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Pam King: Whole human thriving includes the ability to feel, deal, and heal when we encounter trauma. Psychologist Cynthia Eriksson wants to help us understand the human response to pain, suffering, tragedy, and grief. She’s finding that resilience and recovery comes through a spiritually and therapeutically informed approach that prizes vulnerability, honesty.
Emotional grounding, attention to our bodies and mutual presence with and for others.
Cynthia Eriksson: What are some of the things that we can all do that help us to build some muscles when it comes to navigating life’s suffering? How do I show up for the people that are around me who are in pain? What does it mean for me to actually open myself up to the pain of others and stay present?
Pam King: I’m Dr. Pam King and you’re listening to With & For, a podcast that explores the depths of psychological science and spiritual wisdom to offer practical guidance towards spiritual health, wholeness, and thriving on purpose.
In this episode, I have the delight to share a deeply meaningful conversation with my dear friend, Dr. Cynthia Eriksson. Cynthia has not only spent the last two decades researching PTSD and post traumatic growth, but she has also been deeply immersed in clinical work. She has come alongside countless numbers of people and communities in the wake of major tragedy.
Whether Cambodia working with children of war, Uganda working with refugees, Haiti, caring for victims of the earthquake, or here in Pasadena, tending to frontline workers who are often left rocked and reeling from their efforts in relief work. Cynthia and I have been friends since graduate school days.
We’ve not only navigated our work together at Fuller, but we have also raised families together, worshipped at Knox Presbyterian Church, and traveled together. All to say our lives are deeply intertwined. Before I get into the episode, I want to offer a word of care. In this episode, we talk about trauma, and I don’t walk into these waters lightly.
So I just want to say, if trauma is active for you, this is an opportunity to prepare for what’s to come. and possibly listen with a friend. Ultimately, this discussion is one of hope and healing and offers some really practical insight and experiences to help you grow and thrive. People often wonder about the difference between resilience and thriving.
And in today’s dialogue, we will elaborate on how both resilience and thriving focus on adaptive growth, and offer practices to pursue that growth. In resilience work, the goal or horizon that one is aiming for is baseline and normalcy. Resilience focuses on the adaptive capacities that people need to return to normal.
Whereas from a thriving perspective, the horizon is above baseline and focuses on wholeness, vitality, and pursuing purposeful living, an intentional pursuit of living into one’s strengths with and for others and a higher purpose. Both approaches recognize the complexities of life, the joys and the suffering, and both affirm and require human agency.
I’m so grateful that drawing from her research and clinical work. Cynthia shares how psychology provides really practical insight into how our spiritual health is essential for our resilience.
In this conversation with Cynthia Eriksson, we discuss how leaders, helpers, and caretakers can identify trauma in themselves and come to recognize Accept and respond. The importance of paying attention to our brains, bodies, and environment. The five R’s of resilience to trauma and recovery from trauma.
Spiritual responses to suffering and pain, which can often result in incredibly profound experiences with God. And this includes expressing anger at God within a struggle. And practically, we talk about how to deal with avoidance. defensiveness, and blaming others or ourselves. Basically, the potentially destructive nature of coping mechanisms.
And we close with a beautiful grounding practice. That connects us all to our bodies and emotions to engage trauma and stay on the path to thriving.
Cynthia.
Cynthia Eriksson: Hey friend.
Pam King: Really good to have you here. I have been so grateful for you as a friend and a colleague, as a person who lives out of the depths of life, not of the shallows. I’d love to just have you start by telling us a bit about your work and trauma and what trauma is.
Cynthia Eriksson: Yeah, it’s interesting to reflect back on more than two decades of work in this area of trauma.
And the way I’m thinking about trauma is something that is a threat to existence. And that might be my own existence, that might be the existence of someone I love, it might be the existence of my community, but it is the trauma event is that threat. And then the trauma response. is how our bodies, how our hearts, how our thoughts kind of respond to that experience.
I think initially my work in trauma was connected to experiences of being in other cultures and other contexts, wanting to be a help, wanting to see the things that mental health and psychology can do to support people in Liberia, West Africa, or in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, ways that people in cultural context could grow through really difficult, catastrophic humanitarian emergencies.
And so in some ways it was very other, like that I’m going to help these other people that have been through a traumatic experience. And so I think that switch to thinking about trauma, not necessarily as one event that someone’s trying to deal with or recover from or get over, but What does it mean to think about suffering?
What does it mean to think about the ways that other people in my life, other people in my community are experiencing trauma, how do I learn how to be present with that and in that in a way that’s supportive, but also growthful and the fact that resilience and thriving are very much aspects of the same coin, I think, and the more that we talk about the practical experience of.
Being human, being present in our lives, present in relationships, showing up for people, showing up for ourselves in ways that God intends. that trauma can get in the way of that, trauma experiences can get in the way of that, but then we want to thrive through it.
Pam King: Thank you for acknowledging that. You raised so many things that I look forward to unpacking from trauma, vicarious personal resilience, practical applications of it, and your own experience of it.
I’d love to hear how your work has informed how you’ve been able to grow through experience and manage trauma in your own life.
Cynthia Eriksson: Maybe I’ll share a story. and just reflect on that a bit around what, why that story feels important to me. Um, so it was December 11th, 2020. And I was in a meeting, a Zoom meeting, of course, because we were sort of full on in the experiencing life through COVID.
It was about eight o’clock in the morning. And as the meeting was starting, I looked down on my phone and saw that my son Noah was calling. Muted myself and picked up the phone. And Noah said. I’m on the freeway. I just had an accident. I lost consciousness in the car and I just woke up and I’m in the middle of the freeway.
I
got my husband, the two of us got in the car and we drove onto the freeway, got to where Noah was. Noah’s car had managed to end up kind of in a V between an off ramp and the full freeway. And I remember standing on the side of the road with Noah and my husband and the two police officers. And I remember being very present, like problem solving, thinking about what Noah needed, thinking about whether or not he should go to the hospital, all those kinds of questions.
And the police, you know, let us go. The, the car went to get checked out and ended up being totaled. We got home and just sort of focused on Noah and how Noah was doing. And I was okay. I mean, I was fine. And. It was maybe like two weeks later that I was talking to my, our friend, Cara Powell. And Cara said to me, that was a trauma.
