S9.8 | Practical Foundations for Trauma Recovery and Spiritual Growth
In today's episode, "Foundations to Healing," Carla shares a roadmap to healing from trauma and suffering, guiding us from pain to a life of abundance in Christ. Drawing from her course, "Foundations to Healing," Carla delves into six essential intersections we must pass on our healing journey. With insights rooted in scripture and practical advice, she explores the importance of rewriting core beliefs, renewing our minds, grieving our losses, accepting the past, embracing forgiveness, and developing holy habits. Join us as Carla provides the tools and encouragement needed to walk out your healing with God, transforming your struggles into a purpose-driven life. Let's get started!
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Key Takeaways
Core Beliefs:
Trauma shapes false beliefs about oneself and the world. Transforming these beliefs requires rooting your identity in Christ, replacing lies with biblical truths
Grieving:
Ecclesiastes 3:4 reminds us that there is a time for sorrow and a time for joy, and both are essential to the healing process.
Forgiveness:
Forgiveness is an act of obedience and personal freedom, releasing you from bitterness and resentment
Connect With Carla:
Foundations to Healing—-> https://www.carlaarges.com/renewing-hope
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Inquire about 1:1 coaching ---> carlaagreswellness@gmail.com
Come hangout on IG with me @carlaarges
Check out the blog
Resources:
5 Steps to Building Resiliency
Affirming Truths Facebook Community
5 Tips for Overcoming a Negative Body Image
Who You Say I Am Biblical Affirmation Cards
TRANSCRIPT
Carla Arges [00:00:08]:
Hey friends, welcome to affirming truths. I'm your friend and host, Carla Arges. This show is a safe place to share our struggles, grow in faith and root our identity in Christ.
Carla Arges [00:00:20]:
My hope is that you will leave.
Carla Arges [00:00:22]:
Each episode feeling encouraged in your journey. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode.
Carla Arges [00:00:27]:
And it would mean the world to.
Carla Arges [00:00:28]:
Me if you would leave a review. I am so glad you're here. Let's get started.
Carla Arges [00:00:36]:
Hello friends. Welcome to this episode of affirming Truth. I am so grateful you're here today and I hope this episode blesses you. My goal for today is to help give you a roadmap to healing from trauma, from dealing with your suffering and moving out of a place of pain and into a place where you're living in abundance in Christ, right? And that abundance is joy and peace and calm and confidence and boldness, and just a beautiful place to be in the bosom of God, right? When I talk to women in my coaching business, or even women that just reach out to me on instagram wondering, how do I heal from this? How do I heal from the pain? How do I get over this trauma? How do I take my life back? And that's a really big question. And of course, we can't answer it completely in a 1520 minutes episode, but I want to break down what the foundations to healing are for you and really see how this is rooted in the word and how it practically gets walked out in your life to bring about healing. Now, what I'm going to be going through. You can find more in depth knowledge in my course, foundations to healing, formerly called renewing Hope, but foundations for healing, which is a broad view of the intersections we must pass in our healing journey. So what do you do when you have trauma and pain? And again, I want to remind you that trauma is not just abuse.
Carla Arges [00:02:26]:
I think sometimes we think as trauma is, if we've been abused in some horrific way. Trauma is wound. Trauma is a wound that is not healed or not healed well and that can arise in our childhood from many different ways. I mean, we see in research and studies that went out in wartime areas where mothers wanting the best for their kids during war. There was a study done in world War two where the mothers sent their kids away to safety, right? The mothers were making the best choice, the best decision for their kids safety. But that separation, that being taken away from their mother left childhood wounds of abandonment, insecurity, attachment issues. This was not a case of abuse. This was a case of a mom trying to do the best thing she could for her kid.
Carla Arges [00:03:29]:
And still there was wounds that happened from it. Right? So that's just an example of. Not all trauma is abuse. Trauma is just a wound that we have sustained that isn't healing properly and therefore is impacting our life in negative ways, even to this day. And so when we have trauma, what do we do? I'm going to give you six intersections that we have to walk through, and these aren't necessarily in six specific orders. You will find in your healing process that you dabble a little bit here, and then you think you make progress and you move on to something else, and then you have to go back. It's not a straight line, right? It's two steps forward, one step back. There's a messy middle of.
