Julia
Hi, Safe to Hope friends. This is Julia, and welcome to our 2025 summer series. We’re taking a brief pause from our storyteller for the next few weeks, bringing in some of our favorite authors and ministry partners as special guests. Today we have author, teacher, advocate and therapist, Tabitha Westbrook. Tabitha is a licensed counselor, emdria certified and approved EMDR consultant, certified sex addiction therapist and Certified Clinical trauma professional. She’s also the founder and CEO of the Journey in the Process, a counseling clinic with offices in Texas and North Carolina. She also helps train domestic abuse advocates through Called to Peace Ministries. In other words, she’s an expert in trauma, abuse and addiction. 

Tabi joins Ann Maree and me today to explore this sacred journey of reclaiming our bodies and stories. Her book, Body & Soul, Healed & Whole: An Invitational Guide to Healthy Sexuality after Trauma, Abuse, and Coercive Control, invites us to consider what it means to be fully human, fully beloved in both body and spirit. 

I just want to say also Tabi, that although we highly value your expertise, you’re so much more than your degrees in all those letters behind your name. You are intuitive. You’re wise. You’re courageous. You’re fun and you’re vulnerable. You’re a dear friend of ours and an invaluable partner in this calling. 

So Tabi, welcome, welcome, welcome. 

Tabitha
Thank you so much for having me. I’m super stoked to be here. 

Julia
What else do you want people to know about you? Tabi? Like, what did I miss?

Tabitha
I don’t know. We just call me alphabet soup at my practice because of all the letters. So you can just call me alphabet soup. If that’s helpful, I will say, Here’s a fun fact. It’s my favorite fun fact. I have a camper van. Her name is Vanquillity, and she is my emotional support vehicle. So I travel around the country in Vanquillity and do a lot of speaking, go between my offices and all of those things. And I love it. So if anyone wants to know what it’s like being in a van down by the river, I highly recommend it.

Julia
Great clip. Ann Maree also has an escape vehicle too. I don’t know if you’d call it an escape vehicle.

Ann Maree
No, I like Tabi’s. I’m going to steal Tabi’s. What is it? 

Tabitha
My emotional support vehicle. I have a sticker on the back that totally also says that.

Ann Maree
Where’d you get it? Oh, I need that. 

Tabitha
I got it from Etsy. I’ll hook you up with the link. 

Ann Maree
Thank you. I wonder if they’ll let me take it through security on the airport. 

Tabitha
The emotional support vehicle or the sticker. 

Ann Maree
No, the whole vehicle. I need it with me wherever I travel. I love that. 

Tabitha
We need to go camping together. We need to make that happen.

Julia
Okay, so I do also want to offer just a trigger warning. We will be talking about some heavy topics and material related to Tabi’s book, and so some of the content is sensitive. So just be mindful of those nearby you who may be listening and how you’re hearing and responding to the episode today. 

And Tabi, I just want to also acknowledge and express so much of my heartfelt gratitude, because you do share pieces of your own personal story and journey in your book as a survivor, and I definitely want to honor that and even writing this book-baby of yours, it came at a very high cost, a very personal cost for you. And so as a reader, I could feel that you know the wisdom that you offer has been hard fought and hard won. So I just want to say that before we get started?

I would also love to hear from you more about why you wrote this book and who it’s written for. 

Tabitha
Yeah, absolutely. So getting into the why of why I wrote it, you know, I have the privilege, the immense privilege, of sitting across from survivors of all kinds of abuse, whether that is spiritual abuse, sexual abuse, domestic abuse.

And I will say, just to add to your activation, warning that I am extremely direct, and I will say all the words out loud. And so I just want folks to know that, because this might not be one that you listen to with your kids in general, and that I just want you to know that you’re the only you that you have. So if you notice that your body is getting activated, press pause. Go take a walk, move your body, use some grounding skills, and then come back to it. I think the information, I think our conversation, is going to be great, but I for sure, want people to take care of themselves as we walk through this.

Which often includes sexual abuse and hearing the stories of the women and walking with them out of the valley of the shadow of death. One of the things I say often is we, I will get in the valley of the shadow of death with you, but we will not make camp. We are going out the other side. And I believe that that is what Jesus says. And so I feel the weight of these stories and the impact of these stories. Like you said, I have my own story of sexual harm, and had to walk through the valley myself with and some days, still do. That’s one of the things about sexual harm that people don’t realize, is there are different layers. And so you can do a ton of work, and sometimes something pops up and there’s a new aspect of it to tackle, especially if it was pretty severe stuff. And so I just want to, like, say that out loud, because I think sometimes people think, man, why am I here again? Like I’m going around the same mountain, and you really aren’t. You’re just getting to that next layer. So I want to offer a little bit of hope in that. 

And the book itself came about because a friend of ours, Joy Forrest, who’s the founder of Called to Peace Ministries, called me up and said, Hey, we need to talk about sex, and God says that you’re the one. And I said, Let me pray about it, while God is absolutely yelling in my ear yes, the answer is yes. The answer is yes. And I’m like, am I supposed to answer that fast? I feel like I’m breaking some sort of Christian rule if I answer that quickly. And so I told Joy, I’d call her back, and God’s like, ma’am. And I was like, all right. And so I called her back and she said, I mean, God told me. And I was like, I know, you know. 

