Chris Johnson (00:01.687)
Hey everybody. Welcome to the ordinary discipleship podcast. My name is Chris. I'm here with the one and only Jacob and the smartest person in the room. Jesse, Jesse, we are talking about trauma today and every human being has gone through. I think you can agree with this. Every human being's gone through traumatic experiences. But part of the problem is when you're discipling somebody who's gone through these traumatic experiences, a lot of times as human beings, we want to fix it.

And sometimes that's detrimental to the case. And so, you know, we come back to how do we disciple somebody who's been through a traumatic experience? Do we help them heal? Do we fix it? But I think maybe we need to start off by defining, because it's such a ambiguous term. How do we define trauma, Jesse?

Jessie Cruickshank (00:55.495)
That's the right question to start with. So I appreciate that we're starting there. And what people may not know is that there's no agreed upon set definition in psychology of what trauma is. So people define trauma different ways, usually based on the solution they have. So if your solution involves like regression therapy, then

you know, you would say trauma is part of your identity hasn't grown forward or something like that. like there's not an actual agreed upon definition. And that's probably like not something we're ever going to figure out. So for me, I think about trauma in terms of discipleship in with three different things I'm thinking about three different things I'm aware of when I'm discipling somebody or talking to them. The first one is, we talking about old trauma or current trauma?

because the brain is plastic, it's moldable, those are different, they have different levels of malleability and like fallout. So old trauma versus current trauma. Is somebody in a trauma cycle? Like they're triggered, they're upset, they're adrenaline, their amygdala is going off, so that's a part of your brain that helps with fight or flight. And if they're in the middle of that, they're not actually, they're behaving in a survival.

rational, we can sit down and have a conversation mode. So are they in a trauma cycle? And then the difference between chronic versus punctuated trauma. So if you're, let's say you're in a bad relationship or a toxic work environment or something like that, you're going to have chronic trauma and the way your body and soul handle that will be different than if like you're in a car accident or something bad happens or there's like punctuated trauma. So old versus new trauma, are they in a trauma cycle?

and then chronic versus punctuated trauma.

Jacob (02:51.182)
Yeah, and I think in each of those, what I'm hearing you said, Jesse is like, what what trauma is doing to people when it's like, it's an experience that causes you to go into your, like lizard brain, right?

Jessie Cruickshank (03:06.727)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, your brain is helping you survive and it has mechanisms to do that. And those mechanisms usually don't involve sitting down, having a conversation, believing the best in the other person. Like there are things you don't have access to when you're, yeah, when you're in an unsafe or triggering or a traumatic, your brain is...

is in the state of responding and surviving.

Jacob (03:39.126)
Yeah, so what you're saying is like, when we're when we're trying to identify that somebody is is experiencing the effects of trauma, we're saying is it something that happened in the past that got them into their fight or flight response or something that's happening currently? Is it a thing where they've got a triggering response and they're in a cycle of getting into that fight or flight mode? Or what was the third one?

Jessie Cruickshank (04:04.178)
chronic versus punctuated.

Jacob (04:05.792)
Yeah, so is this something that's like they're dealing with on a regular basis or something that happens at one point? But all of it is about people not being in their rational mind.

Jessie Cruickshank (04:17.113)
Right, so rationality is this really weird thing that isn't exactly true, but I think you could say, what might be more accurate is are you in survival mode or are you in, they call it default mode and your brain is open to stuff. So are you in survival mode or not? Let's just keep the term simple. So when you're in survival mode, your goal is to survive. So as a disciple maker,

Chris Johnson (04:40.697)
you.

Jessie Cruickshank (04:47.643)
You know, sometimes what I think that we end up talking about with people a lot is not necessarily current survival mode stuff, although we can have that conversation, but it's also like, what about something really bad that happened in the past? And I'm not currently in survival mode, but like that thing is still extraordinarily painful and I can get triggered into survival mode pretty easily. So.

Chris Johnson (05:11.394)
Hmm.

