Trauma, Safety & Healing: 3 Types of Trauma + 4 Ways to Restore Trust
Episode Notes
What if trauma isn’t just about what happened to you—but what your body learned about safety in relationships?
At its core, trauma isn’t just about what happened to you. It’s about what your body learned in relationships—especially when safety was broken. Whether those wounds began early in life or emerged later through betrayal, loss, or disappointment, your nervous system adapts in ways that are meant to protect you.
If you’ve ever wondered why it’s hard to feel safe in relationships… this episode will help you understand why—and where healing begins.
You’ll learn:
- The 3 ways trauma reshapes your sense of safety
- The deeper story behind patterns of anxiety, shutdown, or people-pleasing
- The patterns your nervous system uses to protect you (without you realizing it)
- The hidden ways trauma can impact your relationship with God
- 4 shifts that begin to restore safety
This conversation offers a compassionate, faith-rooted path forward—helping you understand how your soul and body respond to broken trust, and how safety can be restored over time.
More Resources:
Connect with @dralisoncook on Instagram
Want to go deeper? Join 80,000+ soul menders in our email community and receive weekly reflections and gentle practices here.
If you liked this episode, then you’ll love:
Episode 179: Building Wise Trust - How to Protect Your Heart Without Closing It Off
Episode 188: The Healing Power of Safe People (Not Just Safe Spaces)
Episode 191: The 5 Most Important Things I've Learned About Faith, Attachment, & The Inner Life
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
Don't forget to browse this week's sponsors, who make it possible for me to bring you these resources for free + provide you with additional discounts!
- Quince - How you dress affects your mood and you can trust that Quince has you covered in every day sustainable wardrobe staples. Go to Quince.com/bestofyou for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order!
- MOSH - Save 20% shipping plus FREE shipping on the Best sellers Trial Pack or the plant-based trial pack when you visit MoshLife.com/BESTOFYOU.
*Some of the links above are Amazon affiliate links. If you choose to purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
© 2025 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage or transcript without permission from the author.
Transcript:
At its core, trauma is about broken safety in relationships, where your body learns that connection
is no longer safe. When betrayal happens later in life, it can feel like the ground just falls
away. beneath your feet because the assumptions you carried about the world that people are
basically trustworthy, that relationships tend to be safe, suddenly get shaken. And your body
responds to that shock in very real ways. Healing often involves not just healing our relationships
with other people, but slowly allowing our understanding of who God is to heal as well.
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You. I'm so glad you're here
with me today. Today's deep dive episode is part of what I've been calling our pillar episodes.
These are episodes where we step back and talk about some of the core themes that run through so
much of the work we do together here at The Best of You. Earlier this year, we talked about
connection, how we learn closeness and boundaries in relationships. We talked about formation and
attachment, some of the deeper ways our souls are shaped over time. And we talked about joy and
play, about the importance of recovering delight and lightness in our lives. Today,
we're turning toward another pillar that sits underneath so many of our conversations here on the
podcast. And that's the theme of trauma healing. and safety. Over the years on this podcast and in
my work with so many people, I've noticed something again and again. When people begin asking
deeper questions about healing, so often what they're really asking about is safety.
How do I feel safe again? How do I trust again? How do I live with an open heart in a world where
trust so often gets broken? And honestly, this question has felt so close to home for me this week.
Because over the past month, I've just been struck again and again by how much pain so many people
are carrying. I've talked with someone navigating a painful romantic breakup. Another person
grieving the loss of a friendship that meant a great deal to them. Someone else feeling betrayed by
an institution they trusted. An organization they had invested years of their life in.
