How can I help YOU feel safe? Advice to professionals from a trauma survivor…

From teachers and policemen to doctors and dentists, there are many professionals who encounter people who are suffering from trauma-related conditions such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). As a person with PTSD myself, I have encountered many well-meaning professionals floundering when my PTSD causes me to be an ‘uncooperative’ and extremely terrified individual. Doctors, policemen and dentists have often become very frustrated with me and in turn try to use
threats or force to get me to cooperate – the very opposite of what I need.

Although I am saddened over the lack of training available and/or taken advantage of by professionals in all sorts of areas, I would like to pass on one easy method of helping individuals of trauma. That is to make them feel safe.

During traumatic events, whether it’s car accidents, childhood abuse, natural disasters, war or sexual assaults, the victim is often:

1. Not in control. These traumatic events happen to them. There was no way to control what they felt, saw or experienced.
2. Not safe. By very definition, trauma is experiencing something to which the victim feels unsafe, whether this is perceived or realized.

Hence, the best way to help a victim of trauma, is to create a setting where they are in control and safe. How might this look?

Scenario 1

Witness at a police station is sitting on chair, rocking back and forth, unable to control their shaking limbs or make eye-contact with police.

What to do:

• Get down on their level, i.e. sit if they're sitting.
• Keep a safe distance.
• Talk gently.
• Ask how you can help them feel safe. Do they need a blanket or an object to hold onto to ground them? Do they need a policeman of a different gender or an advocate?

Scenario 2

Survivor of sexual abuse is at a dentist having their teeth cleaned. Their legs are uncontrollably shaking and they are unable to keep still.

What to do:

• Talk gently – remembering to keep frustration or impatience out of your voice.
• Ask the patient for permission for everything you do, i.e. “Is it okay if I place this bib on you?” or “Is it okay if I look at your teeth with this mirror?”
• Ask the patient to come up with a signal that they are needing a break such as raising their hand.
• Ask them how you can help them feel safe. Do they need a weighted blanket, or to have music playing, or for you to talk to them during the whole procedure?

Again, the greatest help you can be to a traumatized individual is to make them feel safe and in control as much as possible. Working with trauma victims takes patience and gentleness, but remember that you have no idea what they are reliving and you may be the one person that can help them overcome their fears and crippling traumatic responses. 

The Fortress

I walked up to the base of the Fortress of God’s Goodness and, through sobs and tears, began to

systemically check its base for a sign of weakness. I searched for a crack or a crumble or an imperfection of any kind, but could find no indication of flaw or frailty. The base of the Fortress seemed enormous, extending far to both my left and right in a perfect concrete arc. Above me, the summit of the cylinder stretched into the clouds, beyond my sight. For a moment I was awestruck at its magnitude. I could not fathom its size. The fortress seemed impenetrable. Desperate, I threw my body against it and beat it with my fists, but it didn’t budge. It scarcely could have perceived my wailing, flailing presence; as though a silo could perceive an ant hurling itself against its base.

Nevertheless, I kicked and beat the wall with all my strength. I cursed it and insulted it and hurled my body against it. Knowing somehow that there was nothing to find, I nonetheless walked the entire circumference of the citadel searching for a symptom of its fragility and at last, when I had no more strength to carry on and no more tears to cry, I sat down on the dusty ground, dotted with golden desert flowers to whimper quietly and rub my swollen eyes.

There was no weakness. The Fortress of God’s Goodness was as solid as something could be. It was unyielding to my protests in any way. I found that, despite my suffering, I could make no accusation against it. And I came to the final conclusion that if it would be so completely unyielding to me, I, then, must be yielded to it.

So I admitted it. The Fortress of God’s Goodness was stronger than I. My experiences were not, as I so wanted to believe, indicative of its legitimacy. I had to embrace that God was resolutely and entirely good and that I was made to suffer at the same time. In fact, I was forced to conclude that my suffering did not detract from His goodness in any way.

