Instead of thinking, well, they just have anger issues, what if we got curious and asked, what makes that so difficult? What makes that situation difficult for you? And as a counselor, of course, I'm always going to ask the question of, when else have you felt this way? That's Eliza Huey, and she's with us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, sharing how we can show the love of Christ to people who've been through really difficult, painful experiences. Thanks for joining us.
I'm John Fuller. You know, John, offering Christ-like love, we, you know, are not perfect people. We're trying to do the best we can as believers in Christ. But to offer Christ-like love and practical counseling tools to people who are struggling has always been close to the heart of us here at Focus on the Family. That's our ministry.
That's what we do. We have caring Christian counselors and a heap of resources. I think people just need to realize Focus is a resource center for you, especially in the areas of marriage and parenting. And we want to support you in that. And if you have had trauma in your life, today's conversation is going to be right at you.
And if you know people that have had trauma in their life, this is going to really help equip you to help them, which is part of the call as a Christian. Eliza Huey and her husband have three adult children and one grandchild. And she's the director of counseling at McLean Bible Church and is a podcaster and professor. And she's written a book that we're only going to be able to touch on today. It's a really rich resource.
It's called Trauma Aware: A Christian's Guide to Providing Help and Care. And you can learn more about Eliza. Her ministry and this great book at our website. The link is in the show notes. Eliza, welcome to Focus on the Family First Time.
Yes, thank you so much for having me and for having this conversation, which I think is so essential. Let me ask you, this is a heavy topic. I mean, I'm looking right at the YouTube viewer and speaking to the listeners.
Sometimes this can be really difficult. We go through trauma, all of us. I mean, I think life deals trauma to us. I think the Lord has a purpose in it. It's always that big question, why do people suffer if God is a loving God?
I don't know if you've wrestled with that, but as a trauma expert, you're certainly seeing the fallout of a fallen world. What conclusions do you have with that question? You're asking the question that a lot of people ask. And I would even say a lot of believers ask and sometimes feel a level of shame. And like, why am I even wrestling with this?
Because I believe God, who God is. But in light of my circumstance, it feels like this just doesn't make sense. If God is good, then why am I going through this? And what I would say to that is, we need to get comfortable with people asking those kind of questions when suffering, crisis, struggle, trauma intercepts their life. Because that's really the cry of the Psalms, right?
We see that throughout the Psalms: this willingness to say, How long, God? Or have you forgotten me? That's the cry that people are asking. They're asking that why question. And I would say what we need to do is just be able to say, you know what?
That's a really good question. And what I would encourage us as believers to avoid is don't feel the pressure to answer for God. Yeah. Like we can sometimes feel like, well, we got to say all the right theological answers about who God is. But it's okay to actually let them say, this is hard and I don't understand it.
And I want to ask why. And in a sense, they're speaking the Psalms. I agree. I think that was one of the best answers I've ever heard. I think it may have been the late Tim Keller from Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City who said, Those are questions that we can't even answer.
We don't know why children suffer. I mean, if you try to answer that, you're probably not even going to get near the answer God might give.
So we have to say we don't know. And it's also okay to not have the answer, but to actually express, it's okay to ask that question, though. And again, these are just hard things to comprehend, and we don't have the answers, but we have... I would say like compass direction, what the scripture's telling us, what mature, deep-rooted Christians can help us think through. Let's start with the story of, is it Tiana?
I'm sure that's not her real name. Right. No, it is not.
Somebody that you had contact with. She suffered terrible trauma. Describe what happened to her. Yeah. So in that story, you have somebody who had an incident.
She had a pretty catastrophic house fire, but she had other little things along the way. And even though the house, and this happens with real life situations all the time, I see them. The trauma can be significant and then it gets like. the situations get rectified, the house is rebuilt, you're able to recover the loss and so forth. But she had other things that happened along the way.
And I think it begs to answer a question as to, and this is why I bring this story up, is because sometimes you can have two people go through similar situations. One person goes through this really catastrophic situation and it's, they're traumatized. Another and they're not. And so that question is, why is that? What makes something traumatizing?
And I think that's the question we're all wanting to know as we walk with people or as we encounter things in our own lives. And I think that's so important to understand because there are some characteristics that are important to know about your own story or the story of somebody you love who you realize have been through something. What causes what I'm going to call traumatization, because that's what we're seeing is that those signs that the trauma's had an impact on them. What causes that is four things, really. The first thing is it is Overwhelm.
