381 - Moving Beyond Sobriety W/ Jenna Riemersma

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Hello there, good listener. I am your host, Nick Stumbo, and you are listening to the Pure Desire podcast, your biblically based and clinically informed approach to healing from betrayal and breaking free from compulsive sexual behaviors. Today is episode 381, and here joining me is my guest co host, our associate Director of MARCOM, Mrs. Heather Kolb. Heather, welcome back to the program.

Thank you. Thanks for having me back again.

Yeah, good to see you today. We're super excited to have a guest who's back on the podcast, I think for the third or fourth time, Jenna Reimersma. She's been a fan favorite and her work with Internal family systems has helped many people take their healing to a deeper level. And today we dive into that, into how healing has to go beyond the goal of sobriety. And one of the things we've said a lot at Pure Desire is we're not here to just stop a behavior. We're here to change the way you do life. And if we're going to change the way we do life, we have to go beyond behavior modification, which isn't always easy. And Jenna talks us through some of that today. So, Heather, what were thoughts or observations? What do our listeners have to look forward to in this conversation?

So we've heard from Jenna before and heard her talk about ifs, but this time she really did something. The way that she described the different roles of the exiles and the managers and the firefighters and the triangle analogy, I thought that that was really helpful. And I don't think I've ever heard her describe it that way, but I thought that was awesome.

Yeah, I was writing down the triangle. So if you're listening at a place where you can draw, you're probably going to pick up your pencil or pen a few times. And as always with Jenna, if you're able to watch the video on YouTube, she usually has a couple of illustrations and she does have one towards the end. What I think I appreciated about the conversation was just the insights into why we might try to avoid trauma and the benefits that can come when we go there, when we're willing to do some of this deep dive and face things that might be painful, but for good reason. If we're willing to go there, the good that can come of it. And I feel like there are many of us that maybe for the first time or for the 10th time, need that encouragement, that facing hard stuff from our past is really worth it.

Yeah, she did a really good job of even just using a couple different analogies. I could see this being an episode that people might have to listen to a couple times to just catch everything.

Yeah. And you're going to want to get her book or check out the other episodes she's been on. Those are in the show notes. A little bit more about Jenna. She is a number one best selling authority speaker and addiction specialist. She is a certified IFS therapist and clinical consultant and the developer of the move toward shorthand of the IFS model, which I think she gave us a little bit of today. Jen has been a certified sex addiction therapist supervisor for many years and is teaching faculty for the International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals, or as we like to say around here, itap. So listeners, you're in for a treat. Here is our conversation today with Jenna Reimersman. Jenna, welcome back to the Pure Desire podcast. Thanks so much for joining us again.

Thank you. It's great to be here.

You know, we've had you on a couple of episodes and I might add a couple of our more popular episodes. So many of our regular listeners, they know you, they follow you, they've learned a little bit about internal family systems. Hopefully they remember it. If not, you know, we'll put a reminder of what other episodes Jen has been on. But so glad to have you back to talk about healing and recovery and how do we go to a deeper level. But before we jump in for listeners that may be newer to the Pure Desire podcast, could you just tell us a little bit about yourself, your family and the work that you do in this area?

Absolutely. So I'm a wife and a mom. I've been married almost 30 years and I'm a long way into my betrayal trauma healing journey, like two decades. And I'm a mom to two young adults and one small cat who is definitely the boss of all of us. And in my professional world, I've spent a lot of years as a clinical director of a private practice and now I spend most of my time writing books and teaching other therapists how to treat addiction and trauma through the lens of a really effective and popular model known as Internal Family Systems, or IFS for short.

Yes. And many of us in the Pure Desire community got to interact with Jenna as part of our PSAP training, our pastoral sex addiction professional training through itap. And Jenna presents that model there and then she put it in a book, which we'll also have in the show Notes Altogether your. And so if you haven't seen her book, that is a great place to start. And we're going to, I think, touch on some of that today, but also go beyond. Not go beyond, but maybe go deeper into some other topics as well.

Yeah. So, Jenna, when somebody has been struggling with unwanted behavior and they're ready to change, stopping the behavior is often the goal. But while this makes sense, why might there be less? Why might this be less effective?

It's a great question. So anytime we're engaged in a behavior that is causing harm to ourselves or to people that we love, stopping the behavior is a wonderful goal, and it is often incomplete. And when we're dealing with sexual addiction in particular, if all we do is try to stop the behavior and we never move beyond that, we don't go to address what's driving the behavior. It is a helpful but incomplete goal. And some of the challenges with that are it's unlikely to be sustainable in the long run, and it's likely to be a daily or hourly struggle for forever because we haven't addressed what's driving it. We're just trying to stop the behavior. And that's what I call sobriety. But addressing what is causing the behavior is what I call recovery. It's doing that deeper healing work so that the triggers that are driving the addictive behavior are actually addressed so that the addictive behavior can be, as we would say in internal family systems, unburdened or released.

Yeah. When my wife and I first got into this healing journey, I know the pain is what was motivating us. My wife was in a lot of pain, and conversely, then I was in pain because I didn't want to lose our marriage and lose our relationship. And so you are focused on, well, what's causing the pain are my bad choices and behaviors. And if I could just stop those, we'll get better. But what was also driving our pain was I had been trying to stop those behaviors for quite a number of years, and they continued to happen. And so I call it the what and the why of recovery. I knew the what like, I had seen the what and knew how it was damaging us and even my own faith. But the why I was largely oblivious to. And so I could have entered a program that just taught me more about the what and strategies to avoid the behavior. And whether it's snap the rubber band or having just really, really high guardrails and really high accountability, all those things may have been helpful to a degree. But if the why was still hidden, that's why we were continuing. That's why I was continuing to trip up, because I wasn't able to see the patterns behind it. And all of the Other pieces. And so I think that was a very early part of our recovery with someone having to kind of explain that to me. And maybe that's a benefit of today's podcast, that someone's here motivated, saying, okay, I'm done with it. I'm done with this behavior. No more. I need to stop. I need to change.