I got up then, dusted myself off, and walked home. My spirits were higher at this time, believing then that I had passed the test and, since I had passed it and surrendered to His nature, my sufferings would certainly be ended. I was surprised to find then that the storm blazed on. My sufferings neither halted nor subsided in any way, rather—they increased. I cried out for them to be stopped, but they were not. I commanded the storm to be calm, but it was not. And in the middle of the desert tempest of pain and disappointment by which I felt mercilessly scorched and choked, I heard a small voice call to me. “Testify,” it said. Everything in me wanted again to cry and to kick and to scream and to fight the powerlessness that overcame me, but I remembered again that it was the Fortress of God’s Goodness that would be unyielding to my circumstances, not my circumstances to the Fortress. So I tore out my broken will and surrendered it.

“You are perfectly good,” I said, through sobs. “I can make no accusation against You.”

I peered back up at the Fortress, expecting an answer of sorts, expecting the small voice to speak to me again. But for that time, the Fortress of God’s Goodness simply remained and did so silently.

Bringing Brokenness to the Table: Why Marriage Doesn't Need You to Be Perfect

How broken is too broken? How much healing is enough? Will I ever be ready for a relationship? Marriage? Kids?

Often these questions plague survivors of sexual abuse and assault. I myself had questioned if I would ever be healed enough to even begin dating someone. I had read books by survivors that ended with a short blurb after depicting well, the seriousness of trauma, saying, “I’m now 45, have a wonderful husband and three great kids.” And all I wanted to do is scream at the book, “HOW?!”

There were times in my life that I felt so broken that I thought that I, like Humpty Dumpty, couldn’t ever be put back together again. I didn’t see how in even the next twenty years, I would ever be at a stage of healing where I could get married and have kids. I was terrified of men. I was afraid of being hurt. I was daily bombarded with flashbacks of my past. I loathed myself. I had given up hope on ever being the main character in a romantic story.

In hindsight (oh the beauty of it), I see that my pessimistic outlook came from having an unreasonable expectation that somehow I needed to be completely healed, healthy and basically perfect in order to get married. What I didn’t realize was that this was a lie.

It wasn’t that I didn’t need to seek healing, or desire to be free from the pain of my past, it was more that I needed to allow someone to love me, even in my brokenness. I often would push interested suitors away from me, inwardly screaming “I’m too broken!” My fear of them discovering just how broken I was and then rejecting me caused me to run and hide any time there was even a remote interest from a man. I never thought it would be possible for someone to look at all of me, all of my messiness and stay. But God, in His wondrous mercy, had a plan.

Without me realizing it, He wove a beautiful love story into my life. He brought in a man who first became my friend. A friend who stuck by me even in the middle of my flashbacks. I was on the journey of healing when he entered my life, but I was nowhere near to the level of healing I had assumed I would need to be at. But that’s just it. I never got to that place before I got married.

Yes, I had had significant breakthroughs in my healing, but I was still broken. What I didn’t know was that my now-husband could love me fully, even in my broken state, and would become one of the most powerful sources of healing in my life. God knew exactly what He was doing when he put this man at the local food pantry the day I decided to volunteer for the first time.

What I want to say to you, my friend who is still asking these questions, who is still wondering if you will ever be unbroken enough to be loved, is that:

      1) You are already loved.

God loves you just as you are. He knows you fully. Inside and out. He adores you. Scars and all. You don’t need another man to tell you what the Creator of the Universe has been saying since the beginning of time.

2) You don’t need to hide.

The man God has for you will be able to see all of you and love you for who you are. You just need to be brave enough to trust in His plans for your life. To trust that when the right man comes into your life, you can begin the slow process of letting down your walls and allow love to move in.

3)  Life is unpredictable.

You may feel as though you’ve been waiting for this guy forever, and it seems like he’s never going to show up. I don’t know what God has in store for you, but I know He desires good things for you, and I know that you can’t even begin to imagine what they are and when they will come about. But hold on my friend, they are coming.

Love, hope and peace to you. 

Lessons from Forrest Gump

I pause my dialogue as I notice the older gentleman next to me begin to go red and his eyes begin to water. “Are you okay?” I ask, thinking he is choking. He merely shakes his head as tears begin to spill down his weather-worn face. I remain silent, dumbfounded. I’ve known this man for over 2 years and have never seen him cry before. “It’s just so heartbreaking.” He whispers as more tears splash down his cheeks. I pause and reflect. It is heartbreaking, isn’t it?

