Christian Therapy & Trauma Healing: Spiritual Abuse, Shame, and Identity in Christ

Hello there, fearfully and wonderfully made human. Before we begin today's episode, I want to offer a gentle content note. This conversation includes honest discussion around spiritual abuse, shame, faith crisis, sexual choices, abortion, emotional suffering, and redemption. Nothing is shared for shock value, but Vanessa's story is very real and tender.

Please listen with care. Pause if you need to, and reach out to a licensed mental health professional, pastor, spiritual director, or trusted support person if this brings up something tender in your own story. My hope is that this conversation reminds you that truth and grace can meet us in the places we thought were too broken to bring into light.

Hello there fearfully and wonderfully made human and welcome back to the Holistic Counselor podcast where I hope we continue to explore the sacred intersection of theology, biology, and psychology. I'm your host Diana Rice, founder of the Through the Valley Therapy and Transform Mind Consulting and Coaching.

And today I am welcoming someone I have never met in person. But when I read her bio, I literally thought, "Okay, she understands the arts. She understands what it's like to be on a set. She understands the therapy room. And she loves Jesus.

Oh, bring her on." Because if you have listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you know I love conversations that do not fit neatly into one box. I love when someone can hold creativity, clinical wisdom, faith, suffering, beauty, and humanity in the same room.

Today's guest is Vanessa Bentley. Vanessa is a licensed professional counselor, author, speaker, and podcast host serving the Nashville and broader Middle Tennessee communities. Before becoming a psychotherapist, Vanessa earned her BFA in musical theater from the Tish School of the Arts at New York University and spent 10 years working in theater, film, television, and print modeling.

Her work as an actress took her from the professional stages of Manhattan to the historical stages of Europe, including a European tour of Westside Story, where she played the role of Maria. Wow, that's pretty cool. After 10 years in the performing arts, Vanessa transitioned into counseling and earned her MA in counseling from TCA Nazarene University in Nashville.

She began her clinical work in a community nonprofit serving underprivileged clients throughout Middle Tennessee. Her work later expanded into teaching and lecturing counseling students, divinity students, and clergy on the intersection of psychology and theology. Vanessa has lectured at places such as Vanderbilt University, Lip Cone University, Nashoto House Seminary, Sani, the University of the South, Cumberland Heights Addiction Treatment Center, and more.

She is also the author of the toolbox, the tools we need to build relationships and repair them when they break and the host of the work of being human podcast. What drew me in is Vanessa's belief that mental health requires two commitments. We have to face reality and embrace our humanity.

And honestly, that is such a powerful place to begin because so many people are searching for Christian therapy, trauma healing, emotional healing, faith and mental health, identity in Christ, spiritual formation, relationship repair, and whole person healing. But underneath all that, I think many of us are really asking, "What is true?

Who am I really? Where is God in my suffering? and how do I stop performing long enough to become honest, human, and whole? So, today I am curious to hear Vanessa's story, how her life in the arts shaped her work as a therapist, what her own faith journey has taught her, and how she helps people face reality, embrace their humanity, and build healing on a foundation of truth.

Vanessa, welcome to the Holistic Counselor Podcast.

Thank you so much for having me, Diana. It's really an honor to be here.

Oh, all right. So before we even get into the clinical work and our licenses and all the things we've learned, right, I want to hear your human story. What parts of your own journey shaped the way you understand healing, faith, and truth?

That's a big question. Um because there's multiple answers, but if I had to really sum up the parts of my story that shaped how I understand healing, it would be my failures.

Wow.

Yeah. Um, you know, I grew up in a pretty religious family. Um, the specific, uh, denomination that we grew up in was 7th Day Adventism.

Oh, yeah.

And it's a pretty strict, um, subset, I think, of, you know, the non-denominational, well, it is a denomination of the evangelical Christian world.

And I grew up with very loving parents. Um, I have three older sisters, but the the emphasis on God and spirituality was on uh obedience and holiness. It's a very legalistic um denomination. And so, there were a lot of rules. And I equated pleasing God with following the rules.

It really didn't go beyond that. I don't remember ever hearing that God loved me. I'm sure it was said. I don't remember it hitting my heart. I remember like going to church on Saturday because we followed the Sabbath. I remember not eating shrimp.

I didn't have bacon until I was 18 years old.

Wow.

Yeah. I mean, we were like very Adventist. We just followed these rules. And there is so much more to the Adventist faith than that. And I don't want to sell it short, but just in my little brain, okay, and spiritual formation is really, really important.

The way that it got passed down to me, it was a set of rules. And so unfortunately when I entered adulthood, you can't build a life on a set of rules. You can't build a life on um a sense of your own worthiness being connected to your performance or behavior.

And so I made a lot of mistakes in my 20s and 30s. And it was during that time that I got into therapy. Um and that was a good decision and that was a helpful decision. And I'm blessed that I had a really really good therapist during that time.

But if you asked me, Vanessa, what shaped your understanding of healing, it would have been my own brokenness. 100%. Um, and and we'll get into this more, and I don't know how much you want me to get into this now, in terms of the story.

As much as you want, girlfriend. As much as you want, because

the you know, this is what I loved about your vibe because I do I do go and listen to people's stuff before they come on, especially if I don't know them or met them. and and your authentic authenticity and just the being real in talking about spirituality and psychology because what you just said like you inherited faith I inherited faith right but what what you ended up doing was investigating the faith

right you went from inherited to investigating to examine faith and that as therapists that you know like you're working with clients I'm sure many that are like disentangling or deconstructing or understand like this is So anyway, yeah, please whatever comes to your heart that you're willing to share, you do that.

I'm not this is this is our time and you know, as a podcaster and totally

few women that love the Lord and I don't know if you heard anything of my story in the if you listen to my podcast, but CPTtsd is a real thing for me as as well. And

and I think these

these conversations is what people are longing for, especially these next generations that are searching for truth when they've been raised with so much editing

and not authentic and

you know. So anyway, sorry. Yeah, I told you I'd go into rabbit holes.

No, I love it. And and with that invitation, let me just give it to your audience real straight. Okay, I'm going to tell you my story. Um because before anyone becomes a therapist, they live a story.

Very few people grow up thinking, I want to become a therapist when I grow up. I want to sit in rooms with people and hear like the depths of human brokenness. Like nobody really, very few people I think come into this field thinking that way.

And so let me give you a little bit of an overview of how the therapist is made

because therapists are not made in the classroom. They're made in the fire.

So I grew up in this loving family. My mother was born and raised in Colombia, South America. My dad's family was from Italy. Um he was born here, but his family was from Italy. So, I grew up in this cross-cultural environment [clears throat] in New York.

Wait, wait. We got to stop. I'm so sorry. We got to stop right there. My mom's Colombian, too.

Stop it.

Where you from?

You speak Spanish?

Only enough to communicate. You're probably much more fluent than I am.

My mom My mom is from Papayan, Colia or was. She passed away a couple years ago.

Yeah, same. Yeah, my my mom also passed away or it already um my mom actually she died 20 years ago. I was pretty young when she died. But um

yeah,

she was born in Marikita and she and her whole family are from Boota and I have family in Kali. I still have family I think just in in Kali at this point in Boota. But yeah, my family, my mother's side of the family is Colombian.

Yeah, my mom's side is from Poayan, Colombia. It's like four hours south of Kali in this little tiny town in the mountains. And I've only been there a few times because it was scary in the 80s because I'm I'm a child of the 70s.

I don't know when you were born, but

same. Yeah. 77. Yeah.

Okay. I'm 71. So, we just told our ages. See, we're really authentic.

You know what? Look, we're in a field where you can mature into this field. Like, we don't have to pretend that we're younger. I'm like, I'm pretending that I'm older. The more wisdom you have in this field. The more years of life on you, the better you are.

