Elly: 0:01

Hello everybody and welcome to A Better Way to Heal, where faith meets therapy. Hello everybody, I'm Ellie and I'm Isa, and we are here today. This is A Better Way to Heal, where faith meets therapy. And we are here today really talking about what our favorite parts of the book are. We're really going to lean into Maslow's. Yes, the book A Better Way.

Elly: 0:24

Integrating Faith and Psychology to Heal Inner Wounds, and we're going to be talking about a lot of the first four levels of Maslow's hierarchy and sorry, I was trying to remember what I was thinking.

Isa: 0:41

When we talk about the levels of Maslow hierarchy, it doesn't have to be something programmed, don't think it's above your head. It honestly is things that once you hear them, you're like, yeah, it's pretty obvious. It's like once you hear what the pyramid of that hierarchy is, it's like, yeah, that's like duh. But sometimes we need a way to process even simple things, especially when we're talking about trauma and figuring out where we are not providing for our needs.

Elly: 1:11

So the mental hierarchy of needs basically says if I don't have my needs met, then I don't, or at least satisfied, I don't move up to the next one, and there's four different growth needs, and that's food, water, shelter the basic physical needs, safety needs, the basic I need to feel safe and secure in my environment.

Elly: 1:31

And then there's the love and connection, the social, really the need for connection. There's self-esteem, the need for esteem and the need to be respected. That's the next one. And then we have self-actualization, which is really the growth level. So those are what we're talking about when we're talking about Maslow's hierarchy.

Elly: 1:51

So when I put my story in this book, and I laid it out and I looked at my life as I was growing up. I could look and see all the areas that I had left and from very fundamental when I was young, one of the things that we didn't have basic, I don't want to say food. We had food, but we had beans and we had spaghetti.

Elly: 2:21

We had no meat in them, but that's what we ate on for two or three weeks out of the month, because we only had one week that we could afford meat. When you think about that food insecurity if you didn't get enough food to eat at the table because I have brothers, then we went to bed hungry when you grow up with that kind of food insecurities- sometimes you grow up and you have problems with weight either bulimic or anorexic, or obese and there's a lot of that in your nonsense, yeah, and also I don't know like how many people are familiar with it.

Isa: 3:00

But, like she mentioned, you have brothers right. Sometimes in households where there's food insecurity, there's also hierarchy on who gets to eat the good food first and who gets bigger servings and that also subconsciously correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm not a therapist can create a sentiment of I'm not good enough, or I'm not good enough compared to or I don't deserve because your children, you, you are not thinking in a way of um, your parents are instilling value in you, like what your value and your worth is, and in those subtle things, even though as parents she might have been thinking well, the boys are going to need more because they're boys and they need more approaching and there might be some real thought process than that, but as a child you see that as a valuation, especially with everything she's going on in the book right so absolutely and there's so much about it that that a lot of people it can resonate um growing up and feeling that everything your parents did or didn't do assigned you a value and a worth, yeah.

Elly: 4:11

So today we're going to talk about some of our favorite parts, and one of my favorite parts is the part that I wanted to do the least. I had the scripture and I had the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but I really didn't want to put my story in there, and my publisher told me that people needed to know that I had some skin in the game because, yes, I have the education. But do I understand what I'm talking about when I talk about developmental needs not being met, as I was, as we're growing up, and how they have an impact on us? So let's hear about one of your favorites.

Isa: 4:52

So my favorite part is related to that. I have two, two big ones, two general ones. I love how you align scripture with what you knew technically, with your education background and your therapy, kind of like your working field. But I also love your vulnerability. So there's no specific story. I just loved what your publisher has to do. It was brilliant.

Elly: 5:18

Sometimes we don't have proper food, water, shelter. How many homeless do we have? Even in the city of Killeen, we have so many homeless people. And just growing up like that, not knowing where you can lay your head, not having safety, not having enough food to eat just that, right there. You don't have to have a specific trauma these things can cause. What is that? An overload of toxic stress that can cause an impact on your mental health.

Elly: 5:46

And that keeps us from living our fullest life. That's really why we do this. We really want to find a way to move from simply surviving, which is kind of what we do before we really get into a healed space. So we want to move from simply surviving to thriving.

Isa: 6:02

My other favorite part of the book is how the hierarchy Maslow's hierarchy is paired up with scripture. It's a way of making scripture practical in the therapeutic process, because scripture is always practical. We just sometimes need a different perspective and need a kind of like a different lens.

Elly: 6:21

I want to share something. We talk a lot about how I've integrated faith and psychology in this book and how I've taken scripture and put that to Madison's hierarchy. So I want to give an example. Yes, so in this book, at the very end of this book, you'll see what I have deemed God's hierarchy of needs, and it it's kind of like this All the different levels, if we think about the very foundational level, that are basic physical needs, how does God care for that? If we look at rest on the seventh day, god has commanded us to rest, and mental, because I have clients that will come to me and they aren't sleeping. They're sleeping one or two, maybe three hours a night, or they're sleeping with this broken sleep and then they have high anxiety or depression.

