Episode #3: F.A.I.T.H. in Adversity (Faith and Growth Podcast with Dr. Betsy Guerra)

Good morning, sunshine. Welcome to the Faith and Growth podcast, the space where psychology and spirituality come together to help you rise into the person you were created to be. If you're ready to stop playing small and start living the life God designed for you, I got you. I'm Dr. Betsigera, psychotherapist, speaker, and author, and I'm here to help you heal, rise, and walk boldly in your purpose. So if you're ready to do that, let's get started. Ive came to my office for her first session, and she sat down across from me and asked, how? And I'm like, how? What? How, Betsy? How did you go from excruciating pain to this joy that you exude? That's. That's contagious? How? I saw you. I would see you in church. I saw you in the Emmaus retreat. Like, how did you go from that sadness and that pain that I witnessed firsthand you experienced? How did you go from that to this? How? Because just by just observing you, I thought to myself, well, if she could do that, I can do this. And that's why I'm here today. That question that Yvette asked forever echoed in my mind. And I remember going to sleep that night and the night after and the next one and asking myself, how. How did I. Was it this doctorate in clinical psychology? No, I had that doctorate the night of my daughter's passing, when I was rocking back and forth on the bathroom floor like a deranged woman. I had that doctorate there. It didn't serve me. Then how? What was it that helped me? And when I pondered on that question, I arrived at the answer, and I wrote a book about it. Hurt. The number two Hope, in case you're interested in reading it or listening to the audiobook. And I learned when I looked back that there were certain tools that allowed me to rise up during my process of grief. But there was one factor, one big factor that summarized it all, and that that was revealed by me or by the Holy Spirit inside of me? Because I don't even remember saying that during the celebration of life of my daughter, I stood behind the podium in a church full of beautiful people who went there to support us. And although my niece were wanting to give in and threatened of not carrying the weight of my body because I was in so much pain, I felt this power come over me and take over me when I stood there and I started my eulogy by saying, I am a woman of faith. And that meant that I knew I was going to be okay. I knew My faith was going to carry me through that. Like, I was able to say that so that people could know, hey, I'm going to be okay. So let's not make this about me now. Let me tell you about Fofi. Let me tell you about my daughter. And even that moment of declaring that I was a woman of faith allowed me to honor my daughter with a love and joy and grace that I desired to honor her with. So faith, my friend, is what allowed me to rise up. Faith is the how. But faith is also an acronym. And the acronym expresses and explains all the psycho spiritual tools that allowed me or supported me in my healing journey. And that's what I want to share with you today. Let's go. Okay. Faith. The F stands for feeling the fertilizing pain. The A stands for acceptance, the I for interpretation, the T for team, and the H for habits. Now, feeling the fertilizing pain means that we get to feel the feels. We think that pain is the enemy and we escape it. Nobody wants to feel pain. Pain. Yucky. Go away. Forget it. Don't think about it. Distract yourself. No. Pain is our friend. Pain is the path to healing and joy. Pain is a fertilizer. Why is pain a fertilizer? I don't get it. What are fertilizers made of? Poop. Fertilizers are made of poop. Pain feels like poop. It stinks like crap. Like, pain doesn't feel good. We want to get rid of it. Ew. You pass by a tree that was just fertilized, and it's like, oh, my gosh. What's going on here? Who farted? Well, the same is true with pain. Like, I want to get rid of this thing. How do I fast forward? I don't want to feel this pain anymore. This sucks. But what are fertilizers doing? They're nourishing the plant. They're strengthening it. They're helping it give fruit. They're healing it. Fertilizers are good for us, even though they stink. When we first experience, experience them. And the same is true for pain. Pain, my friend, is only the path. It is never the destination. And when we see pain as the fertilizer, when we see it as a path, then it brings hope. So then, from the beginning, you have the ability to feel the pain with hope. Because you know that if you're in pain, you haven't arrived. Because again, pain is only the path, never the destination. If you're feeling pain, you haven't arrived. That's hope. Don't you think now tell me about the pain you are experiencing right now. Think about it, bring it to your awareness. What is your big pain? And listen, do not compare pains. It does not have to be bigger and worse than mine. Pain is pain. Pain is just an emotion. And the same emotion that I feel because I lost my daughter is the one you feel because you got an F in your test or the one you feel because your kids went off to college and now you're an empty