And I was like, what? I mean, I literally felt in, actually my first response was me to kind of just to kind of be embarrassed and sort of the way, like I judged my most sex, like. I didn’t realize that it was a trauma. I’m a trauma therapist for God’s sake, but I didn’t even realize that I had been through a trauma.
But why I share the story was the reflection on at the time that it happened, I needed to be in that problem solving space. I needed to be present. I needed to think clearly. I know my adrenaline was going. I, I was, that’s how I function when I’m under stream stress is I get very focused, very problem solving, very, you know, productive in that space.
But I hadn’t allowed myself, even once Noah was home and safe, I hadn’t allowed myself to actually feel the fact that my son could have died. That his, he had been having some medical issues and had lost consciousness and actually having it happen on the freeway. It’s interesting to reflect on it now because I feel some of that sort of like agitation in my body, but at the time I didn’t.
So I think that I share that story to just sort of share that one of the things that’s really important about understanding our responses to trauma is that we do all sorts of different things in order to get through traumatic events and to get through them and survive. And some of those things. are really important and really functional in that moment.
Like for say someone who is the victim of an assault, an intense assault. And we are going to talk about trauma kinds of issues. So I have a, an acknowledgement to those that might have trauma histories and they’re listening to this material, thinking about kind of taking care of yourself as you’re listening.
Um, but one of those things of, about having a history of maybe sexual assault or child abuse is that Maybe the best way to survive in those moments was to completely dissociate and not be in your body at that moment. And that’s very functional, becomes this incredible resilience piece in that moment.
But what gets difficult is when those kinds of experiences continue on. And the person begins to, or the survivor experiences those moments of dissociation in places where that’s not helpful for them, where either it puts them at more risk because they’re not kind of paying attention to what’s happening in their environment, or they dissociate from relationships or situations where they need to be able to stay present.
Pam King: One of the things that stands out to me is that Cynthia, a trauma researcher and trainer, and consultant, really an expert in helping people feel, deal, and heal when trauma comes along. She’s bravely and vulnerably sharing how difficult it was for her to recognize trauma in herself. And I think we encounter this kind of issue among so many leaders and helpers who are constantly in the mindset of serving and guiding others.
And I know so many of you listening to the show think of yourselves in that way. I don’t want the point to be lost here. Identifying trauma in our own life is not an easy thing to do. It is possible for us to experience trauma objectively as a fact and yet not come to attend. to the lived consequences of experiencing it.
So you are a trauma researcher, an expert, and it took you a while, so how might the average person become aware that if they have experienced trauma and that might be something that they need to attend to?
Cynthia Eriksson: One of the things that I’d want us to understand is that coping is coping. And that maybe what we’re talking about is situations where The coping becomes destructive and not helpful in the moment.
So I wouldn’t necessarily say something as good coping or bad coping, but how generative is the coping as it’s moving into different spaces? To the question about how do I know I’ve been traumatized? I think that’s an excellent question, Pam, because not everyone actually becomes traumatized when they experience a trauma.
So, I think I would say someone who. Maybe a struggling with a trauma response that’s becoming chronic, like they aren’t able to feel settled and are having difficulty sleeping, um, having nightmares and feeling like the experience is happening again, re experiencing the event, or it’s kind of intruding on their thoughts in ways that are.
feel out of control and unexpected. Avoiding situations that become problematic and make it difficult to do the kinds of function that they need to do. Every time we go past that exit on the freeway, I think of Noah’s accident, but I don’t avoid it. Whereas I think someone who was traumatized by that experience and it was really impacting their lives might actually find themselves driving way out of the way so they don’t have to go near that thing.
So people might notice that in themselves. And then another really critical aspect is how you start to think about yourself and the world. If I started thinking, I’m such a bad mother that this accident happened, or Noah is really not safe to ever drive again, or all the ways that I might take that experience.
And extrapolate it or generalize it to other things that then impacts my ability to be present as the person, the mom, the wife that I want to be. So I think recognizing there’s going to be responses that we all have traumatic events. And then as those responses, if they start to become more chronic or the ways that we make them part of how we live our daily lives and they get away in the things, then that’s sort of evidence that’s starting to be traumatized.
Pam King: I wanted to hear more of the signs and symptoms of trauma. Cynthia’s work in the trauma field has been focused on understanding the impact of trauma and how to heal from it. But it starts with recognition and identification. In physical biological ways, in mental psychological ways social and relational ways, and also in existentential and spiritual ways. Yeah.
Cynthia Eriksson: Okay. So trauma impacts our bodies. So our natural response to a threatening experience is that sympathetic nervous system fight, flight, freeze response, or fawn, tend and befriend is part of that as well. And so this kind of immediate reaction that we go into survival mode, are we going to Um, lash out, are we going to run away to try to get away from the situation?
Are we going to sort of shut down and just kind of be present and disconnect maybe from the experience? Or are we going to sort of mean towards relationships and sort of seek out this? Kind of tend and befriend and kind of make those connections. So that’s our sympathetic nervous system that’s just going to happen in our bodies.
We can’t necessarily judge or know what’s going to happen. It’s just going to happen. And then trauma disrupts how we think. So trauma disrupts maybe messages I tell myself. about the kind of mother that I am or about safety or about what I can expect in terms of justice of the world. I mean, it’s traumas impacting how I think about those things.
Then trauma impacts our relationships because one of the things that’s really a common reaction to trauma and traumatic events is to feel isolated, to disconnect, to kind of feel Uncertainty. I mean, especially traumas that are more relational or more betrayal traumas, there’s even more of a sense of shame and disconnection and isolation.
So trauma disrupts relationships. Trauma can disrupt our sense of meaning. Trauma can disrupt how I understand the functioning of the world or where I might seek God or how I understand suffering. I might bring up questions about justice. They might be bring out questions maybe. I, I would expect that if I do the right things, then my life should be pretty smooth, kind of like quid pro quo.