I had just been telling him about the work I do with women who’ve been sexually abused and sex trafficked. It has become so much a part of my everyday life that I have begun to numb myself from the horror I encounter daily. However, that does not stop the reality of how truly heartbreaking the stories from these survivors are. The situations that millions of people find themselves still in today. It is estimated that 70-90 % of sex trafficking victims have been sexually abused as children prior to exploitation. Let that information sink in for a moment.

For many children, the traumas of childhood continue into adulthood. The trauma of their youth gives way to their mindset that “sex is all I’m good for” or “I’m worthless”, “no-one could love me”. These thoughts make them so vulnerable to sexual exploitation from pimps who know exactly what to look for, who know exactly what to say. I observed this pattern happen in the movie Forrest Gump, which I originally thought was only about the achievements of a boy everyone thought would never amount to anything. Jenny, Forrest’s best friend from childhood, was sexually abused by her father and she ended up being sexually exploited in magazines and on stages. She was used and abused by men for years and years because she didn’t know her worth. She didn’t know she was worth more than her father showed her. Her pain was so obvious as she stands on the edge of the balcony, wanting to jump, or as she sees her father’s house, years later, and begins to hurl rocks at it. All the pain and anger begin to come out.

I’m right there with her in that moment. I know many survivors who are also feeling that same pain and rage. But the moment that tears me apart the most, is the moment Forrest asks her to marry him. Forest is obviously head-over-heels in love with this woman. Most would assume she would say no because of his low IQ, but instead she says, “You don’t want to marry me.” In her mind, someone so kind and loving could never want to marry someone like her. She believes she is worth absolutely nothing. She believes she is unloveable.

I once believed the same things. I once thought the same thoughts. But God, in His great mercy, brought me to a point of healing where the words of my now-husband broke through the lies. I was able to believe his love for me as he knelt on one knee before me. I was able to shout above the screams from my past, telling me that no-one would ever want me, and say “Yes!”.

The reality of sexual abuse and sex trafficking is heartbreaking, but I know a God who is in the business of healing the brokenhearted. I know a God who brings beauty out of ashes. A God who can heal, restore and set free the captives. Do you know Him?

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,

    because the Lord has anointed me

    to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

    to proclaim freedom for the captives

    and release from darkness for the prisoners,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor

    and the day of vengeance of our God,

to comfort all who mourn,

    and provide for those who grieve in Zion—

to bestow on them a crown of beauty

    instead of ashes,

the oil of joy

    instead of mourning,

and a garment of praise

    instead of a spirit of despair.

They will be called oaks of righteousness,

    a planting of the Lord

    for the display of his splendor.”

Isaiah 61:1-3  

Living with PTSD

For much of my life I, like many others, believed that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was only found in soldiers as a result of their time at war. Never did I think that one day my therapist would look at me and say “you have PTSD”. In that moment, all my preconceived ideas of what this condition was, flew out the window. I was made to see that every day I walk by people – normal looking people, not wearing uniform – who are living and reliving their worst nightmare.

I wanted to give you a glimpse of what it is like living with PTSD, so that those of you who live with this, know that you’re not alone, or that those of you who don’t know the reality of it, can more fully understand.

Imagine this with me, if you would:

You’re walking down the aisle of the grocery store, pushing a cart in front of you. A man turns down the aisle and starts walking towards you...

If you’re lucky, your mind does not spit images from your past into your vision, making you forget where and when you are. If you manage to stay in the present, you are assaulted with a flood of adrenaline (the fight or flight response) causing your heart to pound in your chest, your breathing to become shallow and unsteady and your hands to shake. Everything in you wants to turn and run but

you try to remind yourself that you’re in a supermarket, no-one is going to hurt you. Your body ignores your rationale and shivers begin to race up and down your spine. You are now convinced that it’s going to happen again. This man in front of you is going to pin you down and rape you here and now. There is nowhere to run, nowhere to go. Yielding yourself to what you deem as the inevitable, you force your mind and body to detach – a method you learned long ago to keep yourself safe from the horror of the reality…

Someone touches your arm and you snap back into the grocery aisle. “Ma’am, are you okay?” The woman next to you has a crease of concern between her eyebrows. You realize you’ve been staring blankly at a box of cereal for who knows how long. The man is long gone but your fear continues to paralyze you. “Yes,” you manage to squeak out, desiring to hide away from everyone. Self-hatred and frustration begin to build inside you since you can’t even walk around a grocery store without your past getting in the way.