And.

And this may be an introduction to say yes. And there's a whole lot of why behind what you've been doing. And until you really can see the why and begin to work in that, you're probably going to be back here again. And we really want to put a stop to that pattern.

I really like that distinction that you make between sobriety and recovery, because I think that in this arena, we use those terms to kind of mean the same thing. But the way that you describe it, I mean, somebody could have gained sobriety early on, but actually, until they get into this other, probably a longer season of recovery, that's where the deeper healing is probably going to happen. Yeah, I like that.

Yeah, it often does. The pain of the behavior drives that need to become sober, whether it's the pain of the potentially losing the relationship or the. The partner's pain from the betrayal trauma. But ultimately, when there is sobriety, it allows us then to ask that. I love how you said it, Nick. The why question. What's the deeper thing here? And I think for partners, it's important to have someone really just name and validate that. Asking the why question is not in any way, shape or form an excuse or making things, you know, okay. Not. Not in any way, shape, or form. What it's doing is. It's looking at the whole picture so that the deeper healing can occur and the repetitive experiences with slips and relapses can be hopefully addressed to eventually really attend to the partner's betrayal trauma more effectively than if we didn't ask the question. What's the why?

Yeah, yeah, we've used that metaphor a lot of the iceberg, that the behavior is the tip of the iceberg. You can see above the waterline, but there's a whole lot of other stuff beneath the water that needs to be addressed. And. And that's what recovery is about. And sometimes, Jenna, that can be messy or painful. The idea of going back to our past, revisiting pain and trauma, it can seem easier, like the past is in the past. Let's just leave it there. And maybe even in our faith, we feel somewhat like, well, Jesus forgave my past. The Apostle Paul said, you know, I'm forgetting what's behind me and just straying towards what's ahead. And so some may have a real hesitancy to maybe enter into that work or to go back into some of their past or their trauma. When someone is in that place of hesitation, how do you help them move beyond perhaps that fear or hesitation?

I think there's a couple of reasons that I have heard people share why they're reluctant to go back. One is they're afraid it's making an excuse. And if they look at their pain, they're somehow reducing their amount of ownership for their behavior. So I've heard concerns that is that just making an excuse for my behavior. I've also heard a lot of people who are concerned if I go back so that pain, it's going to overwhelm me and I will drown. I'll never be able to come out from under it. Yeah, I just need to leave that in the past and move forward. And many other reasons as well. Some people have really learned how to survive in their world by not really processing or dealing with emotions or feelings. And so going back and beginning to dip our toe in the water of feelings and experiences can feel like a completely foreign world. And the great news is that internal family systems gives us a way of tending to all of those concerns and others in a way that is really compassionate, that goes at the pace that the individual is ready to go, and that also prevents the overwhelm. That is often what people fear, is that if I open that door, the waves of grief will overwhelm me.

Yeah. I think in a little bit of work I've done with IFS and walking through some things with you and your book, I really like the permission there. It's a way of interviewing yourself and listening to that inner voice and what's being said. And if there's hesitancy, rather than kind of having this strong arm, like, well, we just need to go there anyway. There's the curiosity of, well, why are you, like, what are you hearing? What's the fear?

What.

What is that voice saying about why you don't want to go there? And actually meeting someone right there in that fear and hesitancy, rather than saying, well, you just got to push that aside and go there. It's like, no, if there is a fear, if there is a hesitancy, there's a reason why. And even in facing that, that may be part of, in and of itself, your recovery, because maybe you have an avoidance pattern of pain and even just acknowledging that and welcoming that and Seeing how that might be a protective mechanism that in a good way is trying to keep you from more pain just creates a little more openness to, oh, okay, now we can take another step and another step. And that I don't think is always the case because if we feel like, well, here's a problem, we just got to go there. You just got to kind of power up and do it. That might actually create even more fear of, boy, this is going to be really hard and messy and painful.

I'm curious because this just comes to mind because I have heard people say that, you know, my past, I barely survived it the first time. Why on earth would I ever want to go back there? Can you speak to what kind of encouragement you would give somebody? Because if they're, you know, if they had a super traumatic, like, intense stuff. Yeah, really, how would you encourage them that it's worth it?