Elly: 7:18

And we're not gonna live our best life if we're not sleeping well. And so very from the foundation of our existence. Goddess said or rest. You know, I command you, yes, work, but rest.

Isa: 7:33

You know our bodies? Yes, and it's. It's very interesting to me because a lot of these ideas of the hierarchy of needs remember that the top of the pyramid is essentially accomplishments. It's like self-accomplishments, right? So you can't really handle that when your basic needs are the base of the pyramid, aren't they?

Isa: 7:59

And think about it this way. Think about triage in the hospital. You might have a chronic condition, you might have arthritis, for instance, but if you're going to the ER because you're bleeding profusely and you could die from hemorrhaging, they're not going to treat your arthritis pain in that moment, even though it's meaningful and it hurts and it's something you need attention to. The bleeding needs to stop. So that's what this pyramid represents.

Isa: 8:25

You cannot complete these things that fulfill you in life and help others until you have managed to feel safe with your provision, your food, your care, your physical needs. Then you can think about okay, now I can work on sabaton behaviors that I have like I can work on, that I can focus on. Now that I know I am provided for, now that I know that I can have boundaries and set time for myself to rest, now that I know all these things and I have found my stride and my basic needs are met. Okay, let me work on my mood, let me work on how I treat people, let me work on how I treat myself and those other things, absolutely.

Elly: 9:13

So if I don't feel safe in my environment? She said very much. She said I can't work on my relationships because I'm not safe. And so that's that very same thing and without connection. Science says that we don't even heal properly. We heal better, our immune systems are stronger, when we have strong connections in our life. And how crazy is that, y'all? I mean, that is so crazy. And it's crazy that the science is now backing up what the Bible has been saying. For years.

Isa: 9:47

Science is always catching up. I know? Do you think science comes?

Isa: 9:50

with a scripture. No, science just has some catching up to do, and you see that with every new discovery, whether it's brain science or physical science or natural science, it's literally catching up with the Bible as we speak, and it's amazing to watch. That's why we have to be open to let God speak to us through his creation. We are his creation. He made us and, yes, the Bible is a manual of why and who, but not the how. But he gives us the wisdom and he gives individuals the desire to study these things so that we can teach and help each other. And that's what happens with therapy and that's what we work on. That's why we get with people that are professionals. That's why we seek help.

Isa: 10:32

There's something good about therapy, too, and I think it's understated. It's my favorite part when I go to therapy. I can't hurt my therapist with what I'm sharing, right? Sometimes there's wisdom in not sharing everything with loved ones, not because it's not worth saying, but sometimes we need to process things out loud in a safe environment, and we can't dump certain things on family members.

Elly: 11:01

They're not even equipped to take it. I know, Well, a lot of times we're verbal processing.

Elly: 11:06

As I'm verbally processing, I don't even know what I feel until I've got it out here so if you bring it out here and you've hurt somebody that you love dearly with your words that weren't even really how you felt, but you were trying to process how you were feeling and you had to bring it out here to look at it. You've hurt somebody Versus finding a therapist and you bring it out here. You haven't hurt the therapist. The therapist can help you explore well I wonder what that blind belief is.

Elly: 11:34

What is that shame? What is that inner critic? What is that that's telling you? Who's saying that? Whose voice is that that you're hearing? That is talking to you so it really is it's really good, efficient work with the therapist doesn't substitute prayer, so we want to be clear.

Isa: 11:53

We're not saying that talking to my therapist is a replacement to talking to God. No, both absolutely.

Isa: 12:00

We talked to God. God listens and many times, spiritually, he answers. But he said he had. He started doing that to me once I started spiritually maturing and hearing some things in my life so that I can more clearly hear the voice of God. Let me give you an example Addiction, I'm a drug addict and I am in the middle of it and I can talk to God. God and I may or may not hear him, but I am clouded by this physical thing that can impair my ability to hear God clearly and truly and honestly.

Isa: 12:35

Trauma is a filter and sometimes we're both looking at the same thing, same truth and when we interact with that same truth, our filter changes the image of what we're seeing. That's why you have people in the church hurting other people in the name of God, because their filter has intervened the message. So when we start clearing the cobwebs of our life in tandem with seeking the Lord earnestly, we get a bigger picture of the truth. We get both these things.

Elly: 13:11

God loves you, but you need to rest more. I've created just from writing the book, and it's one of the things that I love is how God takes us through each one of these levels. So I created this thing called the Better Framework and I really dig into that Better Framework and we'll put the link in the show notes, but I really dig into what that stands for. We talked about awareness.

Elly: 13:41

We've talked about really developing awareness many times in our podcast, but the better framework is really talking about begin to notice, and that's the B, and then the E is education.

Elly: 13:55

We really need to understand that, and so that's what some of the things that we try to do in this podcast is really bringing awareness and education at least as much as we can Bring some education, and then we really have to learn how to take down the walls of shame and I talk a lot about shame because I've dealt with it very intimately and then we can reach the transformation. A lot of times we say, okay, I'm broken, I want to be fixed. And so we're trying to get to I want to be fixed before we've even gone through the other things. We really have to understand how we can get to that point of getting fixed.