You know,

I'm embracing my tinsel.

That's it. Embrace your tinsel. I love that. Embrace your tinsel. And her be beautiful. Well, if you're if you're listening to this and not watching it, Diana has really beautiful long brown hair and so you can see the the strands of wisdom coming through and she's covered in beautiful

because I have a party in my head. That's what my grandkids say.

I love it all the time.

I love it. I love it.

All right. Anyway, so back

So I I I'm raised in this loving family, but there's transgenerational trauma. And what that means is there were wounds from childhood in my parents that had never been healed. They brought that into our family. Was there love? Yes. Was there trauma? Yes.

Yes.

Um, and so I grew up in this environment and my mother used religion as sort of her glue. She didn't really look at her own brokenness through a lens of psychology or mental health. Uh, we all really wish she had, but she didn't.

She sort of was like, Jesus can fix everything. And here's the thing, everybody, and you're going to hear me say a lot more about this today. Yes, Jesus can fix everything, but there is a reality of living in the flesh. and battling in the flesh that we have to face.

That's part of what we do in my practice is we face reality and part of the reality is we are in a broken world and it breaks us. So, can Jesus restore that? Absolutely. But, do we suffer? Do we experience pain and brokenness in our lives?

Absolutely. So, I'm raised in this environment and there's love and there's brokenness and there's trauma. And if you're listening to this podcast, you're putting up your hand and say, "Yeah, me too. Yes, this is the human condition. So, I'm really oriented toward the arts from a young age.

Again, the the therapist is not typically wanting to be a therapist at seven, eight, and nine. I wanted to be on Broadway. Well, first I wanted to be a lawyer. Um because well, I'm good at arguing and I enjoy it. Oh god. But then I realized, oh, I can sing and I'm really musical and I can play the piano and so I start getting into the arts.

Okay. And so my parents are like, oh, she was born to sing. And so I start I'm on television by the time I'm like 12. I'm in this little TV show called Kittio Video. And then I'm doing um commercials and then I start doing My mom wanted to put me in pageantss.

That did not work. Um and then I start singing in the choir and I start singing in this a capella group at church and I'm singing and I'm singing and I'm performing and I'm playing the piano and I'm writing music and I wrote my best friend a a song for her 16th birthday for her sweet 16.

I wrote her a song that I could still play for you and sing to you today. So all of this art is coming out of me. Well, the natural step is for me to go to the Tish School of the Arts. So I get into NYU, really beautiful program.

I, you know, I take my religion with me into college. But again, I had a set of rules. I did not have a sense of myself as a daughter of God.

Wow.

I didn't. I had a sense of religion. Yeah.

Now, what I'm talking about here is very important because it's the difference between belief and identity. When you have belief but not identity, you will always always be scratching at the surface of what's possible in your relationship with God.

When you have identity, when you know who you are in the world with God, that's a completely different way to walk through life. So, I had religion but not identity. So, I go to NYU, the 7th Day Adventist Church in New York City.

It's very small. It's way up in Harlem. Like, it was not easy to practice as an Adventist. And also, I'm 17 years old. I'm getting rushed by the thrill of Manhattan and the temptation and the guys. And I was kind of a late bloomer and I did not get a lot of attention from guys in high school.

And then all of a sudden, I'm walking the streets of Manhattan. Okay, you get it. Okay. A lot of women have this experience in college. Like those of us who didn't develop early.

I'm still developing honestly.

I'm I stopped like I stopped at 13. It was over. God was just like that's as far as you're going to get.

I was called little boy all through high school. I mean just because I was a flakita with nothing, no boobs or butt, nothing. For those of you who don't speak Spanish, that's like a nickname for the skinny girls. Diana and I are the skinny girls.

Okay. So, I get to NYU and all of a sudden I'm getting attention from guys and, you know, I'm in this really prestigious musical theater program and everyone's really good. I mean, I remember our first day of class,

uh, the the head of the program,

the creative director of my musical theater school said, "If you were the star in your high school, put up your hand." And there were 48 kids in the room and 48 hands shot straight up. And I remember looking around and thinking like, "Oh, okay.

This is the big league. We're in New York now." Okay.

So, as I'm going through school, friends of mine are getting on Broadway. Like, in school, they would leave class at 5:00, run up to the theater district, do their show, come back, and get get up and go to class. I mean, it was that competitive and that good of a program.

I did not do that. I wasn't that good,

but they did. So, as I'm doing this, my first year in college, I'm like, I don't want to be an Adventist. I don't think I disowned the faith at all. I think I was just like, I don't want to go up to church and like get on a subway for 45 minutes.

Like it I'm just gonna It wasn't on my radar. Again, I had rules. I did not have identity.

So my sophomore year, I joined this campus ministry and this ministry is really dynamic and they want to change the face of NYU. We're going to change the world. And I love that spirit. But there was a lot wrong with this church. It was very fundamentalist.

It was very legalistic. It was very actually spiritually abusive in a lot of ways. So, I go through this church for three years while I'm in college. To be completely honest, it saved me from a lot of what I would have gotten into in Manhattan otherwise.

Well, and the and the thing is like this, we have to have that because I want people to know if they haven't heard my story. Like 29 is when I when the Lord changed my life.

So, I was raised Catholic, right? legalism rules. And I do not want to put down these denominations because I know beautiful human beings in all these churches that really do know their identity in Christ no matter what.

I hate to say flavor, but remember there's thousands of denominations. People don't understand that. They think their denomination is it and their rules is it and everybody else is going to hell.

Yeah. So, I just want, you know, this is why we're having a conversation and I'm all fired up because

I'm like excited to talk to someone that really understands this and the psych the psychology, biology, and the theology mixed together because

many people don't understand that.

Well, we'll get into that momentarily, but you're absolutely right. You know, one of the most serious crimes we can commit against ourselves is reducing ourselves. And this is part of why I wanted to come on your podcast because I love the thrust of it.

I love the idea of being holistic in the way we understand each other. And after I finish up my own story, let's talk more about foundations,

please.

Because how we understand ourselves as human beings is absolutely vital to how we understand healing.

Um, okay. So, I'm at NYU. I start this campus ministry. It's very abusive. Long story short, I'm 23 years old. I've graduated. I've now been working in the full-time ministry. I went into the full-time ministry. I was leading campus ministries. I was leading pre-teen ministries.

I was traveling the world. I mean, I was living this very dynamic women's ministry life. And it came naturally to me in the sense that I I have leadership qualities naturally, but I also really did I love spirituality. I love the Bible. I love the search for truth.

I always have. Well, at the end of this spiritually abusive experience in this church and a lifetime of living with rules and not relationship or identity, I basically was like, I think I'm done with Christianity. This isn't answering the questions. I'm miserable. I don't even like myself anymore because of the spiritual abuse I endured in this church.

So, I walked out into, if you know, Manhattan, I was living on Union Square,

okay? And I walked out into Union Square, which is about 14th Street, and I put my hand up to to heaven, and I said, I remember this like it was yesterday, "Don't come after me. I'm done."

Wow.

And I left God.

Wow.

Left the church, left God. I had become so disillusioned by

a faith that did not seem relevant to my life.

Yeah.

And I decided there is truth. Well, I didn't decide that. I believed there is truth. And the reason why I believed that, this is kind of an interesting little side note. While I was in the church and while I was in my Christian experience before this time, I read Mere Christianity by CS Lewis.

And there's a famous quote in mere Christianity where he says um you know think of a country where people were admired for running away from battle

or think of a place where a man felt proud because he double crossed all the people who had ever been kind to him. And what CS Lewis was pointing to is there is a universal objective morality that we are all participating in. And his point was where does it come from?