Absolutely. So I think it might be helpful to just do a quick kind of an overview sketch of how the internal family systems model views us as human beings to be able to answer your question. And so, at a very high level, IFS teaches us that we all have this core authentic what IFS calls ourselves in Christendom. We would refer to that as the God image within us or the imago dei, but it's who we truly are. And that essence inside of us is always present, and it is never broken or damaged in any way. And that is designed to be the leader of our inner system. And then we all have many different positive parts. All parts of us are good, which is kind of an amazing concept. And all of the different constellation of parts that we each have make up our unique personalities. But when difficult things happen in life, or if we've had a traumatic childhood or any type of a difficulty, even if it's not an obvious quote, trauma, anything that might overwhelm our capacity at the moment to cope, it creates burdens that cover over our positive parts, these positive essences of our parts, and those parts then take on distorted roles. And there's basically three kinds of parts. You can almost think of it. Steve Sykes is a wonderful IFS expert in addiction, and she sort of teaches us as envisioning ourselves on almost a triangle, an upside down triangle. So the. The God image, or the self, is at our core. At the bottom part of the triangle are what ifs calls our exiles. Those are the vulnerable parts of us that initially get burdened with painful situations, and they carry all of our negative core beliefs. I'm all alone there's something Wrong with me, I'm powerless, I'm not safe. If you really knew me, you wouldn't love me. All of those parts of us that are very tender and very vulnerable, that everything in our system tries to keep exiled, that's why they're called the exile. They drive all the behavior of all the other burdened parts, which is why it's so important to eventually get to them and help them heal, so the rest of these burdened parts can heal. The other two kind of clusters of parts in our system are called managers and firefighters. And their whole job is responding to the pain of the exiles. If you think about the managers as being up on that top left hand corner of the triangle, their whole job is to try to run our lives so we never get triggered and feel the pain of our exiles. So these are burdened parts with jobs like perfectionism, people pleasing, not using my voice, my inner critic, the judge. All of these types of parts, parts that restrict sexually or with food, and they try to run our lives so that we meet with success and connection and we don't have to feel the pain of our exiles. But because they're burdened, they're not the God image doing that. They're burdened parts, they will fail. Our exiles get triggered and take us over. And because that feeling of being alone or powerless or broken is so overwhelming and unmanageable, the firefighters jump in to try to make it better. And think about them on that top right hand corner. And those are all the addictions. Self harm, dissociation, suicidality, homicidality, binge eating, all the things. So you have these kind of three clusters of cards. And what we tend to do in our lives and in sobriety is we just chase around that triangle. So the managers run our lives most of the time and try to keep our lives functioning. They eventually fail and we get what we call an addiction. Work triggered, which means the exile takes over and creates this intense emotional state, which triggers the firefighters who then take over and try to put the fire out. And after they've done whatever it is that they do, drink, look at porn, have sex with prostitutes, whatever it is that the firefighters are doing, the exiles are in more pain. They feel more worthless, more powerless, more helpless, which makes the managers have to work harder, which drives this never ending cycle around and around the triangle until eventually the exiles are in so much pain that a manager takes charge and says, okay, firefighter, that's acting out sexually, we're locking you in the basement. That's sobriety. You got to Go. And we can't get rid of any parts of ourselves and we don't actually want to because they all have inherently positive qualities. It's their burdened job that are the problem. It's the burdens or the trauma that is the problem, not the parts themselves. If all we do is get a really strong manager part of us that says you gotta get sober and forces the firefighters to stop, a couple of things are going to happen. Number one, we haven't done anything to address the pain that the exiles are in. And so we are going to continue to be in every bit as much pain even if that particular firefighter is locked in the basement. And because that's the case, they're going to recruit other firefighters to stand in the gap. And this is why, if you walk in, if you walk into a typical 12 step meeting and sit down next to your buddies who are sober from fill in the blank alcohol, you have to walk through a cloud of smoke to get in the meeting, stand in line to get a cup of caffeine and sit down next to your friends who've all gained 20 pounds. And the reason is because the smoking, the caffeine, the overworking, the eating, all of that has to amp up because we haven't addressed the pain. So what we've really done is we've rearranged the deck, the chairs on the Titanic, but we haven't plugged the hole. And if we don't do that, the pain is going to come out in a different way. And eventually what we see a lot in addiction recovery is we have chronic relapse. And that's not the only reason for chronic relapse, but it's one of the most common. We've tried to plug the hole in the ship or I'm sorry, we've tried to rearrange the deck chairs and we haven't done anything about the hole, the gaping hole in the bottom of the chip. So that's kind of a little illustration of how internal family systems sees the work. And what we want to do in the healing process is bring the God image to all of those different parts of us in order to help them heal. When that happens, the whole system transforms and that regular compulsion to act out in some way is able to be released and no longer carried inside of us.

Yeah, yeah. So what I hear you saying is if we're afraid or hesitant or unwilling to revisit our past, we may essentially be dooming ourselves to a repeated cycle of some kind of acting out through firefighters ways of dealing with the pain, because the pain will still be there. And as we've talked about a lot at Pure Desire in our groups, that unaddressed pain doesn't just go away. Time does not heal all wounds. It just covers it over.

And.

And usually wounds that are covered over just fester and get infected. They don't get better. And so while it may be difficult, it may be very painful to go into a past that was hard, overwhelming, something that any one of us would say that was unfair and not right, what happened to you. But in not going back, we're just going to perpetuate a lot of the pain and the brokenness, rather than having an opportunity to truly heal and grow.

Yeah. And you know, the parts of us that were wounded in those past experiences, they're trapped back in those past memories. If we haven't done our trauma work through IFS or emdr, somatic experiencing some way of releasing the trauma, those parts of us are still stuck back in those traumatic memories at that same age. And what we want to do is go back to them in our God image in the imago dei, rescue that little vulnerable exile that's trapped in the past in those horrible experiences, and bring them into the present in relationship with the imago dei, so that they no longer hold the pain and the trauma of those past experiences. If we haven't done the trauma work, those parts of us are literally still stuck back in the past, and they experience the world as re. Traumatizing because they're still four or five years old and they're hearing dad's voice instead of spouse's voice or boss's voice. And that's really, really true.

Yeah.