The person's been overwhelmed with something. And this can happen with little children, what we call complex trauma, over and over and over again. But they're overwhelmed. It's too much, too soon, too fast for them.
So that's the first characteristic of what could cause traumatization. The next one is powerlessness. No voice, no choice, and no ability to change the situation.
So, think of like a car accident that causes somebody to be traumatized. You know, in that situation where you are going to hit that other car or a car is coming at you, you have no ability to change that.
So, overwhelmed, powerlessness. Alone. This one is huge. It's huge because it's the way we used to look at trauma early on in psychological history. They used to think of it as, What's wrong with you?
Something's wrong with this person. And they would kind of scratch their head and go, That person's broken. What's wrong with them? And then, through research and through time, and really through the Vietnam War, because that's when we started to here in the States start understanding trauma better and doing some trauma work. PTSD, it entered into our diagnostic manual.
And so then instead of asking, What's wrong with you? They started asking, What happened to you? Which is much more compassionate. Right, and accurate. And much more accurate.
Right. Well, now. Years, this is now it's been another 50 years or so.
Now we're asking an even better question. We're asking the question of who was with you because being alone, meaning having nobody to process it with, nobody noticed, nobody heard, nobody even asked, causes that traumatization. But it is really that whole person. And that's really why I wrote this book: I wanted people to understand that specifically with trauma, we have to have a whole person approach. We can't just say, what happened to you emotionally, or what's going on spiritually, or what happened to you physically, but we have to have that whole person approach.
And so it's so key. I created a basic trauma questionnaire that's in the book. It's also on my website, free if that's easier. But it's to help the layperson say, How do I know if what my loved one or even what I have dealt with? Is traumatizing.
And so just tried to create it very simply with the resources of other counselors kind of giving feedback on that. I think, again, I want to make sure we're clear about the idea that you've captured in the book here that it's good for you to be not formally trained. You don't need to be formally trained, but you can read a book and be better informed as to how to identify someone who might be going through trauma. You know, one way I've described it, maybe I use this metaphor too much, but it's like a car accident. I've seen car accidents, and that's why I refer to it because it's like you're saying to yourself as you're watching this, Am I really seeing what I think I'm seeing?
Because it's odd, it's unusual. It's not what seeing somebody drive down the wrong side of the road, you're going, is that person really on the wrong side of the road? It's like your brain has to catch with what's happening. And I think identifying somebody who's dealing with trauma at different degrees, I think we could all recognize somebody who is highly traumatized. But it's like that.
You've got to say to yourself, Mm-hmm. Did I really just hear what they said? And did they really mean what they just said? Because that's a flag. How do we get to that point where we can be effective as Christians to say, it feels like something might be wrong.
How can I help you? Oh, that's so good. And you're capturing the heart of why I wrote the book. I didn't write this book for other counselors necessarily, though I think counselors can be helped by it. I wrote it and I had somebody tell me, and this was probably the best compliment I had, was that I took theories and models and understanding like psychological terms and boiled them down to very accessible, practical ways.
I mean, the subtitle is A Christian's Guide to Helping Care. And so one of the things I think is so important is for us to realize the multifaceted aspect of trauma is that, okay, I can't just look for what I think somebody, like sometimes we think, oh, they're all of a sudden they disassociate, or we think of like the backfiring of a car and then all of a sudden somebody drops to the floor or whatever. And that's what I'm looking for with traumatization. No, actually, it will show up. In hyper-awareness of just like being very aware of my surroundings or being very uncomfortable.
Let's say, if you go into maybe a small group, because you know, churches, lots of people have small groups, and that just the discomfort of being in another person's home, needing to see the doorway wherever they sit, or being uncomfortable with being asked very personal questions that are just, I want to get to know you a little bit more. Those are some of the things that we want to think about.
Sometimes I think we can misdiagnose trauma as like antisocial. They just don't, they're not very social, or high anxiety or anger can sometimes also be a protective way of dealing with the trauma responses that they're dealing with. Or detachment is huge. And people want to be attached. I mentioned being alone is part of what causes it to be traumatizing, but they get stuck in that and it becomes like, now I want to detach from everybody.