I do these things and then life is going to be that. So when random things happen or accidents happen or uncertainties or crises kinds of happen, then it raises that question of what’s fair, what can I expect? So I named those things because I think that’s one of the places where we in the trauma field over the years of understanding trauma and understanding post traumatic stress.
have seen certain ways of adapting to or responding to those places of disruption and trying to bring healing through treatment for those areas. So whether that’s treatment related to narrative exposure therapy of telling your story, not talking through the experiences, or it’s related to attachment and building relationships and understanding the ways that early relationships would provide support in that internal sort of way, or it’s understanding and making sense of the ways that the environment.
As impacted and sort of pulling, taking people out of environments that are unsafe. That’s a really important part of that experience too, of trauma related to the impact of the environment and recognizing safety. That’s why over the years of teaching around trauma and doing trauma research and understanding these kinds of issues, I started recognizing the ways that these areas of disruption are also the areas of resilience.
They’re the same places that we need to pay attention to. as we try to recover from experience of trauma. or as we’re building our resilience to experiences of trauma.
Pam King: Resilience is a term that gets thrown around a lot and used a lot by people. I’d love to hear you, before we talk about how we build resilience, just offer an explanation of what resilience is from your perspective and then we can talk about how it’s related to trauma.
Cynthia Eriksson: Resilience is a messy word and I would never want it to be used as a way to define someone’s value because I think that sometimes we can say that person’s really resilient and that somehow they’re better than someone else who might be struggling.
So I think the way that I would approach this conversation about resilience is what are some of the things that we can all do that help us to build some muscles when it comes to navigating life’s suffering.
Pam King: I’m very adamant about referring to like resilience as a skill. It’s not an attribute. It’s not static.
We all have different capacities for it. And the extraordinary thing is we all can build more muscles of resilience. Yeah. And you and your work have come up with a really helpful and beautiful way to think about how to develop resilience. skills. I’d love to hear a bit about those skills that people can practice and cultivate to grow resilience muscles.
Cynthia Eriksson: Yeah, yeah. Having taught at Fuller for a number of years, many years, and one of the classes that I’ve taught is called self care and mission, self and community care and mission. I’ve co taught that with Dr. Jude Tiersma Watson for years. And when you teach self care. You start to realize how much self care can be this intellectual dynamic, understanding the things that we need to do in order to take care of ourselves and our families and our communities, but how difficult it is to kind of become something that we practice.
And there’s research with trauma therapists that ask them about their experiences of self care and all of them know what to do in terms of taking care of themselves. But in turn, when you ask them if they’re actually doing it, there’s a much lower percentage of people who are actually enacting the very things they know.
So that’s when I started realizing, okay, how are we paying attention to ourselves? How are we paying attention to the ways that we’re living our lives, the different components? Of our daily lives, of our relationships, of our ways that we interact with the broader world that actually can be helping us build positive things.
And when you think about, you know, the neural pathways, the neurons that fire together, wire together. So the more that we’re doing these practices, the easier it becomes for those neural pathways to become triggered and kind of connected. So it becomes more of a natural habit or a more natural response.
So, like, we’re building ruts so that our cars can end up driving in the good ruts rather than other habits and ruts that put us in other directions. So, getting those ruts in a positive direction.
Pam King: We are fundamentally embodied beings, and paying attention to the physical realities of life is essential for grounding ourselves in a response to trauma. You can’t ignore that, because so much happens at the neurological, biological, and environmental level. Cynthia has developed five self care practices that are meant to help facilitate and build resilience and recovery when trauma and uncertainty are present.
She’s going to lead us through each of these. I’ll outline them here for you. First, regulation. So much that happens here is about our bodies and our emotions. Second, reflection and right which is about reframing our context to live in truth. Third, relationships, which is all about social support and mutual healing presence.
Fourth, respite and rest, which is about getting the space to withdraw from stress, increase our physical rest, then rebuild sustainable, healthy rhythms and habits. And fifth, reason, which points to a sense of purpose. Connection to the transcendent and staying present to or reaffirming our why.
Cynthia Eriksson: And I started thinking about these five areas. Um, there are five R’s. Um, the first one being regulation and really think about that as starting with our bodies. So thinking about our bodies are this extraordinary creation that God has given us with. The sympathetic nervous system that helps us survive and respond to situations.
And then the parasympathetic nervous system, which is like a brake pedal, which helps us to kind of slow down, helps us to re engage, help us, helps us to get grounded back into kind of the space that we need to be in. And that we can actually practice things like breathing and other kinds of grounding practices that help our bodies learn how to settle more quickly or settle more easily.
And also. helps us to be more attuned to and pay more attention to times when we’re unsettled. Which is also really important that we become aware of, Oh, yeah, like my body, like my shoulders are totally clenched at this point, or I can feel it in my back, or how am I kind of what’s going on in my body that I’m not settled.
So regulation becomes this paying attention to those practices, doing them regularly, daily, in a way that allows me to build those ruts. So my physical ability to settle myself becomes more natural for me. And then that relates really closely to then paying attention to my body, paying attention to the different responses in my body, helping to then connect that to these extraordinary messages that God has given us through our emotions.
And I say that I introduced the idea of emotions as a God given gift, because I think that’s really important that the ways that we respond to sadness, pain, suffering, confusion, joy. Delight, affection, gratitude, all the ways that we experience those things in our bodies. Important it is for us to be able to start naming what those are and emotion regulation then isn’t stamping down or avoiding those emotions, you know, regularly regulating them by putting them aside.
Instead, it’s saying, okay, what’s happening? What’s happened? What do I feel in my body? What’s that kind of nausea in my stomach telling me what that might be related to? How do I put that into perspective? So I’m aware of my surroundings, I’m aware of the message, and I’m aware of like the choices that I have of what to do with that.
What do I do with that feeling? And how do I welcome it? How do I understand that anger? Or how do I understand that disappointment and accept it? And then that really closely relates to the next R, which is reflection or right thinking. And that being, as I’m kind of understanding or taking in that information about those emotions.
Paying attention to the messages I’m telling myself about them and use the word reflection because of the idea of mirror, like what’s true about the situation, the experience with Noah. What was true about my reaction at that time is I needed to be on and problem solving and mom at that time. So having it reflected back, that was a traumatic experience.