Yeah. That is so helpful, your illustration and just explaining it the way that you did, which I think is going to be more helpful. Even with this question, much of the deeper work centers around the IFS concept of the exile. So can you talk us through how we all end up with an exile and what the role of the exile plays in recovery?

Absolutely. Excuse me. So the exiles are the parts that carry our trauma burdens, that drive everything else in our system, and they are created when difficult things happen in our lives. And I want to clarify that. Difficult things can be huge traumas like surviving war or rape or being abused or neglected or abandoned. They can also be things like growing up in a perfectionistic, highly religious, rigid household with impossible standards of perfection and a lack of freedom to show any kind of vulnerability or humanness. These things look very different on the outside, but they affect us and create Exiles in very similar ways. Because the message to us is, you're not okay as you are. You're not welcome here, you're not safe, you don't have power. You, you are not okay as you are. And so these exiles are very powerful. The interesting thing is that most of the time, the way that we approach our exiles, or quite honestly, any parts of ourselves, the parts of us that are acting out, or the parts of us that are raging, or the parts of us that are in denial, the parts of us that are controlling, excuse me, is we move against them. We try to force them to stop doing what they're doing without getting curious about them. Ifs teaches us to do the absolute reverse, to move toward these parts of ourselves with curiosity and compassion. Not saying what they're feeling and doing is okay, but recognizing that that which we resist persists. The more we move against parts of ourselves, the more they tend to fight back. And when we can, with a little open heartedness and compassion, get curious about these parts of ourselves and begin to get to know them, we can actually befriend them and help them not have to do this job that they've been stuck doing. I have a quick three word shorthand for the IFF model that can help people do that. Notice, no and need. So if you're curious about exploring that, what you can do is kind of take a moment, think about the part of yourself that you might like to, to move toward. Maybe it's a part of yourself that controls or a part of yourself that acts out. And number one, just notice when it takes you over. How do you notice that? Where does it show up in your body? What emotions come, what thoughts start running through your head, what behavioral impulses? And once you notice that, see if you can just be with it for a moment and instead of pushing against it, moving against it, see if you can welcome it and invite it to sit at a friendly distance from you. So it's not taking over 100%, but like your friends sitting across the bistro table from each other, metaphorically. And when you've got a little bit of curiosity toward it, just ask that. Part number two, what do you want me to know about you? Where did you first learn to try to help me by taking me over and making me do this thing? What are you afraid would happen if you didn't do this? How do you feel about having this job? In my inner world, are there some advantages, some disadvantages, and we start to get a sense, we'll get some memories, we'll get some ideas from this part. Usually parts tell us, yeah, we get an impression of, like, I had to take you over and make you start doing this when you were six and hiding under the bed and mom and dad were screaming. Because touching yourself was the only thing in that moment that brought you any comfort. And from that time forward, I've learned when you're in distress, this is one way that you can get nurture and comfort. And I don't really like this job. I know everybody else hates that I'm doing this job. I don't know any other way. I don't know any other thing to do. When we realize, gosh, this part is six years old, we can just update it a little bit and say, hey, would you like to really take me in and notice I'm 54 years old, have a look at my life? And is there anything step three that you need from me now to feel a little more comforted and a little less triggered? And we'll often hear, well, I need you to reach out for some support. Don't get so isolated that I have to take over. I need you to use your voice. I need you to set a boundary. I need you to ask for help. Maybe this part just needs a hug because it's so exhausted, just metaphorically in our mind's eye. So just notice no. And need is a quick way that we can implement the essence of the IFS model to get to know these really painful, difficult, hurting parts of ourselves and understand them a little bit more, rather than just moving against them, vilifying them, and trying to kick them out, which we can't do. It's not possible. And it also doesn't work. And it turns out that just like Jesus said, let these little ones come to me. Let's welcome them with love, not hate, with compassion, not exiling. And let's get to know why it is that they're doing what they're doing and how we can help, how the God image inside of us can help. And that, it turns out, can be pretty transformational.

Yeah. Yeah. It makes me think of when Paul says in the New Testament that when I was a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, I acted like a child. But then I became an adult and I put childish ways behind me. And if only in all areas of our life, it was that easy. Like, oh, I grew up and I stopped doing that. I think what we realize in a lot of these behaviors or ways of responding to life, to pain is we're still responding like we would have in a different season or as a child. And if you revisit that, as I'm hearing in your story, it makes total sense. Even if it was a wrong behavior or something we would call sinful or unhealthy, through a childhood perspective of how they were responding, their behavior makes sense. They were a child, they thought like a child, they reasoned like a child, and they acted like one. And we don't berate a child for being a child. Instead, if we see, oh, I'm still stuck there and I'm responding to current problems like I did when I was a child, how do I now come alongside that part of me and go through a process of maturing, of growth, of a different way of responding? And I think that's something helpful too, to keep in mind. We're not trying to say stop feeling pain. We're not trying to say, well, you shouldn't feel bad about things anymore or you shouldn't have any trauma. No, I think recognizing there are healthier, more mature, grown up ways we can begin to respond to that pain and trauma if we allow that early part of us to kind of experience the care that it needs to grow along with us. And that goes back to where we started the conversation of that's what recovery is all about, not just sobriety.

Yeah, I like that. I mean, it makes so much sense when you get the full picture.

I think kind of a follow up. Janet, you know, a lot of our listeners probably come from different angles in recovery or groups they've worked with. Other groups will refer to or talk about an inner child. Is there similarity? The exile inner child, Is it the same concept? Are there differences? Yeah, it just maybe bridge some gaps for us between different recovery models.