Chris Johnson (05:16.215)
Yeah, wow, that's a, that's a lot. I know I was just thinking like, I recently started seeing a psychologist and like, you know, my Jacob knows this, but my like family history was awful. Like growing up, when my dad found out my mom was pregnant at 18, he came over with a gun and tried to take her out and my grandpa wrestled him to the ground. I never met him.

And then my mom was an addict and passed away a few years ago from opioids. And I remember early on when I went to Jake's dad's church and they would describe like God the father. And I always like bristled at God the father because the sermons were always these flowery like God the father loves you so much. And I like, I could never like

compute that in my own head, you know, and it, cause I never had a healthy relationship with a father ever, probably until I met my surrogate father, Jake's dad. and so like that still kind of stinks. I'm 51 years old and that's still like, I've, I've had hours of counseling and that's still, so it's interesting when you said, a story can trigger you. Like sometimes when I hear

God the Father, still kind of like, ugh. so, yeah.

Jacob (06:49.312)
Yeah, and that's where I think like that's thank you for sharing that story. I think that's actually a nice entry point into kind of where we're going when we talk about how do we approach discipleship when we're dealing with people who have had traumatic experiences. So what we would propose is not a great way to do that is to say to a person such as yourself, Chris, you just have the wrong definition of father.

Chris Johnson (07:08.195)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Johnson (07:17.24)
Right.

Jacob (07:17.676)
If you would just get the right definition of father, this wouldn't be a problem for you. Right. Instead, what we want to do is go, man, that's tough that your story involves a negative definition of father. Let's walk together as God rewrites your story and redeems the definition of father for you. And that might take, that might take five years. It might take 50 years.

Chris Johnson (07:20.525)
Yeah, and that's been said. Yeah, sure.

Chris Johnson (07:30.819)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Johnson (07:38.167)
Yeah.

Jacob (07:43.49)
but God is invested in you and we'll rewrite your story so that you understand differently what it means to have a father.

Chris Johnson (07:49.047)
Dude, that's well said and thank you. I'll send my co-pay to you immediately. That looks great.

Jacob (07:52.418)
Yeah. Yeah. And so that's the difference between that's a difference between looking at the person who's experienced trauma and saying, you're the problem. And let's just, let's just fix you to the second way I talked about it was like, no, what we're going to do is we're going to, we're going to help you redeem that experience and exchange it for a, an edifying experience.

Chris Johnson (08:02.521)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Chris Johnson (08:11.886)
Mm.

Chris Johnson (08:17.187)
That's, that's really well said. And I think a lot of times though, the go-to for a human being is let's fix this, let's correct it as opposed to like kind of getting in the situation with the human being, cause that's messy and it's tough. Right. And yeah. Anyway.

Jessie Cruickshank (08:35.911)
And I think it's always about reorienting us to the goal of what does God want here? What is God's good and perfect will? It's not that you suddenly are like poof magically better about your relationship with your dad and the word and the whole concept of fathering, fatherness, but it's actually...

Chris Johnson (08:54.521)
you

Jessie Cruickshank (09:03.899)
For me, I think it's that in spite of your experience, you're brave enough and willing to reconnect, to connect with God when he's in a, you know, a paternal or father nature. Because, you know, God actually doesn't have a gender. So, but that those gender aspects that we can apply things, those are projection and they reveal stuff in our heart. So God's goal is actually healing and connection.

Chris Johnson (09:15.693)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessie Cruickshank (09:32.775)
Not that we aren't upset anymore. Now that may be the goal of the people around us because our being upset is inconvenient. Now they have to think about their words. Now they actually have to like meet us where we are. But that's, but God's goal is healing and wholeness and that, and that your, you know, your identity and your heart is restored. And it is just much more nurturing of a goal than fixing you. So go ahead.

Chris Johnson (09:36.014)
Yeah.

