Speaker 1: 0:31

Welcome to the Husband Material podcast, where we help Christian men outgrow porn. Why? So you can change your brain, heal your heart and save your relationship. My name is Drew Boa and I'm here to show you how let's go.

Speaker 1: 0:49

Hey, welcome back to part two of this series on sexual betrayal trauma with Dr Barbara Steffens and Lachelle Burkett. In this episode, we are going to be a lot more focused on what does healing look like for partners of men who have a relationship with porn, and you're going to learn about the three stages of healing. You're going to learn about how sexually acting out or relapsing can affect those stages and the difference between forgiveness, reconciliation and trust. Especially, toward the end of the episode, we have this beautiful vision of what post-traumatic growth can look like for a partner, whether the relationship survives or not, and you're also going to learn about some wonderful resources that are out there that you may not have been aware of. Enjoy the episode. Welcome back to part two of our conversation with Barb Steffens and Lachelle Burkett, talking about healing for women who have been sexually betrayed, and also for men who have been sexually betrayed as well. Welcome back.

Speaker 2: 1:49

Thanks for having us.

Speaker 1: 1:51

So I would strongly recommend going back to listen to part one if you haven't. In this episode we're going to focus more on what healing looks like for partners and the multidimensional partner trauma model, which was the focus of the training that I just went through with the husband material team. So what are the three stages of healing for sexually betrayed partners?

Speaker 3: 2:17

Multidimensional partner trauma model is an adaptation of another model, which is really just a trauma recovery model that was put together by Judith Herman Dr Judith Herman and when APSAT started we kind of adapted it to look at the three phases that people go through when they are traumatized, especially when it's trauma that occurs from another person, relationally and stabilization. So people get confused on what safety means. Safety means am I safe physically, emotionally, sexually, all those ways? Am I able to manage even my own behaviors and my own emotions? How am I doing after this significant traumatic event? So how safe do I feel? So if you're working with someone and they're asking you about safety, just think about your body and your mind and emotions and your ability to manage what's going on. All of those things are related to safety.

Speaker 1: 3:24

And this is so important because oftentimes the first question a partner is asked is like how did she contribute to the porn and what happened? Or you know what could be going on in her childhood that's affecting her, which is not honoring the first stage of safety.

Speaker 3: 3:45

No, that's assuming things and it's not attending to the person in front of you. So when we do the VTRL we talk about being a first responder. And that's what first responders do. They check your level of safety. Where are you hurt, where are you injured? So for the person who's helping, that's their focus. Where does it hurt? Where are you feeling out of control? For everyone else around them, it's going to be what can I do to assist you? I can see you're in a lot of pain. I can see you're in a lot of pain. I can see you're really confused. So that's stabilization. You know how can we help it start to feel a little bit better? We're not going to be able to wipe it away. We're not going to put a Band-Aid on it and all of a sudden you're up and walking and after having a fractured leg right. So it's going to take some tending to and some care and time.

Speaker 3: 4:38

And the hardest thing about this phase one is it can take longer than what anyone wants it to. You know, it's like if you've ever had surgery. I had surgery and I was young and I thought I could just bounce right back and get right back to life. And oh my gosh, the period of time that I needed just to adjust to the trauma of having surgery. Well, this is adjusting to the trauma of I'm not sure I even know who this person is that I'm in a relationship with. I'm not even sure if I can sleep again because I have so many nightmares or I'm having trouble eating. I throw up all the time. It is a long, hard process and people can get really impatient with phase one. You know, move along. Now you have information, now you can absorb that, while her body needs to absorb it and her brain needs to heal from the trauma. So it can take a long time.

Speaker 3: 5:31

The other thing in phase one that might be going on is, even though discovery has happened because that's what we're relating this to it after discovery, but the partner doesn't know if it's really ended and so there's no ending to start to heal from. So it's waiting. The partner is waiting to see what is going to happen, to let me know I am safe right now. Because I am not safe, I don't feel safe. I don't see evidence in you that I am safe. Maybe other people are not safe to be around, whether that be if I go to my faith community and they ask me well, weren't you having sex enough? Or I'm not safe because someone doesn't believe me, or says, well, your husband's a pillar of the church, he couldn't do anything like that and have it dismissed. So lots of things impact that first phase for safety physical, emotional, sexual, relational, all the things.