Yeah, absolutely. The concept of the inner child is a more perhaps simplified version of ifs. Because it turns out that when we get curious inside of ourselves, there isn't just one inner child. It turns out that we have many different parts. The part of me that feels alone and vulnerable is very different than the part of me that is people pleasing and perfectionistic, which is very different than the part of me that wants to eat all the Oreos. There's actually many, many different parts of all of us, not just one. The concept that that there are parts of us is what unifies those two models. We are not just one monolith. That's why we do things we don't want to do. Because at our core, at our essence, we are the imago dei. We all bear the fingerprint of God inside Of us. We're image bearers, and we have many different parts, not just perhaps one. But that concept of tenderness with the child inside is absolutely applicable and really connects these two ways of approaching kind of healing and recovery. Ifs gives it a little bit more fleshing out and dimension, and also helps us understand the relationships between the parts. Because it turns out the relationships between the parts are actually quite important. Important. And when we start to drill down in addiction recovery or betrayal, trauma recovery, if we go back to that kind of image of the triangle that Csykes lays out for us, what we often see is that we have these usually quite young inner children that are our exiles. And then these managers and firefighters are often what we call polarized. They are fighting each other. So, for example, in my own life, I have an exile, a young one that feels not enough. I've got a manager that overworks, compulsively, gets exhausted. And then I have a firefighter that jumps in and wants to eat all the Oreo cookies. And the one that overworks and the one that wants to eat all the Oreo cookies are both trying to protect the not enough in opposite ways. But what we have to understand is there's a relationship between them. And we can't address any one of those things. We can't address the overworking, the eating all the Oreos, or the feeling of not being enough. If we don't understand the whole system, it is not a singular part. But as these Sykes would say, it's the system, not a symptom. The symptom is what brings us into treatment. What we need to do then is unpack the system of parts, the dynamic interplay system underneath that symptom. If all we do is look at the external symptom and try to eliminate it or move against it or make it go away, and we don't look at the system, we're going to get in trouble. And that often, if, let's say, we try to go on a diet and lock my oreo eater in the basement, the overworker is likely to take over even more. The deprivation exile is likely to get really flooded, and then the oreo eater will come bursting out of the basement in a big fat hurry, which is why the diet culture is so eternally successful. Because it's a million different ways locked our oreo eaters in the basement. And we can't do that. And that's why we go on this diet and the next diet. The next diet or this recovery program, that recovery program, because we have to look at the system. And so yes, we do have these wonderful precious inner children. Ifs would just say there's a few more of them than that kind of idea, that it's just one. But that concept of compassion is still very much the same.

I think I have an Oreo eating manager as well, so just throw that out there.

There's probably many that are saying yes and amen. Well, and it makes me think as you're sharing that, Jenna Paul again in the New Testament, Romans 7, who talks about there's this part of me that does what I don't want to do and another part of me does what I do. And if you read through that passage, he kind of describes the dynamic of these parts being at war with each other and having conflicting ideals. And he's kind of explaining in 2000 year old language what you're talking to us today that, that we need rather than ignoring that those things exist. And I know that we're trying to lay this over a spiritual foundation, that yes, there is an old self and a new self and how that all mixes in is probably a whole other podcast. But in some ways that can almost be an oversimplification I have found for Christians of like, well, anything in me that's evil or bad or wrong is just my old self and I need to die to that, kill that, deny that. And there is some biblical truth to that. But if that's our only attempt at dealing with this and calling it all the old nature, we might be missing what is actually a part of our God given nature just functioning in an incorrect way. And that's, I think a lot of what's helped me in pure desire is to see that even my quote unquote sinful behaviors were often driven by God given motives for safety, for protection, for security, for belonging, for being seen and noticed and hurt like God made us and wired us for. That kind of connection I just found very unhealthy, not God honoring ways to do it, but to see that oh, there's actually a good function that's happening there. It's not just that I'm a sinful, wicked, you know, fleshly person that needs to kill all that off. There's more to it and I just appreciate your approach is kind of helping us take a little deeper step and so to keep going with that. I know a lot of our listeners are doing some recovery work. There may be one, two, three years or more into recovery and, and they feel like they've done some of their trauma work. You know, They've done their 10 worst moments in group, they've done a trauma egg with their counselor. But how might they identify, even though they've done some good work and identified trauma, how might they identify if that past trauma and an exile is still driving current thoughts, emotions and behaviors? And what suggestions do you have if we realize, wow, I really still am being driven by my trauma even though I've done some good work?

