Confronting and Overcoming Trauma w/ Stephanie Ike, Dr. Anita Phillips & Cyntoia Brown

[Music] [Music] hey roommates on part two of paying process in action we get to sit down with dr anita phillips she is a trauma therapist and an incredible pastor alongside centauria brown the author of free sentoya and an advocate for prison reform through this conversation we're going to be unpacking trauma and its side effects our goal is to acknowledge our pain embrace the healing process and discover our action steps let's get into it you know on today's conversation this is actually a continuation of a series that we are we started discussing pain process and action and so what we're going to be focusing on today is trauma and before we really get into it dr nita i wanted to hear from your perspective how trauma can be defined the simplest definition of trauma is it is anything that changes the way you see god yourself or the world for the worse absolutely anything that does that can be considered a trauma and it's really important to define it that way because we tend to compare pain and so we define trauma as some big thing or bigger than what we've been through and then discount our own process but anything that changes the way you see god yourself or the world for the worse is a trauma no i love that take on perspective because even when i just think about like a perspective at angle i think about how often times we misjudge people based on how we perceive them and we don't we don't take the time to get to know people's stories and their journey you know one of the things that we took from the first part of this conversation series there was a major takeaway that i received from a gentleman named mr jason wilson and he talked about the acronym he talked about the word thug but he described it to an acronym and in that acronym he talked about how a traumatized human being unable to grieve and it was to it was to stand as a contrast to how society views the thug and his main intention was to kind of dismantle the negative connotation and give context to people who suffer from trauma and so from just hearing about that you know centolia when we go back to the 16 year old um facing life and i think about what took place in the courtroom you know the jury that came out they were looking at the surface of what happened not your story not what you've been through not the trauma that led up to that moment and so i wanted to even um start this question with you that what was that moment like when you began processing um the trauma that you experienced as a child so that moment didn't happen until many years after i was already serving my sentence because so many things were happening one after another so many traumas were compounding that i really didn't have time to unpack everything i didn't have time to process everything so i was well into my 20s when i started really just sitting down and unpacking what it was that i was carrying with me when i started really looking at everything that i had gone through and how that had impacted me and it was it was overwhelming it was overwhelming and you know i just had to take it one step at a time and be gentle with myself wow you know just hearing that there's one quote and dr anita have so many of the things that you've spoken on but there's a quote that you mentioned that i actually want to bring into this moment you said that if we minimize the effects of abuse on the child within us we risk minimizing the effects of abuse on the child in front of us and so just in light of what cintoya just shared um can you unpack that for us a little bit well when i spoke on that the topic was about healing self and being able to break generational repetition and so often we're looking in the mirror we see ourselves i often encourage men and women who've been traumatized to find pictures of themselves from the age that it happened look at seven-year-old you look at 12 year old you look at 16 year old you because in your mind it's always you but when you look and see that baby that's a baby at 16 we think we're grown 17 we think we're so grown but now my age in my 40s i look at myself as 16. that is a baby and so when we see ourselves in the state that we were really in when we were traumatized i think we can be more compassionate and more accepting of the fact that we actually were damaged we don't like to admit that because in some way it gives power to the person that hurt us but accepting that we were vulnerable to be damaged is part of embracing who we are as human beings and it allows us to be compassionate with ourselves so that we can then be compassionate with the children in our lives because sexual abuse is one of example of trauma that runs in families and you wonder well how could a mom who was sexually abused as a child miss the sexual abuse in her daughter's life but if she has ignored it in her life made it a blind spot minimize its impact then the child is unlikely to be protected even though it is her desire to protect she's reducing her capacity to protect the children in her life by not taking care of the child that's inside of her now i love that you know since i know that you know right now you're living your best life with your husband but looking ahead into your future when kids start coming in um what can you speak to that when you you know when you're holding your daughter in your arms and knowing that the healing that the journey of healing that you've been through and knowing that now you can pour into her and cover her um i just want to hear like when you see yourself as a mother what does that look like for you you know to be completely honest with you um when it comes to me thinking about being a mother i just want to make sure that my child has the closest possible relationship with jesus as they can because i didn't understand the true importance of that i didn't understand just how important that was to overcome trauma um so that's that's my main focus when it comes to raising a child to try to prevent all the things that i went through i love that i love that you know i want to talk about even acknowledging of pain and trauma um dr anita you know to a certain degree in the black community we have been conditioned to live life in like this survivor mode