Different stories. circumstances, but underneath them all is the same ache that so many of us know
so well, the ache of broken trust. And it reminded me of something that is almost universally true
about what it means to be human. If you live long enough in this world,
your trust will be broken at some point. Sometimes it happens early in life from your earliest For
some people, your first experiences of trust with parents or caregivers were complicated,
inconsistent, or painful. And in those cases, your whole nervous system can grow up learning that
the people who are supposed to be safe might not actually be safe. Other times,
the wounds come later. You might have grown up in a fairly stable home. You might have trusted
people easily for years, and for the most part, they came through. And then somewhere along the
way, a betrayal, a divorce, a painful rupture in a friendship, a betrayal in a church or workplace,
it can feel like the ground suddenly disappears beneath you. The truth is,
one of the things I often remind people is that betrayal is part of the human story. Even Jesus was
betrayed. Someone he loved. Someone he trusted. Someone who had walked closely beside him.
So the real question isn't whether we will encounter pain or betrayal. The real question is what do
we do when it happens? How do our souls heal? How do our bodies learn safety again after trust has
been broken? Because trauma, whether it happens early in life or later in life, has a way of
shaping the way we move through the world. It shapes how our bodies respond to other people.
It shapes how easily we trust. other people, and sometimes it even shapes how we relate to God.
So today I want to spend some time talking about what I've learned over the years about healing,
trauma, and safety. Not in a heavy or overwhelming way, but in a way that helps us understand our
own souls, our God-created souls a little better, and helps us move toward healing,
put ourselves on the path toward healing and safety and goodness. Because the truth is,
while betrayal is part of our stories, healing. As we begin, as we talk about trauma and healing,
I want to start with one simple idea that can be really clarifying. At its core, trauma is about
broken safety in relationships. Something happens in a relationship or across a series of
relationships where your body learns that connection is no longer safe. Now,
trauma can take many different forms, but over the years, I've noticed that most people's stories
tend to fall into a few common categories. And sometimes just hearing these categories can help you
locate your own story with a little more clarity and compassion. So I want to start by walking
through three of the most common ways these wounds of trust show up in our lives. The first
category is what we might call early attachment wounds. This happens when the people who were
supposed to be your first safe place in the world were not. consistently safe.
Maybe your caregivers were unpredictable. Some days they were warm and loving. Other days they were
withdrawn, angry, or overwhelmed. Maybe there was emotional neglect, not necessarily dramatic big T
abuse, but a kind of absence where your feelings weren't noticed or responded to. Maybe you grew up
with a lot of criticism, messages that you were too much or not enough or Maybe you learned very
early that the safest way to survive your home was to walk on eggshells, to constantly scan the
room and adjust yourself depending on someone else's mood. When these are the environments we grow
up in, something very important happens in the nervous system. Our bodies learn a lesson about
safety. And that lesson often sounds something like this. Someone saying they love me doesn't
necessarily mean it's safe. And that's a really hard lesson for a nervous system to carry.
Because as human beings, we are wired for attachment. We're wired to need closeness and connection.
But when closeness has also been a place where we've gotten hurt, our bodies develop strategies to
try to protect us. This is where you might see patterns like hypervigilance. You're always scanning
for what might go wrong. people-pleasing. You learn very early that if you can keep everyone else
happy, maybe you'll stay safe. Or controlling tendencies,
trying to manage every variable in the environment so that nothing unpredictable happens.
Or a deep fear of abandonment that can show up in relationships later in life.
In a recent conversation on the podcast, Melanie Shankle shared with us about what it was like for
her to grow up in an environment where her nervous system learned exactly this lesson. That the
person saying, I love you, I'm safe for you, I'm here for you, was also the very person who was
hurting her the most. And when that's the case, your body adapts the best way it knows how.
When you're a child, you don't know how to make sense of that dissonance. So your nervous system
learns to survive. And these early attachment wounds shape how you learn. to trust other people
later in life. Now, this isn't the only way that trauma shows up. The second category is what we
might call relational betrayal that happens later in life. And this one is really important to talk
about. Because sometimes when people hear conversations about trauma, they assume it only applies
if you had a difficult childhood. But that's not always the case. Some people actually grew up in
relatively stable homes. You trusted the adults in your life. You learned that people could be
safe. And then somewhere along the line later in life, maybe as a teen, maybe as a young adult,
maybe well into adulthood, something happens that completely disrupts that sense of safety.