Chris Johnson (09:58.915)
Well, just, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. I I just, I just remember like early on, like going to Jacob's dad's church and then like, you know, being this infant Christian, right. And I didn't grow up in a Christian home at all. In fact, we never talked about Jesus. And, and I remember early on, like, you know, reading through the small catechism and the Lutheran faith and, seeing like the 10 commandments and saying, honor your father and mother. And I was like,

Jessie Cruickshank (10:01.689)
No, no, no, go ahead, go ahead, this is your story!

Chris Johnson (10:28.451)
How the heck do I do that? Like, what does that mean? Like, honestly, God, you know what I went through. You heard me when I was crying out to you when I was eight years old. And now I'm supposed to honor this dude who like one of this dead, like that's tough. And I know that's a longer session and we had, who had not prepared that I was going to throw everything out at Jesse and Jacob right now. But I mean, if we're talking about trauma, the, the,

Jacob (10:55.648)
Well, but I think like, I have a, I have a back of the napkin definition for honor, which is to stay of somebody, what God says of them. And I have, you and I may have had this conversation before, but, so in that case, it's like, if I've got a father who was, toxic or absent, which I don't, but that's the situation we're talking about, right? That maybe you did. And so, like, well, what does God say about your dad?

Chris Johnson (11:00.665)
Yeah.

Chris Johnson (11:07.449)
I don't know.

Jacob (11:24.142)
I don't think that we have a God who says about your dad, he was a dirty rascal scoundrel and there was nothing good in him. Rather, I think we have a God who says, man, that was a guy who was dealt a tough hand, had a tough life and made some bad choices. And his bad choices affected you negatively. but what, so in that case, honoring your father is saying what God says of him, which notice what we just did there was, and this is, this is where I wanted to get to.

Chris Johnson (11:30.766)
Right.

Chris Johnson (11:35.757)
Yeah.

Chris Johnson (11:41.762)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob (11:53.378)
we re-authored the narrative. We told the story in a different way. And so what we did was we took one story, a terrible man, there's nothing good in him, and we replaced it with another story, a guy who had a tough time and made some bad choices that affected you negatively. We took one story and re-authored it in light of God's perspective. And that's actually, that's the how-to of redemption in our life. Is that we take one God.

Chris Johnson (11:55.053)
Mm. Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Jacob (12:21.186)
God takes our story and gives us back another one. And in that new story, we find a different way to live.

Chris Johnson (12:28.153)
Yeah, that makes sense.

Jessie Cruickshank (12:29.159)
Because discipling, like when you're coming through trauma and I have a lot of trauma in my background, I score seven out of 10 on the AC Adverts childhood experiences, which most people probably wouldn't guess about me, but I've been in therapy for 20 years. So y'all therapy works. But when we're walking through this, it is about identity change. It is about a different narrative about us. It is about a different narrative about the people in our lives.

and seeing and having that come into alignment with who God says that we are. you know, this is so, so one of the ways that this can be talked about in some aspects of our society is moving from being a victim to a survivor. I mean, that's a journey and it's painful. And yes, like that's true, but it doesn't erase what happened. It doesn't erase the situation. It's not gaslighting. That's something else, but it is.

aligning with God's narrative, which is still part of reality. It's just actually a more complete reality. It's a more whole reality. And for whatever reason, we

Jessie Cruickshank (13:41.671)
It settles our soul, right? And that's not like a top-down, I got to figure out how to be around this person and work really hard to be a good person kind of way. It just does something different in our hearts. And that helps us live more openly in the future and be willing to connect. And I don't exactly know why it all works that way, guys. Like, I don't know why...

that has all this magic you do to help to help heal us. But it does, it does.

Chris Johnson (14:15.415)
It's, it's interesting. like doing this for the, you know, the last few years of my life, one of the most common traumas that I come across is definitely like husband and wife been married for a long time. Somebody's unfaithful. come to me and then we have the conversation and it's like, I, I, maybe I can forgive, but I can never forget. It seems to be like a common, like trauma response.