And so they end up, unfortunately, it can end up being really a cause of conflict in close relationships. They're kind of comfortable. In your uncomfortableness. It's an odd thing, but it's accurate. Yeah.
This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and today Eliza Huey is with us, and we're just getting into this topic of trauma. And it's pretty widespread, and that's why this is such a great book that we're talking about: Trauma Aware: A Christian's Guide to Providing Help and Care. Get a copy of the book from us here at the ministry. The link is in the show notes. You know, you mentioned in the book signs of trauma.
I just want to listen to them quickly, and we can come back and point out a couple. Triggers is one: recurrent memories or dreams, avoidance, unwanted somatic responses, and then mood disturbances and arousal responses. The triggers one, this is kind of interesting that you mentioned that a moment ago: the distinction between somebody just being. upset. I remember being at a coffee place and this woman ordered right in front of me so I had the whole thing.
She ordered you know this latte and she wanted it at 104 degrees. And I'm going, oh, this will be interesting. You know, and had a lot of foo-foo stuff in it as well, chocolate mocha or whatever. Anyway, she gets it at the other end and she sips it and she goes into a tizzy. Like, this is not 104 degrees.
This is more like 101. And first of all, I'm going, wow, you have an amazing temperature gauge. But she flew off the handle. Seeing this now, that's more of a trigger of something deeper going on in her. It's not the superficial thing.
This woman is really weird about her coffee. It's saying something else. In that context, you're not going to do anything because that's just odd to engage in that. And they corrected it and they made it hotter for her. If it were me, I'd probably do 107 then.
Let's leave that to the side. But speak to that kind of thing about how people engage like that, that are upset about just everyday things that go wrong. Driving. Oh, my goodness. Like driving is unhinged now.
Right. Yeah. And this was something that I wrestled with in the book because as a counselor, I see a lot of those things. What you described is very common in just like day-to-day relational conflict or people's just struggles that they have in everyday life. And I have to wrestle, like, is this trauma or is this not?
And so I struggled with, do I put this in the book? And I actually did put a section on there when it's not. Trauma, because I do think it's also important for us to recognize that there are some things in us that might even look like, oh, maybe there is something deeper, and that deeper could be trauma, or that deeper could be, I have a very high opinion of my comfort zone, or something like that. And so, I think the key is to understand where, when we look at that acronym that you just listed, that is an acronym for trauma. It's the acronym.
I should have pointed that out. Is it just one of those things? Because if it's just one, then I would say, you know, maybe not trauma. But if it's multiple ones, And if the triggers are not just now I'm upset, but the triggers take me back. Because let me just explain quickly what a trigger is.
A trigger is what I call a memory link.
So it's linking to something else that happened, but it is packed full of the emotions, the feelings, not just the emotional feelings, but the physical feelings. of that terrible event that I went through. And those things all come back and they're smashed together with no space in between and they feel it all over.
So think of a trigger of like being right back in that moment with no warning. People who have triggers do not want triggers. They're not trying to like over, you know, because that's a word we throw out there a lot. Oh, you're triggering me. People who are truly traumatized will do everything they can.
That's part of the first A there to avoid anything that's going to remind them of trauma. And so we want to get curious, is this other things that are happening? Maybe some relational struggles or maybe, you know, some anger issues that I have that aren't related to trauma or are there some of these other things connected to it?
well. You know one of the things with society, if we could put it in this context, I remember an example that I had where I was in DC. There were people protesting in the street, more of like an Antifa kind of situation. And I was coming out of a meeting in a suit and tie.
So I think they kind of figured who I was. You know, I'm some kind of maybe DC person, which I'm not. But I'm walking and two women come to confront me, one holding a phone. And there are many people coming out of this event. And she came up and she was very crass and using foul language and saying things to me.
And I remember I felt a weirdly weird peace. I mean, I was not offended by her. And I remember just looking at her right eye to eye and I said, What kind of relationship did you have with your dad? that has driven you to act like this. She went stone quiet.
She didn't react to it. She just looked like I had just hit her with the two by four emotionally. And the other girl noticed that, and then she began to engage me. And that girl just stood there. And I could tell it connected.
And to the point in the book, you mentioned that people that are expressing deep disrespect or anger behavior, there could be that thing that happened to them that, or many things that have happened to them, that caused them to lean into that kind of activity. Describe that. And the attitude we should have as Christians. In that situation, I could always have two responses. I'm no super Christian, believe me.