Maybe it's a divorce or an affair. that comes out of nowhere. Maybe it's a betrayal inside a church
or ministry environment that you trusted deeply. Maybe it's a friendship that suddenly fractures in
a painful and confusing way. Maybe it's an institutional betrayal where a place that was supposed
to care for people instead protects itself. When betrayal happens later in life,
it can feel like the ground just... away beneath your feet because the assumptions you carried
about the world that people are basically trustworthy, that relationships tend to be safe, suddenly
get shaken. And your body responds to that shock in very real ways.
You might feel anxious in relationships where you once felt relaxed. You might find yourself
questioning your own judgment, doubting yourself, second-guessing yourself. You might feel a sense
of grief, confusion, even anger about what happened. This is normal. It's a healthy response.
Again, none of these responses means there's something wrong with you. They mean your body is
responding to a rupture in trust. Now, there's a third pathway that's also really common,
and it's what is sometimes called accumulated relational stress, or also what is sometimes
described as complex trauma. And this kind of trauma isn't one dramatic moment or one big event or
one huge betrayal, right? One moment of having the ground. cut out from underneath you.
It's more like a pattern that unfolds over time. It's like a million tiny paper cuts.
Maybe it's years of subtle criticism that slowly erodes your sense of confidence over time.
Maybe it's rampant bullying. during your middle school years or your high school years or your
elementary school years. Maybe it's workplace dynamics where you constantly feel undermined or
dismissed. Maybe it's spiritual manipulation or pressure inside a faith community where your
questions or boundaries weren't welcomed. In these situations, the nervous system isn't responding
to one giant shock. Instead, it's responding to a series of smaller relational wounds.
And over time, these experiences accumulate. I sometimes say it this way. Sometimes trauma isn't a
hurricane. Sometimes it's years of tiny storms. And after enough storms,
your nervous system begins to adapt. You may start bracing for criticism before it even comes.
You may assume people are disappointed in you even when they aren't. You may begin to withdraw from
relationships because it simply feels safer not to risk being hurt again. The bottom line is that
our nervous systems are shaped by the relationships we move through in this life. And when safety
has been broken, whether early in life, later in life, or slowly over time,
our bodies develop strategies to try to protect us. And these strategies are actually incredibly
brilliant. They're signs that your nervous system has been doing its best to help you survive.
And understanding that that is what's happening is one of the first steps. toward healing.
The older I get, the more I want to live with intention, especially with the way I eat and take
care of my body. Because food isn't just fuel, it's part of how we show up for our lives. That's
why I've been loving Mosh Bars. You may have heard about Mosh on Oprah's Favorite Things. They were
founded by Maria Shriver and her son, Patrick Schwarzenegger, with a mission to create a
conversation about brain health through food, education, and research. Maria's father suffered from
Alzheimer's, and their story is one of the reasons this mission is so meaningful. Mosh goes beyond
your average protein bar. Each bar is made with... that have been shown to support brain health.
And Mosh is the first and only food brand boosted with Cognizant, a premium nootropic that supplies
the brain with a patented form of cetylcholine. And honestly, I'm picky about protein bars and Mosh
tastes amazing. I love their peanut butter crunch, their cookie dough crunch, their PB chocolate
crunch, their chocolate brownie crunch, their lemon white chocolate crunch. They are all so good.
And what's even more special is that Mosh donates a portion of proceeds to fund gender-based brain
health research through... And what's even more special is that Mosh... a portion of proceeds to
fund gender-based brain health research through the women's Alzheimer's movement, because two
thirds of Alzheimer's patients are women. If you want to find ways to give back to others and fuel
your body and your brain, Mosh Bars are the perfect choice for you. Head to moshlife.com slash
best of you to save 20% off plus free shipping on the bestsellers trial pack or the new plant
-based trial pack. That's 20% off plus free shipping on either the bestsellers trial pack or the
plant-based trial pack at moshlife.com slash. best of you.
Thank you, Mosh, for sponsoring this episode.