nester. And it's the pain that you feel because you're going through divorce and because your spouse passed away or is ill or someone you loved is going through difficult times or you're struggling in a relationship. Pain is pain. It's just an emotion. It's just that in society we, we give it like a ranking, like, oh, this is a bigger pain than yours. It's. No, it's just pain. It's an emotion. Now when you feel the pain, you heal it. Feeling is healing. Then if you allow yourself to feel the pain, you, you're allowing yourself to heal it. If you embrace the pain while you're going through it as the journey and the path, you have hope even while you're in the middle of it. And that's powerful. That allows you to get through it. If not, it's excruciating and dark and unbearable. So pain as the path and as the fertilizer is the opportunity to embrace the healing journey that's gonna lead you to joy and peace. Now, there's a difference between pain and suffering. Haruki Murakami said, pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. Pain is inevitable, my friend. You're human, you're gonna feel it. And the more you love, the more pain you're gonna have to feel. And that's a great thing because that means you're blessed to love and to have and to, and to experience all these, all this goodness of life. But it also means it's inevitable now, suffering, which is pain without hope, pain as the destination, that is optional. It's a choice. Every time we declare, I'm never going to be happy again, I'm never going to be able to overcome this. This is never going to end. Every time we declare that we are choosing to stay in the pain without hope, which is suffering, that's not what I'm talking about. That is no path anywhere. That is a destination and it's excruciating and it's dark and it sucks. That's not the fertilizer. That's when you feel Stuck. So now there's discernment in, okay, when am I allowing myself to feel the pain? And when am I indulging in the suffering and dwelling on it? And if we go back to the fertilizing analogy, when pain stinks, it sucks, just like poop. But poop is warm, so you can accommodate and get comfortable in it. And many times we do. Because it's so much harder to go against pain and to choose joy and to choose hope. It's so much harder. It takes all of you, you to make that effort. It takes all of you to get out of bed when you're grieving. It's hard. It's hard to just feel pain with hope. It's so much easier to dwell on the pain until we choose. Choose it as a destination and dwell in it. But it's easier now. But I can tell you, living a life of suffering sucks. I've stared at suffering in the face. I have witnessed clients choose suffering and not even know that they have the choice. But you don't have that excuse anymore. Now you know. So what is your choice? What is the intention you're going to set? Are you rising above this with grace? Strength? Resilience? Power? Joy? Peace? Because I'll tell you, I always say that losing for Fee was the most. The most excruciating pain. But the experience that came from having lost her, the process that I endured was the greatest blessing I've ever lived. It got me closer to God. It got me to experience and know wholeheartedly, know the peace and the joy that surpassed that understanding, the God of mercy and love that I had heard so much about but couldn't. Couldn't make sense of. With all this guilt and all these other things that were instilled in me, I got to know the God that I could just lay on. On whose lap I could lay and feel the caress in my hair and feel safe and know that he's got me. But you can. You can do that when you allow yourself to feel the pain and he joins you in that pain. Because we know from my experience and yours that having faith does not save you from pain. Having faith promises you that there's going to be hope and light and company. You're not going to be alone, and you're going to rise above it because you have resurrection power inside of you. That's a promise. So pain is not the enemy, my friend. And the first step to healing is to feel the fertilizing pain and feel it. To heal it, feel it with hope. Feel it, knowing that you haven't arrived. That's the first step. The second step is acceptance. Now in the five stages of grief that were originally created. The fifth step, the last step, was acceptance. And that's when you're like, okay, we're good. I say it's the first one right after feeling the feels. Acceptance is when we remove the resistance that oftentimes create more pain than the original pain itself. So resistance looked like for me, it looked like it wasn't supposed to be this way. She was supposed to bury me. I was raising her for you. God, how could you have taken her? I cannot live without her. How am I going to do this? Resistance was wanting to control that which I don't have power over. I. E. Reality. I had no power over reality. I had no control, no power to bring her back. And resisting that reality that I couldn't change created a lot of darkness and a lot of pain or suffering, I should say so. Acceptance is relinquishing the power you never had and giving it to him who had it all along. I'm going