I could act out of my flesh. and respond to her Or I can try to find the peace of God and respond with what He would want me to respond with.
Well, and you demonstrated it so well. What I would say is when you have a situation where you're wondering what is going on, Why are you so upset about this? What makes this so significant? Where maybe the next person would be able to handle this question or this situation in the coffee shop or whatever? The thing that you did was so right is that when we don't know, the best thing that we can do, and I talk about this quite a bit, is to ask, ask a question.
Because what we tend to do is we tend to assume, oh, she's just fill in the blank, or this is the platform she's standing on. Yeah, exactly. And so we assume a lot about the person, we assume a lot about their circumstance, and yet we don't know.
So you did, you modeled it right there. And so I would say, even as a church, when we are having people come into our small groups or into our Bible studies or into our congregation, and you notice there's something different about this person, you know what? They always sit on the fifth row from the right, the last seat, and somebody was sitting there and they got so upset. Instead of thinking, well, they just have anger issues, what if we got curious and asked what makes that so difficult? What makes that situation difficult for you?
And as a counselor, of course, I'm always going to ask the question of, when else have you felt this way? Because that's what we're looking for. And I just give a ton of questions that you can ask because you did it right there. We don't want to assume because when we assume, we don't ask. Question asking really is a diffuser.
You know, another thing, and you've got to think maybe, especially if you're in the realm of being in the culture, engaging people that disagree with you. Another one is just to say, what has brought you to this place? Exactly. Why do you believe what you believe? And I kind of, in my mind, envision this big balloon that's full of air.
And when you ask a question like that, it kind of goes, whoo. Yeah. And some of that air pressure is let out. I was just having a conversation with a colleague of mine, Kurt Thompson, and he asked the question. He said, We should ask, what makes this make sense?
And I think that's what you did with that lady. What makes this make sense? And if you can just simply ask that question, that can go a long way in diffusing the situation. And really, what are we doing? We're being like Jesus, who was masterful at asking questions.
Who touched me? Do you want to be well? Where is your husband? Like, these are questions that he did not need to ask, but he asked to draw them out and to understand their story. Yeah, yeah.
And I was actually talking to one of my children the other day, and I said, It's not the first question. Most of us can figure out a first question. It's what you just said. It's the second question that kind of gives people a sense of, oh, you really do care. But that's.
That's so hard in our everyday conversations.
Well, let me give you a little cheat because you are 100% right. That first question just gets the conversation rolling and says, I want to know. And the second question is where we, as the question askers, get a little bit nervous, like, okay, now I don't know what to ask. Exactly. I can't tell you how many times people said, what?
Just give me. And that's why I did list a bunch of questions in the book. But take this as just your little cheat. What do I need to know? about what I already know.
So that first question gives you something.
So then just ask more about what they just go a little deeper. Yep, about the same stuff. You also in the book talk about three simple ways to help people combat trauma. These are real common sense things. But again, it's almost like you need to think of that before it happens or it won't be on the tip of your tongue.
But those three were encourage care for the body, create a safe and supportive environment, and explore expanding their community of support.
So just describe, that can sound a little complicated, but just describe those really quick.
Well, the first one, just encouraging the care for the body, you're not doing good trauma care if you leave the body out. That's just the bottom line. That's just the way it works because. Guess where the body was when they experienced trauma? It was right there with them.
It was in that car accident, it was in that horrible living situation. What does that advice sound like, though? How do I say to somebody, boy, it'd be good for you to care for your body? Yeah, well, some of it is even just recognizing like maybe they're not caring for their body, but you as a person, what I mean by that is I want to actually attend to what's happening in their body.
So when I say good trauma, if you're doing trauma care without the body, you're not doing trauma care. When you're sitting with me, talking with me, and you have that moment of, okay, I'm now talking to the real situation now, we have to pay attention to what the body is doing because the body is what kept you alive in that circumstance. And you guys probably have heard the fight, flight, or freeze responses that are very common. That's what happens in trauma. You're triggering one of those fight, flight, or freeze.
And the body will do that to keep you alive, but it will keep doing that in that moment. And so, for example, You might notice that somebody either like checks out mentally or they kind of get up and leave, even a conversation. They may not be being rude. That might be the flight response that they knew in that trauma.
So, helping them understand that when you're feeling that, there are physical sensations. How can you actually address that?