and even sentoya i've heard you speak about living in this mentality of like you know i'm in survival mode right now and oftentimes when to take that moment when we just have to pause and say that you know what this hurt me it just feels like now this is wasting my time but we are in this place that quarantine has forced us you know to face ourselves and but there's one thing with being forced into stillness and there's another thing to embrace stillness and so i want us to talk about how do we get to that place of embracing um stillness so that we can begin to acknowledge some of the things that we've gone through in our past there's been a significant rise in mental health struggles since the stay at home orders started back in mid-march we saw anxiety levels spike we saw a crisis hotline suicide hotline calls overwhelmed child abuse reports overwhelmed so there's been a lot of stress and strain and i think some of what is triggering some people is happening to stay home being forced to stop they may have loved being in their home before but the sense of force that i'm trapped here has triggered many people and their childhood wounds to find themselves staying in their room all the time or eating too much whatever coping mechanisms they may have used in childhood to deal with some of their traumas have come to the surface and in best case scenarios people have then embraced that stillness as the opportunity to heal something that has been waiting for their attention all this time because we can live traumatize on a daily basis and look fine and seem fine because we've been in that mode since we were 14 or 15 years old and suddenly have the opportunity to live in a way that is better and more free and more healed you know this has really been it for a lot of people and we've seen people coming into mental health care and joining online support groups and sharing their stories um in a way that's allowing post-traumatic growth and that's what we want to do we want to grow no i i love that you talked you highlighted the the like even the forced into stillness how in to a degree that could even be counterproductive on some people um and just thinking about you know centauri your time period in solitary confinement that was a two-year period and i that cannot even compare to any the worst day on quarantine you know can you can you talk to us about that how did that process um did was that counterproductive for you or was that actually something that benefited in your own journey to acknowledging some of the experiences of your past a little bit of both actually because one you're forced to be alone with yourself with your thoughts with everything that's that's kind of pushed to the back whenever you're busy and you're going through the day-to-day it's it's overwhelming and you know a lot of people who are in solitary confinement you find them struggling with anxiety struggling with all kinds of things going on in their mind i just i struggle through that but once you get past that once you get beyond that point and you can really start unpacking things you can really start evaluating things you can really start thinking well this is how i've been reacting in life in the past and this is what led me to this situation but this is not where i want to be you can start thinking of where you want to be in life um that is still different from like you said embracing stillness because before i was forced into that stillness now i embrace that stillness because i've come to a point where i learned that when things are still then i can focus and i can have my time to get closer to god and for me on quarantine that's just been the most rewarding thing because so often we put so many things before him we have to do this we have to do that we have to take care of everything else but we don't take care of our relationship with him and he always puts us first and so for me to embrace that time to just give that back to him has been the most rewarding thing ever now even just as you're speaking i'm thinking about the scripture that talk about that talks about be still and know that i am god and just that when we are when we come to that place of quieting the noise and not being too focused on okay what else could be happening in my life right now but you know kind of giving it a different perspective that in this moment my relationship with god can grow you know dr neither you're a pastor and you know even as a pastor myself i think that sometimes we we find ourselves because there is the responsibility where you have to speak to people and you have to prepare a message and so you find yourself where you know even your your time with the lord is about other people you know what you want me to say to other people and centolia i know you can attest to this too because your voice is leading um many that have encountered what you where you've been but now you're leading them to that place of freedom and liberty but we find ourselves in the presence of god for others and there are times like this where we can be in the presence of god for ourselves and so i really love that you mentioned that and so just in light of you know growth with the lord um just want to talk about steps to healing even after we've come to that place of acknowledging right and so centauria i would even kick this off with you because even as you just talked about faith what role did faith play in your process because there's a story that you shared and i love it so much i was listening to it in an interview and you talked about this mustard seed that you had received from a volunteer and you would pray with that mustard seed and you will hold it and you're rubbing it and it's like okay god you're going to do something you know but to recognize that in your darkest moments you are able to hold on even literally to a mustard seed of faith what was what was the role of faith for you in healing so i loved dr anita's definition of trauma about anything that removed you further from the lord and it was when i met my husband that i realized that trauma had removed me from that closeness with god had removed me from really having true faith when i was holding that mustard seed i was 16 years old and i didn't understand what faith truly was i didn't understand