My response of shame. That’s, it wasn’t true that I needed to feel ashamed about it. No, it wasn’t true that somehow I was not a caring mother, that I wasn’t bereft at the time that it happened. Um, but that I could say. Wow. I was really like on a space of really needing to be present for Noah at the time, in the midst of the pandemic and all the other kinds of stressors that were going on, needing to stay kind of present and on and not kind of getting undone in that moment.
So reflection and right thinking. Those are things that we can do ourselves and ask ourselves those questions of like, why am I feeling this right now? But then another really powerful piece of this, so you can see we’re going from kind of like in our bodies and what feeling in our bodies to my thoughts.
Then the next like, well, how does that relate to community is like, sometimes I need other people around me to be that mirror and to reflect back to me or help me with my right thinking. So the importance of relationships, having people in our lives that we’re spending time with that are helping to kind of counteract some of those messages around the shoulds that we do.
Or counter, counterbalancing maybe the kind of impact that trauma can have of wanting to isolate and feeling like there’s something wrong with me that this happened or there’s something wrong with me that I had this experience. Relationships remind us of the commonality of a lot of these experiences and the ways that we have, we were seen by another person in the truth of what’s going on.
And that. sense of connection, the way that even connects with our brains and being able to kind of reconnect some of those places of making sense of those difficult feelings with our thoughts about them, with what we’re getting mirrored back from those relationships. So moving from my body to my thoughts to those relationships.
And then the next area of R is respite and rest. And that’s thinking about the environment. How am I thinking about safety? You know, how am I thinking about ways that I. might need to disengage and get rest from what’s going on? And are there situations in my life that are actually traumatic to me, that I need sanctuary from?
And I say that as a upper middle class white woman, I don’t have that same kind of experience, in terms of there are many, most of the spaces that I’m in are predominantly white spaces. that we’re trying to work on how to be less white centered or white normative. But what does it mean for someone who’s in from a community where there is a lot of ongoing stress or ongoing discrimination or threat?
What are ways to create spaces to have sanctuary to just be themselves, to be able to kind of disconnect? And then it would be problematic to not actually mention Sabbath. in terms of rest. So respite, I see as like risk, deconnecting, disconnecting from the things that can be threatening or challenging.
And that can even be disconnecting from, um, media coverage or social media, like input that’s traumatic or difficult. Then there’s rest, which is literally the Sabbath rest of moving out of that space of productivity, allowing our bodies to rest, allowing ourselves to just enjoy life and be in that space.
of wholeness and the commandment that is from scripture that God wants us to take that space and rest. The next R is talking about the transcendent. It’s like the reasons. So thinking about meaning trauma can really be disruptive of our sense of meaning making, how we understand and expect things from the world, what we expect of other relationships, how we see ourselves.
And then meaning can also be an important place of resilience in the midst of difficult things. Imagine going through a really difficult time or a really traumatic event that you reach out because of the role that you have. Say, you know, in my work with humanitarian aid workers and research over the years with people doing ministry or mission work in difficult places, that sense of calling and purpose and the reason to be there becomes a really profound aspect of resilience and a place to kind of find grounding in the midst of really difficult or challenging situations.
Pam King: Trauma can be such a scrambling, chaotic, messy experience. When we encounter it, we get overwhelmed and it’s tempting to go into a survival state. Our bodies, even without our awareness, may definitely go there. Our brains can definitely go there. So it’s all the more important to build out practical responses and receive the insight and guidance that emerges from the science of resilience and healing from trauma.
I’ve appreciated that you’re suggesting that people should reflect. and pay attention to their body and what they’re feeling. But what happens when those feelings are big and maybe disorienting?
Cynthia Eriksson: That’s a really helpful question. I think that one of the really important things that we can do when the feelings feel overwhelming is to first recognize that it’s a feeling and it will subside.
You know, so maybe that’s part of the truth of telling yourself the truth around that. And Moving into some practices that are settling or grounding. I know that Lisa Najevitz is a theorist, therapist, writer, who writes a lot on working with folks that have been through trauma and substance abuse. And she really does a great job of talking about the importance of grounding.
In the here and now, and that’s connected to settling practices. Um, but if you think about I’m, as I’m even talking about it, I’m actually shifting in my chair and I’m holding, I grabbed kind of the handles for my chair because that is one of the ways to think about grounding in that space is just feeling where you are in the physical space that you are kind of reorienting and regrounding your body.
pressing your feet into the floor, feeling yourself in your chair, and kind of knowing, telling yourself like, I’m here now and I’m safe. And those kinds of grounding experiences that can be really helpful. And then breathing, doing a simple breath practice that where you’re breathing in first or count, holding it for count, breathing out for count, those kinds of experiences.
Those are ways to sort of be in the moment of the big feelings. And Kind of experience them and, you know, maybe you can, if they keep continuing and you want to express them, being able to talk to a friend, being able to express that physically by crying, maybe it’s journaling and expressing it out there, but as well as staying present in our bodies with it.
But I think I want to go back to the experience with Noah and the car accident. It was. Important for me over time to also realize that I wasn’t allowing myself to feel, but then as time went on, I realized that things were building up and I was feeling a lot. I was aware that there was a lot that was there that I wasn’t allowing myself to feel, that I was avoiding in different ways.
I was spending more time watching Netflix. I was not spending as much time with friends. I was kind of working more. And it was actually in the context of some conversations with the spiritual director, where I realized that I needed to create some intentional time for myself to feel, and what I did was actually a practice of lament as a way to like sort of say, all right, I wanna open this door.
I wanna kind of put this out there and really express to God all of the different ways that I’ve been scared, angry, hurt. Noah’s health situation had been really complex. There were so many losses that I was sad for him for all of the diagnoses and navigating the medical fields. All of those things were so confusing and difficult and frustrating.
So really sat down and used a model to, to guide myself through the experience of lament.
Pam King: The spiritual context of a particular approach to Christian theology is interwoven in all of Cynthia’s work. But again, I appreciate. the courage and vulnerability that exists at the heart of Cynthia’s faith. We all tend to look at God when bad things happen. Some of us, if we’re honest, will even say we get angry at God when bad things happen.
Cynthia is one of those honest and vulnerable people. But I want to suggest That the experience of expressing anger at and with God is part of a vibrant living and daring faith, perhaps most beautifully on display throughout the scriptures, but can be regularly seen in the emotional lives of the psalmists and prophets.