to repeat that. Acceptance is releasing, surrendering the power that you never had to give it back to him who had it all along. So when you accept, you surrender your pain to God. You stop fighting it. And now surrender doesn't mean giving up. Surrender doesn't mean you no longer feel it. Surrender means you don't fight it. You don't resist it. You don't keep engaging in those natural thoughts of, it wasn't supposed to be this way. We were supposed to get stay married forever. Like, you know, my daughter was supposed to make good decisions and succeed because she was. I taught her well, and I raised her with good values. And my son wasn't supposed to fall into drugs. And I was supposed to do great in my business or in my test or in my endeavors because I worked so hard. Right. Like, we have an idea of how reality is supposed to be, and we try to control it with our actions. And don't take me wrong, your outcomes are. I'm sorry, Your actions are building and creating your life and your reality. So. So they. There is a very important correlation, but it's not a cause and effect kind of situation. It's a little. It's a little messier than that. So acceptance is when you go from, it wasn't supposed to be this way, and I. I can't live without her to it is what it is. Fofi is no longer here. I gracefully accept this moment exactly the way that it is. I would literally repeat that to myself. I welcome this moment exactly the way that it is. I welcome this moment exactly the way that it is. So when you accept, you remove the pain of resistance, which is something that you can control, and then you surrender into the arms of God. You are in good hands when you accept. Now we can start working on healing and being proactive about incorporating tools that can help us rise above this pain. Now we can, but first we must feel and then we must accept. So now it's time to do the work. The I in faith stands for interpretation. Interpretation means life is neutral. And everything that happens in life has the opportunity to be positive or negative or maybe both, depending on how we interpret it. So, for example, money is neutral. But some people think money's the best thing ever, because money is a tool and it allows me to, you know, I feel free when I have money because I can invest in this and I can pay for that, and I can create holy moments, moments with my family, and I can buy what I need and what I want without having to think about it and stress about it. Money is amazing. I love it. I love money. And then I have a client who feels that money is just the destroyer of his life. Every time he creates an abundance of money, he cheats on his wife, he starts drinking a little too much, he smokes more pot than he should. Like, he just, it doesn't serve him. He becomes a little arrogant, and it just changes him in ways that he doesn't appreciate. So money, for him is the root of all evil. You know what they say, more money, more problems. So for him, that's the interpretation of money in his life. Money is neutral. How you interpret money is up to you. I love that this has been wisdom carried for years and years. I didn't make this up. Shakespeare said, nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. So we get to choose if something is bad or positive. And we can literally change the perspective without the situation having to change. And in psychology, that's called reframing. When you change the perspective with which you look at something, you reframe it. And I always tell the story of when my grandma brought me a beautiful picture of a Key west sunset with the palm trees. Beautiful, beautiful. But it was in a golden, like Victorian, super old school, old fashioned frame. And she wanted me to put that in my apartment. And I was like, I don't know about that. But then I was like, oh, man, I really want to please my grandma and I want her to feel super special. So I kind of do want to put up the frame, but there's no way this is going to match with my super cool apartment. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's not going to work. And then I thought, wait a minute, there's a frame shop by my house. I can go by. So I went by and they showed me all sorts of very nice frames. And the person there, like, I'm not as artistic and creative, so they helped me a little bit in choosing the right one. And when I put the brand new frame on that Key west sunset with all those beautiful colors, like rainbow colors and the sun sky, I was like, oh, my goodness, this is the most beautiful piece of art I've ever owned. Did I change the sunset? Did I change the art? Did I change the situation, the circumstance? No, I just changed the frame. I reframed it. So reframing is changing the perspective with which you look at something into a positive one that it will serve, that will serve you and create more pleasant emotions within you. That's the power we have. So reframing is changing the perspective. And, you know, I can change the perspective of money. I can change the perspective of traffic. I could be like, I love Miami traffic. It allows me to listen to this podcast and have a little bit of quiet time with my. Without my kids