anything about having a relationship with god i was practicing things that i had learned from religion growing up in a church and i felt that if i did a b and c then d would happen that's not how it works and i had to learn that and so for me to really start working on my relationship with god and started helping me to heal from a lot of those traumas the traumas that i encountered i was always made to feel that i was less than a person i was always made to feel that my life somehow didn't count but when i started looking at myself how he looks at me everything completely changed and it was just empowering beyond anything that i could ever tell you and it was the faith that i developed after my husband showed me what faith was he showed me about having a relationship that led to me being freed from prison wow i love that and dr nieder i want to hear um this same question from you because you know you have a podcast in the light and that podcast is incredible first of all but on your first episode you really opened up your world to us you brought us into your home and your mother was on that episode with you and you guys had a discussion and a conversation about your sister valerie and just being so open and transparent about the the trauma that was experienced as a result of her mental illness and so i wanted if you could just talk about that with us and how faith played a role because i'm just thinking about the young girl who is hearing her sister who is 13 years old saying that hey you know saying things that seem violent and being scared for your life by the hands of your sister i can't even um begin to think about how that affected you but what was that like for you and how did faith play a role it was definitely very traumatizing for me my sister at that time hadn't been diagnosed but she had bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and so often it's it's easy to be sympathetic for people who are struggling with a mental illness when the symptoms are not aggressive you know if they're just depressed or sad but my sister's symptoms included being aggressive impulsive running away from home all the time breaking rules for what seemed like no reason and so her behavior towards me but also the disruption in our family was very traumatizing for me it shook my faith as a young person because i felt like well my parents love god and they're praying for her and she doesn't seem to be getting better so if god's not answering their prayers he's probably not going to answer my prayers and so my broken heart really rose to the surface over what was happening in my spirit and the bible tells us that right proverbs 15 13 says by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken and so many of us our faith is damaged by our broken hearts and so in similar fashion to what cintoya said when some love found me when my heart started healing then my spirit started healing you know sometimes we try to start with spirit and jump over our broken heart but that hurdle is too high sometimes god comes into that emotion space first and he starts to heal the heart that broke the spirit because otherwise if i heal the spirit that heart will keep breaking it and so when i went away to college i was at a um i met a young man who was at school just friends and he just kept on witnessing to me and no matter how hard i told him i didn't want to hear about god i cursed him out i slammed doors in his face he would knock again do you want to come to church with me and i'm like oh my gosh like really and so finally i went to church because i just felt guilty for responding so negatively to someone asking me just to come to church and god met me in that service but i was just moved by that man's commitment that fellow student to loving on me and wanting to see me better and so very often we'll find that when our hearts have been broken in a way that has broken our spirit god will meet us in our heart first invest into that spirit space and that's what happened for me and and it was a really personal experience that i had with god that night i was 19 years old and um that changed my life forever so being a preacher's kid had kind of put the firewood there but there was nothing ablaze but when i had that personal experience through my heart and into my spirit's face the fire of god's love came alive and just began to heal so many things for me um it was the beginning of my healing process but now i'm a therapist but i've also spent some time in the therapy room i had some um serious post-traumatic issues as a result of what we went through my sister tried to kill us i literally tried to kill our family there was a lot of violence and chaos in the house and so i had to spend my time in the therapy room too so you know we're spirit soul and body and we can be in the therapy room and still be firmly rooted in the spirit too just like we can go to the doctor's office and still be firmly rooted in the spirit you've got to take care of all that stuff and therapy really helped me to discover more about who i was and how i could heal and then continue on and what god called me to do now there's something you mentioned and just to tie it into both of your stories when you said when love found me and i am just amazed at the love of god how it's revealed in so many different ways you know that that persistence that chasing after um you know for you it came in the form of that student who was just persistent that i'm not even paying attention to what you're saying do you want to come to church tomorrow um and even in tentoya's story about her husband there was this persistence and and covering and protection and so i love that and i think that there are a lot of people out there and they can the the it's almost like there's a dynamic between those two stories that i really want us to press into because for many people out there they're looking for this love that would bring healing and that would bring restoration or just someone right who would believe in them someone who would say you got this i think about how centoya's husband the first letter he writes to her he's telling her you know god is saying you're going to come out of prison it's this is not the end for you that student of yours who is like hey just come on come with me i