Carla Arges [00:04:16]:
But when we do it with God, when we're empowered by God to walk through and do this hard work, we come out on the other side with purpose and a new commission in our life for the kingdom that is beautifully, beautifully given to us by the Holy Spirit and beautifully given to us by a God who redeems our story for our good. All right, let's get into it. Number one, the number one intersection that we have to address is our core beliefs. So trauma created beliefs in us. Trauma created a certain way our brain developed, and it created a way that we understood ourselves and the world around us. The problem is trauma creates beliefs that are not true, that are not true. Trauma creates beliefs born out of our pain. In John 14 one, Jesus says, let not your hearts be troubled.
Carla Arges [00:05:22]:
Believe in God. Believe also in me. You see, our troubled hearts, our cluttered minds, often are a result of these visceral, subconscious, core beliefs that trauma form. And so we have to rewrite these beliefs and reestablish a belief system that is rooted in who Christ is, in believing in God. And we may, on an intellectual level, say, yes, I believe in God. I believe everything about his character, and I believe everything he spoken about me. And intellectually, we believe it's true. And in our hearts, we want to grasp to this truth.
Carla Arges [00:06:07]:
But subconsciously, there's been these deeply rooted beliefs from trauma, that we're not lovable, that we have to earn our worth, that people will leave us. And so we have to challenge those beliefs that trauma built and rewrite them and replace them with beliefs that come from the word of God. The second intersection in healing from trauma, another foundational aspect, is to renew our mind. And this is very closely related to core beliefs we know. In romans twelve two, it says that we are transformed by the renewing of our minds, right? So we were once broken and sinful, and believing lies, but we are transformed into new creations. We are transformed with new hearts and new desires. We are transformed with new beliefs by the renewing of our mind. And our thoughts drive our feelings, which drive our behaviors.
Carla Arges [00:07:09]:
So if we want our behaviors to change, if we want our behaviors to line up with who we are in Christ, it starts with the renewing of our mind. It starts with the renewing of our mind. It starts with taking those thoughts captive that raise themselves against the knowledge of God, that are of contradiction to the knowledge of God, and we put them down in obedience. We have to renew our mind. Another intersection that we go through in our healing is grief. And now grief is pain. And our brain likes to avoid pain. Our brain, you know, well meaningly tries to shield us from pain.
Carla Arges [00:07:55]:
But the truth is that we can't heal what we don't feel. And going through grief in the stages of grief is a necessary healing balm, even if it's uncomfortable to do at the time. In ecclesiastes three four, it says there is a time for sorrow and a time for joy. And we have to give sorrow its time. We have to bear witness to that sorrow. We have to look at that sorrow with compassion and move through grief. Maybe we need to grieve a childhood we didn't have. Maybe we need to grieve a perception about ourselves that we believed for so long that dictated behaviors.
Carla Arges [00:08:36]:
Maybe we have to grieve a future that is not going to look exactly like we thought it was going to look right. Maybe we have to grieve hopes and dreams. Maybe we have to grieve relationships, lost. Whatever it is that trauma stole from you, you have to grieve it. And then we have to accept, this is number four. We have to move into acceptance. Accepting what was is not saying it was right. It's not saying that it's okay.
Carla Arges [00:09:11]:
It's not saying that wasn't bad. But acceptance allows us to take our gaze off the past and fix it on a hopeful future. If we do not accept the past, we stay prisoner to it, and we relive the past over and over and over again. If we can accept the past, that it's not changeable doesn't mean it was good, doesn't mean I wanted it. But I cannot change the past. But I do have agency to change my future. I do have agency right now, in the present, to change. Then I have to focus on that.
Carla Arges [00:09:52]:
Isaiah 40 318 says, forget the former things do not dwell on the past. See, I'm doing a new thing. God wants to do a new thing in your life. But if you are stuck keeping yourself stuck in the past, you're not able to walk in that new thing that's ahead of you. So in order to do that, we have to accept what was so that we can partner with God in creating something beautiful for the future. The fifth thing we have to do is forgive. We have to be a people that forgive. Jesus multiple times in the New Testament talks about forgiveness and how forgiveness must be a posture of our heart.