It’s amazing to me how artists, musicians, poets, authors, painters, performers, how they are able to. Access the truth through the human aesthetic sense beauty, the pursuit of truth and goodness is not safe, and beauty is not safe. Cynthia described for me some of the most vulnerable and open ways that she encounters God while guiding people through the full gamut of dealing with trauma.
Cynthia Eriksson: The first step in lament is to make a direct address to God or your higher power. What is the way that you would. express, you know, in the lament around what was happening with my son, I might say, Oh God, the father of fathers, the great parent, the one that I rely on, making that direct address to God, and then naming what’s happening, naming the reality of your experience, what has already happened, what’s currently happening, being truthful about all of it, truthful about your emotions, truthful about your hurt.
Truthful about how angry you might be, truthful about how wrong it is, truthful about where, why God isn’t there, all of those questions, all of those, just naming it, putting it out there. What’s real for you in this moment? And then moving into an appeal for action. What do you want to happen? You’ve named all these things.
What is it that you want to see? What is it that I want to see? How do I want things to be different? How do I want God to intervene? How do I want things to change? Again, being truthful and unpacking that, putting it out there on paper, putting it out there to God. And it might be that you end up asking a question in that sort of, in that desire for intervention.
God, why aren’t you, why aren’t you here? Why haven’t you intervened? Why aren’t you doing the things that I would have expected in my faith journey with you and what I understand from scripture or what I believe are the promises that you’ve given? Why aren’t you acting in that way? This is the interesting thing about laments, many of them end with this, a conclusion of affirming a faith or a sense of that I will trust in God’s promises that in scripture and in the Psalms, particularly many of them have that final movement towards reconnecting with God or readdressing God.
But I would say, and I think it’s, and, and Psalms is that way too. They don’t all end that way. So actually in that expression to God and expressing what you’d like to see happen. in that expression, you can end with a sense of, and I will trust you, then do that. Do that final conclusion of affirmation. But if you can’t, Psalm 33, Psalm 88, there are Psalms that don’t end with that affirmation.
And I think that’s important for us to say that God wants that too. God wants all of that. God wants those expressions in ways that are honest and that pour our hearts out to him. And you think about the way that’s being connected. That’s being truly attached to God when we can really be ourselves in that full way.
And when I took the time to sit down, pulling out my journal and writing out all of these expressions of what had happened, how I was feeling, what I wanted for my son, what I wanted God to do, What was so despairing about things that I knew couldn’t really change and then just sort of sitting with that and allowing that to be real.
There was a way that it created a freedom to be present with God in that. And it wasn’t instantaneous. I mean, I will say that there were moments where I would still be like, well, I’m not sure I can trust you guys. I’m still not completely sure that we’re on the same page with this and I’m still kind of mad.
But it was a beginning. Just like it’s a kind of a relationship, it was a beginning of that honest expression. It allowed me to feel my feelings in a way that was contained, in a way that had a space. Allowed me to see some of those more deeply than I’d been giving myself the space to do that. And allowed me to be more present, I think, with my family and with my son as well.
And I want to also name the ways that I see and have experienced that practice of lament is a really important aspect of resilience when it comes to even recognizing the suffering of others. That’s really helpful.
Pam King: In the science of virtue and also the philosophy of virtue, we talk about practices that help cultivate virtue, but that you pursue the practice not for an end of, in this case, feeling better, but you pursue the practice to lament in an end of itself.
Cynthia Eriksson: Yeah. And in fact, we’re doing it to be in relationship with God. To show up faithfully. Yeah. Yeah. And that was, that was part of the journey for me, honestly, and continues to be because you realize that there’s this tension of if I show up for God, will God show up for me? And so you have to sort of face the risk that you might get to the end of the lament and not feel that sense of.
reaffirmation of the promise or a sense of, Oh yes, God’s faithful in this. It might just be the suffering that’s there, but the experience of. And doing that with an open heart towards God is a very different experience than retreating from God or turning away from God and experiencing the suffering in a disconnect from God.
I had the opportunity to do some research with some of my students and we interviewed people who have been urban ministry workers for a number of years and asked them about their experiences of trauma. during their work in urban ministry, and then how that impacted their relationship with God, or their sense of their spiritual formation and spiritual development.
And one of the things that we found was this really interesting, very authentic way that some of these workers would talk about the opportunity to be angry with God. You know, how could you create that kind of pain? How have you allowed this to happen? This is not what I signed up for. Um, that honesty and that integrity in that space, as opposed to this more distance turning away from God, a posture of sort of moving away in the midst of it.
And that the opportunity to be honest and truthful and present with such a different intimacy and allowed for such a different opportunity for connection and growth. And I think that’s important to give that permission. And if we look at the Psalms. truly look at the Psalms and look at lamentations in terms of the kinds of things that are said in the Psalms of great anger and rage and calling God out.
This is not what you promised. This is not okay. Where are you? That that’s, that’s in our scripture. That is part of scripture. That is part of the canon of scripture. That is what we have as, as our guide. For navigating all of these or being present in our lives and in the suffering that we experience as humans and in the suffering that we need to experience more of in the experience of other humans in communities that may not be the same as ours.
It’s also about how do I show up for the people that are around me who are in pain that if I’m not regulated, I’m not going to be able to kind of be in that. I’m going to avoid it, I’m going to pretend it’s not there, I’m going to, like, what does it mean for me to actually open myself up to the pain of others and stay present?
Pam King: And I think one of the core tenets of thriving would be it, thriving is not just about me, but it is about we. And so we pursue resilience. We go to the daily resilience gym to work out our resilience muscles of the five R’s, not just so we can feel better. Or pursue our own well being, but that so we can show up for others and that we can enable others to heal and thrive and have more experiences of justice.
Cynthia Eriksson: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s the piece that That I’ve been really trying to work out for myself in terms of how that relates to my obedience to God’s call for justice, to do justice, love, mercy, and walk humbly. It’s like being obedient to that so that when I’m in situations where I’m called out for maybe a racial microaggression that I’ve committed or for ways that I have done things not intentionally but still hurtfully.
to other someone, how I can stay present and regulated in the midst of those conversations so that I’m learning and so that I’m using my own position of whatever power that I have to try to make a difference. And Really wanting folks to see that that ability to stay present and the ability to stay settled in those kinds of situations is so much of what we need right now when our experiences become so polarized and so dichotomous.