in the car going crazy, or I get to call my mom and catch up on things or with friends that I haven't been able to speak to in a while. You know, I could totally reframe traffic. But how do you reframe losing your child? Like, what is positive about that? When I first lost Fofi, I walked. I should say, I moped around town with my head low, with sad eyes, with, like, low energy. And I was thinking, I am the grieving mom who lost her daughter. I can never be happy again. How could I lose her? How did I not fulfill my only job as a parent, which is to keep my child alive? How do I reframe that? Well, I had a choice to make because I wasn't going to suffer. I was only going to allow and honor pain to go through me so that it could heal me. But I was not going to engage with it and sit with it and dwell in it as if it were the destination. So when I was ready, when I had felt the pain, when I had accepted. And by the way, this is not linear. You go back and forth. When I was ready, I was like, okay, I can be the grieving mom who lost her daughter, or I can be the Chosen mother of an angel. And I chose to be the chosen mother of an angel. And I told myself a lot of stories to really embellish that belief. I told myself, like, oh, my gosh. Mary, the mother of Jesus, she was the chosen one. Like, she was the chosen mother of God. I was the chosen mother of an angel. I must be really special. Oh, my goodness. I think I'm God's favorite God. You shouldn't have favorites, but I guess I am because you chose me. You chose Mary. And Mary's super awesome, so I must be super awesome too. Oh, my goodness. Wait, what? I have hookups in heaven. Like, Fofi is so cute that when she goes to Jesus, very much. Like when she went to me in the kitchen and grabbed my shorts and asked me to go, like, go to the pool with her, I imagine she goes to Jesus and she grabs his robe and she's like, jesus, Jesus. Listen, my mom really wants you to hook her up with this. Can you please? Can you help her out? And Jesus looks at her and he's so in love with her, as am I. And he goes to her and he's like, you are so cute, Fofi. Of course, mamita, of course. I'm going to give you whatever you want. So then, I'm VIP in heaven. Yes. Yeah. I am God's favorite. I have hookups in heaven. I am the chosen mother of an angel. I'm so lucky. And I've believed this story so much because ultimately, that's all life is. There are a bunch of stories that we've told ourselves, and many of those stories are lies. We were created for greatness, for joy, for peace, for God's sake. Christ died on a cross for us because he wanted to save us and love us and rescue us from that suffering. We were created for greatness. So then those are the true stories. I told myself this story so many times that when people meet me nowadays for the first time and they learn about my story, their first thought is like, ah, porcita. Which translates to like, ah, poor thing. And my thought is, poor you, poor you. You didn't get to grow closer to God. You didn't get to know, really know the peace that surpasses understanding. You didn't get to experience the joy that does not depend on external circumstances. I do. I did. Poor you. So interpretation is about reinterpreting your life, about changing that frame of that picture that you think is so horrible. Your life, and making it beautiful. The T in faith stands for team. And I think I don't have to talk too much about that, but what that refers to is that when we are grieving or experiencing pain and adversity, we. We're not operating at our 100% maximum capacity, and we get to open up to receive help. And receiving help from the right team is going to take us to the destination that we are meant to live in, which is greatness and joy and peace. But if we choose to surround ourselves by a team or a group of people who are going to bring us down even more. And by the way, many times those teams, people who bring us down are those who love us the most and don't know how to support us. So we get to teach them. For example, a family member will come to you and tell you, don't cry, don't cry, don't worry about this. Let's just go out shopping and forget about this. They mean well. They're trying to support you. They don't want to see you sad. It hurts them. And they don't know what to do with it because they can't fix it. Nobody could bring Fofi back. That was the one and only thing that was going to bring my joy back at the beginning of my journey. They couldn't do anything. So when you feel disempowered and you don't think you can solve a problem, then you want to escape it. But then there are people who will sit with you in the pain, hold space for you, empathize with you, allow you to cry, allow you to scream, allow your curse to be angry, irritable, and so portable, unbearable. Those people, those are the people you want in your team. The people who understand that pain is a fertilizer and you need it to heal. There's also the people who have been there, done that, and are on the other side, and they're testaments of hope. You want to surround yourself by those. And it doesn't have to be an actual human or someone you know, it could be an author, it