Speaker 2: 6:33

You mentioned something about people being impatient with this phase, and the number one person that was most impatient with this phase was myself. Yeah, I did not want to be a mess anymore. I was determined that it was going to. We need to shut this down, right, because I got stuff to do and nobody's got time for this. But, much like Barb's example of a surgery, when we ignore the symptoms, right, oftentimes it morphs into something much bigger than it needed to be to begin with. So we have pain and it's the incision sites red and everything else, and I'm like, well, I'm just too bad. I got to keep going and then suddenly it's infected and you got to go back in and it's just a thing. So I just want to point that out, that for me, while it was important for me to have that safety and I didn't have a lot of safe community around me in the beginning, and so because of that, I think I was trying to shut myself down too, because there just was no one helping me navigate that phase- so I just remembered.

Speaker 3: 7:39

Another part of safety that a lot of partners will find themselves dealing with is financial safety, especially in a lot of our Christian communities. You know everything is shared, bank accounts are shared, all of that. Communities you know everything is shared, bank accounts are shared, all of that. And whether they're both employed outside of the home or not, the partner, as a female partner in particular, can feel very vulnerable financially. I know for me that was one of the areas that it hit me the hardest where I didn't feel safe, because I was working but I certainly didn't have the income my husband had and we had joint accounts, and so one of my first steps for myself was I have to have my own, whatever financially, to be able to separate so that I can protect my finances and protect my financials. Some partners will request that and their loved one will not allow it, and so then we're going to coach her on how she can do that, if she needs to do that, if that's a felt need.

Speaker 3: 8:38

But financial is another big area where partners cannot feel safe. They feel very vulnerable. I've had lots of partner clients who have come and how discovery occurred was their loved one losing their job as a result of their behaviors, and so imagine the financial insecurity there. You know he could act out again and then he's going to lose another job. So what am I going to do to protect myself? So everything we do in this phase is help them start to calm and heal, but also start to come up with some strategies to help them feel safer in their situation. So it can look different for different people.

Speaker 1: 9:22

When sexual acting out doesn't stop or there's a relapse. How does that impact phase one of safety?

Speaker 3: 9:30

It can't end until someone makes a decision that they're going to have to separate out of it so that they have less impact by it. That's, if the behaviors don't end One way or another, a partner is going to have to find a way to pull out of whatever that is. So I'm not saying divorcing, but that may be one of the options, or some kind of period of time of separation, because being around someone all day long or in a relationship who is not safe just prolongs that trauma for the individual. So that's not a first decision, normally, but it may ultimately be a decision so that they can start to, you know, step back to take care of themselves and protect themselves. You know, step back to take care of themselves and protect themselves.

Speaker 3: 10:14

If it's a relapse, let's say that okay, they've made it through phase one and they're really starting to heal and they're starting to extend some trust, which we haven't even talked about yet. They've started to extend some trust. And then there's a major relapse. I can tell you, stage one for that part may be harder than wow.

Speaker 1: 10:35

I often tell men that when you have a relapse or going back to old behaviors, that doesn't invalidate all your previous recovery. It's not like you're back to square one, but for partner, it probably feels that way and we need to honor that reality. Even while continuing to be confident and all that I have gained and all that I have healed, we still need to realize that that's not the reality for the other person.

Speaker 3: 11:10

She's not in your brain to know your intention and to know that that's what I'm really wanting to do. If it's not observable, she's not going to know it, especially if it's not consistent, there's no way she can. She has to protect herself and she's going to have the same kind of trauma response that she had an initial discovery, because, oh my goodness, now everything is up in the air again or is threatened again.

Speaker 1: 11:37

So that's so. This is so helpful. We all need to hear this, even if it's not easy to hear.

Speaker 3: 11:42

Not easy to hear, I know.

Speaker 2: 11:44

Before we move to phase two. The one thing I was just going to add is, like immediately as I was listening to Barb and you asked the question about relapse and then her saying then she'll never get out of it, and I was just like I felt every bit of that in my spirit because I know the feeling itself of navigating relapses and you know behaviors that were just very concerning, et cetera. And while I just want to stress that it's, it isn't actually as hopeless as I think I interpreted it at first when I heard Barb say that, because what we are doing during that phase is we're gaining the tools and the knowledge of what self-care looks like. We are, as partners, trying to heal, even thinking about the example of the financial resources and getting that checking account in place. She doesn't lose her footing quite as much as she did that very first time, because there's a hope that she's done something in there in that initial stage to create stability for herself. That doesn't make it feel like she is starting completely over. So I say that a lot with my partners. I'm like I know that it all feels the same, just like you use that drew, like it does feel the same, but and helping a partner remember the things she has collected along this way so far and how valuable they are to get her stabilized as quick as possible, versus feeling like she just floating down a river. So phase two is you're going to just appreciate this, that we added this word to the, to the phases, to the model drew, because it's anger, grief and mourning and I know we talked about that in the last phase, in the last episode, but they're all vital. They're all vital to an individual healing through a traumatic event.