Okay. But that stayed with me and I set out at that time in my life to find truth. I had ruled out the Christian faith. I was like, "It's not here. This just hurt me." And all it did was give me rules. It's not here.

But there is truth and I'm going to find it. And there's a passage in Ecclesiastes, I think it's Ecclesiastes 2 or two, where Solomon writes, "I denied myself nothing."

Yeah.

And he goes after everything. Like I amassed houses. I amassed horses. I amassed women. I built this. I built that. Well, in my little 24year-old world, what that meant was, I'm going to move to Europe. I'm going to be as sexual as I want with anybody, whether they're married or not, was immaterial to me.

Like, when I say I left the faith, I left everything

and I decided to find out what is sin, what is wrong, and why.

I do not recommend this set of choices. If you are listening to this podcast for that

listen I broke every commandment

every single one. Now again what does this have to do with mental health? Because the therapist is made the therapist is not born. I was in the fire of my own making.

I entered the world without God and said I want to find out what is true, what is right, what is wrong. Now here's the thing and Solomon wrote this in Ecclesiastes. He said, "Wisdom was leading me the whole time.

There was something in me that was not attaching to these lifestyles. It's like I was trying it and then backing off and evaluating it."

Yeah. It's the curiosity you are not allowed to have in a safe environment.

Correct. 100%. And I learned that the greatest consequence of these decisions was ab Yeah. there were there was harm that I perpetrated on other people especially sexual sin. Um but the greatest harm that I that that I that I experienced within myself and this is why I said like my greatest lessons have been my own mistakes was I became completely comfortable if you can imagine this statement that I'm about to make.

I became comfortable living in shame, guilt and fear. They became normal.

Yeah.

I didn't know what freedom was anymore. Mhm.

So I like a drug kept making decisions that were forwarding my experience of shame, guilt, and fear and shame, guilt, and fear. Now underneath a lot of that was anger

because I wasn't allowed to be curious in a safe environment. And I wasn't allowed to ask questions. Questions were considered weakness.

But I took myself into the world and I read every single thing I could get my hands on. I read new age psychology. I read um new age spirituality. I read pop psychology. I read the Bavad Gita. I read the Upanishads. I read the Quran.

Like I'm reading every single I'm reading Buddhism. I can read I'm reading everything I can get my hands on. I was so curious about truth that I started reading quantum physics. I do not recommend this for the faint of heart.

Oh my gosh. I So yeah, I Yeah, I've done that. I'm just diving in. Right. And for people who wind up in this field,

I was not asking like how I wasn't asking necessarily like where is truth. I was asking not only where is truth but why is it true

I was looking for like the bedrock.

Yeah.

Because I did want to build my life even though it sounds like I was deconstructing it. I was the cornerstone.

I did want to build my life. Yes. I needed bedrock and I was searching for that. Now at this time I start therapy.

My whole family was against it at the time. They have since changed but they were like you don't need therapy. Mom and dad did the best they could. I mean it was that you know

it was that

I think we need to go let's go in there just for a little bit because people need to understand that in our work. I mean it depends on what kind of therapist you are and how you do therapy right because it sounds like you did your work.

I know I went to therapy later on in life. I wish I would have started at a very young age and I you know sometimes I wonder if not that I'm not in the right field I guess I I surrendering to God every day but honestly Vanessa like it was kind of thrusted upon me in in middle school because I had such chaos at home that I became a peer counselor in middle school

and that gave me and that gave me and people like I had a a a student that we were all close to that drowned in Crystal Lake Middle School Like I went to Crystal Lake Middle School in Brower County. But you see what I'm saying?

So when adults gave me purpose and identity at that time going, "Oh, everything we just taught you in peer counseling. You're going to need it now cuz your friends are grieving the loss of Alex.

You're a helper."

So yes. So you see where I'm getting at? And then in high school, same thing. I was a peer counselor in high school. So I'm like, "Oh, well then I just I guess I'll just go into psychology without it was like I hate to say it was thrusted on me until I realized what you're saying. like you're opening up the things that you probably did.

Not all of it because we're two different stories, you know, same road, different um scenery,

but

I hear you like that. I that happened too. Like I did a lot a lot of things I did all the way till I got married at 23 that most adults have never done in their life.

Yeah. Well, you know, one of my favorite books during this time and I was living in [clears throat] this is when I was living in Europe. I was on the European tour of Westside Story and I'm sitting on a tour bus driving through Germany reading the road less traveled.

Wow.

I'm 23 years old reading the road I mean I when I say I was on a search I was on a search.

So I'm reading the road less traveled and I remember one line that M. Scott Peek wrote and he said you have to forge an identity before you can surrender one.

And I remember thinking well I'm forging it. Little did I know. I don't know if I was forging an identity. I was more like forging headlong into sin, but I learned a lot. Okay. Again, wisdom was leading me. So, to your point, you know, the natural progression is we go from hurting to healing to helping.

Exactly.

And a lot of counselors go from hurting to helping and then they have to figure out later, wait, I need to do healing. I by the grace of God actually went in the progression of hurting to healing to helping. So, when I started therapy, again, I have no relationship with God.

By this point, I'm pretty much an agnostic atheist. I read all of the books on the new atheists that came out in the early 2000s. I read God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. I read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I read The End of Faith by Sam Harris.

Like, I set out to systematically take apart my faith and it worked.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, it almost worked.

No. Right. It's like you you have this faith. This is what I love is because this is a scary part for so many people that live in black and white thinking because that's a cognitive distortion, right? When when you have this high controlling religion, I don't care what religion it is because there's fundamentalists in every religion and you have that black and white thinking.

You decided to finally you dove deep into the gray and you really worked it out to a point where here you are refined like gold and sifted like wheat and now you get to do the purpose and your ident and nothing will shake your cuz to me I've had a lot of stuff happen.

My my faith has never been shaken. Even when people are attacking it like crazy or saying, "What? You think you're right?" And I'm like, "No, I I I I want to know why you think that." Like, you know, I'm always like,

"Yeah,

because

people that are

well, we become less afraid of questions."

Yeah.

When you go into the gray, you become less afraid of questions. And it's Look, Peek in the road less traveled talks about four stages of faith. And I love this. I mean, Fowler is kind of he wrote the famous book Stages of Faith, but I like Peek's four stages of faith.

I think Fowler has like eight. I don't remember. It's been a while. But Peek has four. And the four stages of faith in Peek are one, uh, chaos, two, institutionalization, three, skepticism, four, mysticism. Okay, let's break that down. Now that the therapists are talking now, not the ladies.

The therapists are talking. Okay. The the first stage is chaos. What does that mean? It means you could be four or 40, but basically you are your own god.

That's a chaotic way to live. When you are disconnected from the source of life, truth, wisdom, and reason. Okay? Hear me say this. If you're listening to this and you're on the fence about God, okay, we are not talking about a grandfather in the sky who sends lightning bolts with a long white beard.

We are talking about the source of being.

Yeah. The source of wisdom.

Yes. Cry. Let yourself. This is who loves us.

Yeah.

This is who loves us. The source of being. The source of reason. I was trying to reason through the world without the source of reason. I was trying to figure out truth without the source of truth. Who never, by the way, abandoned me and will not abandon you either.

I left him. He never left me. We'll get to that. But what Peek talks about in stages of faith, this is, by the way, Diana, you're so beautiful right now. She's got tears in her eyes. This is so contrary to a to to a to a clinician because as a trained therapist, my instinct is to immediately stop, create space.

Like, but this is a podcast. We got to keep going. So, just know that my heart is with you in your tears. Okay?

I know, Vanessa. It's the a when you said that statement, it's the awe. Well, wait till you see where we're going. Because when we talk about foundations, man, what God has brought me to is is is a different world. It's a different world.