My husband has seen me in this state many times. He describes it as such, “She starts to have difficulty focusing on reality. Sometimes, I was able to distract her enough to keep her from going into a full blown flashback, but many times she would become dead to the world, staring off into space, her body looking uneasy and her lips shaking. I would say her name and her eyes might look at me for a split second, but she wouldn’t really see me there and would continue to stare in a panicked manner. Other times she would interact with me, but she was still reliving a past traumatic memory. I just happened to be in the room with her. Even though I would tell her she is safe and it was only me there, she would still be terrified and panicking and would hear or see her abuser. These states could go on for as short as a few minutes or as long as an hour. The worst part was that once the flashback took over, I was often helpless to stop it or to bring her back to reality. I could only do my best to comfort her until she was back.”

PTSD affects all aspects of your life. It makes you more prone to depression, anxiety, eating disorders and addictions. It gets in the way of relationships and aspirations. It is not something that will simply disappear over time. It is a daily battle.

But there is hope. There is always hope.

I have been living with PTSD for over 8 years now. I cannot say it has always been getting better. Some days are worse than others. But through the grace of God and the support of many friends, I have been able to move from surviving to thriving. I continue the climb onward, encouraging and helping other survivors along the way, one step at a time.

For more information on PTSD see: http://www.helpguide.org/articles/ptsd-trauma/post-traumatic-stress-disorder.htm

Chronicles of Thailand: Safe Houses

When I went back to church for the first time after coming back from Thailand, I was really confused. We were worshiping Jesus, the Majestic, Glorious, Splendid King. And of course He is all of those things. I knew that, but I wasn't prepared for it to strike me as odd.

I had just come from watching Jesus be the humble, sweet, gentle servant. The last few worship services I had been to were in safe houses, where I listened to the women wail out praise to Jesus their Savior. They were crying. They were bawling loudly and completely out-of-tune. In one house, the two worship leaders wore shirts that read, "Amarican Style Burger--Eat me" to honor their American guests. I mean, how much sweeter can you get?

In a land so broken, so dark, so wicked, and so oppressive, there was sweet Jesus, content to kneel down, cup the faces of the broken in His own broken hands, and hold their gaze. He was there collecting their tears; He was there welcoming them back when they ran back to "the life" then wanted out again; He was there rocking them through addictions; He was there breathing life into dry bones and raising beauty out of ashes.  As one woman said, "The community sees us as worthless, but God sees us as precious."

At church back home, we got to sing with a whole mass of people to the accompaniment of an awesome worship band, in a building with great acoustics and beautiful architecture. But when the songs died down and the sermon ended, it would be easy to go home and get back to life as we knew it with work and chores and family and stuff. Not necessarily forgetting Jesus, just being distracted. But Jesus is not like us. His faithfulness is not fickle. He is there with those women after the soundtrack has faded out, when it is not convenient, when there is no one watching to give Him praise, and when it is no longer glamorous to serve.

So when I came back and we were worshiping Jesus as the Most High, you can see how it just took me slightly off guard. It's like working side by side your best friend in the ER wearing bloody scrubs together amidst the chaos and wounds of the night and then the next night hearing a familiar voice on the TV, and, looking over, you see your friend there all polished up giving the State of the Union address. Like, "Wait--you're the president too? Hold on." So when we started singing this song, I just lost it a little. Oh, my God.

--

We visited 4 safe houses total, but heard from partners from all over the world who run similar programs. We learned about the methods of outreach and toured the facilities to see where the women were making jewelry, decorating cakes, running cafes, baking goods, and learning other skills to establish sustainability. We met and got chances to talk with and pray over the women. From some, we heard the stories of their extreme woundedness of being prostituted and abused and how God met them in those places and then brought them out and restored them.

At one of the safe houses, a little girl named Foo latched onto me. I'm guessing she was about 10-12 years old. She took me by the hand and showed me around the building and out onto a balcony, overlooking the garden. We couldn't talk to each other, so we just stood there gazing out at the yard and smiling at each other. Then she brought me outside and led me down a path shaded by a large arbor delicately laced in vines. "Grape" she said to me and lifted the vine to let me examine it. She wrapped my arm around her and led me through to the backyard, pointing to a fountain, sword-fighting me with a branch, and leading me to her "house", where she brought out to me the jewelry she was making.