That people can feel easily threatened when things are kind of shown to them that are different or that might be challenging.
Pam King: Cynthia, in all this vast information, in the complexity of trauma, in the many ways human beings as very complex creatures might respond, you’ve mentioned that at times people might be avoidant. So, coping is coping? Yeah. Yeah. Until it’s not. And maybe, can you give us a quick offering on some not, when coping does not become helpful?
Cynthia Eriksson: Yeah. And I think that’s such a great reminder to kind of think, yes, I think we saw an uptick in things like drinking alcohol during COVID, how many wine bottles were in people’s or whiskey bottles from people’s recycling. And there may be times where you find yourself using those kinds of substances or ways of disconnecting, maybe sleeping more, maybe shopping more, maybe other ways of getting, playing video games more, getting quick hits of dopamine, working more, all those kinds of avoidance. And that recognizing the, how tempting that is and how normal it is in some ways, and then the ways that it becomes destructive because doing avoidance behavior.
It doesn’t allow you to process those emotions or be present with what’s going on. And it also disconnects you from the people that are there to support you. And I think that as we were also talking about processing emotions and reflecting on how you think about what you’re feeling inside and the thoughts and right thinking.
One of the things that I think can be really tempting too is replaying an experience or. ruminating on experience again and again, and the ways that’s a type of thinking or type of kind of reflection that can become destructive. And the ways that we, I would encourage us to pay attention to when thoughts become ruminations is when we’re caught in this replaying of the experience in a way that’s judging, that’s wishing that things had gone differently, that’s judging ourselves for our responses.
That’s wishing for something different instead of stepping back and saying, even to the lament, what actually happened? What do I want differently? And then for enrumination, what can I actually do that’s different? You know, can I have a conversation? Can I step towards this thing that happened and actually make, repair it?
Or can I. get something that adds to my sense of safety or reduces my sense of vulnerability around a certain event that might have happened. So I think that’s the piece for me that’s important around Thinking that becomes ruminating is taking that step to make it something that becomes external to those thoughts.
How do I act on it? How can I be proactive?
Pam King: So in a sense, rumination is processing is not cycling through the injustices, either how I screwed up blaming myself or how someone treated me poorly or violated me. It’s being able to hold that and look at that objectively as much as we can and say, this means what can I do to heal?
Exactly. To re forge connection. Exactly. That’s really helpful. Because I think sometimes people feel like rumination is processing, but that’s not a constructive.
Cynthia Eriksson: Right. Processing. And I think that to add a component around our spirituality too, that’s a really important place for grace, is how do we show grace for ourselves?
How do we forgive ourselves, especially if we’re ruminating on something that we wish we had done differently, or a place that we’re blaming ourselves. How do we step towards that and say, what forgiveness would I give someone else if they were sharing this experience with me? And what kind of grace would I show myself right now?
Pam King: Cynthia regularly guides people through trauma recovery, intended to lead to resilience and thriving, training leaders and frontline relief workers. And I asked her to bring one of these practices for us to do in this episode. She suggested a grounding practice that we’ll begin together right now. It’s a means of Slowing, settling into the place you find yourself, paying attention, activating your nervous system, and beginning to notice those emotions, noticing how we feel, and coming to accept and become more curious about them.
Cynthia Eriksson: This is actually something that I’ve used in class. That is adapted from my, the book, My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem. And also some grounding practices thrown in there from Lisa Najavitz in her Seeking Safety book. I’m going to kind of move us into that space. Pay attention to our bodies and take a few deep breaths.
Breathing into your stomach, through your nose and out through your mouth.
Now take some time to notice your surroundings. First, turn to your right and look all the way behind you.
Now come back to the center. Then turn to your left and look all the way behind you again.
Now come back to the center.
Now take three deep breaths, noticing where you feel the air moving in and out of your body.
Now breathe normally. Bring your attention to your body, closing your eyes if they’re comfortable.
Press your feet into the floor. Remember, feel the floor as solid underneath you. Notice how your bottom rests in your seat, feel your lower back supported by the chair.
Now notice any other sensations in your body, the bend in your knees, your spine, straight or curved, your belly, and any tension that you might hold there, and your chest expanding and shrinking with each breath.
Starting at the top of your head, bring your attention slowly down through your body as you’re comfortable. And notice the sensations. As your attention passes through each area of your body, sensations of warmth, coolness, relaxation or tightness, softness, pressure, energy or numbness,
slowly move your attention, noticing those sensations,
just noticing and accepting what is in your body.
Now bring your attention back to the feeling of your body in your seat, how your awareness returns to any sounds around you, and
when you’re comfortable, you can open your eyes.
That process might be a little different than some other body scans or other experiences that you have. Just want to point out some of the things of why we did them. So first, staying kind of present and noticing your surroundings is an important piece of grounding. So looking around the room, seeing where you are, kind of being in that present moment, in that space, that’s grounding you and helping to settle you in that space.
Then the point where we. turned and looked around behind us to the right and to the left. Risma Menachem talks about that activating the vagus nerve, getting our parasympathetic nervous system activated by that simple stretching motion. And then as we talked about breathing, taking in those deep breaths, in fact, that can be one of the easiest ways if you’re feeling really agitated and you’re breathing really quickly is actually just to slow your breath and that signals to your body.
That’s an important way to To reconnect and settle and get the parasympathetic nervous system activated. And then paying attention to our body, learning that just paying attention and noticing those sensations, that’s a practice that we can do that helps us to learn how to notice, learning how to pay attention, learning that there are different sensations and that practicing that over time and paying attention can then give us that awareness for when we are feeling feelings.
And we notice those sensations in our bodies, notice tightness, notice warmth, notice coolness. Those can help us inform what kinds of bodily experiences we’re having and how those connect to the emotions that might, and continue with those.
Pam King: That is so helpful and personally found it so refreshing in this moment.
Thank you, Cynthia. I’m really grateful.
I’d love to ask you, we’ve been talking about trauma, suffering, and hard things. There are practices, there are things we can do to connect with ourselves, with others, with God. But what happens when it’s too much? How do you know it’s too much? When do you get help and where do you go?