And, I don't know, like I was thinking about that the other day, we had a, had a couple that I, you know, I've been married for a long time and just one was unfaithful. And I was like, my gosh, like never expected that never expected to be sitting down in this conversation. The other thing is it always irritates me because they always come to me at the last, like when they need a hail Mary and not when the couple is starting to have problems. You know what I mean? Like

Come to me early. Don't come to me when you need like a miracle solution. But anyway, I don't know. Like maybe is there something to that whole thing with like, okay, I can forgive this person. Jesse, you kind of touched on it. Like, but I can't be in the same room with this person or I can't forget what they've done. Like, I don't know. Can anybody in this room speak on that side of trauma?

Jacob (15:40.216)
Well, I think that like what in the situation you're describing, what they're saying, I think is, well, yeah, I'll forgive you because I have to. But I'll never feel safe again.

Chris Johnson (15:49.762)
Right.

Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.

Jacob (15:55.394)
And and what I would say is, well, then you haven't really forgiven them. You're just going through the motions because you think you're supposed to. But what I would say is it's reestablishing safety, which is sort of on. Our initial step in being able to work that process of redemption. And so we like Jesse and some of her previous work with some of her colleagues developed.

Chris Johnson (16:18.039)
Hmm.

Jacob (16:24.086)
a way of talking about this, that it's four things that go in order. It's orientation, safety, value, and challenge. Orientation, we have to know what the expectations are and where the boundaries lie. Once we have that, then we can establish safety in community and in relationship. Only once we have safety can I actually trust and believe that I have value to add to the community, whether it's a community of two or multiple.

Chris Johnson (16:48.361)
Okay.

Jacob (16:51.116)
And then once I understand that I have value to add, then I can receive challenge in a healthy way. But notice like if we take a couple where somebody's been unfaithful and one of them doesn't feel safe, then we say, just charge ahead, try the next thing, start trusting. And we try to challenge without, without reestablishing safety. It's not going to work.

Chris Johnson (17:01.581)
Mm.

Chris Johnson (17:11.299)
Good point. Yeah.

Jessie Cruickshank (17:13.543)
And that's part of what trauma, like the output of trauma, we get triggered, which means we feel unsafe for whatever reason that is. I mean, I had PTSD, so like, I don't even know what would trigger me and I would get these freezing episodes. And I couldn't even tell you what happened. Was it the light? Was it the way that something moved in my periphery? I don't know. It happened to me. I had no clue what was going on. And I couldn't do anything about it.

Chris Johnson (17:39.501)
Yeah.

Jessie Cruickshank (17:40.827)
But what triggers the amygdala, can't really do anything about that process once it gets triggered and it goes. So that orientation, that talking about, know, do I need? What do I don't want? And finding words and language, like that is naming reality with each other. And that reality is painful. And that reality is, know, it has to be truth. But then...

What do we need to do to reestablish safety? Like that's the beginning of rebuilding trust. Cause you don't get to, you don't, you've lost, if you've hurt somebody, you have lost the right to just have them blanket trust you. You have to rebuild that. That's just part of the consequences of that sin. And you gotta go back and do it. And it takes the other person working hard too and partnering in that to rebuild trust. It's not a one sided thing and you don't just poof back to where you were.

It takes everybody's part to rebuild, reestablish safety, work hard on articulating the things. And then now the bravery is that tiny little margin of trusting the next time, of trusting when they don't call, of trusting when they're late. That's the brave part. Everybody, I think in a lot of our discipleship, we want people to just jump to be brave. And we call it having faith.

Chris Johnson (19:06.872)
Yeah.

Jessie Cruickshank (19:07.611)
Just believe, just have faith, just do it. And we don't understand that their soul has to go through this journey and we don't honor the journey. And so people don't actually heal. They just learn coping mechanisms and they learn to fake it or they leave those relationships because they, people aren't willing to journey with them through the messiness and it is messy.

Chris Johnson (19:30.979)
Yeah.

Jessie Cruickshank (19:33.551)
And we have to be willing to be patient. If your goal is just to help somebody move forward because they're uncomfortable or you're uncomfortable or you're uncomfortable with their uncomfortable, like bring somebody else into that conversation who can hold space with that because you have to be recreated and that's a growth time process.