This safe house housed children rescued from trafficking as well as those who would be at-risk of trafficking to give them an education instead. I wondered, as I often do, how people could possibly have it in them to harm, to destroy, a child like sweet Foo. I wonder still how broken one's view of the world and their self would have to be to embrace that level of evil. At this point, my wonder usually turns into anger. And then I start thinking of what I could do with a Samurai sword to all those men in the red light districts and then I see that the depravity is in me too.

But the Lord has not abandoned me to it. And as angry as I get at the perpetrators and as much as I now see the justice of God's wrath, I am also reminded that if any of those perpetrators would come to the Lord, turn from the destruction, and ask for forgiveness, He would give it. He would raise them up out of the ashes too, calling them "Son", and never again holding their past over them. I'm not suggesting they wouldn't have to suffer the consequences of the injustices they practiced, only that He would be willing to redeem them too from the inside out, without question and without guilt.

He did the same for me. He would do the same for you. That is the sweet, humble, glorious One.

Who breaks the power of sin and darkness
Whose love is mighty and so much stronger
The King of Glory, the King above all kings...

-Kelsey

Chronicles of Thailand: Incense

I walked into a friend's house recently and was met with a strong whiff of a very familiar scent, but I couldn't place it.
"What's that smell? I know that smell....it smells like Thailand."

"It's incense," one of the friends offered, gesturing to a little table placed in the corner of the dining room.

Ahhhhhh. Indeed, that was the smell of Thailand. I felt like I could smell it everywhere there, inside and outside. There are shrines set up in every business and home and on almost every single city block, where people offer sacrifices to the images of their gods. I'm guessing it was at these altars that incense or candles were burned and prayers offered and that, due to their great volume throughout Bangkok, if you were paying attention, you could almost always smell incense in some capacity.

Since incense is known to accompany prayer, it occurred to me at some point during the trip that Bangkok smelled like the prayers of its people. 

How interesting.

It made me think of Psalm 141, where David says "May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice." And again in Revelation 5 where it says, "And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people..."

But here...here the people, mostly Buddhist, were offering sacrifices and prayers and worship in order to win the favor of their gods. It didn't appear that this was a casual, random occurrence either.  Altars were literally everywhere, many filled with sacrifices of drinks and food and wreaths. It was very common to see someone at one of these altars, lighting a candle and praying or offering some kind of sacrifice. There were small street booths and carts everywhere with workers making flower garlands, symbols of respect, that were frequently bought and offered on the altars as well. Sacrifices and prayer seemed...part of life.

--

Never have the goodness and kindness and sweetness of Christ seemed quite so evident to me as while spending time in Bangkok. I was so struck by the fact that people devoted so much of their lives to offering sacrifices and prayer, striving to create positive karma and win them favor in this life and the next. Their lives were built around this belief. But my God, my God offered a sacrifice so I could have His favor. My God was the One who made the sacrifice. Not to win my favor, but to give me His. Forever. Who does that?! 

My Jesus asks for obedience on account of favor already given, not in order to obtain it.

I wanted to shout out the windows, "You don't have to do that! Come to the altar of Jesus and drink and eat food and drinks that were sacrificed for you!"

Oh--I just realized...that sounds strikingly like scripture. God already beat me to it, shouting through the prophet Isaiah in chapter 55,"Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price..."

And I wondered...what if the people of Jesus understood this? Could they even begin to grasp how rare and precious and sweet and incredible this idea is--that God turned the tables on mankind and offered the favor they could never have won through striving? And what if they did, and what if they began to see that prayer and worship and sacrifice are offered not to win God's love, but in response to it so that our streets and cities could begin to smell like the prayers of Immanuel's people. Perhaps it wouldn't be a smell you could sense with your nose, but what would it do to the atmosphere of a place, seeing a people rise up and spend their lives rejoicing in and worshiping a glorious, humble God who stepped off His throne, made Himself flesh and dwelled with them.

I wish people could see others love one another with such devotion that they could ask of a place, "What is that smell? I know that smell."

 And the people of God could answer, "Oh, it's Jesus."

-Kelsey