Carla Arges [00:10:42]:
It is actually an act of obedience to forgive. We're even told that if we won't forgive, God won't forgive us. Wow. That shows you how important it is to God that we be a people that forgive. Because forgiving is not about letting someone else off the hook. Forgiveness is about freeing yourself from bitterness and resentment that is a cancer to your soul. That's what forgiveness is about. Forgiveness is obedience and it's freedom.
Carla Arges [00:11:15]:
Part of moving out of the past, part of what helps and enables our acceptance and our ability to look forward is forgiveness. Because lack of forgiveness, that resentment and that bitterness keeps us bound. It keeps us bound to our pain and it keeps suffering on top of the pain. All pain is inevitable. Not all suffering is. And we add suffering to our pain when we sit in resentment and bitterness. The 6th thing that six foundation to healing is developing habits that support our healing. In proverbs 25 28, it says, a man without self control is like a city broken into and left without walls, without having the self control to do the habits that serve us, serve our healing, serve our spiritual health, our mental health, our physical health.
Carla Arges [00:12:19]:
We are like a broken down city that there is nothing left good, because it's been plundered away. We don't want that. We want to be a strong, fortified city, right? And that's what healthy habits do. I call them my four pillars of thriving. There's four areas of habits that I really emphasize with my clients and take you through in the course of foundations to healing. And it's about renewing your mind, resting your body, fueling your body and moving your body. These are holy habits. And holy habits bring us strength and protection and keep us walking on the path that we need to walk for our healing.
Carla Arges [00:13:09]:
So these are the foundational intersections that you need to move through. In my course, foundations to healing, I go more in depth into each of these intersections. I take you through exercises. I get you to practice each of these intersections and see how you can make it personal to your own life and your own situation. But none of these, in my experience, can be bypassed if you want lasting healing, if you truly want to thrive in God's abundance, no matter your circumstances, you have to hit all six of these. In some sort of order, in some sort of form, you have to hit all six of these. My affirming truth for you today is I will take active steps in my healing. And the verse that supports this may seem like an odd one to pick, but I'm going to psalm 119 50 where it says, my comfort in my suffering is your promise preserves my life.
Carla Arges [00:14:13]:
My comfort and my suffering is this your promise preserves my life? Because we will not have full restoration on this side of heaven. We won't. The healing journey is going to be a continuous journey until we're fully in our redeemed bodies in heaven. And yet, while we're walking with this, while we're walking with the pain, we can have comfort in the promises of God. And God promises that when we are walking in his will, that there is blessing and there's peace and there is hope and there is joy. There is promises that when we renew our mind, we will be transformed. There is promises that when we forgive, we'll be forgiven. There is promises that when we stop being stuck in the past, we can see the new thing God is doing.
Carla Arges [00:15:07]:
There is promises here. And that is such great comfort that as I take these active steps in my healing, as I take these active steps in my restoration, yes, in partnership with God, that his promises are going to be made manifest in my life. And there's so much hope in that. So friends, I want to encourage you today to stop just being a consumer of information, to stop just consuming the podcasts and the IG content and, you know, the webinars. But to actually start walking in what you're learning, to actually start walking out your healing. And I want to invite you to make foundations to healing a part of your journey. As I take you through these broad strokes and show you how to make them personal for your own experience and walk them out with goddess, knowing that his promises will preserve your life. You can find foundations to healing in the show notes.
Carla Arges [00:16:23]:
You can also find it by going to my website, carlaarges.com. and feel free to reach out to me with any questions you have. You can always find me on IG at Carla dead Arches. Thank you guys so much for being here. And I'm so excited to see the goodness of God made manifest in your lives as you take steps and start building your foundation to healing. I'll talk to you guys next time.
Carla Arges [00:16:59]:
Thanks for joining me today. I hope we're already friends on social media, but if we're not, come find me on Instagram at Carla Arges or at affirming truth. Can't wait to see you back here next week. Bye, friends.