And more than any other teaching I’ve ever done, this one wrote me, and I felt the weight of it as I prepared to give it at the retreat that I gave it at. And I saw the faces of the women, hundreds of them that were brave enough to come because we titled it in the most unfortunate of ways. Our title was, Let’s Talk about Sex, which, for survivors, is terrifying. And people still showed up. And I saw how God moved. And so at the time, I was already talking with the publisher about something completely different, and said, I think we’re going to talk about sex. I think this is what the Lord desires. And they agreed, and that is how this book came to fruition.

Julia
I love the pause. I love that you’ve both felt the calling and wanted to wait and search your own heart and consider the timing. And I think that makes you a very wise guide. One of the things that I did recognize in your book is that there is a lot of information about, you know, various impacts of trauma, various impacts of teachings in the church, etc, etc. But at the end of each chapter, you have a moment for the readers to pause and to do some somatic work, to check in with their body. And so I think that makes you a very wise guide and the perfect person to write this book and resource for survivors.

Tabitha
I think it’s so important to go slow, maybe not too slow, right there, we all are going to have a different pace, so I want to acknowledge that. But if we don’t take the time to feel it and to notice what’s happening in our body, sexual harm more than any other abuse, I believe, takes us out of our bodies, and our bodies become a dangerous place, because maybe they responded in a way that makes us feel as if we were complicit, because there are parts of a woman’s body in particular that do one thing, if you will, and they that particular part of us is going to respond whether we’re having a good time or not. And so if we responded with something like an orgasm in the midst of harm, then we often think I caused this. I am complicit, and that’s not true. And so as a part of that, though we divorce ourselves from our bodies. We become not embodied, but we are like, Yes, I have a body, and we try to ignore it, or bring it into submission, or all kinds of things that can get really distorted. And so to give us the moments to say, let’s step back in. Let’s step into this good body that God created and let us feel, is such an important thing, because in order to heal it, you gotta feel it. That’s right.

Julia
Yeah. So you normalize a lot of the struggles just with the words you use, saying the words saying the things that people are afraid to say, or that the church has taught us we shouldn’t say, except in silence or muffled or whispered tones, and that gives permission for people to step forward and ask those very questions. And I think we need, we need more of that in the church. So thank you.

Tabitha
I would say you’re being awfully charitable on the muffled tones. I don’t know that women are allowed to say them at all in some spaces, and I’m not, and again, I’m not broad brushing all churches. There are excellent churches that do a good job with this, but the vast majority of Western evangelical churches do not. And I think that purity culture has deeply harmed how we see men and women, and deeply harmed both men and women. Women became the arbiters of people’s sexual health and wellness and whether or not a man sins, which is completely not what the Bible says about any of that. And then it says to men, all you are is your luast and so some of the problems I think, that we’re seeing in Christendom today are a direct result of that?

Julia
Yes, absolutely. Not many of us consider that we’ve been discipled into a form of sexuality. Of course, it happens in the secular world, but it does, particularly in the church. Why is it that we get it so wrong?

Tabitha
I think it started out good, and this is one of the things I say in Body & Soul, Healed & Whole, that purity culture had good ideas and very poor execution. You know, there’s nothing wrong with wanting a biblical sexual ethic and wanting to teach our children that, and to teach society that, and those sorts of things. Walking within God’s rhythm is beautiful. However, what it became was a method of control and a method of power and control, which we know is the heart of abuse. We know that’s the heart of Satan in the book of Isaiah, when he said, I will sit on the throne and be like the Most High and that is terrifying. And from that place of power and control, it became a place of subjugation. And I will tell you what to do, and I think that sometimes having checkboxes makes us feel safer as humans, but it is not how God works. Our hearts are far more important to him than whether we have checked all the boxes, right? That’s really what you know, sacrifice and offering, I don’t require of you at your heart. That’s really what that’s getting after. So when we tried to distill it down to behavioral modification, we then pitted men and women against each other, and we are seeing really awful fruit from that.

Julia
Yeah, yeah. It certainly opens up this door of vulnerability for women who are in abusive relationships and almost like this form of entrapment, where it did start off as a good form of protection against some fear that was within the church, fear of outside of the world, or fear of not doing things well. All of a sudden, for a certain population of women, it crosses a line into very dangerous. So you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast that you work a lot with women who are in relationships that involve coercive, coercively controlling partners, and when that is is part of the dynamic, then there’s always going to be some level of sexual abuse. So for those women who may be listening, who are questioning themselves, what’s going on in their relationship, or how to discern what is healthy versus unhealthy versus abusive, what would you tell her?