know you may not want to hear from the lord right now but come along that what the how love can find us in so many ways and so i want to ask the both of you how important is it not only to bring people into your journey but to open your heart to people being part of your journey well the lord you know he he uses people as vessels so you know you just never know when when he's going to use someone to speak to you or to touch your life to bless you in some way yeah so i think it's important for us to be open but also for us to be discerning yeah you definitely have to be discerning when it comes to people i i can't tell you just what a blessing you know it is that that i look back at how my husband reached out to me and i actually paid attention to that letter i actually responded to that letter because it has completely changed my life i wouldn't know jesus the way that i know him if it weren't for that because i was in that place where you were at one time where anyone who tried to talk to me about the lord i just brushed them on i had even come to a place where i said i didn't believe and yet and still god pursued me so it's just every day i think about that and i'm just i'm just so blessed so we definitely need to keep ourselves open for that i think we need to take care of be open to taking care of other people that way as well you know what is so difficult sometimes for women especially if we've been through trauma is that we don't always have experiences with healthy relationships we don't have experiences with people not wanting anything from us and way too many young women um and older women don't have experience with non-sexual care it's like if they don't want to sleep with me why are they here you know what i mean so she had this man who became her husband just showing her the love of god i had just a friend who was a student we were never in a romantic relationship so often we're looking for romance to heal us but connection with us and when we haven't had experiences with healthy connection or healthy friendship and it's always been sexualized we can miss it and so i encourage people to be open to god showing you something clean and pure in terms of love yeah because it's available and it could be in a it could be one of your girlfriends it could be the person at the grocery store who encourages you every time you go through the line god is so determined to get to us um the prayer can be god open my ears and heart to hear you if you're there and that's the other thing we can be so honest like god i don't even know if i believe in you right now but i'm gonna just ask you to help me anyway even that little bit of open up opening will make space for god to find us i love that because even in that connection because i believe that there are many people that are that are going to watch this and they're looking for god but god is in the details god is in the character that that person that girlfriend that friend in your life who is who's persistent who is persistent with your patience with their love with their kindness that that is god showing up you know and so just to hear this i know that that by itself is just going to bring so much healing because many times we want god to come through in a certain way and he's like i'm i'm right there i'm i'm the neighbor who is showing you kindness every single day to let you know that i see you someone is watching over you literally and i just want to be that voice to you so i really love the just the um the point of connection you know connection is what heals us and so that's powerful but even thinking about it from a community perspective um right now our community we are experiencing what i believe you know you're the professional here at dr neither but what i believe is collective trauma um and not only due to kovitt 19 that is affecting the black community but also when we think about the recent murders from ahmad aubry from brianna taylor to george floyd to rashad brooks and for me in particular rashad brooks when i when i watched the video when i saw photos of his family his his wife his three daughters i didn't even realize that that triggered me in a certain way because every you know when i saw george floyd's murder it was i was enraged i was just angry when i saw rashad i was emotionally depleted i i i just felt like i it it affected me in a different way and i couldn't understand it um it wasn't until like a couple days later for me that just in the presence of god and i'm like wow why this has a very heavy toll on me and then it hit me when i had seen the picture of his wife and his three daughters it made me think of my father because when he was murdered he it was he was left with my mother and three kids and so it was almost like i was reliving seeing that these kids don't even know what they're up what the world that they're going into you know this mother like just to pray over them and cover them and so in thinking about that you know first of all how is everything that is happening right now how is that affecting you all and have you felt triggered in any way by just what is what has been in the headlines well let me ask you a question first yes i knew this was coming how did you move from that triggered state once you recognized it how did you move from that triggered state um out of that triggered state what was the what was the transition or the process for you you know to be to be honest i don't it's i don't know because one of the things i i mean even in this conversation is how we even acknowledge that we've been traumatized you know and i think that what i love about when i have conversations with different people is that i also find my healing in that you know so what i'm posing to you both i'm also there are questions that i have for myself because when that how that affected me for such a long time for many years in my life i never realized that i was traumatized by my father's murder because in my mind i was a baby i was about eight months old and so when people would talk about it when people when i would tell someone and i'm like oh yeah my father was murdered they're like oh my gosh i'm so sorry i'm like no i wasn't even there really barely and even though it's not something funny but i was so disconnected from it and so