As we begin to understand what's happening in our nervous systems and how these wounds of trust are
showing up in our lives, the next question becomes, what actually happens inside of us when safety
is broken? Because trauma doesn't just live in our memories, right? It shows up in our bodies and
our emotions and in the way we move through relationships. There are a few really important things
that tend to happen inside the soul when we experience broken trust.
The first thing is this. Your body learns protection. When something painful or threatening
happens, your nervous system automatically begins working to keep you safe. It's amazing. It's a
part of how God designed us, right? But it isn't always conscious. You don't necessarily
consciously decide to go into survival mode. It's something your body does for you.
You may have heard about people talk about the four primary trauma responses or fear responses.
Fight. flight, freeze, and fawn. Fight is when your system moves toward confrontation.
You become defensive, argumentative, or quick to anger. Your body is trying to push threats away.
So you move toward conflict, right? And it doesn't always show up through loud arguments or
yelling. That's what people don't understand. Often it's that quick to criticize, quick to defend,
quick to put your guard up. That's a form of fight response. Your nervous system gets activated and
you move into overdrive, even with folks who may well be trustworthy. The second one most of us
have heard of is flight. This is when your nervous system moves you toward escape. You might become
restless, anxious. You might stay constantly busy, always trying to move away from whatever feels
threatening. Think about someone who's always kind of a little bit on eggshells, right? They're
never confrontational. They're never moving toward people. They're always kind of staying busy,
dancing around in the background, trying to avoid any threat, right?
And it's just as exhausting. Your nervous system is just as activated, but it's there to keep you
safe through flight. Now, freeze is when the body shuts down. You might feel numb,
stuck, or unable to act. It's almost like you're frozen. And in this case, it's almost like your
nervous system can't choose between fight or flight. And so you kind of feel stuck, frozen,
blank. You can't find words. You can't figure out what to do. You feel numb inside. And again,
this is your nervous system trying to protect you, but not knowing how to move, how to shift into
the gear that will eventually get you to safety. And the last response is called the fawn response.
And this term was coined by Pete Walker. It's a little bit more recent. I talk about it in The Best
of You. And here in Wyoming, we sometimes bump baby fawns. It's amazing, right?
In the wilderness when you're hiking. And baby fawns don't run. They don't...
They don't flee. They stay camouflaged. They're curled up as if you could barely see them.
It'd be so easy to just kind of bump into them. And that's how they stay safe. They stay hidden in
that way, camouflage from the other animals. And our fond response is like this.
It's when our nervous system tries to keep the peace by pleasing others,
by staying small, by camouflaging ourselves, by smoothing things.
over, by accommodating, by adapting yourself to avoid conflict.
Now remember, just like the other responses, this so often happens outside of your conscious
awareness. I have noticed this repeatedly in my own life as an adult where I'll just flip into that
switch. ever so subtly, and it looks like being nice, right? You just read the cues,
you know what the other person wants to hear, and you try to make them happy as a way of staying
safe. Now, it's not all bad, it's adaptive, and it's very effective, especially for women,
especially for women in faith communities, because we often get rewarded for this. But there's a
difference between being truly kind, which is about exerting sort of a kindness and a compassion
towards someone else, and the reality of trying to please someone to keep ourselves safe.
under the radar, out of their realm of threat. So it can become really problematic when we don't
know that we're doing it and we give over to pleasing and codependent patterns versus that very
important skill of being able to stand in our own space and disagree or say no or very politely
excuse ourselves, right? You don't have to be mean, but to be advocating for our true sense of self
and autonomy and agency. Here's the thing. All of these responses have the same goal.
The goal is self-protection. Your body is trying to keep you safe. And this is so important to
understand because so many people look at their reactions and assume something is wrong with them.
They think, why do I get so anxious in relationships? Why do I shut down when conflict happens?
Why do I keep trying to please everyone? What's wrong with me? How many of you have felt that way
at times? What's wrong with me? Why can't I just show up as myself and be normal?
That's what I'll say to myself. Why can't I just be normal? But what I want you to hear me say.
today is this. Your nervous system is not broken. It's trying to protect you.