Tabitha
I would say biblical literacy is your best friend, and the Holy Spirit which lives in you and is, you know, there for discernment. I mean, James says, you know, if you lack wisdom, ask and God will give it to you liberally and without reproach, which means he’s like all about it. And so I think starting there, knowing that the Holy Spirit lives in you, that you can hear from God. You do not need another arbiter. That is such the symbol of when the veil was torn from top to bottom, you know, to say we no longer have a barrier to the Holy of Holies. He has made his home within us, if we’re a believer, and so we can ask him. So that’s step one, and then step two is really looking at the word of God for yourself. What I find is that women who are truly wanting to follow Jesus, Scripture can get weaponized. So my definition of spiritual abuse, and this is, again in the book, is it is taking someone’s good and right devotion to God and using it as a weapon against them. So so many women who are harmed are wanting to do the right thing, and they believe that their spouse is exegeting Scripture correctly, that they’re utilizing good hermeneutics, that their church is utilizing good hermeneutics, and looking at those things and saying, Oh yes, this must be true. But when you really look at what’s being said, and this is what I walk a lot of women through is, what does the Bible actually say in its entirety? So wives submit to your husbands. Yes, that’s in the Bible. And so is submit one to another, submit to Christ. Husbands love your wife like Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her. Husbands love your wife like you love your own body. Husbands do not treat your wife with harshness, right? And if we’re not looking at it in the hole, then we are getting a partial picture in 1 Corinthians 7 is one often misused in the bedroom where, you know it says, well, you’ll I’ll hear your body belongs to me from the husband to the wife. And so therefore that means your yes was at the altar. And I’m like, wow. It does not say that. So when you go and look at it, it actually was equalizing the playing field in a period of time when it was not equal. And it says, yes, your body belongs to me, but his body belongs to her. And that also means that she can say, I don’t want your body on my body. And then we can get into people parsing out, well, you know, it says you can abstain for a time, but don’t make it too long. And it’s like, okay, well, how long is that time? It’s not stated. What are you supposed to be doing in between… praying, praying and seeking the Lord. You know it talks about, if you are walking in sin, your prayers will be hindered. So if a brother is walking in sin, then maybe he needs to check in, because perhaps his prayers are being hindered in this area. If your sole focus is on sex, that is not the sole focus of the Bible. It is much more relational than that, and so I have questions about your intimacy and all kinds of things. Now, if we look at the whole council of the Word of God, we are going to see a very different picture than what gets stated in abusive, weaponized Scripture.

Julia
Yeah. So ask questions, seek the Lord, seek counsel. Yeah. What about consent in marriage? Can you speak to what that should look like?

Tabitha
Oh, yes. I am determining in this moment how measured I am going to be, and I think I’m going to start unmeasured, and we will see what makes the cut. The definition of consent is either a hell yes or a hell no, and there is no in between. I will also say you could term it this way, which is what The Book says. It is an enthusiastic Yes. So there is no hesitation, there is no obligation, there is no fear. Is a true gift of Yes, I will give you my body in this intimate way, and we will enjoy a deep intimacy crafted by the living God. That is what it should look like. 

I was working with a group of abusers. I occasionally am a co facilitator for better intervention and prevention groups. It’s one of the things that I’m trained in in my alphabet soupness And I had a night where we were talking about sex. Because guess who always gets the sex talk? Of course, it’s me, and we were discussing it, and we were talking about consent. And out of the men that we had, only two like could say they had not had sexual relations with their wife that were non consensual, all of the other guys had raped their wives because there’s no other word for it. That is what it’s called. And the look on their faces because they thought, Oh, she’s mine. She’s my property. And now I’m not saying all men feel that way by any means, because not all men are destructive. I want to be very clear. I know absolutely phenomenal men who love Jesus, they love their families well, they are not at all destructive. But I do think there has been for so many men, an understanding that is outside of Scripture, like, oh, well, I can do this anytime. It’s okay if she, you know, has to kind of push through it and do the thing. And it’s like, but is it really? Is it really? Or are you using her as your personal blow up doll with a pulse? Because if it’s the latter, then you might want to reevaluate how you view intimacy and what you believe intimacy entails, because it’s not just sexual activity.

Julia
So hell yes or hell no. I’ve heard free full and informed. I also like yours. I might just borrow yours. I might take yours. But the informed part is helpful, especially for those marriages where there’s pornography. So if the husband is hiding pornography and the wife doesn’t know, then she does not have informed consent to say yes, because she doesn’t know what’s lurking behind the curtain.

Tabitha
Absolutely and pornography rewires our brain. It changes what we believe to be healthy sexuality. I will also note that pornography is almost never consensual. There’s always domination and power and control. There’s a stronger party, whether it is opposite sex pornography or same sex pornography. And the reason I’m bringing that up is because one of the things I find the church does not do well is ask people, What are you watching? What kind? Because boy, does that matter. Because it’s not. I hate this term vanilla porn, which is heterosexual pornography very often as it escalates, because sin does not stay stagnant. It has escalated to something far darker. And if we’re not asking the right question, we are not helping people disentangle and heal. So depending upon what’s being watched and how often and how frequently and how violent that shows up in the bedroom, whether the spouse knows or they do not. And sometimes there’s force to participate by watching it and reenacting it. There is force to create it that is then put on the dark web and far worse things that I won’t say right here, but that you cannot imagine the number of stories I have heard that I’m like, wow, okay, is a lot. And nobody thinks, oh, I’m going to get to this place. Nobody thinks oh, I’m going to traffic my wife. But it happens, and if we don’t reckon with that for what it is and how it has changed our minds, then we are missing a key component to help people heal and keep people safe.