Speaker 2: 13:40

I heard Jake Porter say this so I'll give him credit. He shared something about that. You cannot grieve until you are safe. You cannot grieve until you find yourself in a place of safety. So notice the building of in this model and the importance of it. And so the reason I mentioned that is because when you talked about the perpetual relapses, oftentimes partners have never experienced the level of grief and they get to anger but they don't actually get to grief and mourning because then they're not safe again. So we got to go back into survival mode, we got to go back into stabilization and finding our safety, so on and so forth.

Speaker 2: 14:23

So really important, because what I have witnessed is this coupleship. He has been doing his work and he has done a great job and he is really showing up well and he's pulling out the vowel situation, right, vulnerability, taking ownership, and they're rocking it out and all of a sudden she just crumbles in grief and she's terrified Something's wrong with me. He's like what's going on, we were doing so well and it really is an indication. He's like what's going on, we were doing so well and it really is an indication that she's found safety. Because grief is such a vulnerable experience, right, like you think about, when you know somebody who's lost a loved one, there is in our brains it triggers a sense of vulnerability with that person. Oh, they've lost that, there's a loss there which makes them vulnerable, et cetera. So really important connection there in those phases.

Speaker 2: 15:18

But so the grief process is probably the biggest phase that I thought I was going to skip, because nobody's got time for that either. Right, like I am a and I know that there are other women out there like me we're just I call it rhino syndrome. I'm just going to push through as fast as I can and not have to do any of these, but grief was one of the hardest phases. It's complex, it's not linear. So that frustrated me as well, because I wanted a formula. It's very personal.

Speaker 2: 15:53

Things that I grieve in my story are not necessarily things that another woman grieves in her story, and so, with all of those nuances, grief tends to be a place that women neglect and they don't want to sit in it. I've even had women say I don't even know how to grieve, I don't even know what that means, and that's a direct correlation to a lot of their childhood stuff where that was never permission. And so what I love about the APSATS model and the multidimensional trauma model is that it allows us to give women permission, because what grief is saying is I lost something, but not only did I lose something, I lost something that I loved dearly. Right, we don't grieve things that don't mean anything to us, right, and so that's another piece to this is being able to really put value around what's happening.

Speaker 2: 16:50

What I do see is not it's not all the time, but what I have seen is that that anger can be a mask for grief, right?

Speaker 2: 17:00

So a lot of times I've had an interchange with a particular pastor and he said, yeah, I got this couple and he they keep coming in and he's doing all the things, but, man, she is just one angry lady and I said to that sounds like a woman who hasn't been allowed to grieve, right, because nobody has met her in that space to say, I see that you lost something that was really special to you.

Speaker 2: 17:29

We don't have funerals for sexual betrayal. No one's bringing me a casserole when my husband looks at porn on a Tuesday night. It's not happening, and so we don't have anyone to bear witness, and that's part of the way that we've been created is to bear witness to one another's burdens, right. And so when women are navigating betrayal, there's very rarely a witness that's going to be able to step into that space which then allows for grief to happen. So, again, this is why community is so vital for both parties for him and for her, but they have very different roles. But for her, that community really helps aid her into moving into grief, which is her healing process.

Speaker 1: 18:11

So, even as these phases are different between members of a couple, we can see so many parallels between what this looks like for those who are struggling with porn and those who are being impacted by it. Guys, think about how much can you really recover if you don't have a safe place to open up and talk about these things? And so much of our work in recovery is grief, being able to sit with emotional distress and the things that happened to us when we were little boys. I hope that can provide some perspective on why partners need these very same things, just tailored to what they are experiencing, and in the BTRL training we spend hours on each of these phases. This is just a preview what happens in phase three.