So, chaos, you are your own god. You're making up the rules as you go along. I lived there. Okay. Institutionalization. What does that mean? It means we want to bring order to chaos. This is why children are given rules. This is why they're given bedtimes.

This is why they're given schedules because you have to order chaos. It's the nature of human beings. That's why we study the heavens. It's why we look through microscopes. We want to figure out what is bigger than us. Okay? It's human nature. So institutionalization could be putting a criminal who can't obey the law in jail.

That's institutionalization. But for all of my Christian listeners, this is very important. It can also mean taking the wildness of your spirit that was created in the image of an eternal immortal god and putting you in a church where there's only rules to to to sustain you.

Preach it, girl. Okay, that is institutionalization. Now, what does it do? This is why we this is why we adhere to it. This is why we accept it because we want to bring order to chaos. So it feels good, okay, to take this chaotic self who's feeling and wanting and desiring and longing and hurting and wondering.

That's all of us. We're just churning inside. And sit your little butt in a pew and sing songs from 9 until 9:15 and then pass an offering plate from 9:15 until 9:20. Does it sound familiar, folks? Right. and then greet the person to your left and your right and share the piece and then go to the bathroom and then plop your butt down for 30 minutes for a sermon.

Is there anything wrong with any of that? No, there's not. But we have to understand psychologically what that's doing. It's giving us a system that organizes the chaos. Now, here's the deal. If we put our faith in the system that's organizing the chaos rather than the God who created you, your faith is in the wrong thing.

Okay? You were not created for institutionalization. That is a step in the faith process. But what's the next step? Stage three, skepticism.

Yes.

Why am I doing this?

What is true? Who is God? Who am I? Why am I 40 years old with three kids, married to this guy? I don't even think I know him anymore. Right? Skepticism. This is crisis. This is good. This is a good thing.

But and this is so so many counselors from a spiritual perspective don't know how to work with spiritual crisis.

Yep.

I'll tell you right now, folks, from everything I've seen of Diana in the last 20 minutes, she does. If you are in her case load, if you are listening to this podcast, this is a woman who can hold your crisis and not flinch.

I can see it already. Okay. But why? What gives a counselor an ability to hold crisis without flinching? Because we have faced our own. That's why I said the counselor is not made in the classroom. We're not made sitting listening to lectures and reading books.

You're made in the fire of your own life. So crisis, skepticism, you question everything. Fourth stage, mysticism. When you begin to realize this is all about love.

This was never about fear and a response to fear. This was always about shelter from the storm.

Yeah.

This was always about let me God, let me be the one to answer all your questions. Let me satisfy your soul. Yeah. sit in church, pass the plate, take communion, listen to the concert.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. What we used to call worship, now it's a concert.

I'm sorry. And and and I don't want to be skeptical like that because like I said, there's people from all denominism all the way to

I have Jews, I have atheists, I have everybody in between. Yes. And they're all precious precious precious people. and and their faith is really important. And I love that you're bringing this up, but you're also calling out the religion. I mean, the business of religion.

There's a guy that I've been following that's been like going into and I think that's what's happening in the westernized mentality of like wait we have created churches into businesses without without accountability instead of what you were talking about getting into the deep roots of of why why do we feel and believe and we know that Jesus Christ is Lord and he's the king of kings

right why do we even believe that

exactly

I could talk about that all day. But yes, why? Because I was an atheist, right? So in my story at this point, I'm an atheist. I'm reading the four stages of faith. I didn't even recognize that I was in skepticism.

I didn't even get it. I was in.

So what do we do with all that? If someone's listening and they're like, "Oh my gosh, yes, they're they're speaking our language."

How do how do we as therapists now? because I think we should go into that part of like what your your offerings and and and what what has like how has God used you and everything you've been through to create

healing for others.

Yeah. Okay. Well, let me put it this way. When I after I had ruined my first marriage with an affair, um I got pregnant from that affair, had an abortion.

Wow. Now folks, I you know Diana was like, "Well, I chose you chose you because you were authentic." Okay. Well, here's Vanessa. All right. If you're sitting out there and you're judging me, I understand why you might. But this I am a story of a life who can be redeemed.

Amen.

Okay.

Everyone has a story that they can be redeemed. Vanessa, this is what people need to understand.

100%. And I went into that appointment. It was December 21st, 2010, and I was an atheist at the time. And I put my feet up into Look, folks, you want to talk about an abortion, we're going to be graphic. You put your feet in stirrups, okay?

And I remember saying to myself in my soul, God, forgive me for what I'm about to do. And I did not have an abortion because my life was in jeopardy. And I did not have an abortion because I needed to. I had an abortion because having that child would have been shameful and inconvenient to the life I wanted to build.

Period. I destroyed a human life out of shame. Okay. After that, I'm on the bottom floor of hell, people. I am drowning in darkness. My own making. Okay, this was not like I had some terminal illness. I got dragged into some terrible situation.

I created my own hell by trying to be my own god at that time. And now I'm going to start crying. I start to hear in my heart, Vanessa, come home. I was like, it was a little bit like Saul on the road to Tarsus.

Who are you, Lord? Vanessa, come home. Now, at this point, my family has [snorts] been alienated from me. They really don't want anything to do with me at this point. And honestly, I can't blame them. I was a hot mess. I was lying as easily as I was speaking.

I told them I wasn't having an affair. I divorced my husband. I don't think anybody knew about the abortion. Like, I'm just a mess. I have one friend who, by the way, is an atheist who was standing by me through all of this.

Wow. She's most loyal person. I mean, she just would not leave my side. So, she came to Nashville after the [snorts] abortion. She was like with me through it all. But I'm so lost, right? And I keep hearing Vanessa come home. And so, I start listening.

And at this point in my life, I did not really believe in God, but I'm like, what is going on? What's happening inside me? So, I was kind of talking to the voice, but I wasn't praying because I didn't have faith, but I wasn't just thinking.

So, I used to call this pranking. I love it. You need to coin that right now. We need a trade.

We're coining this. You can take it. You can run with it. For all of you out there who have been pranking, I hear you. I know you. I get you.

I think I'm continually pranking now.

Yeah. I mean, it's like I'm not quite praying, but I'm not just thinking. I'm like thinking toward you. I'm pranking.

I'm pranking. [snorts]

So, I'm pranking. Okay. And I start this dialogue with God. And long story short, all my books are now coming into light and I'm realizing, wait, there is truth. Holy cow, am I am I coming back to God? Not Christianity. That's not yet.

Okay. Am I coming back to a faith in God? Too many super supernatural things happened during that time for me to say on this podcast, but let me just say one of them. Okay, this was one that happened. I started reading the Bible again and I was like, "Well, let me just see."

I had one. I dusted, you know, you pick up the book, you dust it off, you blow all the dust off of it. And I opened this Bible and I immediately slammed it shut because all that was coming off the pages was shame.

And I just was like, I have too much of it already. I can't read more. I can't get deeper into more shame. And so I shut it and I said, God, I can't do this if I can't read this. Give me new eyes.

That's all I said. I said, 'I can't do this if I can't read this. Give me new eyes,

folks. I don't know how to tell you other than just to tell you this is what happened. I opened the page and the words were jumping off of it. I mean, like spiritual insight like I had never received in my life. It's like I was seeing the truth behind the words.

Wow.

I didn't have to extrapolate it. I was just downloading like wisdom and reason and truth. That was one moment where I and I remember like my eyes were so wide and I was like I can't believe this just happened. Right? So I'm incredulous.

Well, long story short, I go to God and I'm like, "God, I think I believe in you again, but that makes me a deist, but it doesn't make me a Christian. If you want me to be a Christian, now remember at this point I was still pretty agnostic.

I had no fear of hell.

I didn't believe in hell,

right?

None.