removed from it that it was just about growing up without him there that maybe was more traumatic but the acknowledgement of saying this was a traumatic experience for me is not a firm reality to me which is which so having that impact when i saw what happened to rashad and seen especially the photo of his wife and her three kids it really moved me because i'm like wow i i i did not think that it would be tied to thinking about my father yeah trauma is tricky and that gets down in the body it's not just in our minds but it literally gets into our physical bodies and when we lose someone the way you lost your dad even when you were very small we would call that an attachment trauma or an attachment there was an attachment there you heard his voice echoing even when your mom was carrying you and then that figure is gone that's a loss that is a trauma and it gets into the body itself and we underestimate what disruptions and attachment can do to us over the long term but they can damage us in a lot of ways what's beautiful is you were able to find that truth in your prayer closet which is a safe place for you and probably help you in recovery but recovering from trauma is a process and i don't want to say it's never fully over but losses take on different meanings at different times in our lives right so imagine that this is the trauma and this life and life has a cycle and so my husband lost his dad when he was 11. boom that he hit that trauma and then when he graduated high school pop he came back around by because he noticed not having my dad in my high school graduation that was a new manifestation and then he's going on with his life and he gets married and we're getting married and i never got to meet his dad and so there'll be times when life will bring you back around to that trauma the key is when we do that how do we manage that new encounter because it's a new loss it's a new grief and how we manage that determines if we go down from there or up from there but either way we will cycle by it again and so you ran into it again but it sounds like at least that in your prayer closet it was a safe space and you have work in there that allows you to kind of recover and so you pop but you continue to grow but some we don't have the skill to handle that that run-in we'll find ourselves spiraling down and that might mean that we need to deepen our spiritual relationship it might mean that we need to reach out and get some help from a therapist or a support group or our loved ones but you know that once and for all thing is just isn't real and man it would be awesome if it was um but we will find as the years go by that we'll run into certain things and so in some areas we'll have recovered and moved into growth and in some areas we might still find out that we're a little bit shaken you know after i got out of my family home and my parents are wonderful it's just my sister's mental illness just tore everybody apart um and then i got married and everything was going along good and when i saw the positive pregnancy test stick i completely like fell apart inside did not expect that to happen but i started hearing all these things coming back from my mom's fears because she didn't understand what was wrong with my sister and there was like a sense of powerlessness as a parent like maybe i can't do anything what if this goes badly and so that was ah i hit it again and i had to work through that to make sure that those fears didn't didn't interfere with me as a mother so trauma is tricky you know it may play a role in our lives over the years but that doesn't mean that we're not growing or getting better it just means that we may have suffered a new loss from an old thing and now we need to process that and that's okay wow suffered a new loss from an old thing wow centolia does that speak to you because this is speaking to me well you know for me when when it comes to like the trauma that that i had dealt with what it came down to is the lies that i was told the lies that i was led to believe about myself and so if there are ever situations where that comes back up where you know the enemy tries to whisper to me and tell me that i'm not enough and you know that i'm not loved that i'm not worthy i just call it for what it is um it's a lie i'm not gonna allow my life to be run by lies i'm not gonna allow my life to be run by trauma i talk a lot about the role of forgiveness and overcoming the role of forgiveness for yourself for other people and you know that's jesus said it the whole time he told us the whole time how important that was and for me that's the best tool that we have in combating and overcoming drama so you just brought something that is huge up and i really want you to unpack that for us a little bit because forgiveness is so key um you know it in my life when even talking about my father's murder his cousin was the one responsible and this cousin for me was an uncle that i loved as a kid we did not find out till i was about maybe 12 or something like that so i grew up knowing my uncle i grew up come him coming to the house loving on him and he was like my favorite uncle from my father's side and then this whole thing comes about that he was actually the one who sent um assistance against my father and i remember back then you know my like even because i encountered the lord early about nine years old and when i had spoke to the lord about it the first thing that was on my heart was about forgiveness and it was just about to forgive my uncle and to see him from a god perspective not negating what he did but to recognize that he's also he's acting out from a from the place of his own pain and his own trauma and his own um you know jealousy and all kinds of things in life and so forgiveness was such a huge thing and the way the lord began to teach me forgiveness at a young age is what i carried on throughout my life and so even as you talk about forgiveness because there's forgiveness of self there's forgiveness of others that played a role into the things that broke us as children but where you are today how did i really want you to just unpack how forgiveness played a role to you getting to where you are today who so my first experience i'd say with forgiveness was when i found out that the person who