Julia
Ann Maree, any thoughts, questions?

Ann Maree
No, I’ve heard you talk about this in one of the podcasts. Well, the only other podcast that I interviewed you about the consent, but we didn’t talk much about the pornography. I was reading, and I was just reading this earlier about the stories that you included. And I want to say thank you. Originally, when I used to read books for reviewing them, I would think, no, that’s just too many stories about your stories. I don’t know what it was. There was a lot of them, but they were also very helpful to put the like the flesh on the concept, if you will. 

Talk to me about it. I don’t know me. Julie might, have a better question than this, but just talk to me about the wife that doesn’t know what type, or even that her husband is using porn, and what, I guess, what can she do in those situations when she’s being forced into places she may not recognize what you’re calling it, which I would call it as well. It’s rape. What… talk to that woman specifically.

Tabitha
Anytime that you are being asked to or made to or coerced into, because I don’t think it’s really an ask. I think it’s coercion. Then if you’re not comfortable, it’s not okay, and that can include any sexual act, touching, time of touching, all of those things. If you’re not comfortable, it’s not okay, because it should be comfortable. And if you’re like, Well, I didn’t have sex before I got married, I don’t really know what to expect. I don’t feel comfortable, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily a bad thing, and that is a place to maybe ask some questions, because, you know, for people who married and haven’t had sex or anything like that, there are some things that you might be like, Well, I am uncomfortable with that. I don’t know how I feel about that, but a healthy partner is going to hear you and is not going to take you somewhere that isn’t comfortable for you. I’ve worked with lots of couples who have had different struggles, different struggles in the bedroom, just different levels of desire. Because maybe one or, you know, has a higher desire than the other, and that’s not a bad thing. Desire and is of itself, is not wicked at all. But you know, they’ve had to work through like, how do we work through that if there was sexual harm in one partner’s past, they’re very gentle and kind to not push and so if that’s not your experience, and that is an initial question, if you don’t feel freedom to say, I don’t like this, this is uncomfortable, this hurts. This makes me feel dirty afterward, then something is deeply wrong, and that is something that should be explored potentially in counseling. I will always say safety first. You know, it’s not always wise to confront your partner about that and say, you know, I don’t like this. What are we doing here? You know, you’ve probably already said some level of that anyway. But you know, depending on the relationship, I’m always just an advocate of safety, because things can get unsafe much more quickly than people realize at times. 

But for the woman who’s going, Yeah, I’m not comfortable, that’s your first sign. God made our bodies amazing, and they register a knowing in ways that our brains don’t always catch up with super fast. So for example, if you’re feeling uncomfortable. If you’re feeling like something is off, right? We call those gut feelings. Now, do we live and die by them? No, we don’t. But do we start asking questions like a check engine light and maybe run a diagnostic? Yes, yes, we do. And so that might be your first place to ask a question. Now you may come to the conclusion. Now everything is okay. Maybe there’s something in my own history that I need to work through and that happens. And you may come to the conclusion that something is not okay in your marriage. I will say people who have a porn addiction, there are signs and things like a disinterest in sex. So it may not be destruction in the bedroom. It may be absolutely nothing happening in the bedroom. That’s right, and that can feel really awful. Do you not love me? Am I not desirable when really their arousal template is so broken and so distorted that you just don’t do it for them, and that’s not a you thing, that’s a them thing. And so if there’s absolutely nothing happening in your bedroom and no other good explanation, then that also might be something to ask.

Julia
Yeah, just to lean into that a little bit more. There might be a form of punishment that a woman experiences that may not be obvious to her in the moment. What would some examples of that look like or be?

Tabitha
It could be a complete isolation, being iced out, if you will. And it’s more than just like I didn’t say hi to you there. You can feel it in your body when your spouse is icing you out. In Gottman research, they would call it stonewalling, but I actually think that it’s something far more insidious. I think it actually falls into the contempt. So if you’re not familiar with the four horsemen that John and Julie Gottman have proposed. It is criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling. Contempt is abuse, and so that can be the big size, the deep eye rolls, icing you out so no connection, you know, not giving you any affection at all. That can be a form of contempt. If you don’t fill in the blank, whatever fill in the blank is for any abusive individual, then I will simply ignore that you exist, even in the same household, and I will not give you any physical affection. I have seen women practically strip naked and run through the yard. You know, I haven’t seen it personally. I’ve heard their stories. Let me be clear. But you know, don’t want any confusion there. But I’ve, I’ve, I’ve heard women tell stories of doing almost anything to get physical affection, because it’s been so withheld, which is neglectful, which is also not biblical. And so those are things that sometimes happen. It could be a criticism of their acumen in the bedroom, you know, or their criticism of refusing to do something that the partner wants done, or criticizing something that they want to do, you know, if there’s a position or something that someone would like to try and the partner’s like, Oh, why would you want to do that? Like that can be a form of demeaning and contempt. So it shouldn’t be tragic to be in the bedroom with your spouse.