I was like, I'm coming back to you because I'm seeking truth. I am not coming back to you because I'm afraid of going to hell. I'm literally finding truth in you now. But I have this real broad universal view of God. I love when people, oh, the universe told me.

I'm like, I get it. I've been there. I [clears throat] remember when my faith was in the universeish,

you know?

And so, I remember saying, God, I can't I don't believe in Jesus. I don't believe in the cross. I don't think I believe in the resurrection, but I know that you're real. So, if you want me to be a Christian, you're going to have to show me who Jesus is.

M

and I'm sitting with all this again. I mean, folks, when you break the laws of the universe and the laws of God that deeply like I did, it stays with you for years. This was not like,

oh, yeah, that's

I got saved and I felt better. Like, no, I felt terrible for a decade to be honest. Like, it just it stays with you. It's not easy to get over those things. But I remember I was in my car and this old hymn that I grew up singing in church and if you were raised in sort of the Protestant wing of the faith, you know this hymn.

It's called What a Friend We Have in Jesus.

And the lyrics of it are

Yeah. Can you sing it since you're sing?

Oh gosh, I haven't sung in forever. But yeah, it's What a Friend Jesus. All our sins and griefs [singing] to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to God [singing] in prayer. So you can hear my Nashville's coming out. Diana, you have such a beautiful face when you cry.

Um, so I'm I'm I'm I'm singing this song in the car and I just start weeping because it clicked. He's the friend. I had a sense of God now being like the order, the reason, the supreme being, the ground of being, like all of that.

But I was like, "Oh, he's the one I share the pain with."

Yeah. He's the friend. What a friend we have in Jesus. All our sins, folks. My sin. I've sinned enough for all of you. All our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer. Right. So, I got it.

Very shortly after that, I gave my life to God

and I said, "I'm done. You're in charge.

Surrender. I'm getting out of my ego and I'm going into humility and I'm never going to go ahead of you again.

That's right. I'm done being my own god. Even though I have tried to crawl up on the throne a bajillion times since, but that's human nature. Okay, so that's the point. Now, what does this have to do with mental health? All right, let that's the story.

This is the making of the therapist right after my conversion. I that's what I consider my conversion. That was May 15th, 2011. I went to graduate school that fall. And then God brings me into the field. One of my uh professors looked at me one day after I gave a presentation in school and she said, "Vanessa," I'll never forget this.

Dr. Tammy Beman, one of the greatest professors ever, she said, "Vanessa, welcome to the arena." And I knew at that time, God, you are about to send me in because I have an axe to grind with atheism, agnosticism, bad religion, and honestly, bad therapy.

So,

let's talk about foundations. Okay, can we shift into that?

Yes, please.

Okay, one of the things that Diana wanted me to cover today was the idea of you. It's very hard to heal if your foundations are not good. Okay. Now, why is that important? Well, because if you are a human being and you're listening to this podcast, you are interested in mental health.

You're interested in counseling. You're probably in counseling. Okay. One of the failures of our field, which is kind of a fundamental failure, and I don't think it's their fault. I think they're doing this to stay safe, but it's actually a failure of the field, is that our field doesn't have a good definition for what a human being is.

So, we're trying to heal something, but we don't know what it is. That's like trying to fix a car, but you don't know how the motor works.

Wow.

Okay. It's like literally trying to fix something and you don't know what it is.

Mhm.

Now, what the field will tell you is that a human being is a biocschosocial organism, right? You remember this from graduate school, right, Diana? This is the biocschosocial organism. Okay, let's break that down. An organism means that you're alive.

That's all that means. It means you're actually alive. Biocschosocial. Okay, bi biological that you have genetic predispositions towards some things. That does not mean that mental health is genetically inherited. There is no proof of that. There is no scientific proof of that. But some people may have predispositions toward anxiety, fearfulness, timidity, depression, melancholy.

The the genes, this is a Dr. Mark Heyman long ago, I remember hearing this and he said genes are the bullets. The environment is the trigger.

Nurture and nature. So yeah,

that's right. And that field is called epis um uh anyway epidemiology whatever it is

right

it's the study of how gene I'm saying the word wrong but it's the study of how genes are activated in different environments okay so that's your bi biological predisposition

your psychological [clears throat] is more what Diana is talking about with nurture okay and social we're very social beings humans are the most complex social beings on planet earth uh much more than any other animal or mammal in the animal kingdom okay so that's how we are understood in the field.

But if you ask different theorists, they're going to give you a different emphasis on human nature. So if you talk to the cognitive behavioral people, they're going to say, well, humans are mostly governed by their beliefs and their thoughts, and that becomes their actions.

And then if you talk to the emotionally focused people, they're going to say, well, humans are mostly governed by their feelings. And then the humanistic people are going to tell you, well, human beings are really really like we're we're governed more by by our potentialities, right?

So depending on who you ask, you're going to get a different view of what a human being is. Now, that's okay in that humans are all of those things. That's a composite view, but it doesn't answer the question, what is a human being?

Right?

It's not cohesive. It's like everybody's touching the elephant. Well, I've got the trunk, I got the ear, I got the tail, I got Well, what are we describing? What exactly is a human being? Christianity has a beautiful cohesive answer to that question. And a human being, okay, this is important for us to understand.

Again, these are foundational understandings, is an integrated being who is created in the image of God. What does that mean? You being an integrated being means that you are body and spirit and they cannot be separated. Yeah, they're not irreducible to the parts.

They are one being. Okay. I think it was Thomas Aquinus who taught us that there are different categories of being. There are spiritual beings like angels. There are embodied beings without spirits like animals. And then there's the human being. And the human being is unique in that we are body and spirit.

And we are not separable. Why is that important? Because if you try to heal without understanding your spirit, you are only trying to heal part of you. And that's what most therapists are trained to do.

It's again, it's not their fault.

It's just that psychology doesn't have a metaphysics. What is a metaphysics? It's a worldview. It's an understanding for how the universe works. Psychology doesn't have that. That's the realm of theology.

Okay. So, when you go see a could be a very skilled trained therapist, they don't know how to deal typically unless they're a Christian who's done a lot of work. Yes.

They don't know how to deal with the spiritual component of healing. So, that's the first step we have to understand. The second problem in modern psychology is modern psychology will tell you that your identity is created by you. you are constructed.

Now, modern psychology will also acknowledge that that's part nature, it's part nurture, it's the environment you're raised in, but at the end of the day, like you have the right, you have the will to construct your own identity and that honestly now it's our job to affirm it, which is insane and I'm not going to go down that road.

But in Christianity, that's not the case at all. Your identity is given. Your job in life is to discover it and live into it.

What does that do? It connects you to the giver. It connects you to the God who made you exactly as you are for the purpose that you are meant to fulfill in your life. So contrast those because it's a big contrast. Modern psychology says you can construct who you are.

Christianity says no, you have been given a person, a personhood, a personality, strengths, gifts, and all of that is directly connected to your purpose. And when you find those things, you thrive.

Yeah.

So how do you explain then when people come into your office or when when they hear that or is like wait a minute so the purpose of me being say raped by my father or the purpose of um you know being abused or emotionally neglected is you know because to me it's like modern psychology telling people like oh no you get to have choices and you get to create so I want I want to maybe disentangle

that a little more because you know I've had people say that and I also have a lot of clients who are just like wait a minute that doesn't make sense.

How do you explain it or how do you put it in in a vocabulary that's understandable because you know we we work with a lot a lot of hurt and pain.

Oh yeah. Yeah. So we have to be careful that we don't cross categories. Okay. what you experience in your life, the ways that you've been victimized in your life, that is not part of your purpose. Okay? That's very important to understand because now we're ascribing to God either an abuser or a passive allower.