had taught my first college class who i had come to know as a friend it turns out that he was actually a prosecutor in my case this was a man while i was fighting with everything in me to become free he was fighting with everything that he had to keep me locked up and i had to have that moment where it was like wow wait a minute and i learned that you know he was operating from a different place right he was operating out of a place where that's what he felt was the right thing to do however erroneous it may be um i have to have some kind of understanding from where he was coming from don't have to agree with this don't have to think it's okay um but i can see that and i could recognize that and i could see that you know he was he was remorseful for what he had done and i couldn't allow that to just wipe away everything about who he was that couldn't define who he was as a person and that led me to confront other things and it's like wow i know i've made mistakes i've hurt people in my life and i can't ask that someone forgives me and sees me as a whole person apart from that one incident apart from that one behavior if i'm not willing to do the same thing and so it's really just taking a step out of that snap reaction to just see the world as black and white and understand that it's full of gray area um being a human in this world is an extremely complex thing and sometimes there's there's just there's just situations where you have to have forgiveness um sometimes there's situations where there's no excuse and it's not okay but you have to forgive in order to move on from that yourself um so it's just forgiveness is it's difficult and it's definitely something that that i had to lean on the lord to do for a lot of situations now i love that and just even just even to continue um in that conversation you know right now i think that many of us find ourselves in this tension between just when we look at the civil unrest that has taken place in this country um the tension between how we walk in forgiveness and how we advocate for justice and so um dr anita i would love to hear you know you on this how do we how do we live in that tension how do we live in that world to say okay i'm not gonna look at this person with hate in my heart but i'm still gonna advocate for justice how do we because i think many of us find ourselves where you know the scale is a bit unbalanced where sometimes we're moving and it's coming from a place of hate and rage and we have to step back and say okay i'm forgiving you but i'm still i'm advocating for justice at the same time how do we how do we live in that well dr king urged us to focus on fighting systems he identified the three he called them the triple evils right racism poverty and militarism and he urged us to keep our eye on the system battle the system not a person and i take that really to heart because i am a feisty girl and i have a little temper and uh licensory said forgiveness is not my first talent i have to work for it okay and so one of the ways that i deal with that is by minimizing my offense in the first place right if i don't have to forgive you if i don't even get angry with you or offended by you in the first place so i try to keep my eye on the ball because if it drops down to individual people around me um in this fight for justice that's gonna drain energy that we need and this is gonna take energy it's gonna take time it's gonna take persistence and if we're allowing that to be drained because we focused on the person across the street or an individual who's holding a certain office we have to pour our energy into changing systems in order to maintain that balance between fierce love and justice and so who's advised better to follow than dr king's so i'm riding with him on that one because otherwise i'll get myself in a lot of trouble and i want to be able to fight this fight well i love that i love that i mean that really even speaks to me because i i do find myself in those moments especially um just at the height of everything and it's like you know where do you say enough is enough but you're still making sure that your heart is pure because your heart is really it's it's all you really have like if my heart is contaminated i cannot function i cannot move forward in in any aspect of my life and so making sure like no matter what we are we're moving for we're fighting for but keeping a pure heart in the midst of all of that you know questions first that's really critical i'm a christian first yes always so even in the fight for racial justice or whether i'm doing therapy with someone i am his first yeah and there are certain emotions that are not congruent with the fruit of the spirit and if i'm having too many of those then i'm out of line i've gotten into as we say in church i'm in the flesh now and i am responsible to god because the boundaries of my relationship with god don't allow for me to exist in that way and so if it gets to the point where i'm so furious i can't pray for someone because i'm so then i'm out i'm in the wrong and so we have to make sure that our faith is the context in which we do everything we have to be accountable spiritually first to make sure that we process the emotions that need to be processed and watch our motives why would you both speak to when you say i am a christian first um to christians who feel as though what it means to carry your faith with you seems timid to the world well for me personally that's one of the things when when someone speaks about you know jesus is being timid jesus was not timid at all he was very bold when i look at things that are going on right now in our country i think about how he handled things when he was here on earth um the way he dealt with the pharisees the way he spoke up about injustice um he was very bold and so we're looking at the battles that are going on we need to keep in mind that at the end of the day this is the spiritual battle yes it has physical manifestations but we have to be prepared spiritually to battle so when things are going haywire and going crazy out in the world and i really don't understand i'm having emotions rise up in me rage rise up in me and things going on that's when i need to take that to god that's when i need to go to him because i know at the