Yes. I think this is such an important question, and it really speaks to how we use that phrase, doing my trauma work in the recovery community. Because sometimes when we use that phrase, we're referring to knowing about our trauma. So we have an autobiographical recollection of our trauma. We've done a trauma egg, We've done our 10 worst moments, we've talked about our trauma. And there is, when that is done in the, in the safest, most accepting, loving atmosphere of a group or with a therapist, there is some element of experiential healing that does happen there, of seeing and being loved as you are in spite of these 10 worst moments, in spite of this trauma egg. And yet talking about our trauma, knowing about our trauma is not doing our trauma work. That's the same thing as saying knowing about God or talking about God. Knowing facts about God is the same thing as experiencing God. And we, we know experientially those are two different things. And the reason why is because of the brain. In a very, very simplified understanding of brain development, the cognitive parts of us reside in the frontal cortex, part of the brain that handles our executive functioning and is the most recently developed part of the brain. And that's the part that talks about things, that knows facts and can recite data and dates. Where trauma lives experientially is back here in the limbic part of the brain. It's in the brain stem and the limbic area. And those parts of the brain are stronger. They override the parts that know all the things and can talk about them, which is why we do things we don't want to do, because the trauma is more powerful than what we know we should do. And so if we have not engaged experiential trauma healing therapy in our recovery work, we haven't actually done our trauma work in its completeness. And those types of experiential therapies are things like internal family systems, emdr, eye movement, desensitization, reprocessing, somatic experiencing. So Peter Levine's work, Bessel van der Kolk, these are Dick Schwartz. These types of therapies speak to the limbic area of the brain and heal trauma where it lives, so that it's no longer a live wire in our brain. And I think most of us can relate to the fact that we know we should eat all of our vegetables and not have cell phones at the dinner table and spend quality time with our spouses. But what we do go to the gym every morning at 5 o', clock, but what we actually do is at a more instinctual level. And that's the difference between knowing and experiencing. And we want to make sure when we're attending to the trauma of our exiles, the pain of our exiles, the that we're doing it in a way that actually helps them heal, not just talking about it. Because sometimes just talking about it can actually re traumatize our exiles and not help them. And it can actually make it worse, depending on how we are talking about it. So really getting with a clinician who's trained in those experiential modalities is an important part of that because we really do want to have that really good foundation with our trauma egg and our worst moments and that cognitive awareness of our story. And then we want to drop deeper so we can actually heal it.

Yeah, I think that that's one of the things that we find that's so important about people who are in group is that I know that I've been in groups where at some point somebody just stops doing her work or for, you know, like three or four weeks in a row and she's showing up but nothing is done and you can tell that something has changed. And where, I mean, I remember one case where she just like she hit a wall because we had just talked about trauma and, you know, and she couldn't go, she couldn't keep going. She had to step out and go to a counselor who could help her in that part, because otherwise every time she came to group it was just retraumatizing and opening up some of that old stuff. So I think that it's very important, even within the context of a group, that you have a leader who recognizes that and who can say, say, I don't think it's going to help you to keep coming to group. We love you and when you're ready, we want you to come back. But you might need something that's going to help you in a deeper way.

Yes, I think ideally in a perfect world, and obviously this takes time and resources and privilege that not everyone has. So I really honor what a dilemma that is. A perfect fit is both group support, especially for the More cognitive learning, you know, pieces that are psycho educational and the therapy support, which is more trauma healing and of course, formal disclosure and all of that that we go through early in the process. And in a perfect world, every person, if I could wave a magic wand, would get to have both of those. And I recognize that's a lot of privilege that not everyone has. Yeah.

When it is an opportunity for our faith to really be integrated into healing and recovery. Whereas we recognize these traumas and we voice them. And I do think that's important, that we get to say it in a safe space and it's acknowledged and heard. But then it's, for many of us, the experience of taking that into our relationship with Christ, with the Heavenly Father, and hopefully with a newer concept of his love and compassion for us in that area and kind of revisiting in this trauma. Lord, what do you want me to know and experience about you? It's some of the tools we try to take people into of imagining or having those positive experiences of who God says you are that directly relate to some of those traumatic moments. So that it's not just trying to place cognitive truth, like what you said, Jenna, that, oh, I know the right answers, but actually replacing some experiential truth into that very place where I've had experiential lies or harm or trauma. And then even not just doing it that one time, but kind of rehearsing that. And whether it's in our meditation time with the Lord or with a counselor or a friend or just kind of revisiting that place of remembering. No, this is an experience I've had that I can know what God says about my true self, about who he made me to be, and allow that to take on greater and greater importance and over time to transform that voice of trauma, rather than, I think what we get stuck in is feeling like, well, I did it that one time. Right. I told my group I'd never told anyone before. I told them this horrible thing that happened when I was 10. I got it out, and now God can heal the trauma, and I wish it worked that way. That is a vital first step. But there may be. Continue to unpack. Okay. I finally told someone about that experience when I was 10. But now I'm needing to invite the voice of the Holy Spirit and the Father into what were the lies I'm listening to? And how can I experience the opposite about your goodness and truth? And so it just speaks to the ongoing nature of our work and why. Why this takes time. We'd all like it to be quick. We'd all like it to just be a fast weekend of healing and then we're on our way. But. But it's just this process of unlearning what maybe we've been stuck in for a very long time.

I think the spiritual integration of a lot of these modalities is exactly what you're speaking to. I remember before I became a therapist and I was very involved in sort of church life and I had some manager parts of me that were quite burdened with spiritual talk and behavior and actions that knew all the right things and knew what I should believe and what I should feel. And they weren't actually the God image inside of me. They were well intentioned manager parts trying to manage my life from a spiritualizer perspective and get me to replace my wrong thinking or whatever it might be. And they had a real agenda and a. There was a shaming energy that went with it. And the beautiful piece about the spiritual integration in IFS and other models is that it's the experiential opening to the loving, the loving kindness, the compassion of the divine, which has none of that shaming, diminishing, fear producing energy. It's the, the experience of that loving essence of the divine that we can bring into the work that is so powerful because it is that experience of this, this is how God is with me in this trauma, is holding me in this trauma. And it is the felt sense which is so different than some of my manager parts that were spiritualizing, that were trying to get me to believe the right thing or feel the right thing or say the right thing and override my trauma.

That's so good. So as you work with somebody in recovery, if a pattern of relapse reoccurs after a season of sobriety, what are the common causes that you see? Where do you most often see the gaps in the initial healing journey?