could be a podcaster, it could be someone you admire. It could be me. I'd love to be that person for you. So hiring the right team, whether it's an actual humans that support you through your journey or people who represent something and write about it or speak about it. Those people get to be aligned with the vision you have for your life, with the intention you have set in how you're going to rise up from this pain that you may have experienced. And team also includes the professionals you hire. So if you're going through a divorce and you hire a therapist or a coach. I recommend the faith based coaching Academy coaches. They are the best of the best of the best and they have both the psychology and the spirituality. So please let me know if you need a little support with that. But if you're hiring a coach, an attorney, a financial advisor or anybody, any professional that's going to support you through your journey, hire someone who's aligned with your values, who's aligned with your vision. Because if you're going through a divorce and you hire the attorney that's going to and your desire is to, to keep your family healthy and loving and to do it with grace. But you hire the, the, the fierce lion attorney, like the one that's going to like just end with your husband's ex husband's soon to be ex husband's life and take everything, rip him of everything. If you choose that attorney who's going to guide you in that direction, then you're never going to arrive at the family first grace first, do things with love and support my children. In the journey destination, you're choosing the person that's not aligned with your vision. So it is important to consider who am I hiring in my team and just be intentional about that. People who have been there, done that know how to guide you there too. That's why I love coaches, even in some ways above therapists. Like I'm both. I'm a therapist, I'm a coach, but a therapist studied the thing at school. A coach walked the talk. So if you're going to, whether you're going to hire a therapist or a coach, just make sure that they know how to get you there because they're a living testament of that which you're trying to acquire. The H in faith stands for habits. The habits that we practice on a daily basis can support or hurt us. And in my habits masterclass in my faith based coaching academy, I teach that there's a difference between daily practice, daily rituals and habits. Habits usually form unconsciously. It's something that you've done and it was reinforced and it worked out. So you did it again and did it again and before you know it, you're doing it mindlessly. And whether it's good or bad for you, it's just what you do. It's who you are. It's become part of your personality. Daily practices and rituals are mindfully chosen. So we want to be mindful about converting habits into daily practices that we want for our lives. When you are grieving, you're not operating at your 100%. So your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that's in charge of your decision making, of your thinking process, of your discerning, the part of your brain in charge of executive functions, is very limited. So we want to send as much as possible to a different part of the brain called basal ganglia, which is where all the repetitions and automations exist. When you create healthy habits that support your body, your mind, your spirit, you are sending as much as possible to the automated part of your brain. So you don't have to think about it. You don't have to think about whether to eat that chocolate cake or not. You just know that's not what you do because you're wanting to stay healthy and have, you know, feel good in your body, which is gonna elevate your mood and create a different energy as you're grieving that will support your journey of seeking and finding joy. So habits are important. And when I say habits, I mean everything from eating well, moving your body, praying daily, practicing silence, meditation, stillness, laughing, doing things that bring you joy, looking at things from a positive perspective. Anxiety is a habit. Did you know anxiety was a habit? It's a form of habit, right? Sometimes we're in the habit of seeing things with fear and anxiety. So looking at things with hope, looking at things with positivity, optimism, all those habits support your healing journey. So, Yvette, when you asked me how. How do you go from hurt to hope to happy? The answer is faith. I hope this has supported you, and I invite you to share this episode with someone who may be experiencing pain and just bless them, let them know you're thinking of them, and bless them with this information which may give them some guidance in this journey. I love you. Bye. That's it for today's episode. I loved, loved, loved spending this time with you. So thank you for joining me. If somebody came to mind while you were listening, bless them with this episode, send it to them. And if you may, please subscribe and leave a review. Those are really helpful to help us spread the message. And if you want to grow in faith and wisdom, join me@faithandgrowth.com thank you for spending this time with me. Love you. Bye.