Psychologically feeding the needs of readers through the written word.

I have crossed state lines and country borders to study family and human behavior in hopes of healing my own complex trauma. Without fear of using my own stories and experiences to highlight the topics that most choose to deny, my journey of healing has been shared with many in hopes to break the chains of secrecy over others. Addressing issues of my own abandonment and feeling unwanted, I forged research on in-utero rejection by freelancing as a special needs therapist in the “hoods” of Baltimore and Savannah. The emotional suffering of teens that I witnessed as a result of neglect and abuse, inspired me to start a youth group among my black students who were going home to crack houses. The scope of intervention swept into strip clubs and I began ministering to prostitutes and orphans who all suffered from the same depravity I had known, shame. Shame was the enemy to my spirit, the culprit to all symptomatic behavior that plagued both myself and the youth that I eventually fostered under my own roof. Volunteering with ministries unveiled the misconceptions that most hold against humanity; belief that addictions, psychological disorders or broken relationships are the lack of faith or will-power to change, but I found those manifestations to be a result of abuse and un-wantedness in the womb.

It didn’t feel good when someone from church said that I was choosing to sin and needed to be reminded of what I did wrong in order to make a positive choice instead. All of the girls I took in had trauma in their childhoods just like I did, but nobody addressed how to get to the bottom of bad behavior without fearing punishment over some kind of sin. The modalities of therapy I studied in college and the prayer approaches learned at seminary, didn’t prepare me for the myriad of problems that clients were bringing in regard to polarized viewpoints and problematic patterns that plagued their lives. It was my eventual study through the IFS Institute, where I learned about the many parts that fuel behavior, and my approach to therapy shifted. Coupling Christianity with counseling through “parts” work, equipped me to understand that coping mechanisms are symptoms of emotional pain that need to be understood instead of negated, silenced or abstained from. The emotions that surface in each of us just need to be understood for the “part” they play in protecting the other emotional parts, much like a family would. To the degree of dysfunction a client has experienced in life, the more coping mechanisms each “part” utilizes to cooperate or disrupt how the family gets along. My own internal family system, began to listen to why parts acted out in fury and judgment toward itself if I made a mistake and the healing process naturally embraced acceptance and love to change instead of the performance people said would do so.

I now help educate church groups to stop deeming people a certain way based on their behavior because they aren’t defined by their sin. A murderer isn’t just that, he could still be a believer but had a murderous part react out of a place of fear that was attached to a childhood memory. Instead of judging the “murder part” as bad, we would spend time getting to know its positive intention and how it was trying to protect the person. Once understanding is felt, the part accepts the God given role it had before the trauma, and the reactive response is exchanged for it. My role as an IFS Practitioner is to remind the faithful that we have different sides to a story and that each one should be heard for reconciliation to be made. Inside a family of origin, a church family or an internal one, each system longs for all parts to be welcomed before they can feel wanted.

Satisfying the soul is the common denominator in every task I take on, affording me the ability to explain topics that cross socio-economic, race, cultural and religious demographics. Psychologically speaking, I write about the things that few talk about. Therapeutically, I counsel the curious types who are burnt out on religion in hopes to redeem their actions that mask deep need of inner healing. http://www.pastoraltraumatherapyifs.com

https://pastoraltraumatherapyifs.com/