Dr. Julie Hayden:
Thank you. I’m so excited to be here. And really, actually, I do love the consortium, but usually just means boring meeting. But actually, that one’s pretty good. So I am excited to be here. And I know we’ve prayed, but there’s so much good information I want to have come across. And I just really want the Holy Spirit to take the information I have and give you exactly what he wants you to have. So I’m just going to take a quick moment to pray before we get started.
Lord, I just thank you for blessing me for being able to be here and just all these ladies here and just the passion you put in them to be healthy and come to you and just kind of be refreshed and ready to conquer the world and what you have for them. I pray very specifically that your Holy Spirit will lead me tonight to share what you have for them each individually and as a group here, a powerful group that can have an impact around us. In your name, Amen.
All right, I will introduce a little bit about myself because I think it’s important for the topic. So I am a licensed psychologist and I love psychology because it studies people. I first love the Bible. And then as I studied psychology, it was easy for me to have a perspective on people and understanding people and relationships that came from scripture. So I believe that’s very powerful and I’ll share some information out of scripture and out of psychology and out of research today that I think you’ll find interesting. But I want you to know, that’s my background.
I also want you to know that I enjoy being a woman. I’ve been married 20 years with two kids. And in career, I have received my doctorate and pursued a lot of endeavors in kind of the work life and having that balance of family and work, sometimes completely failing miserably and really having God get me back on track with what’s important. So, before I get going on some of the topics I have, broadly I want to look at feminism and how it has impacted our society, as well as a Biblical worldview and kind of see what comes. And it’s exactly the place we need to be to see why are we chasing happy and is it really working?
So we’re going to have some really fun information at the end that you can kind of take and see if it can improve some of the areas you might be dealing with. But with such a broad type of group where everybody might be in a different spot, I want you to remember, I’m coming at this from kind of a very broad 20,000 foot overall view of what’s happening in our society. And then toward the end, I’ll kind of zoom in and bring it back to you and how that might impact you. So keep that in the back of your mind s we move on.
I want to start with telling a story that I believe you might use in other parts of your conference of Mary and Martha. And I’m going to read the scripture so we have this in context as well and then we’ll kind of dive in to some of the topics. So, you have two sisters experiencing the exact same thing but each comes with a very different lens. And today we’re going to look at two lenses, two very important ones, I think. But how you view things has a huge impact on how you’re going to experience it. And I’ll read it real quick and then we’ll just look at the lens.
And Jesus and his disciples were on their way. This is Luke 10:38 through 42. And He came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister, Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening. I love that, just keep waiting to what He said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to Him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me.” “Martha, Martha.” He says it two times. I don’t know why that matters, it does. “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things but few things are needed, indeed only one, Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken from her.”
Very powerful. Martha thought she was doing what was really, really important and doing a great job at it, and she missed it. And that had to do with how she was viewing the situation, how she was looking at it, her lens she was using. Mary figured it out fast and did what she knew was called for at that moment and listened to Jesus. So I want you to have that in your mind and that’s what we’re going to bring in at the end again to you personally. And so we’ll do that at the end.
But I want you to come back up to the next slide. We’re going to look at just to remind us what we’re talking about. And we’re going to dive into feminism but this could be controversial so. I love controversy so that’s fun. So I’ll go there with you. And, sometimes we just have these conversations just to kind of get riled up. But this is very important for you guys to understand as you’re conquering the world out there in whatever capacity you are.
I want you to turn to the person next to you and tell them what first comes to mind when you hear the word feminism. Okay. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word feminism? It must be good. Okay.
On the next slide, we’ll take a look here. But a lot of times when you hear feminism, you kind of think pro woman, right? Definitely you have this idea of fueling women to conquer the world. They could do anything they want to. They can go for it, get their goals. There’s a lot of push for women’s opportunities and rights and just a lot of positive has come to give women fighting chance out there in the world to kind of run as far as they can in every area. There also might be, if you talk against feminism, kind of the idea of anti-woman, something that would be opposed or against women, but I want to disagree with that.
Feminism is a lens in how you view the world. And we’re going to look at what it says and its components. And then I want to contrast it with a Biblical lens because that’s where many of us maybe come from. And let’s kind of compare and contrast and then we’ll look at what are the ramifications of it. So there’s a lot of things in feminism that might overtly be very good. So I don’t want you to get caught up in the details of it but more broadly in society how it has impacted us, and for today, how it has impacted women. We’re going to look at that.
Okay. I want also on this slide to take a look at the social change and the women are victims of male dominant. These are kind of just core components of feminism, is that the concept that for many, many years, which I’m not even saying is not true, but for many years, women were oppressed by tyrannical male, patriarchal kind of society. So men had all the authority and women were pushed down and held down. So there’s this kind of women being victims of a male dominant hierarchy. True to feminist ideology is also a component of activism. Not every lens, or we could say worldview, has a call to action, sometimes it’s just how you view people.