Like that is not your purpose. That is what you endure in a broken world. Okay? I was molested as a child. I was beaten as a child. I was whipped. I mean, is that my purpose? No,

not at all. But let me contrast that. God created me with a natural boldness. Okay. Now, what is the purpose of that boldness? Well, separated from God, it was all about bringing attention to myself.

All of it. I mean, I was an egocentric person. I was I was on stage. I was all about like being bold enough to get to draw attention to myself. What is my boldness? What is the true purpose of my boldness? Is it to serve my ego?

No, not at all. It's to speak truth uh without a lot of fear.

Okay. I'm not saying

and not everybody and not right and not everybody has the same because this is the comp we live in a comparison world. You know these younger girls and younger guys I'm not bold. Okay. All of those gifts. So what we're talking about when you talk about purpose you're talking about living your life with for and in God.

That has nothing to do with the traumas that you may have experienced in your life. Right? Remember what Romans 8 says. And we know that in all things God works together for good for those who love him and have been called according to his purpose.

Right? It does not say that all things are good.

It says that God can work all things together for good.

Wow.

That's called redemption.

Yeah. So we have to understand that as Christians and as people who are seeking mental health, it is very dangerous when we start conflating what we have endured with God's will.

It is not God's will for us to endure, you know, horrible traumas. Of course not. He's a loving father. But we live in a broken world. We live in the kingdom of darkness. We live separated in this world from God. Our spirits are not separated from God.

But the world we live in is

and so we will suffer under the darkness that we are in. But God provides the path toward redemption and wholeness.

So we have to understand our identity as a human being. Right? The field can only go so far. But the problem that the field has is the field is claiming a lot of authority to be able to heal and restore human beings when it won't define what a human being is.

That is a problem of anthropology people. We how do you heal something if you don't know what it is.

Right.

Right. The Christian worldview says no you are a spiritual being integrated body and spirit can't be separated. Those two things you are created in the image of God. What does that mean created in the image of God? It means that you are conscious.

Well, what does that mean? It means you have a sense of yourself being alive in the world every day. You are aware of yourself. You can observe yourself. Right now, how does how is that connected with God? Well, when Moses asked God, what is your name?

God said, "Go to Pharaoh and and and tell him to let my people go." And J Moses said, "Well, who should I say is sending me?" What did God answer? He said, "I am. I am who I am." Folks, if that is not a statement of consciousness, what is?

And so, we've got human beings who for thousands and thousands and thousands of years who have have been saying, "What am I? Who am I?" Why? Because something in them knows I am.

So, what does that mean? Who am I? Right? This is what I mean. And I know this gets very deep and philosophical, but this is what I mean by you have to understand what a human being is. If you get nothing further in this podcast, then I am created in the image of a being who is immortal, eternal, and is love.

God is love. First John,

then you understand more about yourself than all of the philosophers of ancient Greece.

Yeah.

Okay. So, we have to understand who we are. You were created by love, in love, and for love. Nothing but love will satisfy you. This is why abuse hurts.

Yeah.

If you weren't created by love, in love, and for love, abuse wouldn't hurt. You wouldn't care. But it hurts because we have a sense of personhood because we are created in the image of the person that is God. Not a human person, but still a person that is God.

All of this makes sense in the Christian worldview. So, that's the foundation of the human being. Now, let's talk about the foundation of Jesus because this gets much more intense. Okay? As if I'm not intense enough.

I know. Believe me, I know. I've been living in my own brain for 48 years.

I I hear you,

you know. Okay. So, Jesus, we What a friend we have in Jesus. Jesus holding the little lamb. Jesus born in the manger. Okay.

Little not talking Wait, wait. And I want to make it crystal clear because many people have this image of Jesus in this

very westernized European version of and we have to get back to the biblical context of who Jesus is.

Okay? Because you see what I'm saying? Because

I do.

We've we've come to a part in our culture at this time where people are hijacking Jesus in order to control the masses

and they always have.

Yes. Yes. But now visuallywise or you know and so it is and I think we need to go into the therapist part too because well first of all it's been an hour and second of all

you tell me. Yeah. And second of all, I just really would love for us to get to the part of how someone listening, you know, like I would love to have you back on because philosophical uh conversations. I'm all I don't have many people to talk like this with, but I also know that you know the listen most of my listeners want to know practical tips and tools like yeah this is great.

So now what? Now what? I'm holding this thought process. I'm holding this situation and I need help.

Okay, let's talk about that. I'm going to make a quick point about Jesus and then let's go to mental health.

Please, please.

So, you're right. We've westernized Jesus, but we've also reduced him.

Yes.

Okay. So, John one, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning. What does that mean? The word word in Greek is logos. I'm going to give you a 45 second history on that word.

Okay, we're going to go back to ancient Greece for a second. Greek Greek philosophers. The first philosopher who organized and gave us a sense of the meaning of the word logus was Heracitis. Heracitis believed that the logus was the cosmic under like the the cosmic reason for the entire universe.

What does that mean? It means that underneath like rocks and streams and mountains and stars and constellations and galaxies there is a wisdom. There's a reason that undergirds all of that like everything that is why it is and how it works. What undergurs all of that is the logus.

It's like the underlying reason behind everything in the world. Okay, fast forward to Plato. Plato believed that the logist and logist kind of changed definitions over time. Excuse me. We have a lot of English words that do the same thing, but over centuries they change nuance.

They change definition. By the time Plato comes along,

Plato understood that the logos, the word was the way that we come to know truth. It was sort of the rational discourse by which we can know what is true. Okay, fast forward to Filel of Alexandria. This is right around the time of Christ.

Felo of Alexandria believed that the logus, this is what he taught, that the logus was the intermediary between God and man. It was like this the reason the the the the understanding that sat between the vastness of God and the mortality of man by which we could understand God.

Now you have a cosmic, relational, rational, huge concept of why the universe exists, how it exists, what governing principles make it go, and it is now understood to be the way that we can understand both truth and God. Now, now go to John for 1:14, the word that became flesh.

Wow.

Jesus is bigger than you understand.

Exactly.

When the Bible says everything was created by him, through him, and for him, this is what they're talking about. His being is holding everything together. It's underneath everything. That being is who died for you. That huge concept is who became flesh. So it doesn't really matter how we're depicting him or if we get the color of his skin right.

Like you have to understand who he is. The literal undergirling reason that holds and sustains every single thing that exists in the way that it is sustained is Christ. Wow.

Welcome to your relationship with Jesus.

I love it.

We don't worship him enough. Okay. Now, mental health.

Yeah. Oh, now I want to go back into that. But I know that.

Yeah. It's big. It's big. It's a huge. So, now you read in the beginning was the word.

Yeah.

And the word was with God and the word was God. He was Oh, now it makes sense. By the way, go read John now.

Yeah.

With that in mind, read the book of John now. It will make so much more sense to you. Well, honestly,

the authority that he has.

The the thing is we're we're talking to each other that has gone from inherited faith to investigative faith, right? But so many clients I know that that come in with a Christian lens,

they they were just taught on what to believe

without opening the word and really doing the deep dive.

That's right.

That's the inherited faith. That's the inherited faith, but it's also the taught faith.

It's the It's the let's make it palatable faith. Let's reduce it to where you can understand it faith. Folks, when I did this study on Jesus and I researched all of this, like this wasn't just like, you know, like I did a deep dive into Greek Greek philosophy here because I really wanted to understand what the logus meant.

I was like dumbfounded and silenced for weeks. I believe.

And I think if you're listening to this, you understand that Vanessa doesn't have a problem talking. Um, I couldn't speak. I fell on my knees and was like, I I am not worshiping you enough. You are bigger and more beautiful and more important.