end of the day this is a spiritual battle and we all have our role to play in the movement not everybody plays the exact same role but when the bible says the blessings of the lord maketh rich and added no sorrow we think about that in terms of money all the time but it's not just about money if i'm really moving in my role what god has called me to do it's not going to burn me down i'm not going to be so overcome by rage that i can barely sleep at night i'm not going to have my anxiety level spiking while i'm doing what god told me to do you know what i mean so we need to it's sometimes hard that's why it says the the bible the word of god divides between soul and spirit yeah people are calling something spirit that really rose from their soul their emotional state they wanted to do or vice versa so we have to be careful and it takes self-awareness one of the things that i really even want to dive into because when i look at both of your lives it's so inspiring to me because i see that your life's work has almost seemed like a response to what you both have been through in life you know right now dr anita you're an amazing pastor um you're a therapist leading people to their own healing from trauma um despite what you have been through looking at you centolia you know you're living your best life child but you're an advocate for prison reform and despite everything you've been through it's almost like the things that you're doing right now is responding to the very trauma that you experience and so i would love to hear from you both you know how do we turn our pain into purpose well you know for me it was as i looked over my journey and all those moments that had taken me further from god where i thought you know he can't possibly be here he can't possibly care for me because why would he allow this to happen and coming to a place where i realized so he had a plan this whole time and realizing that his plan for my life like that that's a purpose in itself and it has purpose to heal other people to free other people and it empowers me um i don't feel i have a choice other than to do the work that i'm doing now he had every intention of me going through what i went through so that i could help someone else and you know that's that's how i turn you know my pain into what i'm doing now and it's just it's incredible just to think about the role you know that i can play in his plan [Music] i feel that same sense of gratefulness as well that you survived and um that other people can be touched you know when i get when i first started the podcast and really telling the details of what it was like um in our home and our family i can't tell you the number of messages that i got where people were like this happened this was a secret at our house you're the first person that ever said it out loud i mean just for people to be freed from sharing the experience you know i can't say that i set out to do it this way i was definitely looking for an explanation i wanted to know what had made my sister's life the way that it was and she passed away a few years ago and that kind of triggered me to start talking about it more but i just wanted to understand it right so i was studying for the answer but then when i realized i was really trying to understand my own pain you see for a while it was like oh it's about her i want to understand what happened to her but really i wanted to understand what happened to me and once i got into that honest space and i started to heal from what had happened for me um yeah how can you not share that so it's just yeah i could not not do anything else it's not like oh gosh the lord is forcing me to do this is it right here every single time you see someone get it you see a light come on in their eyes because you shared your story because you prayed with them because you sat with them it's addictive to see people get free i'm addicted to it that's nothing else for me to do now i love that so much because you know it makes me i've always been intrigued by the idea of a painful journey um you know and even how within that in itself like because we always talk about the purpose and the pain you know and when i hear you both just share from this it's almost as though would we receive this today if not for your past you know many people right now there are questions you know dr anita you on your podcast your my you had asked your mom you know what is it that maybe you you sought the lord for and your mother talked about how she would ask the lord why you know why is this happening and there was never a response yet her love for him was so real so authentic that she was like you know what i'll keep going twice as hard for you i'll keep traveling i'll keep ministering i'll keep talking about your love and talking about who you are even though you don't answer me in the why is this happening and i just wonder from both of you did you ever find a place in your life where you questioned god where it's just like and what was that like for the person right now who is questioning god you know the bible says that when we talk about well why did this bad thing happen or why did that bad thing happen the bible says that it's because of the enemy the devil sins from the beginning that's what happened and the husband is in this world there's gonna be mess but then it goes on to say that for this purpose with the son of god manifested to destroy the works of the enemy i want to make sure we differentiate between the work of the son and the work of the enemy the bible says it's the enemy the devil sins from the beginning but for this purpose was the son of god manifested to destroy his works and so when god shows up to destroy the works of the enemy in my life then he forces all things to work together for my good and so now he pulls purpose out of my pain but i'm always careful to determine that it was god who wounded me in the first place now good father so sometimes he allows me to go through some hardships to work on my character just like i allow my children to stumble and fall so that they can learn their way but i don't abuse them i would never damage them and so let's be careful we don't attribute something to god that was the work of the enemy because we do have an adversary and we know that jesus shows