Those responses have developed for a reason. At some point in your story,
they've probably helped you survive something that was painful or confusing or overwhelming.
And the truth is you can teach your nervous system that you are the adult in the room and you can
now make the decisions for yourself. Now, there's a second thing that happens when trust is broken,
and that's the different parts of us step in to help. Now, I often talk about this idea of parts in
my work because it gives us a compassionate way to understand our inner world. And some of these
subconscious responses, instead of thinking of yourself as one simple unified personality,
you begin to notice that there are actually different parts of you that respond in different ways,
depending on what's happening. A part of you. gets defensive. A part of you It freezes,
right? A part of you wants to run away. A part of you plays small. But other parts of you are mad
about it. They don't want you to act that way. And it helps us understand that we're complex. We're
multifaceted beings. So in my book with Kimberly Miller, Boundaries for Your Soul, we describe
three categories of parts. And it's based on the internal family systems model of therapy.
And the first category are these manager parts. And these are the parts of us that try to stay
ahead of danger. They try to prevent something bad from happening. These are the parts of us that
become vigilant. They scan the room. They analyze conversations. They try to anticipate what might
go wrong. Sometimes they show up as perfectionism. If I can just get everything right, maybe
nothing bad will happen. Sometimes it shows up as control. If I can just manage the environment,
manage the relationship, manage everyone's emotions, maybe I can keep. things safe.
These manager parts of us are trying to prevent pain before it ever happens but when pain does
break through anyway as it does another kind of part tends to step in.
And these are what are called firefighter parts. They're like firefighters. They come in after the
flames of pain surface. And these ones move quickly to put out those emotional fires.
When something feels overwhelming, maybe grief, shame, anxiety, these parts jump in to help us
cope. Sometimes they show up as withdrawal. You pull away from other people or as numbing.
You scroll endlessly, distract yourself, overwork, overconsume, over... Sometimes they show up as
anger, right? If you think about it, a burst of anger lashing out can make you feel better in the
moment. It creates distance, which can feel really good, like you got something for your efforts,
right? But underneath all of these protective parts, there is another part of us that carries the
original pain. And we call these in Boundaries for Your Soul and in IFS,
Exiled parts. These are the parts of us that carry the grief, the sadness.
The pain, the fear, the loneliness, the sense of being hurt or rejected or abandoned.
These are the tender places inside of us that learned something about the world when trust was
broken, that I'm not safe, that I'm not good enough, that I'm not worth care, that I'm not lovable,
that I'm not fundamentally safe or okay. And these parts of us carry those burdens deep inside.
often outside of our conscious awareness.
And what's so important to remember is that none of these parts of your soul are bad.
They're all trying in their own ways to protect something precious inside of you.
Before we get to healing, there's a third impact of trauma that we don't talk about as often, but I
think it matters, especially for those of us who are people of faith. And that's this.
Trauma can change the way we experience God. When relationships are safe,
it's easier for our nervous systems to experience God as safe. But when relationships have been
confusing, or painful. It can make our relationship with God feel complicated, too. Maybe a part of
you knows with your head that God is good or that God is trustworthy, but to another part of you,
trust feels risky. You might find yourself wondering, can I really trust God?
Why didn't God stop what happened? Why do I still feel anxious or wounded or unloved if God really
loved me? These questions are not signs of a weak faith. They are signs that your nervous system
has experienced something painful in the realm of trust. And if the people who represented safety
in your life, parents, mentors, spiritual leaders, adults, were unsafe in some way,
then it makes sense that trusting God might feel complicated too. Our images of God are often...
through the lens of our earliest relationships, which means this. Healing often involves not just
healing our relationships with other people, but slowly allowing our understanding of who God is to
heal as well. When we step back and look at all of this together, we begin to see something really
important. When trust is broken, your soul adapts. Your body develops protective responses and
different parts of you step in to manage pain. And sometimes even your relationship with God gets
tangled up in these wounds as well. And here's the good news. None of these responses means that
something is wrong with you. They mean that our systems are doing its best to survive. And
understanding that opens the door to the next question. How does healing actually happen?