Julia
Thank you so much for those examples. I think that’s really helpful for people to hear. Just to put some more meat on the bones. You mentioned several times already, women having these gut feelings and being able to trust that, and I think that’s a dilemma for many of them, myself included, is that we live disembodied, disconnected from our bodies, whether it’s from sort of the cultural narratives that we’ve been bought into or from past traumatic experiences. And your book essentially is laying that out that you’ve been sliced or shredded or split body and soul, one from another. So speak a little bit more to that, like, what embodiment looks like in a healthy sense and what it doesn’t, what what disconnection and disembodiment would look like. 

Tabitha
Yeah. So we have to look to at how women are habituated, which means, like, what we call normal. And one of my supervisees said this, and I think it is the best quote of all time, so I’m going to repeat it now. And it is nice girls end up in trunks (like the trunk of the car), because we are so habituated not to make waves and to say nice things and to be what is it mindful and demure, as the millennials and xennials and whatnot say. And really that is not kindness. Boundaries are clear. Clear is kind, and to be overly nice puts us in a position where we are going to be a peacekeeper versus a peacemaker, which is very different biblically, and that is not where the Lord would have us in that space. So I think that is one of the things, is noticing, what water do you swim in? And this is something that I just have noodled about in the last bit about just the church as a whole, is, do we know always? And this doesn’t matter the denomination. It’s all about the same, because we all have our own proclivities, right? We have our own traditions, our own things, and they’re not bad necessarily. Some are very good, but if we do not question, at least occasionally, what water am I drinking? What water am I swimming in? And we may not know, we may be just in the system of, oh, it’s just this way without going but is this God’s way? And I think that systems tend to protect systems versus the people in them. And as Dr Diane Langberg states, Jesus did not die for systems. He died for the people that are in the systems. And I think that that is a very important distinction. And I think that this is part of asking our own hearts, what do we believe? What is going on? The other thing is poor teaching. And the thing that came to mind as soon as you said that was our hearts are desperately wicked. Who can know them? Well, I’ll tell you who his name is, Jesus, and He also lives in there, and the Holy Spirit lives in you. And the things that were broken in the curse have been redeemed by the blood of Christ. Therefore we can ask questions about our emotions. We can go, This doesn’t feel right, and know that perhaps that gut feeling is Jesus Himself, going, girl, lace up your shoes and run. And if we do not listen to the Lord and seek Him, then we are missing out. And if we are staying in that habituated place of, what if, what if I’m wrong? What if you’re right? What if you’re right? And I believe that the Lord gives us discernment. I believe that his word is part of that. I believe that his people are part of that, and I believe that prayer is part of that. And so I would never say anyone you know, go change your life on a feeling, but I will say, if you have a feeling, start asking questions.

Julia
Right. I mean, feelings are signs and symptoms of something around us that’s going on. And when we’re habituated to not feel or not trust our intuition or not trust our gut, we’re easily controlled, aren’t we? I think there’s a philosopher who talks about just that idea: that if we’re robots, we’re easily controlled. So it’s coming back to our bodies and understanding the feelings and sensations are coming up as information, as feedback, not necessarily that we’re going to give into it all the time and let our feelings run the show, but we have become so, so deadened, and we’re, I think we’re so intellectually emotionally stunted from what healthy and healthy emotional life looks like and should look like, and how that is connected to our spiritual life and our spiritual formation.

Tabitha
Absolutely. And you know, Jesus had emotions, that’s right, big ones. You know, I think about in the Garden of Gethsemane when he says, if it’s possible, let this cup pass from me. Bro is sweating blood, right? Because he is so intense, his capillaries are breaking. Like, if that’s not an emotional response, I’m not entirely sure what is. And for people who are like, Oh, emotional abuse is nothing. It’s not physiological. Well, I have questions, because unless you can take your brain out of your body and stick it in a jar, it still is in your body, and it’s dumping out neuro chemicals and all of those things, there’s a physiological reaction. So our emotions are telling us something. They are God given. Jesus himself had them, including anger, which, for women, is almost a vilified emotion, but anger, righteous anger, is a beautiful thing. It says in the Bible, be angry and do not sin. So we can’t just say, Oh, you’re too emotional. And so many women in the audience have just had a visceral reaction to that. 

Julia
I did too!

Tabitha
Yes! Cuz you’re not. One of a therapist friend of mine says it this way, and I love it so much. There is no such thing as an overreaction. There’s just a reaction. And when you start asking the question, what makes this make sense? You find a whole lot of different stuff in there. Why is it a big presentation when a wife comes in with her husband and lets him have it in front of the pastor, or perhaps she finally feels safe enough to say the thing that she can’t say at home, because she’ll get knocked flat, or she’ll get iced out, or he’ll take, like grocery money from her. Perhaps we might ask another question. Now, if she is struggling with emotion regulation, maybe there are things in her past, then we can explore that, right? So, but what makes this make sense? What is happening is such a charitable, beautiful, godly place to ask the question.

Julia
Yes, standing from a place of curiosity. Mm, hmm. Okay. Ann Maree, any questions, thoughts?