And and and John wrote, "The word was made flesh." Folks, that was an earthquake. Do you understand? The Greeks reading this, they understood what the logus meant. They Wait, what? Truth is not a concept. It's a person. Reality is not a concept. It's a person.

Yes. Now, let's go to mental health. What is mental health? Again, ask a therapist. You're going to get 47 different answers. What is mental health? Here's how I define it. Mental health is your ability to be in reality without denial, deception, or distortion and thrive in that place.

I love that.

Okay.

Oh. Oh my goodness. Yeah, that's amazing.

Mental health, I'm going to say it again so you can really digest it. Mental health is your ability

to be in reality without denial, deception, or distortion and thrive in that place. Another definition of joy is thriving in reality. Not in escapism, not in pleasure- seeeking for its own purpose, but in reality without denial, deception or distortion. Now, for Christians, we go one step further.

The reality is Christ.

Yeah.

That's why mental health and theology have to kind of go hand inand for us. We have to understand who we are and who Jesus is. And when we understand that, we have an ability to go, "Oh, I now know what I'm approaching." Mental health means I'm aligning myself with reality, with truth.

The more I'm aligned with truth, which is truth is just how reality expresses itself. The more I'm aligned with truth, the mentally healthier I am.

Now, does that mean we won't struggle? Of course, we're going to struggle. depression, anxiety, we got all kinds of stuff going on. We live in a broken world, broken people, you are

all the signals are signaling out. It's what you're going to do.

Yes. And also, we have to stop pathizing these things. These are signals of a soul in distress.

Yeah.

That's all that is,

right? Anxiety is not a a curse. It's not something you're going to have to live with for the rest of your life. You can resolve it.

Right.

In my practice, we talk about Yes. We talk about healing. We don't talk about managing. We don't manage symptoms. We get to the root, the underlying root. Where in your life's journey did you misalign with reality,

with truth,

right?

With Jesus.

Yeah.

And how do we get that realigned? That's the therapeutic process right there.

Wow. So, if somebody wants to work like you have books, right?

Are these workbooks or are these books like do people get well of course the one book is the tools about tools and stuff like that that we need to build relationship and repair them you know um what else are your offerings or how do people work with you or or do you teach like I want to know all about you because I'm just like oh my gosh like I'm going to I'm going to go and take

a course or learn something because for you're so you're so far ahead and you you've done the real deep dive.

I've done some deep dives, but not like you, girl. Like you you you're like a professor. Like I could I

Gosh,

I love it. I love it.

Oh, yeah. I I You see the bookshelf behind me and I I I seek knowledge. Um yeah, I the podcast is a great way to find me. The work of being human.

Um I do have a clinical practice in Nashville. We've got a couple of therapists who work we work together. Um we work in a different model. Um, and you know, you if you want to have me back on, I can talk through the model, but the model is different than um, we don't work in the medical model.

We don't diagnose people. We work at a root cause level. And so, we're looking Yeah. I think a lot of therapists are starting to move in that direction, which is so much healthier than the medical model.

Well, it's so sad because, you know, I don't take a lot of interns anymore, but when I did, I just realized like, you know, they're they're they're hanging on to the halls of the universities and then go straight into trying to be a therapist without doing their own work because I know I was made for six months to do therapy to graduate.

Yeah.

You had to prove that you were and and what I'm hearing is like, no, nobody makes me do that. And I'm just like, oh, I I think it depends what the number one.

No, 100%. I went toe-to-toe with my own program about this because I was like, you got people, you're graduating people as therapists who have never sat in a therapist's office,

right?

Like, how do you know you want to do this? It's actually a very difficult process.

Yeah. Well, and it's also like you're going into a field where um you're you're not able to how do I say this gently? It's just you're you're going in new.

I mean, imagine a 23 year old, 24 year old, and they're like, they're all eager and happy and want to do the, you know, and help, but they go in and they're so scared to make a wrong decision because the insurance model, the medical model, they've uberized us in a way where, you see, and it's just and they're going in with so much more pressure than I think I had when I graduated,

you know, and many are just online not going into say seeing real true

[sighs and gasps]

people that are really suffering, you know, like the community mental health or like in person with schizophrenia with all the labels. And I'm not saying we're going into the like cuz I I agree like if there is a label of some sort there are we getting to the root cause.

We're just taught to manage this.

Yeah.

With the psychiatrists and make sure like the medications and and it's just survival mechanisms so they could stay afloat. What you're talking about is like, oh no, you're drowning and we're here's the life raft and the and it start and I'm going to be honest, it starts with Christ.

But how do you do that when you're working with the non-Christians? Well, because truth is a big tent. Okay, truth is truth. Okay, this is like, you know, one of the one of the um modalities of therapy that you might hear about on if you listen to the mental health podcast is, for example, like dialectical behavioral therapy.

Okay. You don't need to know who Marshall Lahan is

to benefit from dialectical behavioral therapy. If it's true, it's true.

Yeah.

Truth is a big tent. Would I love for people to have a relationship with the source of truth, with the origin of truth, who is Christ? Of course. But you don't have to you don't have you don't have to know him to experience healing.

You have to know him to experience your origin.

Does that make sense? So truth is truth. And if you're listening to this podcast, if you're not a Christian, if you and you've listened this far, I'm like congratulating you. This was a lot of theology and philosophy today.

But that's why foundations matter because if our foundations aren't secure and we don't know who we are as human beings and we don't have a sense of the logus like who who Jesus actually is um it's very very hard to entrust ourselves to a god that's not big enough to hold our pain

right

but if you are listening to this and you're not a Christian truth is truth look I went on a hunt for truth as an atheist I found it. That's why Jesus said, "If you seek, you will find."

If you knock, the door will be open to you. Whoever seeks finds, and to him who knocks, the door is opened. I lived that. So, if you're looking for truth, where I would say start in your own life is the truth you tell.

This is very important. Coming out of denial, deception, and distortion is not a philosophical journey. It starts with you in your own life confessing your lies, owning the places where you are denying your story. This is very hard to do. If you just do this, you will be a mentally healthier person.

Okay. The most uh detrimental place that you can get into if you are pursuing mental health is to lie to yourself.

Yeah.

There's nowhere to go because now you're going to fashion your whole world. That's the that's we we didn't get here but we talked a little bit about the true self and the false self in our exchange the questions you sent me

very briefly I mean that's how you build a life on the false self as you build it on denial deception and distortion so the closer you come to truth

but that doesn't have to be like big capital T philosophical truth start with the truth within yourself have you told any lies in your life any I have worked with I had a I had a client who came to me some time ago and had a with lying.

And I said, "Well, the good news is you're working with a recovered liar."

Yeah.

Yes. I lied to survive. I lied because I didn't have any respect for the truth. And I lied because the truth was like a story I didn't want to own.

It was shame. It was fear. It's all that stuff. That's why we lie. It's a defense mechanism.

So, we worked on it every session. I would say, "Okay, in the last week, have you told any lies? Any whatsoever?" His mental health cruised, moved very quickly because he was coming out of denial, deception, and distortion. So, is that easy? No. Are you going to put your ego to death?

Yes,

it's very hard. That's look, you want to grow. Look, you want to grow, you have to kill your own ego. You have to let it die. You cannot grow and sustain your ego. You make a choice in this field.

You make a choice. Yeah.

And those who pursue mental health will pursue truth.

Yeah.

Well, Vanessa, does that mean pursuing Jesus? Well, look, I'd love it if you did, but not necessarily. It means pursuing the truth about your own story. If you have been through trauma telling the story,

becoming more and more and more comfortable in the truth of what you've been through, what you've done, who you are, how you were raised. Those truths are where you start. Yeah. Wow. Well, this is great. So, where can people find you? I know

they can find me at my website. Yeah, the podcast is comes out pretty much every Monday unless there's a holiday or unless I just cannot get it together with

Is it on all Yeah, it's also on YouTube.