So here's the most important thing to understand about healing. It almost never happens through
force. or willpower. It doesn't happen through beating yourself up. It doesn't happen through
criticizing yourself for having some of these responses. Healing starts with compassion.
It's a slow process of restoring safety in the places where safety was lost.
And here's the good news. You can become that re-parenting, that re-attaching figure for your own
soul in partnership with God. So here are a few ways that this can happen.
It starts with teaching yourself what safety feels like. Your nervous system can learn to
experience moments where it is safe. Moments where it learns that it doesn't have to stay on high
alert all the time. Sometimes that safety begins right inside your own body.
It might be as simple as learning right now as you're listening is taking a moment to slow down
your breathing. Learning to notice when you're overwhelmed and giving yourself permission to pause.
Learning to listen to the signals your body is sending you instead of overriding them.
It might mean right there in your car or right now as you're listening to this podcast,
noticing what are the cues my body is sending me? What's happening?
It starts with awareness. You begin to attune to your own soul, to your own body,
like you might attune to a child you love. Think about how you attune to your own children.
You notice their unspoken cues. You notice their downcast eyes, the slump in their shoulder,
the bubbling over of laughter at times, right? You notice that and you mirror that to someone you
love. You begin to do that for your own soul and your own body. Some part of me is downcast.
I don't know why, but I want to get curious about that. Instead of shaming yourself or trying to
fix yourself, you start to notice. This is what's happening right now.
I'm right here with myself as it happens. This is how you begin to retrain your body to learn
safety. You learn to become safe for yourself. Sometimes safety begins through small experiences of
being understood by someone else. Maybe someone listens without trying to fix you and you notice
what that feels like inside. Maybe someone sits with your pain instead of minimizing it.
They're just with you in it. Maybe someone respects your boundaries and it surprises you.
You anticipated that they might get mad, but you did it anyway. And instead of lashing out at you,
they say, I get it. I'll honor that. And you notice what that feels like in your body,
right? It's not just that it happens. It's that you allow yourself to become consciously aware that
it's happening. That was safety. What that person did there felt safe to me.
I want to notice what that feels like in my body. They seem small,
some of these moments, but they matter when we become more aware of what it feels like in our
bodies. Here's the thing. Every experience of safety begins to teach your nervous system something
new. It teaches your body this is what connection can feel like when it's safe again.
Even after a rupture with someone who's safe, you maybe have a conflict, but you work through it.
You say what you feel. They say what they feel. You arrive at a deeper understanding.
You're so relieved that you hurt each other out, that you came back to a place of peace. Oh,
does that feel good in the nervous system? We never had that experience before. This is what safety
feels like. You learn it and you grow it and then you move toward it consistently.
Sometimes this kind of relational safety happens with the therapist, right? This is what the
process of therapy is. It's relearning what it feels like to have that healthy.
Attachment, not that that person validates necessarily everything you feel or think, but that that
person stays with you, showing you what it's like to work through honesty, kindness,
and repair. Sometimes it can happen in community spaces where you can show up as your real self
instead of performing or hiding. I've talked with so many people about what it feels like after
leaving a toxic system where they felt like they had to suppress themselves or couldn't speak up or
would get punished if they thought a certain way. And then they find themselves in a community, not
that's perfect because they aren't perfect, but a community where. they can be themselves. And even
if people disagree, there's a kindness, there's an honoring that happens, right? Even if you have
to set a boundary, there's an honoring of that, that you just feel in the culture of that system.
Right there, there are two ways that we can experience healing. One is to become a compassionate
witness to your own experiences, to begin to notice the movements of your own soul,
to notice when a part of you is acting up. Again, not to fix, but to notice,
to witness, to get curious about. And then the other way is through other people.
We are often wounded by other people and we are also healed through other people,
through ordinary moments of kindness, through other people. showing up for us in ways that surprise
us and teach our nervous system how to heal and how to trust again. Healing rarely happens in
isolation, right? It happens as we slowly experience safe connection again, both from ourselves and
from other people. And this leads us to the third part of healing. Healing is, I believe,
a part of our spiritual formation. It's the ongoing work of becoming more like Jesus.