That's a really important question and it's very individual. But there's a handful of things that tend to precipitate that kind of chronic relapse. One is we're just super early in recovery and we don't have enough of the structure, the scaffolding in place and old patterns are being unlearned. And that chronic relapse can be especially apparent in early recovery. What I find most often as we go along has happened is someone has taken a move against approach to their recovery when that relapse is happening after a period of time of sobriety where they've tried to just vilify the part of themselves that's doing the behavior and get rid of it, lock it in the basement. And rather than taking a systemic approach and doing the trauma healing work. And so if the trauma work hasn't been done, or if someone has had the approach of I need to get this part of me out, I need to cast it out, I need to lock it in the basement, what tends to happen is either other firefighter parts get recruited and so now we start eating everything in sight, or compulsively overworking or thinking about suicide or drinking more, whatever it might be, or that part will just continue to get locked in the basement, pop back up, locked in the basement, pop backed up. And that can happen in, in a period of days, weeks or months, or even years if it's unaddressed in that way. I think also, and this will be a topic, I think, of our next podcast together is When Neurodiversity is Unidentified. There is a huge untapped kind of overlap in the addiction world with neurodiversity and addiction. And there's so much to say about that. But what I will say is there is a lot of that that is not getting tended to, not getting addressed. And when neurodiversity is present underneath the addiction and it's not appropriately attended to, that will absolutely cause relapse, even after long, long term sobriety. So there's multiple different things also, just when the stressors, when the external stressors, when the demand exceeds our capacity, those. When we're in those vulnerable times, and if you're using the Patrick Carnes material, if your picky score is getting high and demand is exceeding capacity, those are times when we're prone and we want to be increasing our green circle, we want to be increasing our supports and reserves. And sometimes we need more of that. And if we don't have that, it can be a time that really leaves an opening for relapse. And what that then invites us to do is readdress the recovery plan and shore it up in the areas where there have been some vulnerabilities or weaknesses.

Yeah, yeah. It speaks to our desire as humans to have this journey be over with or to be better. And I think I see that for men and women. But, you know, I work more directly with men in recovery who feel like, well, I'm better. And if something starts to creep back in there is that fear and move against, like, whoa, I don't want to think about that, or I don't want to go there, want to tell people that maybe something has come back in. And so we keep trying to, as you say, lock it in the basement, squash it, turn away from it, not realizing there's a reason. Again, there's a why this is starting to surface and having that curiosity to go, huh, I wonder where this is coming from and how could I bring this to my group or support system in a non condemning way to just say, man, this is going on and help me understand what might be triggering some things and, and seeing it from that place of openness and moving towards, rather than feeling we've got to hide and ignore it. Because every time I've heard someone coming in and being stuck back in a pattern of relapse, it's usually been preceded by a season of I was trying to ignore these things. I was just pushing away because I'm better now and I didn't think I'd give in to them. And really for maybe a couple of months, they needed to be coming to their group with some of that initial rumblings and with that curiosity and compassion. But in ignoring it, it just allowed it to keep growing and growing until they were kind of stuck in another pattern and really did have to go back and say, okay, what triggered this? Where did this come from? Because it's often then its roots, it's going back to some of the very same things that might have brought them into recovery to begin with.

And it does necessarily take this level of awareness and even just being able to say, okay, I've worked so hard on my recovery and now this thing keeps popping up over and over and over again. And it might be the perfect time to use your analogy of the notice no and need, you know, of that instead of pushing away to move toward it and try and understand it more. Because again, like you said, if it keeps popping up, it's not going to go away on its own.

Yeah, that's beautiful. Notice no. And need is a little bit of a way of directly asking the part of ourself, what's your why? And I love how you articulate that, Nick, like what's the why here? And for every person in every situation, the why is going to be unique. And we don't know until we actually ask that part. Hey, how? What is it that's caused you to get activated right now? How are you trying to help me? What are you afraid would happen if you didn't take me over and make me want to act out? And usually the, the thing that's beautiful about ifs and what allows us to move toward all parts of ourselves with curiosity and compassion is not that what they're doing is helpful, but their intent always is. The intent of every single part of us is always 100 of the time positive. And what we know about the parts of ourselves that act out sexually, most often what they're trying to help us with in unhelpful ways is connection, self soothing, nurture, acceptance, these really beautiful God given needs. And when those needs are feeling raw and those exiles that carry the absence of those get activated, the firefighters tend to jump in to try to soothe. And so when we get to know that we can allow the image of God inside of us to be present with them so that they don't have to take us over in such extreme ways. And asking the why of the part of ourself that's getting activated is a really beautiful, compassionate and enlightening step. So I love how you say that.

Yeah. So when we begin to experience more health, we're learning to have healthy dialogue around our exile. What happens? Does that part of us grow up and move out, so to speak, or will we always have that exile part of us that carries our woundedness? What, what does that picture of health start to look like in terms of how it relates to an exile?