Okay, good.

Everything is there.

The book you can buy on Amazon except it's under my maiden name because I wrote it a while ago. So, it's Vanessa Landino. L O N D I N O. But, um the link can be in the show notes. That's the toolbox. Um, the tools we need to build relationship and repair them when they break.

And I literally wrote this book because I was exhausted explaining the same concepts to my couples that I work with. I was like, can you please just read this book and then we'll go through it together.

So, I sort of wrote it for myself to be honest. Um, but the toolbox, uh, my podcast and yeah, I do a bit of speaking and teaching, but all of that is not um, like it's not all online. So,

so there's no TED talk.

There's no TED talk. you want to volunteer me, I will show up for a TED talk. I could talk about the Logos all day long. No, it's just the whole the whole thing of people understanding who they are in Christ and that you are an educated woman that has done the deep dive into context because that is really really important

for people to understand that that you know like and you've come from faith and and you're still like because you're you're allowed to hold and right and people don't like that where you're like no my family was unhealed and they were loving at the same time or I was abused and I am now thriving in my mental health like you know it's like understanding like you you use your story

mental health is not a destination it's a lifestyle exactly

okay so fitness is like physical right yes it's a lifestyle so what does that mean it means if I have a weekend where I'm like yeah I ate pizza on Friday I ate Mexican on Saturday delicious just love these foods but like probably not as high in nutrient value as I might want.

That means on Monday I just go back to like eating healthier, right? What does that mean in mental health? It means when I find myself in de deception, distortion or um denial, I just go back to reality. I talk to someone. This is why you you you would use your therapist, right?

I go back to you know what? I told a lie last week. Folks, if we had more people in therapy talking about that, we'd have a much healthier society.

Yeah. Yeah,

I told a lie last week. I I told my husband blank and and this wasn't true.

In the word of God, it it talks about confession. Like you confess, you know,

and here it and here's there's a very important piece of that scripture. It's in James. Okay. Confess your sins one to another. Why?

So that you have a clear conscience? No.

No.

So that you become more mentally healthy? No. What that passage says is, "Confess your sins one to another that you may be healed."

You want to talk about healing, there's a prescription for it,

but we don't want to do it because we want to be healed. We want to go to therapy, but we want our little egos intact,

right?

It isn't right. And and also like in the book of Ecclesiastes is my favorite book, by the way, of the Bible. Beautiful book. Talk about philosophy. You are deep.

I I I just love it because it just puts things into such great perspective of understanding that we're born, we die. There's a time for everything. Every emotion. God created it. And it's like what what is it? We're dust in the wind. I'm I'm thinking of the song from the 60s, but but it's more of like vapor.

And to understand that, hey guys.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's it's it's to understand that it's okay to have the feeling because people fear death. See, this is we're going to keep going. No, we got to stop. We're going to have to stop because we have to find a place. Yeah.

But it was like, you know, people fear death and and people fear, you know, and so they do these things because of pain, you know, either they try to end their lives or they go into to numbing or like you were saying the 3Ds.

I love that like what you talk about. It's just like no guys like it's time to take responsibility for you for yourself.

Yes.

Right.

And so this is where I think therapy can become an extremely powerful mechanism. You know, therapists are not gods. We're not priests. We don't absolve you of your sin. Like

no magic bullet.

No, there's no magic bullet. But when you can sit in front of somebody who's done their own work, who's danced with their own demons, who has dealt with their own ego,

and you can say, "Look, I need to come clean.

You're on a healing path."

Yes.

But a lot of times therapy becomes a place where we um reinforce our victimized status and then the therapist colludes with that.

The victim, the victim, the victim, the victim. Okay. Yes, there is an important

time.

There is a time for us to say I was victimized and explore what that did to you because it's real and it's fragmenting and it's break it breaks us. I get it. Okay. And there is a time to say it is now my responsibility to live my life in a way that brings me joy that I can thrive in.

That should be the goal. But if you have a therapist that's not taking you down that road, they haven't walked it. And that's that's the issue.

If the therapist stopped at their own victimization, that will be as far as they can take you.

If the therapist moved through their victim their victimization to their redemption, to their empowerment, to their thriving, they will be able to walk with you the whole length of the road.

So that's an important part of therapy. But for the therapist to be the person that you can go to and you can say, "I need to come clean."

Yeah.

That's an excellent therapeutic session. Use it.

It's an alliance. It's a therapeutian alliance.

It's a non-judging alliance.

And we do not judge you.

I won't.

We're trained. Well, that's

I've done everything.

Yeah. Well, and it's it's to for me as a therapist,

it is it's Carl Rogers of Argerian, you know, that unconditional. Yes.

Getting but not to say, okay, like I'm just going to give you what you want to hear to stroke your your ego because it's not about the ego. We got to everybody in that ex. Yes. Until the next thing happens.

Yes. And what does that mean? It means that we face reality.

Yes.

We face reality. This is what I've done. And these are the consequences of it to me to the people around me. That's reality. And then we embrace our humanity. Okay. Well, what need were you trying to meet?

Okay. I can look back on the worst years of my life, the worst decisions of my life, and I can still see the humanity of Vanessa through all of it. Now, could I always? No. There was a time in my life when I was very black and white about myself, and I hated those years of my life.

But through the work, right? Through mental health seeking, coming out of denial, coming out of deception, coming out of distortion. The distortion was you are a dark person with a dark heart and you did dark things. That's a lie. The reality was that I had to step into with Christ was you were separated from me.

You became your own God and you tried to figure out the way the universe works through pleasure. That's the reality.

Girl, that's so good. So good. Well, that's years and years and years and years and years of practicing coming into reality,

coming into reality again, facing reality again and again and again and again.

Okay, folks. This is mental health,

right? It is. It is. It's It's the ability to own up, to show up, right? And to receive

and Yes. Own up. Show up. Grow up, girl. You just co coined your own slogan.

That's it. Own up. Show up. Grow up. But none of that needs to be harsh or shaming. It needs to be Who are you growing up into, folks?

A God who is eternal, immortal, and is love.

Love

is love.

And it's Yeah.

That's who you're surrendering to.

Amen. Amen. Oh, Jesus. Thank you so much for Vanessa.

All right. Diana.

All right. So, before we say goodbye, and this time we are because you can follow me on Instagram. It's Vanessa the Therapist. Very simple. Vanessa. And you work with people in So, you're licensed in Tennessee, correct? Okay.

I work with coaching clients all over the place.

So, you have coach. Okay. So, she can coach as well from all over the world then. I think because

if there's room, don't push it.

Well, no, no, no. It's okay. It's just, you know how it is. When you're full, you're full. But yes, the best place to find me is on my podcast, The Work of Being Human. And I I and I interact with people all the time on the podcast.

You can follow me on Instagram, send me messages there. Yes, space is super limited for clients and coaching clients right now, but keep going. Yeah,

I hear. No, that's it. That's it. And then, uh, well, any last word or Bible verse or anything before I say goodbye and hang up? Any last word? There have been so many words. Um what I would say a Bible verse. I think we just said it.

Folks, if you seek, you will find.

Yeah.

And if you knock, the door will be open to you.

That is not spoken by a Jewish rabbi in the first century. That is the voice of wisdom, truth, and reason speaking directly to your soul.

Yes.

So when you grab hold of that truth, you are grabbing hold of mental health and you're grabbing hold of reality itself.

Jesus is not a Christian. Jesus was the voice of the logus in flesh.

Ah, love it. Yes. Amen. All right, people. Well, if you made it this long with us, please do not forget to trust in the Lord, guard your heart, and renew your mind. Bye. And now for the disclaimer to make sure you understand that you are responsible for you.

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