Chris Johnson (19:43.48)
Yeah.

Chris Johnson (19:53.143)
Yeah. And also, I think you said something there, trigger the amygdala. I think that would be a really nice 90s grunge band, trigger the amygdala. Exactly, exactly. You're going to go to Omaha and watch trigger the amygdala. OK.

Jacob (20:03.306)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessie Cruickshank (20:04.923)
Like Rage Against Machine.

Jacob (20:06.872)
Trigger the amygdala. Yeah.

Jacob (20:13.902)
That's the biggest city Chris can think of because he comes from Anita, Iowa. It's like Omaha.

Chris Johnson (20:16.953)
Well, you know, they're not gonna it's not like they're it's not like trigger the amygdala is gonna play at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, you know, they're gonna be like Newark or something. Okay.

Jacob (20:24.682)
Right. it's right. Yeah. Well, but I think like, and I think if we bring this back to like, let's think about a typical church context. I had a couple that was a part of our church recently, and they came for several months, and they were sort of tentative as they got involved, they like dip their toes in. And as they were doing that, they were telling me about some of their past church experiences, and why they were tentative to get involved.

And then there was like, after a few weeks, we hadn't seen them and we reached out and they said, well, we decided that it just, this wasn't the place for us. And which was really odd because they had made a really intentional choice to say this is the place for us just like three months prior. And as I looked, well, I looked back and I was like, at first I wanted to be like, well, what did we do wrong? You know? And I wanted to like,

Chris Johnson (21:10.605)
And that's how they break your heart.

Chris Johnson (21:18.147)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob (21:20.418)
And then I thought about a couple of instances that I realized, and then a couple people told me about some instances with them and I was like, and I, and I connected it to the past church experiences they had told me about. And I realized that like, they had become fearful that the same thing that had happened before in their church experience was going to happen here. And so they, they, they decided it was no longer the place for them.

Chris Johnson (21:41.666)
Mmm.

Chris Johnson (21:46.84)
Mm.

Jacob (21:47.842)
And I think that's the kind of thing that when we're in faith communities, and if you're leading a faith community, that can create a lot of anxiety and stress for you is trying to manage everyone's experience, but understanding that their past experiences. And here's the thing. Like we were just, Jesse was just saying, if it's a married couple and somebody was unfaithful, okay, now it's your responsibility. You have to recreate safety. What happens for us in faith communities is people come into a faith community and they're scared.

Chris Johnson (22:16.985)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob (22:17.75)
And we want to say, I didn't do anything. Why are you so scared? But actually, we hold responsibility for the painful experiences they've had in the past. And it's not fair, but I think it is kingdom. And so we have to like we have to be sensitive to their past experience, whether we were a part of it or not.

Chris Johnson (22:28.29)
Right.

Chris Johnson (22:38.105)
But you know what, like think about, and I know that we've all been involved in church work for a long time, but think about the last time you walked into a church for the first time, how intimidating that is, especially if it's not a mega church, right? Like if it's, if it's church with like 30, 40, 50, 60 people in it, like that's intimidating because everybody's like already got their friends and you're walking in and you're like, if you've had a previous bad experience, then you're walking into a small to medium church.

Like totally get that. And it's not on you as a pastor, but it's also makes our job very hard, you know, because you have to create situations where you have safe, safe spaces and they're sometimes judging you on your 20 minute sermon and the people around you. It's tough. It's really tough.

Jessie Cruickshank (23:27.739)
And I also think about like, it's probably not the pastor that's gonna cause the experience that will bother them. It's the people in the congregation.

Chris Johnson (23:37.017)
Right.

Jessie Cruickshank (23:38.299)
But the answer to that is not, let's walk on eggshells. The answer to that is not, let's only allow them to talk to each other when they pass the piece because that's all I can trust anybody to do without triggering anybody. Or let's have the most perfect greeter team so that they, which would just be another version of walking on eggshells. So going to that to control the environment.