up to destroy his works and pull purpose out of pain that came from the enemy and there's a difference there between that and god allowing me to walk through something as a good father to develop my character because so many people have been spiritually traumatized yeah being told that something unspeakable that happened to them was god's will to strengthen them i love that virtual trauma so we have to make sure we give the credit to god and we put the blame on the enemy when he's when he's been the one and we can come out of that god's gonna make it work out for our good and make it so that for me i look back and i don't i wouldn't necessarily want things to be different i want them to be different from my sister maybe she'd still be alive but the opportunity to be a healing tool it's been it's been enough it's been more than enough repayment for what i lost right so for me um for me questioning god i completely question his entire existence when you know i was 16 i knew what i was taught in church i knew what you know the preacher had sat up and said every sunday and so i felt that if i prayed every single day if i pray with this mustard seed this is truly gonna happen because i was always taught asking it shall be given unto you and when i saw that that wasn't happening i said well maybe i'm not doing this right maybe maybe somehow i got this wrong and i kept trying and i kept searching you know for a way to just do this religion thing right and that was what was going to get me out of prison and the final straw was when my appeals kept getting denied and it was like why not wait a minute i have been praying and i've been praying i've been praying that i not do life in prison that i not be convicted that i not even be tried as an adult and this keeps happening if this keeps happening there must not be a god who listens to me this can't be real and for years i went around saying that it wasn't real i had all these rational explanations for things i had all these scientific reasons for why we were here i spoke things about evolution and anything to run away from the truth that no there was a god and he loved me and the god of the bible is very real and i went through that for for almost i think 10 years of my life but it was when i realized that it was just me struggling with understanding why those things had happened because like you said i was blaming god for those things happening in my life why did he allow this to happen he must not be real um when i saw that there was a plan and even though that i put myself in certain situations other people had made choices that put me in situations and the enemy got a hold of me he still rescued me from that he was still able and he did it once i allowed him to once i came to him once i developed that relationship with him and then i saw that just like you said he completely turned everything around in my life and it just everything worked together so perfectly and i i mean i couldn't have made it up i couldn't have written it myself if i was if i was writing about it it was just perfect the way that he had written the way my life played out and so for anyone who's questioning god take it from me he is very real i have been there i have denied him i have said that it wasn't real and he spoke to me he showed me things in dreams um that no science textbook ever could have done um that that that nothing nothing other than than god himself could have shown me so there's there's no questioning it i know beyond the shadow of a doubt he is real from the things that my husband wrote me when he wrote me that letter saying that i was getting out after the court every single court had said that it wasn't going to happen and then lo and behold here i am that tells you that that he is a living god he speaks to people he will speak to you and when your time is right you're going to have a moment where you're confronted and just please seize that moment because it is going to be the most rewarding thing that you've ever done with your life i love that you know i think this is such a beautiful place to pray into um and actually centauri i would even ask you to just cover this in prayer for everyone watching because what you both just touched on literally would bring so much breakthrough to somebody watching right now that was in that is currently in that very place that we like we all have been right and so i just yeah i really want us to really just cover that in prayer all right bye god um i come to you right now and just ask that you know you can step into this place and speak to whoever is listening here right now whoever feels that they haven't heard you that they don't know you maybe they don't even believe that you're real i pray that you speak to them in a way that only you can speak to them speak to that pain that they feel all those doubts that the enemy has put in their head the lies that they've been told i want you to just speak to them please father and let them know that you are real that you are more powerful than anything that has ever come against them that your truth can completely overtake all the lies that they've taken in themselves trauma is nothing to you um there's nothing on this earth that that is more powerful than you and i pray that they just accept that i pray that they start to just come under your will god so so many times we're just we're just so consumed with the things that we want to do the things that we feel should be done how we should fix things and we often find ourselves just making things worse than they were in the beginning i know you know that's been my problem and i'm sure other people here they encounter that same thing but i pray that people just learn to just give things to you because they can do all things through you um you can do all things and just pray that that your will is done in their life father and in jesus name that i pray amen [Music] you

Channel: The Same Room

Views: 24,027

Keywords: Anita Phillips, Dr Anita Phillips, Stephanie Ike, Sarah Jakes Roberts, Woman Evolve, Cyntoia Brown, Trauma, Healing, therapy, the same room, the shade room, wholeness, Breonna Taylor, Stillness, One LA, Justice, Survival Mode, Faith

Id: tSdNFu7DgY4

Length: 53min 18sec (3198 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020