So, one of the things I tried to do is just give a whole lot of actual exercises that I do, just kind of invited you into my counseling room and said, Let's talk about how we can address the body through breathing. Breathing is the number one way your body goes into fight, flight, or freeze. That's how it starts, is you your breathing starts to change. You just don't notice it.
Well, if that's how your body moves into fight, flight, or freeze, guess what? That's how it moves out of it as well. And we can activate the other, the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the rest, digest, and process. We talk a lot about fight, flight, or freeze.
So, I talk about how you can address the body and bring them back into the rest, digest, and process through breathing, through meditating on scripture and how scripture. Scripture can also do that, but really addressing that because we are embodied souls, which means we live out embodied faith. And we need to go to where the hurt started. And a lot of times it started in the body. Yeah, some physical encounter.
Let's hit quickly then, create a safe and supportive environment. I think it's self-explanatory, but give us the definition.
Well, we've already started talking about that with the let's not assume. Let's not assume, but let's ask and be willing to be patient, to be patient with the person, to be patient with yourself when you don't know what to say, because you're not going to know what to say. And that's okay. You might actually say, I feel like I should say something right now. And I don't know what to say.
And that might be the most helpful thing that you could possibly say.
So, because you're trying to create that safety, that connection, because in trauma, they didn't feel safe. And so, what we want to do is not create another unsafe place. We want to say, We're going to go at your pace. I'm going to ask a lot of questions. And you get to even tell me, I'm not ready to answer that question.
And giving them that permission is really good for creating safety. You know, and lastly, then explore expanding their community of support. We just earlier talked about the loneliness factor. I mean, how does a person that's in this lonely generation now, connecting digitally, but not Really, with people, how do you expand their support base? What does that sound like?
Well, as a counselor, one of the first things I'm doing is looking at who else knows this story.
So, if somebody has been willing to tell you their trauma story, ask that question: Does anybody else know the story? And if they say, No, I've never told it to anyone else but you, then you know you got to expand their circle. But if they say, Well, I've told my best friend from high school, she knows about it.
Well, I'm going to be bringing that best friend into the conversation, even if they're not physically there, just thinking about, I wonder what Susie or Sally, whatever her name is, would say if you'd shared this with her. And even help them think, What would it look like to share this with maybe a trusted friend at church? Not we're going to share it this week. That's not a homework assignment, but let's talk about even what that would look like. That's expanding their circle without even bringing another person in just yet.
Just getting them to think about that is so key.
Well, this is so good. I'd like to keep rolling, and we'll come back next time with a day two because this is, I think, touching.
So many people's hearts. And thank you for being here and talking about these things. And let's come back next time and continue. Can we do that? And to those of you listening and watching, I hope you will feel equipped to come alongside people who are struggling, or maybe this program impacted you because you've been dealing with trauma.
If you could use some extra support, give us a call. We have caring Christian counselors who can talk to you over the phone and help you take those first steps to find hope and healing. Yeah, set up a consultation with our caring Christian counselors when you call 800-232-6459. 800, the letter A in the word family, or check the show notes for details. And another great resource for you to get is Eliza's book, Trauma Aware.
It has so many more of her insights into caring for those we love and understanding the ways the mind and body connect. We have copies for you here at Focus on the Family. And when you make A gift of any amount and join us in ministry. We'll send you a copy as our way of saying thank you for your support. Because we are a non-profit ministry, we need your donations to keep making these resources and counseling and all the other helps here at Focus available.
If you have benefited from the program today, please show your appreciation by financially supporting us. Every dollar you give goes right back into ministry so we can help hurting people, save marriages, and support parents raising the next generation. Donate today and get your copy of Eliza Huey's book, Transformers. Trauma Aware, a Christian's Guide to Providing Help and Care, when you call 800-232-6459. 800, the letter A and the word family.
You can also donate and get details by clicking on the links in the program description. Thanks for listening to Focus on Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller, inviting you back next time as we continue the conversation with Eliza and once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. Your marriage can be redeemed even if the fights seem constant, even if there's been an affair, even if you haven't felt close in years. No matter how deep the wounds are, you can take a step toward healing them with a hope-restored marriage-intensive.
Our biblically based counseling will help you find the root of your problems and face challenges together. We'll talk with you, pray with you, and help you find out which program will work best. Call us at 1-866-875-2915.