Ann Maree
I have to confess, I didn’t get to read all of the helpful ways that you brought women in your book. Tell me what would be because we are, we’ve been thinking about conscience, gut, you know, listening to your gut as a topic for our Institute. Anyway. So what would be, I don’t want to say remedy, cure. What would be a methodology? I’m getting the language down. This biblical counselor is going to get the language. What would be a methodology to exercise that gut, like trusting your gut feeling.

Tabitha
Yeah, there are millions of them. It’s so exciting. It’s starting with a small practice, right? Because for some people, we’ve said that, and now they’re like, Great, I’m going straight to hell. This is a problem, because truly, like, we have been habituated in some wicked ways, with, like, just really distorted theology and things like that. So even, like, leaning into something that’s an embodied practice can feel awful and scary. And I just really want to normalize that, that depending on where you’re at in your faith walk, I might be saying things that you’re like, Oh no, goodness gracious, I’m freaking out, and I just want to be really honoring of that. So start small. One thing can be, how do I feel when I’m around a given person? So think about your best friend, right? So let’s imagine the three of us are physically in a room together. I think we all like each other, and it would be super fun. How would your body feel? I think we would feel relaxed. I think we would feel joy. There’d probably be a little bit of physiological arousal, because we’d be excited, and that would be a beautiful thing. But I wouldn’t feel scared. I wouldn’t feel like I need to run away or I need to edit myself, because you guys are safe people. Now if I go into, let’s say, a concert. So recently, I was invited to a concert. It’s a long story that I will not get into because we don’t have time for it, but it was an environment that perhaps I have aged out of, if you will. And so was I going to accept something from a woman in the bathroom line when she said, Put your hand out, and the answer was no. And she was like, come on, I want to give you something. And I said, I am aware. No. And finally, it was a little acrylic bunny that she carries around and gives to cool people. But I was not going to just take that. Why? Because my body was like, nope, nope, nope. We do not take things from people in the bathroom line, especially when we think the lady might be a little inebriated, and she was definitely a little inebriated, so my body was a hard pass on that. Now was I going to tell her stories of my life? Absolutely not. I was not, was I content talking to her in the bathroom line about random things? Yes. And so that was an honoring of my body to go, Hey, it’s telling me this is not the time to go. Let me tell you my deepest, darkest secrets. And so those are little places that we can start to enter in. When do you notice that feeling of safety? When do you notice a feeling of hesitation? Who are you around when it happens? What do you know about this person? Right? If I’m in the grocery store and some dude is checking me out and I’m like, then I’m going to notice there’s that hesitation. So what am I going to do? I’m going to put physical proximity between me and them. I’m going to ask for help if I need it, whatever it is, right? If I feel safe and good, I’m going to maybe reduce physical proximity. I might stand closer to someone. I might allow them to give me a hug, things like that. And so that’s just a little way to start just taking that pause and going, hmm, I wonder what’s happening here, and to start to trust that, and it’s a little messy. Sometimes we won’t get it exactly perfect, because progress, not perfection. That’s why we call these things practices. And the more you do it, though, the more you hone it. It’s sort of like lifting weights. The more you lift weights, the stronger your body becomes, and the more that we’re also building these neural pathways. So the more that we build a neural pathway of learning what safety is in our bodies, the more that we are going to be able to walk in places of safety.

Julia
I do think you make a powerful point, though, just the idea of returning back to our bodies and having a different relationship to our bodies than we’ve had before. And I do remember reading in your book where you say that our bodies aren’t our enemies, they’re helpers, and that was so beautiful to me. Yeah, I don’t know if you want to say more about that. 

Tabitha
I think as women, we are often put against our own bodies. I mean Instagram and social media and commercials and all the things tell us all the time, your body should look like this, and you should do this to your body. And then there’s this diet and don’t eat this thing. You know, for a while it was don’t drink coffee and don’t eat eggs. Now you should absolutely drink coffee and eat eggs and not eat fill in the blank, whatever else, cheese, I don’t know. And so we get a lot of opinions from outside spaces, and then also sometimes from the church, on what our bodies should and shouldn’t look like, should and shouldn’t do. And so there’s already a war for most women, you know, with their bodies, and that is not how God created us. God created us to be embodied. He himself came in a body, and he’s not giving up his body when we see him again, we’re actually going to see the scars, which, as I thought about that, it is such a beautiful picture of like this is what embodied looks like. All of the difficult, all of the pain, all of the redemption, is in our bodies. And we think glorified body, and I think for some reason, we think we’re all going to look like Barbie. And I just wonder how much truth there is in that, since we don’t know and we’re not there, and I really feel like it’s going to be something so much different, so much more glorifying to the Lord than looking like Barbie. Not that there’s anything wrong with Barbie, I suppose. But you know, what we’re going to be is so much different. It’s going to be such a connected place, and it’s going to be a connection with our savior who came and died in a body.

Julia
That’s beautiful. Can we talk about curses and vows? Because a lot of the work is somatic. A lot of the work is body work, returning to ourselves, which can be terrifying, threatening, dangerous, especially when you’re experiencing trauma symptoms and you’re easily triggered, but even when you find regulation in your body, the truths that we believe about ourselves, I find I don’t know if you would validate what I’m saying, the the truths that people believe about themselves and about their relationship to God and to other people lingers. I think that’s the stickiest and hardest part of the work, especially because it’s entwined with shame and contempt. So I would love to hear you speak a little bit too, especially curses, if we could start off there. 