Speaker 3: 19:11

Phase three. We kind of call it moving on or moving forward, reconnecting so we use different words for it but it's basically gone through and have navigated the trauma piece of it and you've gotten some good safety in place, and then you've grieved and any other trauma symptoms. You now have ways of managing it and in the relationship, or apart from the relationship, the partner is left with now, what, now that I've done all this work, where do I want to go? Who do I want to be? How do I want to show up? So it's rebuilding and for some it's developing brand new skills and a level of resilience that they didn't have before. So it's post-traumatic growth. So I'm going to do different things, be a different person or move into something that was scary for me before. Or perhaps the partner will get to the place where they say I have a lot of hope now and so I want to reach back to someone else who doesn't have as much hope, and so that's where that might start to happen too is encouraging other people that are going through similar things. But it's the exciting part of this process is, now that this has happened. What do I want? What is God calling me to do? Who am I and who do I want to be, and so it's very much a moving forward. And that can happen in the relationship with both people, where they get to revision what their relationship is going to look like, and it can happen individually If the relationship doesn't survive.

Speaker 3: 20:56

There is still thriving, there's the grief, there's change, but there's still thriving after that. So that's the fun part. That's the fun. Coaching part is helping someone get curious and start to make plans for what's next. So they're coming out kind of the other side and people again want to jump over all the stuff that Lachelle talked about from okay, I'm not feeling safe to now this is who I'm going to be, and not deal with the hard stuff in the middle, not process the grief. So we want to invite you please don't jump over the hard stuff, because then it's you're not going to be able to soar the way that you want to because that stuff is still going to be there.

Speaker 2: 21:41

So those are the three phases. I'm going to add a visual to the whole picture. So the the picture I want to give you, or the visual I want to give you, is it's the process of building a mosaic. So stage one is the breaking of the place. It is the shattering, it's the unsettling, it's the surprise of how it came apart. Right, it came apart, and if you think about the safety of having broken glass around, right, you got to figure out how to get that in its right place, and so on and so forth.

Speaker 2: 22:14

When you move into phase two, the anger, grief and mourning. What you're doing is you're looking at this brokenness and you're telling yourself the truth this plate is broken. And then you are assessing it and you're sad. This was such a special plate for you, right, it was so sentimental, whatever was attached to it, it's broken. Then you move into phase three, which is that reconnecting and restoration, and so that is the phase where you start to pick out the pieces that are going to become something altogether new and better, beautiful, different. Really, that is the ultimate process.

Speaker 2: 22:53

There I love to refer to phase three also as reconnecting with self, because a lot of times when women read reconnection, they immediately assume it's in the relationship, and it is not about the relationship. That can happen simultaneously, but where I tend to see women start to come back to either they discover themselves in an altogether different light or they start to rediscover parts of themselves that they lost through this journey. That's usually what's happening in this last phase, and I see this a lot even with women in their faith. They tend to have a crisis of faith at some point in their journey of safety, stabilization. God didn't protect me and now I'm grieving.

Speaker 2: 23:33

So the other narrative I hear is I'm a mess so I shouldn't be around other believers because I can't put on a face. That's the phrase we use a lot. I can't put on a face, so I'm not even going to go to church. That's a way of us saying I'm going to disconnect from a lot of that.

Speaker 2: 23:46

Right, you move into reconnection and restoration and suddenly they have this deeper level of relational connection to the one who made them, and that's what I see happen most often in that phase three. It's all kind of weaved together again, of someone discovering who they're going to be and who they are, who they were meant to be all along. And then, like Barb said, the most beautiful thing is is when I get to watch a woman who's been in group with me for a long time, for a season, and all of a sudden another woman shares something and she says, uh, lachelle, can I speak into that? And I go, yes, you can, because what I know is that that was just a pivotal moment of her reaching back right. She finally felt like she had enough clarity, strength, all the things, to be able to just encourage another woman so beautiful it's a beautiful picture, lachelle the mosaic yes, as we envision what that healing and redemption looks like.

Speaker 1: 24:52

Sometimes we can get a little bit confused in the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation and trust. Sometimes they're even used interchangeably, but they're not the same. So what is the difference between forgiveness versus reconciliation versus trust?