In other words, the places where we've been wounded are often the very places
Careful here when I say that. I'm not saying that God causes the pain, right, so that he can heal
us. Broken trust, betrayal, and relational wounds aren't what God intends for our lives.
But what I am saying is that God meets us inside these wounded places, inside the grief,
inside the betrayal, inside the confusion, inside the questions. And over time,
something begins to shift. These parts of us. have been carrying pain begin to experience
compassion. These parts of us that have been bracing begin to soften. These parts of us that have
believed we were alone begin to discover that we were never alone after all. And slowly over time,
our souls begin to experience safety again. Safety with ourselves, safety with other people,
and safety with God. Now again, it doesn't mean we'll never be hurt again,
but it does mean we will learn how to be with ourselves and stay with ourselves through the hurt.
And we become, over time, more resilient. I want to close today with something really simple that
you can reflect on today, even while you're listening. Earlier, I mentioned the idea that many of
our reactions are actually signals. They're places where our nervous system is telling us something
important. Instead of judging these reactions today,
what if you approach them with curiosity? And it's really as simple as noticing and getting
curious. I notice I'm sad today. I wonder what that's about.
I notice I get really defensive with that other person. I wonder what that's about.
I notice I'm resentful today. I want to get curious about that.
I notice I'm exhausted deep inside. I wonder what's going on inside my soul.
This way of attuning. to your inner world, not to fix, not to analyze,
not to shame, but to be with is an amazing aspect of how God designed our souls that we can stay
with ourselves. We can invite the power of God's presence to meet us right there.
And through doing that, we can become more authentic with other people instead of hiding.
these parts of us, instead of trying to shove them aside, we bring them into our conscious
awareness. And as you practice that today, just noticing, getting curious what's happening in your
soul, inviting God into that space, you might even think about who's someone I could share this
with. Not to analyze or fix again, but to say, you know, a part of me is a little sad today.
And then just notice what happens. How do they respond to that? Does it feel like care?
Does it feel like pressure? Doesn't necessarily mean that they're a bad person if they're not the
right person to show up for you in that moment. But you're learning to test. You're learning to see
how does your soul respond? What feels safe? And you become an advocate for yourself.
Because the truth. is this trauma is what happens when safety is broken but healing is what happens
when safety is slowly restored moment by moment day by day step by step awareness by awareness it
often doesn't happen in one big flash it happens in these tiny moments of getting curious of
extending compassion of reaching and learning and noticing and pulling back not because you're
operating out of protectiveness, but because, oh, that didn't feel good. That's interesting.
I wonder what that's about. These small moments of noticing matter so much more.
then you might realize they are the places where healing begins. Because these different moments
where we're activated or we're experiencing emotions or feelings or thoughts that we wish we
didn't, they are not your enemies. These are actually signals. They're invitations to slow down and
become curious about what's happening inside your soul. Instead of shaming yourself for these
reactions, you begin to ask yourself gentler. Questions. Questions that open the doorway to
understanding and eventually to healing. As we close today, I want to leave you with a few
questions to reflect on. You can linger over them right now as you're listening, or you can pause
this audio or video, whatever you're watching, and take some time to journal what you notice.
Just notice what stirs up inside of you. Where in your life have you experienced broken trust?
How did a part of you learn to step in and protect you when that happened?
What does it feel like to extend compassion to that part of you?
And imagine inviting God to meet you in that place even now.
Because so very often these places where we feel the most tenderness, these places where our
protective patterns show up the strongest, these are hues, they're signals,
our soul ascending, that there's a journey toward healing right here.
Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you
take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to or
watch podcasts and click the plus or follow button. That'll ensure you don't miss an episode and it
helps get the word out to others. While you're there, I'd love it if you leave a five-star review.
And be sure to join us each weekday for the best of you every day, a brief daily reflection to help
you start your mornings with a steady dose of wisdom. Remember, as you become the best of who you
are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.