Isa: 14:35

Yeah, and I love that. You know she built a companion guide. So if you are not quite ready to sit down and share with somebody, it is a journey, there's no shame in that you can grab the companion guide and kind of like it helps you walk through the book and how to write your own story within the story and apply those tools too. So you can literally go in there and start putting yourself with the same tools, because you know we all have different stories but the consequences of our traumas are pretty much the same, because we respond to tiredness the same way, right, we respond to hunger the same way. So those basic things are basic for everybody, regardless of what got you there are basic for everybody, regardless of what got you there.

Elly: 15:24

So the last thing I would say, the thing that I really like the most about this book, is how I really start to talk about shame and writing. This book actually sparked the shame quiz that I have on my website and also a shame workbook that I'm working on, and it just really helps me understand how shame throughout the levels of need, how that's just impacted everything.

Isa: 15:49

yes, when you're ashamed, it makes you feel unworthy. It all goes back to the value. I keep on feeling that, like we value or devalue ourself based on how we feel in regards to shame, can can take a lot of your self-worth. That makes you feel that you can't approach God. It makes you feel that you can approach your loved ones and makes you feel that maybe you even deserve bad behavior from others.

Elly: 16:15

So it limits, yeah you don't create boundaries when you have shame, you don't create boundaries on yourself.

Isa: 16:17

You don't create boundaries when you have shame, you don't create boundaries on yourself. You don't create boundaries with others because you feel unworthy. Absolutely, really, peel those onion in there. Shame takes a lot from you and it adds nothing to you, absolutely. It's navigating that fine line between conviction to change behaviors, because it's not that we don't have accountability or that we don't have accountability or that we don't have things to work on ourselves. Shame just makes it seem like you can't and it's pointless to do so, or that others see you as less and you should see yourself as less one of the things I think about when you talked about value.

Elly: 16:56

One of the things that kept coming back to me is one of the pieces in the book talks about the value the value that we assign to ourselves and the value that we let the others in our lives assign to us. And it's who's assigning the value. If we think about a dollar, a dollar bill. If we go into other countries, that dollar bill is going to either be worth more than the local dollar or it's going to be worth less than the local dollar, depending on where you're at.

Elly: 17:23

So, it's who's assigning the value. And when we think about shame who's assigning the value. And we're assigning the value based on how we feel. And if we read the Bible, we hear how God assigns the value. And when we allow God to assign our value, our self-esteem and our self-worth just improve, because when we start believing what God has to say about us, I mean I can say you're worthy. You're worth something, you deserve better things. But when God says it, when God decides your value, no man can take it away yeah that's exactly right, and then you have to believe it yourself.

Isa: 18:07

we I've heard people in now that I'm working on my journey and figuring things out and healing from trauma myself from childhood. I've heard people in the past say I just have so much love for others and don't treat myself well. I even think there's a false reality to that, because you can't fully love other people until you love yourself, and that's biblical. We try, we do acts of service for others. That could be a loving thing, but do you really love deeply when you haven't loved yourself? And I say that because the Bible says love others as you love yourself Absolutely. It's important, it's in there, because it's important that you love yourself.

Isa: 18:50

And we tend to treat people according to the shame or lack of shame or what we carry, even if it's good things. Even people pleasers. They're always doing good things for others, but it comes from a place that's not healthy, right. It comes from a place of devaluing yourself, right, and that's not love.

Elly: 19:09

God doesn't want you to devalue yourself, people will only love me if I take care of them. Yeah.

Elly: 19:13

Yeah, we talk about that a lot in therapy. So, I think this is a good place to leave it. I think we have probably talked for a little while now. I can't see the recording timing, but we really appreciate you listening and hearing our heart about the book and about Maslow's Hierarchy and, of course, about what God says about Maslow's Hierarchy and about the different needs and how he he meets them for us. So in such a personal yes, absolutely yes, please, please, please.

Isa: 19:48

If you're coming across our podcast through social media or anywhere you can comment and you have read the book or read the book? Comment your favorite part of the book. Let us know what you appreciate from the book. Comment your favorite part of the book. Let us know what you appreciate from the book, what you learned from the book or anything else you would like to know more of. We are trying to make this interactive and we're building and hoping that the right people come across this. God will send the right people, or will send us to the right people. This is to create awareness for our body of Christ and people that are seeking healing and feel shame that prayer isn't helping them or they think isn't helping them.

Isa: 20:24

But maybe your prayer led you to us.

Elly: 20:27

Maybe that's why you're here. Yeah, yeah, absolutely Well, thank you all for watching. Thank you for listening. However, you're listening to us. We appreciate it and until next time, bye-bye, bye.

Isa: 20:39

That was like our cue thank you for watching us.

Elly: 20:45

We really appreciate you being here. If you enjoyed the episode, like, subscribe, share with a friend and join us next time. Thank you, bye-bye.