Chris Johnson (24:00.675)
Right.

Jessie Cruickshank (24:04.581)
so that nobody gets hurt or nobody gets triggered is not the answer because that's impossible, y'all. it's, you're gonna crush everybody's soul and you're not gonna actually achieve it because somebody came in there and they were triggered by the soul crushing control. So the answer has to be like, who are we together? We are a people who bring up when we're uncomfortable, when raise our hand. We're people who listen to and honor the stories of one another.

Chris Johnson (24:17.347)
Yeah.

Jessie Cruickshank (24:33.595)
We're a people who lay down our right to live in an unselfaware way. We're gonna lay that down so that we can meet other people where they are and we can be conscientious because we serve a God who makes us where we are, right? So, you know, the inconvenience of humanity. Well, that's kind of the opposite of the kingdom, right? The kingdom is human. It is only humans. The kingdom is people.

and you can't have a kingdom of God without the people. So as a person in these faith communities, we talk about who we are together, what we do here, and you just keep saying it over and over and over again. And maybe the 10th time, people will start to believe it and allow themselves to be seen a little more. And then, I mean, you're just always cleaning up the mess, and we'll talk about that at a different time, because that's the whole topic. But the trauma-informed discipleship,

in my heart is that we're at least self-aware that other people have lived every day of their life before they met you, and some of that sucked. And some of that was very scarring and pain. And if we get the opportunity that they show us those wounds, then we also have the privilege to like pray the healing of heaven over them, because out of that is actually what comes anointing. Jesus left this planet.

Chris Johnson (25:44.44)
Yeah.

Jessie Cruickshank (26:01.713)
with scars, we're leaving this planet with scars, and there is an anointing and a power from heaven in the scar. So it's not that the trauma never happens. It's not that we just erase and forget it and we remove it from our mind. The answer is that it becomes something that gives glory to God because now it's powerful. And what the enemy tried to harm us with becomes our greatest weapon against him. That is

what we hope to do in trauma-informed discipleship.

Chris Johnson (26:33.977)
Preach girl, preach! That was fantastic. And that's how you end a podcast right there, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been by far, I guess, thank you for the therapy session, Jacob and Jesse. I appreciate that. Send me a bill. Yeah, I was gonna say send me a bill. And this has been the Ordinary Disciple podcast. If you guys found some...

Jessie Cruickshank (26:52.145)
We'll bill you.

Chris Johnson (27:02.059)
this to be helpful. Please, wherever you listen to your podcast, go and review and rate us five stars. It helps other people to get this information. I think a lot of people, I think all of us have gone through some traumatic events and I hope you found this helpful. Jesse and Jacob, where can people find out more about what you guys are doing?

Jessie Cruickshank (27:26.993)
You can always touch base with us at whoology.co, W-H-O-O-L-O-G-Y.CO. See what we're offering, see what we're putting out into the world. And we've got some things you can just take on the website. We've got other opportunities, man. We're always doing stuff, so check us out.

Chris Johnson (27:43.531)
And Jesse, you go out and you speak to churches too, right? Like, mean, you go and do this stuff and help churches all around the world, don't you?

Jessie Cruickshank (27:54.467)
Yep, I travel about 50 % of the time and I cap it at 50%. So I book about a year out in that travel to help, but, cause I have to sustain myself. But yeah, it's one of my privileges is to help other people with this.

Chris Johnson (27:58.382)
Yeah.

Chris Johnson (28:11.203)
Gotcha, and if they want to book you, they can do that through Hoology?

Jessie Cruickshank (28:15.333)
You can fill out a form and reach me to book me. So yeah, no, no, can't just jump on my calendar because it's full.

Chris Johnson (28:17.387)
I got you, but I'm

Gotcha. All right, guys. Thank you so much for joining us for the Ordinary Discipleship Podcast. God bless you guys. We hope this has helped and we'll see you next time. Bye bye.