Speaker 3: 25:15

Okay For me. Reconciliation is a process that requires two people and forgiveness only requires one. So I'm the injured party here. So forgiveness for me would be having to look at all the places where I've been wounded and take stock of that and then deciding, over and over and over again probably, that I'm not going to let this hold me back, that I am willing to heal from it, that I am willing to forgive it in that I'm not going to let it stain me anymore. So forgiveness is for me If I can say I'm choosing to forgive this and I'm not just blanketly refusing or saying I'm going to forgive, I'm peace by broken peace, saying I will let this go. It never means it's okay or it was okay that it happened. Forgiveness isn't required, except when there's been an injury. Forgiveness is really about me letting go of it.

Speaker 1: 26:22

And if the injuries keep coming, or if the injuries continue to be revealed, then of course forgiveness is not going to be linear.

Speaker 3: 26:32

It's not linear and it's not time-oriented. It can take a long time. So if I'm working with a partner and they say, well, I think maybe someday I might want to do forgiveness, I said, okay, that's your first start, you've started the process. If your heart is wanting to do that and you do that for you. It's nice if you're in a relationship and there's forgiveness, because it opens up a greater connection.

Speaker 3: 26:58

But you can forgive and never have interaction with another person again. Right, there are people that I have forgiven, that I will not be in a relationship with because they're not safe. I can't trust them. Because they're not safe, I can't trust them. So forgiveness does not require trust. Forgiveness also does not require reconciliation, but reconciliation requires a level of forgiveness. So in order for reconciliation to happen, both people have to be working towards coming together. But it starts with the person who did the injury, who did the offense, moving towards the person who was offended and then, once that looks safe enough, then the other person moves in. So reconciliation is not the responsibility of the wounded party. It has to start with the person who did the wounding to demonstrate trustworthiness, and that takes a long time.

Speaker 2: 27:59

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 28:00

Starts and stops Right, and then trust is just I'm going to see and observe that you are who you say you are consistently over time, or that you're going to do what you say you're going to do consistently over time. Sometimes we give blanket trust when we're first in love and they're very, very kind and nice and we just trust them until it's shattered and then you go oh, I'm going to have to be much more careful now with my trust. It needs to be observable over time. Consistent. When trust has been shattered, it doesn't take a lot to shatter it again. So it's a process and it takes a long time, so much longer than anyone wants it to take.

Speaker 3: 28:46

It's very uncomfortable not trusting someone that you love, not being trusted by someone you love, so it's a really hard process. Consistency over time do what you say you're going to do. Don't do what you say you're not going to do. Let it be observable so reconciliation can happen if there's trust being rebuilt. Without trust, I don't know who you're doing. It's not really reconciliation. It's more like putting a blanket over it. He looks, he does look sad, all right.

Speaker 1: 29:17

I look sad.

Speaker 3: 29:19

He looks sad.

Speaker 1: 29:20

Well, yeah, I mean I guess I am feeling sad, thinking of the men who are in this slow process and also just being convicted about the ways that I sometimes break trust or the ways that I sometimes am not really honoring this process. It's very convicting.

Speaker 3: 29:46

Yeah, any of us can break trust. It's what we do afterwards. How do we try to reestablish that connection? How do we make amends for that? Try to reestablish that connection. How do we make amends for that? How do we demonstrate that, man, I really blew it and I really intend to not do that again, and this is what I'm going to put into place so that I don't do that again. Or ask the other person what would help you. Now that I've done this, what kind of repair might I do? So doing repair attempts is really helpful when trust is broken.

Speaker 2: 30:20

There is a book out there on the five apology languages. I don't know if you knew this, but it's by Gary Chapman, the same guy who wrote the five love languages. There's five apology languages. Now I read it. I'll tell you I wanted all five of them. There was not one that stood out more than the other. But I'm also a woman who has experienced lots of betrayal across my story, not just in my marriage, so maybe I just was like I'll take anything, as long as you'll repair with me. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:49

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 30:49

So I think that's the important piece through, like, as you talked about being sad, is it's one thing to do it, it's another thing to do something about it. Or how are you going to repair? That's the word that I love to use is repair, and it feels like it connects well with men, like they're fixers. So how are you going to repair right this thing that has been broken? How do you fix it? Repair right this thing that has been broken? How do you fix it? And it's important, I think, to understand also the language that your spouse is needing for that repair.