Tabitha
Yeah, and curses are the things that are said over us, either explicitly or implicitly. So someone who is abusive, who has a position of power, has said or intimated something about you, about who you are, not just about like, I don’t like your hair because I mean, like, whatever, but like who you are, you are terrible. You are damaged goods, you are no good, you are worthless, you are nothing. And we know from working with abuse victims how much that gets said with actual lips and actual behavior. And so especially if it happens, you know, over a long enough period of time, say I don’t know a marriage or from developmental times, like, I don’t know your parents or caregivers, or, you know, a powerful voice, you’re going to drink that in for two reasons. One, it’s going to feel true, because that’s what you know. And two, it’s going to be a survival because if you try to disagree, you are in danger. Abusive people do not love disagreement. In fact, they dislike it very much, and so that is a great way to get punished. And you learn quickly not to disagree, and then you end up becoming your own captor through making vows and saying, Yes, I believe this to be true about me. So now I will drink this in and I will walk this out as if it is true.

So even if you’re out of an abusive situation, you may have made a vow with that curse, and now you are your own abuser. And I cannot tell you the number of things I have said to myself that are worse than any abuser ever said to me, because I had to one up it and make sure I stayed in line and being able to break those things and say, no, no, this is who Jesus says I am, this is what God says about me, is extremely powerful, and they’re insidious. Because, like, we know all of our flaws and all of our brokenness and all of our mess ups and all of that stuff, and so when we go, alright, I’m going to try to walk in this new thing that doesn’t super feel true right now. It can be really tricky, and it can feel like I’m just a liar. What am I even doing? I am worthless. I am terrible. And then we have faulty teaching, like all you deserve is death and hell, which I don’t know how many times I heard that as a growing up evangelical. It’s not true. It might have been true before I knew Jesus, but it isn’t now, because his blood covers me. And so that is that subtle shift of going, I don’t just deserve death and hell. I deserve eternal life because my savior gave that to me. Yes, it came at high at very high cost, but if I just say, Well, I’m better, I’m doing better than I ought to be, really, am I? Because we were made for heaven, and I don’t think I am. Actually, I think that I am grateful for a savior. And so I think when we start really challenging that and saying something else out loud, then we have the opportunity to break those vows and to let those curses no longer have sway over us. One of my favorite things to do with clients is to make little squares of paper that say I don’t receive that, and to write down the things we ought not receive and then burn them. And that is to say, I will no longer accept this thing that was spoken over me that doesn’t look like Christ. I reject that in favor of what the Lord Himself says about me, because he’s a much more reliable resource.

Julia
Amen. Reading that part of your book, I was also thinking about in the garden after Adam and Eve fell and covered themselves in shame, and the Lord walked and looking for them, right. He was calling out to them, where are you? And when they spoke those curses and their shame was evident to their Lord, God responded, who told you? And in your book, when you’re describing this war against whose voice is that, who told you, I was hearing echoes of that garden scene where the Spirit of The Lord speaks to us, who told you, right.

Tabitha
And he’s not yelling at you, that’s right. I think that’s the thing. Like, I know that I was when I was growing up in the church. I was taught he was kind of yelling at us and mad, and we were going to get grounded and all that good stuff. But it was a heartbroken who told you, lied about me to you, and he made them close like he put it together. He can go now, you gotta go figure this out. And here’s Pinterest and YouTube and whatever, right? He made them and clothed them. It’s such a tender story. Even though it’s full of heartbreak, it’s so tender. 

Julia
Good. Ann Maree, any thoughts, questions?

Ann Maree
No, I’m enjoying being a fly on the wall here, taking it all in. No, I did just think of something, because this actually came up in a conversation I had with somebody that’s been helping me, and I didn’t, I didn’t take on so maybe you could help me understand this. Maybe, maybe you talk about this. I wasn’t paying attention close enough in your section on the curses and vows, but I didn’t take the curse in and believe it, I did everything in my power to prove it wasn’t true, not to the person, but internally, my own battle inside, I was, I was going to show… I’ll show them. No, that’s not true. And maybe that doesn’t happen as often, I don’t know, but can you speak? 

Tabitha
I’m actually going to challenge you. 

Ann Maree
Oh, good. Go for it. 

Tabitha
I want to challenge that a little bit, because you wouldn’t fight against it if you didn’t believe some parts, right? 

Ann Maree
Oh.

Tabitha
So when I was in high school, I had a very wicked principal who said, You will amount to nothing, Tabitha, you you are just hopelessly broken. And I made the honor roll twice and dropped out of high school to prove to him that I wasn’t. And when I got my bachelor’s degree, I sent it to him with a strongly worded letter that I will not repeat. And I could have said, Oh, I’m so much smarter, but there was a piece of me that thought, what if he’s right, so I have to fight against it, so it’s never right.  That’s the insidiousness of a curse. I was just gonna say,

Ann Maree
Yeah, the evilness and yeah, what’s verbal abuse? That’s nothing.