Cynthia Eriksson: Yeah. I think there are layers to that question because we all have different circumstances in terms of how to access different kinds of support.
So I first would want to say getting help can look a variety of ways. When you need help, I would say is when you realize that the types of coping you’re using are getting in the way of being who you are, of doing the work you need to do, getting in the way of your sleep, getting in the way of your relationships, getting in the way of being able to concentrate. So you’ll see that it impacts your ability to kind of do the things that you want to do in your life. And that suggests getting some specific help. That can look like pastoral care. It could be talking to a lay counselor. It could be talking to a good friend who you know is wise.
and seeing what it’s like to express the story, to share the story, maybe cry together, lament together, be in that presence. But there may be ways that’s not quite enough either. So you might do some of that work and then say, Oh, I’m actually still having challenges. Then I would start looking for someone who has a professional role as a counselor.
And that could be a psychotherapist, that could be a marriage and family therapist. And there are different ways you could do psychology today if you’re in the States. Psychology Today has a website that you can search for people who have trauma specializations in their clinical practice. The International Society of Traumatic Stress.
also has some resources to identify different therapists who have trauma history or trauma training. There might also be things to read about trauma. There’s books like Bessel van der Kolk’s book, The Body Keeps the Score. Many people find that a really helpful resource to understand trauma. Or Judith Herman’s book, Trauma and Recovery.
Resmaa Menakem’s book, My Grandmother’s Hands is an incredible book on racial trauma and racial trauma healing. So, those types of resources also online, and we can kind of put this in the show notes for you, is the National Center for Traumatic Stress, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. It’s your own self awareness, but then it might be someone that you know and love who says to you, are you okay?
Do you need help? And take that seriously. Ask them why they say that. You likely will feel defensive as that question gets asked, but maybe take a step back and say, what is it that you’re seeing? Or what do you think? Or it may be like, that you burst out in tears, and that’s okay too. But using those as signs that it’s good to reach out and then identifying some sources that, that fit for you and that makes sense for you through your insurance, through your church, through other community resources, finding that space to talk through your experiences.
Pam King: Cynthia,
I’d love to close by asking, what would you describe Thriving as?
Cynthia Eriksson: Knowing you for so long, I should have prepared for this . I should, but I didn’t. I didn’t. So this is totally spontaneous. I didn’t ask you what I think it is you. For you, what is thriving? Yeah. For me, thriving is to be able to be fully myself, to really know that I am loved by God, that God made me in this particular way, in all of the things that are unique and crazy and frustrating that.
But those were, that’s how God made me and to be able to live that out with freedom and with joy in ways that can bring freedom and joy to the world. So living that out well so that others can live well. and others can thrive.
Pam King: I so appreciate that and I so appreciate how your very rich discussion of trauma and resilience and particularly the perspective of being able to build skills for resilience or muscles for resilience enables one.
To be freed up, to be more fully oneself, not to be stuck in pain or rumination, but to live in it and through it, not avoid it. And that really does allow us to live most fully as ourselves and be attuned to the needs of others as well.
Cynthia Eriksson: Absolutely.
Pam King: Well, speaking of joy, it has been a joy to have this conversation with you, to realize more fully how I get to reap the benefits of this wise, wonderful woman as a friend.
And Cynthia, I want you to know that you are deeply loved and treasured. You have been a good steward of suffering and pain in your life, and you have not only experienced growth, but brought growth to others through that. Thanks for taking your time to be with us.
Cynthia Eriksson: Thank you, Pam. It’s humbling to be part of this journey with you, to be able to share so that others can thrive.
Pam King: My friend, Cynthia Eriksson, brings me so much inspiration and joy. When I think of not just her work, but her own personal spiritual life. I see an integrated woman, one who makes sense of the physical and environmental, psychological, cultural, political, and definitely spiritual realities of life, and leads others on a path to resilience.
recovery, and brilliant thriving.
The key takeaways that I will carry with me from this conversation are the following.
A life of thriving on purpose actually includes pain and sadness. A history of trauma is not a disqualification from thriving.
Coping strategies are tricky. They tempt us towards avoidance, defensiveness, substance abuse, blaming and self judgment. Our goal is not coping. Our goal must be thriving.
Lots of R’s here, but regulation, reflection, right thinking, relationships, respite and rest, and reason are core components to developing resilience and enacting recovery.
It’s okay to be angry at God. And it helps to tell God that’s actually the case.
We can find emotional grounding and regulation through intentionally enhancing a deep connection between our bodies and minds.
And the path to thriving is often one where our minds need to follow our bodies and all their glorious complexity.
With & For is a production of The Thrive Center at Fuller Theological Seminary. This episode featured Cynthia Eriksson. This season, new episodes drop every Monday. For more information about resilience recovery in Cynthia Eriksson’s framework of five Rs, visit our website at thethrivecenter.org. I am so grateful to the staff and fellows of the Thrive Center and our With & For podcast team.
Jill Westbrook is our senior director and producer. Lauren Kim is our operations manager. Wren Jurgensen is our social media graphic designer. Evan Rosa is our consulting producer. And special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology in Marriage and Family Therapy.
I’m your host, Dr. Pam King. Thank you for listening.
Episode Summary
Whole human thriving includes the ability to feel, deal, and heal when we encounter trauma. Psychologist Cynthia Eriksson (Fuller School of Psychology) wants to help us understand the human response to pain, suffering, tragedy, and grief. She’s finding that resilience and recovery comes through a spiritually and therapeutically informed approach that prizes vulnerability, honesty, emotional grounding, attention to our bodies, and mutual presence with and for others. Includes a Meditative Exercise: Cynthia Eriksson guides listeners through a Grounding Practice for Emotional and Embodied Connection.
Note: This episode contains content about trauma. Listener discretion is advised.