Speaker 2: 31:26

I remember when my husband had broken so much trust and he got home late one day. He was literally, I want to say like nine minutes late from getting home from work. Well, at 6 PM I was the little toe tapping like where are you? By 6.05, there was a smoke coming out of my nose and by 6.09, I was breathing fire everywhere, right, because he told me he'd be home at six o'clock. He did not say he'd be home at six oh nine and he didn't call me. He didn't even call at six oh two to say hey, I know, I told you I'd be there at six and I'm not there, but like there was no communication. Right now I realized that for some that would be a little extreme on my part to be breathing fire, um, by six, oh nine, be breathing fire by 609. But we had no trust with one another and we were in a season I thought we were in a season of rebuilding that right. So he walks in the door and he says to me you know, I'm upset. He can tell I'm upset and I go well, I just, I just don't trust you. And he goes well, what do I have to do to earn your trust? And I go I don't know, you screwed it up, you figure it out. And that was the most honest answer probably I'd ever given him, because I had no idea how to rebuild trust. There was no class on that in high school. No one gave me that and some life skills, like when trust is broken, this is the way we fix it, right. Well, god loved my husband.

Speaker 2: 32:53

Guess what he did? He unloaded the dishwasher, he started taking the trash out and he began doing things around the house, which meant nothing to me, because my response was those are your dirty dishes, that's your trash. Yeah, you should pick up the house Like that spoke nothing to me, right? And so now he's frustrated because he's attempting to make an amends but it's not communicating to me the way that I needed it to be communicated, and truly what I needed was for him to stop and acknowledge what he had done, versus being very what felt passive, right, and that all felt very passive and not addressing the issue. That was my whole thing. You don't even address the issue and so it was.

Speaker 2: 33:42

It's a. It's a place to learn and get curious about our partners, to understand what is it that you need? When you say I need repair, what is that? Does that mean I need to slow down and just sit with you at the table and we talk it out for five minutes and I take ownership for what I did? Is there some other forms of repair? Like there's a lot that goes into it and I think we try to put just like cookie cutters on things. So, needless to say, loading the dishwasher is still continues to be a joke where I say what did you do when he loads the dishwasher?

Speaker 2: 34:15

But dishwasher, but I think that that's an important distinction to give individuals who are trying to do this is like what does it mean to rebuild trust, and we don't always know how to communicate it to another person. So what was lacking for me as the partner in that particular example was I knew what I needed. I just didn't know how to communicate it, because what I needed was consistency, and do what you say and say what you mean. Right, integrity. Those were the two things that I wanted. And so, with him coming in at six, oh nine, those did not happen. He did not communicate with me and he did not do what he said, which was I'll be home at six, so you're welcome for taking my soap opera of a life and learning from it Loading the dishwasher and that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3: 35:09

I used to call that kind of like the good boy syndrome, and I don't mean in a demeaning way, but when you think about a child who's in trouble and they don't know what they did wrong, then maybe either they disappear or they start doing nice things and hope that that makes mom or dad happy again. So it's kind of like they're trying to see how good I'm being rather than what did I do to disappoint you or to hurt you?

Speaker 1: 35:30

And how can I?

Speaker 3: 35:30

make them.

Speaker 1: 35:32

That is such a wonderful example of showing up as the little boy rather than the mature man.

Speaker 3: 35:40

Mature man? Yeah, because I can guarantee you for speaking on behalf of every woman everywhere. We don't want a little boy.

Speaker 1: 35:48

So husband material is here to help men become emotionally, sexually and spiritually mature, and also Hope Redefined is here for the partners of Husband Material, men. Lachelle, can you talk more about that?

Speaker 2: 36:04

I can. So we are a 501c3 nonprofit. We were birthed in 2018. And, as you can imagine, it came from my own story. I needed community no-transcript be a disclosure guide. We also walk women through the disclosure process and support them through that. We do a retreat twice a year that we host outside of Knoxville, tennessee. We're hoping to someday get to Texas, so we'll see about that to host a retreat there. We also have an online community that women can connect right off their phones. There's an app they put on their phone and connect. And then, finally, we have a scholarship program and so, as a nonprofit, we work really hard to fill that scholarship bucket in order to help women get the financial resources they need to have care within the community. Oh, and I get to be a podcast guest host. I'm on Hope for Wives.

Speaker 3: 37:17

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 37:17

Right so we'll put the link to that podcast in the show notes as well. I had a phenomenal experience doing the BTRL training. 25 of us spent four days with you. To be clear, Barb is not part of Hope Redefined, but Barb and Lachelle partner to offer this training.

Speaker 2: 37:37

Yes, through APSATS Yep.

Speaker 1: 37:39

Can you tell people what it's about and if it's for them?