Tabitha
And get you know, we all have this piece of us because we know that we need a savior deep down that goes but what if this is true? What if this is true? What if. What if Jesus can’t save me? What if I am what this person said about me? What if I am this broken person who can never be whole? What if I am that, and that is a way to keep us stuck. I think that the enemy uses and then we end up over functioning. I am a classic over functioner. You know, some people go into addiction, and some people go into learned helplessness, and some of us get straight A’s, and we are socially acceptable, we are equally broken and in need of care and kindness and healing.

Ann Maree
I got counseled too. That’s cool.

Julia
That was great to see. That’s why it’s so important to start naming things and speaking them, right.

Tabitha
There’s so much more in our stories than I think we ever understand or realize. It’s one of the reasons I like story work, and it’s one of the reasons I used a lot of stories in the book. Was, first of all, Jesus talked in stories quite frequently. And also, our stories tell us so much more than we even can imagine. I think I said this in Body and Soul, Healed and Whole. My very first narrative focused trauma care class, I brought this, like, lightweight, you know, seemingly benign story that was anything but and when those threads were pulled, it was like, oh, there’s stuff here. There’s stuff here.

Julia
Yeah, it is a sacred work of untangling a massive knot, and it takes so much time and patience, which is something that we’ve mentioned before. What encouragement would you give to listeners moving forward in their healing journey?

Tabitha
It’ll probably take longer than you want, but it is absolutely worth the walk. And I know that we live in a society that’s like, you know, go take this med, go do this thing, whatever, we live in a church society occasionally that is, take two verses and call me in the morning. But God’s path, even when it’s messy, even when it’s up and down, even when it seems very tangled, it’s always the right path. And it always reminds me of going back to this old book called Hinds Feet on High Places. It’s one of my favorite allegories. And much afraid as she walks, she’s like, What are we doing? Like, where are we going? And there’s all of these challenges that she must overcome. And the Good Shepherd is always right there. He’s like, Why didn’t you call out to me? Like, I’m right here, you know, and if you called me, I will come. But she’s so afraid, so afraid to call but in the end, after this journey that has peaks and valleys and challenges and all kinds of things, she ends up with those hinds feet and high places where she can scale those mountains with the Great Shepherd, and that is something that we have to embrace. It won’t go the way that we want. I think that we have heard that from some of the storytellers, particularly your season six storyteller of where is Jesus in all of this? And I think I have to say Episode Two is my absolute favorite of all time. I have like given that to so many people, because where is Jesus when you are in the darkness and he is there, and he is still good, and so even in the darkness of healing, because healing is not easy, it is painful, it is hard. You know, there are questions, and the Lord is big enough for all of that, and he doesn’t leave you alone in it. Trust the process, trust the Father. Learn to trust the father, because maybe you didn’t have a father that was trustworthy. And that’s a whole statement I just made. And you’re like, Oh no, I don’t know if I can trust a father. And I get that. I totally get that. But lean in, because you will find that Jesus is who He says He is. And even if the process isn’t what you want it to be, you are still walking with that great cloud of witnesses we always talk about, like the first part of Hebrews 11. But man, if you read the rest of that, and then there were the people who were beaten and flogged and starved and burned and all these other things, and you’re like, I like to forget that part Lord, would be great, but honestly, the healing path that he brings you through is goodness. It is worth it. I have faced down more things in my own life than I would care to admit, and I would not change a thing, because who I see Jesus to be in it is far more worth it than staying stuck. 

Julia
You offer a declaration of war at the end of chapter nine that I’ve printed off and want to personally reflect back on but also give it to some of my clients. And the last three paragraphs, I just want to read… to the lie that I’m alone in my suffering. I remember the fellowship of suffering that is in Christ. In him, I have a great high priest who intercedes for me and understands the depths of my pain even I cannot fathom. Let it be known to every falsehood that has taken root within me. I shall wage war with unwavering resolve, armed with the truth of who I am in Christ, Jesus. May the echoes of my battle cry resonate far and wide, inspiring fellow survivors to join me and the great cloud of witnesses as we cast down lies and rewrite the abusers narratives of our lives. Victory is ours. For Christ has already won, and truth has set us free. Amen.

Tabitha
I wrote that on a day I needed it, and I encourage people to say it out loud, because there’s something so powerful in using our voice for that, especially when your voice has been stolen through abuse. And I encourage people, and my hope is that they will write their own for their situation, that they will say it loud. I had the opportunity to read that at a retreat recently, and I remember telling someone, I said, I am going to take up space to do this. I hope it’s going to be okay. And God was like, ma’am, go take up space. And so I read that, and I read it with my whole body. I read it with all of me in front of 400 women, and I watched how the Lord used my simple declaration of war written on a day that I was not doing okay, minister to people who have days that they’re not doing okay, and I encourage them write your own because your words are powerful.

Julia
Thank you, Tabi, may the Lord bless you. May the Lord keep you strong, May He keep you soft, may he fortify your calling and your ministry. Thank you. 

Tabitha
Thank you guys for having me. 

Ann Maree
Our pleasure. Thank you.