Yeah. Well, if you. I don't know if viewers will be able to see our video or just hear the audio, but for those who can see the video, if you can imagine that my fist that I'm holding up is an exiled part of myself and it's a good part of myself. Maybe it's the part of myself that is playful or curious or spontaneous. And I'm putting, I'm draping a sheet over it right now. This that I'm draping over, it is the burden. Maybe I got yelled at when I made a mess when I was a child. And now instead of access to that playfulness, what I have access to is shame. The burden, the trauma, the sin is the problem here that's holding the shame. So when I get my God image in relationship to this part and witness it and develop this connected internal relationship between the part of me that's carrying the burden and the image of God, the image of God actually releases that burden. That's how we do the trauma healing work in ifs. And the burden, the shame is lifted. And now this part of me is freed up to be its original positive quality, which is perhaps in this case, playfulness. And this is why so many of us, when we come into the healing journey, we don't have access to playfulness. We don't know what play even is. And when we go through this burden lifting process, we gain more access to those original positive qualities that were underneath the burden. In Christendom, we call it the burden of sin. In clinical work, we call it the burden of trauma. In ifs, we just call it burdens. But the burden is the problem, not the part. And the image of God helps release that burden. And then the part is restored. We have access to its original positive qualities. So we are more fully ourselves. We cannot and do not want to eliminate these parts of ourselves. Because if I eliminated the part that was underneath that shame burden, the playfulness would be gone. I want to do that. And this is another reason why usually the part's original positive quality is the opposite of the burden it's carrying. So what I know to be true from years and years of working with addiction is that the part that is trapped under the burden of sexual acting out is most often the part that is designed to connect in intimacy. And if we kicked that part out of the system and we can't, but if we could, we would lose the ability to be intimate with the partner. That's why what we want to do is help the burden to release so that that capacity to connect intimately with the partner is opened back up again. And this is what happens with a lot of people in longer term recovery who are struggling with sexual reintegration after a period of sobriety and the 90 days and all of that is if they've tried to address that by locking this part in the basement, there's no access to an intimate connection. And so trying to restore intimacy with the partner is very difficult because we've just locked the part that carries that in the basement. And what we want to do is release the burden so we have full expression of that original positive quality that.

Is so good and so important.

Yeah. It makes me think that we should talk to Richard Schwartz about a better name than exile. Because it seems like as we get healthier to keep calling it an exile mentally works against what you're saying, but because I completely agree that it's kind of that imago dei, the image of God in us that did make us to be adventurous and brave and curious and the fruit of the spirit and all those things that says that's who God is and wants his children to be. But we're all kind of kept from it because of these burdens. And so in health, yeah, maybe we could come up with like, we got exiles. And the growing exiles have become. I don't know, image bearers or something a little more positive.

Well, when the burden is lifted, the part is no longer in exile or a manager or a firefighter. These parts are only carrying those, you know, little labels through an ifs line because they're underneath the burden. When the burden's lifted, they are.

They're just part of self.

They're just. They're part of who we are. This is my playful part. This is my intimate part. This is my creative part. They no longer are in those burdened categories of exile, manager, firefighter. Yeah, yeah, it's a great point. Yeah.

So, Jenna, we appreciate so much you jumping on with us today. So what final words of encouragement would you have for our listeners?

I would love every listener to know that that part of you that you are the most ashamed of, the most afraid of, that carries the most pain is really and truly welcome. And if you can welcome that part of yourself with curiosity and compassion, you actually have the capacity to help it transform. And if you would like my support with that for free, you can come to Insight Timer and just. Insight Timer is a free app on your phone. Just put in my name, Jenna Reimersma. I've got all kinds of move toward meditations for healing. Addiction, betrayal, trauma triggers. Doing a morning parts check in just out there to support you in your healing process or on my website, Jenna remersma.com. you absolutely have the ability to heal every part of you, and I would love to help you do that.

Yeah, and we will be sure to put those in the show notes, right, guys? Looking at the production crew behind the tv getting a thumbs up maybe. Yeah, we'll. We'll have our listeners connect with you there, and I know many will be glad to do that. Jenna, this has been so good. I think if I were to offer any encouragement, it would just be kind of to this theme or maybe back to where we started there. There is in all of us a desire to avoid pain, pursue pleasure and doing deeper work, talking about trauma, trying to figure out my exile, that that can feel a little bit like pain. And there's a part of us that probably doesn't want to do it. And that's normal, and that's okay. What I hope today has provided is some of that encouragement, that future vision to say, man, what my life could be. And really it's that return to who God made me to be. It would be worth it. It would be worth doing that work because of what could come of it. And there are so many people in this room and that have Done groups that would say, yeah, I would echo that. Is it always fun? No. Is there parts of it that get a little painful and messy before it gets better? Yeah. But it does get better. It does lead to places that we haven't been before. And a freedom, a joy and light. It's like, man, this is what I was made for. And if you can see that or even hear a little bit of that today, then it might be what you need to begin taking those steps into a deeper place in your healing. Any final words or thoughts for you.

Heather, this was just so good. And I've heard you were a speaker at our summit. I've read your book. And even now I still can just listen and listen and listen, and it makes so much sense and new things pop into my mind. This. Oh, yeah. I should probably work on that. So, yeah, super helpful.

Yeah.

Wonderful. I'm so glad.

Yeah. Jenna, we believe in you and the work you're doing. You are an advocate for understanding and embracing those parts of ourselves that have been hurt, wounded and shamed. And rather than trying to drive them away, we can move towards those parts with compassion, curiosity, and care. And so thank you for illuminating that journey further and for using the gifts that God has given you to be a blessing and an encouragement to so many others. We're just delighted to have had you here today.

Thank you so much. And I'm so grateful for all of the beautiful work that Pure Desire is doing in the world. Thank you for all that you both do. It's an incredible blessing.

Yeah. Thank you. Well, if you're a fan of the Pure Desire content, please subscribe, share this podcast with somebody and write us a review. It helps other people find the content. And if you want more information on our groups, resources, or counseling, go to PureDesire.org Journey on my friends, you are not alone.