Speaker 2: 37:43

So BTRL stands for Betrayal Trauma Religious Leaders, and this particular training was birthed out of the passion of individuals within the APSATS community to help educate religious leaders on what it looks like to be first responders. How do I meet an individual or a couple who has just walked into my church office, to my biblical counseling center, to my small group that is navigating some sort of sexual integrity issues? How do I care for these individuals? And while we have a heart and passion to help individuals understand the person who's struggling with the sexual behaviors, we really do want to focus in on what does it look like for the partner and unpacking kind of the mystery of betrayal trauma, because oftentimes what you see is not actually what's happening underneath, and so we're trying to give some clarity around that. We also want to give some tools and really invite religious leaders to become a safe place.

Speaker 2: 38:48

What we consistently hear in this environment is that their faith communities are not safe and, if I'm honest, that feels so counter to everything that we're taught when it comes to many of our faiths.

Speaker 2: 39:00

So we love to walk with any religious leaders. One of the gals on our team is very involved in the Jewish community, so we have had a lot of exposure and presence helping to teach rabbis and other individuals, leaders in that community. And then, of course, barb and I have had the opportunity to do this a few times through Christian outlets, so we're not limited to just those. The training in and of itself really is can be positioned to meet a religious setting. So, and we'll use that language as we're going through the training but we also love to be able to come specifically to organizations like yours, drew, and we'll use that language as we're going through the training. But we also love to be able to come specifically to organizations like yours, drew, and customize that in order for us to be able to really meet you guys right where you're at in your support of individuals.

Speaker 1: 39:47

Yeah, it was amazing to go through this as men's sexual recovery coaches sexual recovery coaches but regardless of what your leadership looks like, you do not have to be a licensed counselor to get this training, and that was the game changer for me. You have opened it up to a much wider audience and I hope it grows. Thank, you.

Speaker 3: 40:11

Yeah, it is wonderful to share all of this information, but also to share it within the context of someone's faith, someone's belief, and incorporating that into the healing process very intentionally and help them figure out how to do that intentionally and in safe ways. How to avoid adding more harm upon harm. How to avoid adding more harm upon harm. One of the biggest complaints we get from partners is I went to my pastor or my priest and I was told well, forgive them that that was the solution to the problem. So we want to make sure they understand what the problem really is so that they don't add more discomfort or harm.

Speaker 1: 40:52

Treatment-induced trauma and institutional betrayal.

Speaker 3: 40:57

Exactly. We want to reduce that and I love it if our churches and our synagogues could do that.

Speaker 1: 41:04

Absolutely so. You can find more information about Betrayal Trauma Religious Leader Training in the show notes. Barb and Lichelle what is your favorite thing about healing?

Speaker 3: 41:14

It's watching someone find some freedom from pain or fear in particular, fear and gosh just seeing them supported. Seeing someone supported in the process that's the fun part for me, and as the grandma of doing all of this stuff seeing how many people I spoke to 15 years ago who were in the midst of it, who are now pioneers in helping others. There is nothing better. Nothing better that's post-traumatic growth.

Speaker 2: 41:46

Absolutely. I'm a gardener, I love to garden and I feel like it is one of the most beautiful depictions of healing. Specifically, I love flowers and I just love watching that process of it grow and then the bud comes and then it opens and there's such an appreciation for what happens and I feel like that's healing is. You know, as a gardener, that it's coming. There's an anticipation, and so, as a helper in this place, I carry that level of anticipation and hope.

Speaker 2: 42:19

For women that I walk with is like oh, I know it's coming. I mean, I may not know when, I don't know what day your, you know your flower is going to burst open. But, man, I am going to be so excited when it happens. And with the right environment right, just like in gardening, with the right soil and the rain and the fertilizers and all the things environment right, just like in gardening, with the right soil and the rain and the fertilizers and all the things, it thrives and it's such a gift. I mean I joke all the time that I'm addicted to healing, but it's true, I'm really addicted to healing. I love watching people heal. It's just part of who God made me to be.

Speaker 1: 42:53

That's so amazing. Thank you for sharing with us.

Speaker 2: 42:57

You're welcome.

Speaker 1: 43:04

Thanks for having us. It's an honor. It was an honor to be taught by you for four days and I hope more people have that privilege. So if you want to learn more about Barb and Lachelle and the training they are doing, go down to the show notes and always remember you are God's beloved son In you. He is well-pleased.