Show Notes
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Note: This episode contains content about trauma. Listener discretion is advised.The path toward hope and healing is often charted through pain, suffering, loss, and grief. Coming from two decades spent studying post-traumatic stress disorder, researcher and clinical psychologist Dr. Cynthia Eriksson Cynthia has worked with individuals and communities in the wake of major tragedy. Her psychological and spiritual perspectives emerge from first hand experience with Cambodian children exposed to the atrocities of war, Ugandan refugees, Haitian victims of earthquake catastrophe and infrastructure collapse, or at home in Pasadena tending to frontline workers who are often left burned out and traumatized from relief work. Cynthia Eriksson discusses how to pursue resilience and recovery by reflecting on the role of faith and spirituality; habits and rhythms of life; and relationships and community. How should we understand the difference between resilience and thriving? Resilience focuses on the adaptive capacities that people need to bounce back from trauma, creating the capacity to bounce back, and the skills to increase one’s ability and agility to recover. Whereas thriving refers to adaptive growth through adversity, trauma, challenges, and opportunities, all the while in pursuit of one’s purpose. Both resilience and thriving recognize the complexities of life, and both affirm and require the actualization of human agency.In this conversation with Cynthia Eriksson, we discuss:
- How leaders and helpers and caretakers can identify trauma in themselves, and come to recognize, accept, and respond.
- The importance of paying attention to our brains, bodies, and environment.
- The 5 R’s of resilience to trauma and recovery from trauma.
- Spiritual responses to suffering and pain—which can often result in incredibly profound experiences with God—and this includes expressing anger at God within a struggle.
- And practically, we talk about how to deal with avoidance, defensiveness, and blaming others or ourselves—basically, the potentially destructive nature of coping mechanisms.
- And we close with a beautiful grounding practice that connects us all to our bodies and emotions, to engage trauma, and stay on the path to thriving.
Show Notes
- Resource: "Thriving through Trauma: Five R’s for Resilience and Recovery" (via thethrivecenter.org)
- Resource: "Practice: The Five R’s of Resilience and Recovery" (via thethrivecenter.org)
- Resilience versus thriving—what’s the difference?
- What is trauma? A threat to existence.
- Extending from trauma to suffering and helping other people build resilience and recover
- Cynthia Eriksson’s personal experience of trauma (and not realizing it)
- Problem solving and seeking control as a coping mechanism and defense against acknowledging and dealing with trauma
- Dissociation
- Experiencing trauma is not the same thing as being traumatized
- Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn (”tend and befriend”)
- The symptoms of trauma and areas of disruption
- What happens in our bodies
- What happens in our minds (thinking)
- What happens in our relationships
- What happens in our sense of meaning, justice, and making sense of the world
- Resilience
- “What are some of the things that we can all do that help us to build some muscles when it comes to navigating life's suffering?
- Resilience as a skill everyone can cultivate through personal growth, rather than a static trait
- “Neurons that fire together wire together.”
- The Five R’s of Resilience
- Regulation: bodies and emotions
- Reflection and Right Thinking: truth and factual acceptance
- Relationships: community, connection, friendship, and support
- Respite and Rest: disengagement and Sabbath healing
- Reason: meaning and transcendence
- How to deal with big, overwhelming feelings in the wake of trauma.
- Grounding and settling practices: feeling where you are. “I’m here now, and I’m safe.”
- Lament as a healthy spiritual response to trauma
- Anger at and with God
- Spiritual practice of lament
- Asking a hard question of God: “Why aren’t you here, God?”
- Lament and anger at God as a practice to stay in relationship with God
- “There’s this tension of: “If I show up for God, will God show up for me?”
- Orienting to the pain and suffering of others: “How do I show up for the people that are around me who are in pain what does it mean for me to actually open myself up to the pain of others and stay present?”
- “Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly.” (Micah 6:8)
- Coping mechanisms: substances, shopping, Netflix, avoidance
- Unhealthy responses to trauma-based emotion: the dangers of replaying, ruminating, and regretting
- Rumination is not a constructive processing.
- What kind of grace can I show myself?
- Book: Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
- Book: Lisa Najavits, Seeking Safety: A Treatment Manual for PTSD and Substance Abuse
- Guided meditative practice: Grounding
- Explaining the science behind Grounding Practices
- Practical ways to get help
- Book: Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Braim, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
- Book: Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
- Book: Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
- National Child Traumatic Stress Network (currently under website maintenance as of March 4, 2024; contact helpdesk at help@nctsn.org or in an emergency, dial 911)
- National Center for PTSD
- Cynthia Eriksson on What is thriving?
- Joy and Freedom
- Pam King’s Key Takeaways
- A life of thriving on purpose actually includes pain and sadness. A history of trauma is not a disqualification from thriving.
- Coping strategies are tricky. They tempt us towards avoidance, defensiveness, defensiveness, substance abuse, blaming, and self judgment. Our goal is not coping. Our goal must be thriving.
- Lots of R's here, but regulation, reflection, right thinking, relationships, respite, and rest, and reason are core components to developing resilience and enacting recovery.
- It's okay to be angry at God, and it helps to tell God that's actually the case.
- We can find emotional grounding and regulation through intentionally enhancing a deep connection between our bodies and minds.
- And the path to thriving is often one where our minds need to follow our bodies and all their glorious complexity.
- For more information about resilience recovery, org. In Cynthia Erickson's framework of five hours, visit our website at thethrivecenter.org.
About Cynthia Eriksson
Cynthia Eriksson is Dean of the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy, and is a Professor of Psychology in the Clinical Psychology Department. Her research is particularly focused on the needs of cross-cultural aid for mission workers, as well as the interaction of trauma and spirituality. This work has included trauma training, research, and consultation in Monrovia, Liberia; Kobe, Japan; Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Barcelona, Spain; Guatemala City, Guatemala; Gulu, Uganda; and Amman, Jordan. Eriksson also collaborated with colleagues in the US, Europe, and Africa on a longitudinal research project on stress in humanitarian aid workers funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. She also participates in the Headington Program in International Trauma at Fuller. She has completed research on risk and resilience, exposure to stress, and spiritual development in urban youth workers funded by the Fuller Youth Institute. Eriksson and her students are currently exploring the intersection of cultural humility and culturally-embedded resilience practices through collaborations with ministry agencies and Fuller colleague Alexia Salvatierra.About the Thrive Center
- Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
- Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
- Follow us on X @thrivecenter
- Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter
About Dr. Pam King
Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.About With & For
- Host: Pam King
- Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
- Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
- Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
- Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa
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