In psychology, we have all kinds of theorists and they try to figure out how to view society and view humans and make sense of it all. So they have their lens that they see the world with. Feminism is a lens but with it has a component of social change. So whatever the views are that are within this philosophy, there’s also a call to action to change all of society toward those views. It’s part of it. That’s why you see community organization, you’ll see the media, you’ll see components of this and many kind of vivid out there places because it’s part of it.
If you’re true to the philosophy, you have a way you view things and then you’re going to push it anywhere you can for people to move in that direction as a society. That’s very different than if you have a brilliant woman that is very good at her job and excelling that something very individual and yet this is more of a philosophy that is a call for all of society to move in a certain direction. And we’re going to look at what that direction is and how that’s impacted us.
So before we move a little bit further into the feminist worldview, I want to go and look at the Biblical worldview. So this, again, if you read scripture, you’re going to be able to see people from a different perspective. Let’s go to the next slide here. Now, I call this actually a Genesis worldview, biblical worldview obviously that’s important using all of scripture to understand people and what’s happening in our society and the world, and what are we supposed to do, and where do I fit into this world? That Biblical worldview is going to be very valuable.
But when it comes to social type changes and experiences that we deal with every day, just some examples, domestic violence, divorce, dealing with sex trafficking, actually here in El Cajon definitely is a huge problem. As a psychologist, we definitely see depression, anxiety, mental illness. It’s just kind of this myriad of very extreme difficulties in our society. You may have some that you wrestle with, and you look at it and you think, why and how do these all fit? And sometimes they seem very scattered like there’s no theme to them. But actually there is a theme and we’ll look at that. A lot of them can be addressed in a Genesis worldview, a Genesis lens right there at the beginning of Genesis 1 through 3.
You have the creation story, right? You have God created, created everything. Everything was good. He created, it was good. He created, it was good. He created, then He comes to man, my favorite part, and it was not good, all right. It was not good for man to be alone, He created woman. Man and woman were created in God’s image. And he said, go multiply and subdue the earth. Man, woman, offspring, right there before sin, beginning of time, humans on Earth, you have family. Of course, you know the story. Satan coming in deceiving Eve, Adam ate, the whole world’s cursed, right? You have sin entering the world.
And we’re going to look specifically in a moment at the curses but what you have broadly right there in the beginning of creation with sin entering the world, you have a war, it says between Satan’s seed and woman’s seed that’s very genetic, sexual and biological. You have God created man, woman, go multiply and subdue the earth, family, and Satan trying to destroy what God had created right there at the beginning of creation. And as we go to the next one and we look at the curses, one curse is to Satan that there be enmity or war between Satan’s seed and woman’s seed. Genetic, literal seed.
And we know Satan tried to mess with the genetics of humankind. And today, in all of our lists of problems we could name in society, there’s a theme, Satan wants to destroy the family. If he can take out the families, he can destroy society. And we’ve seen this in history, we’ve seen this in other cultures. Today, I won’t name names of countries, I want to keep it kind of light and fluffy even though I’m not, that they’re saying, wait, never mind, everybody have children fast, this is a problem, that it can destroy a whole society when the core or the family units are broken down. So we’ve seen this so it’s not an accident. Satan is very wise. He knows what he’s doing. He hates humans because we’re created in God’s image and he can destroy us by destroying how humans were created on Earth, that family unit.
So we have some other curses, but I want to take some time to talk about this idea of curse. So I think you know. First of all, one curse that really gets on my nerves, but at least it helps give context for things, is we’re going to grow old and wrinkly and have disease and die, okay? So that’s not fun. That’s not fun to have the consequences like that. But it is helpful, because as a psychologist in a field where I believe God’s word, sometimes Christians have a hard time with like mental illness and things like that. I was like, “Yeah, a long time ago, we sinned. And everything’s been falling apart since then including the consequences like depression and anxiety and some of these things.”
There’s a context for it, we’re curse, we’re falling apart, and it’s only going to get worse to some extent. There’s hope, right, even in the curse to Satan talks about how Christ will come and conquer Satan, and He did. So there’s hope but we still live in this world. Our true hope is in the future. And today, here we are dealing with the spiritual war right there, Satan against the families, and all that’s coming to us every day while before Christ comes back or until we die. Here we are in this timeframe right now.
But there’s other curses. And these curses are really interesting. I’ve loved Genesis, I’m going to tell you how it changed my family and perspective toward the end as I bring it in to the personal. But I want you to just take a moment to think about God’s curses. God’s curses come from grace and compassion for humans despite harshness. God’s curses are not evil but more tough love on the planet. The flood was to purge an evil society from total corruption. The Tower of Babel was the same, Sodom and Gomorrah the same. God’s curses are better than man’s alternative solutions.
Now, look at this for a moment. Men were cursed to work hard and till the ground in order to eat, okay. It’s like curse a man. Men, and this is psychology not even scripture just obviously for feminist field as long as I have, you’d be surprised how the revelations of psychology have been there all along, okay? But we find that man find identity and fulfillment from their job. Now, it’s not every single man. These are just broad patterns we see even with people that are suicidal. If it’s a guy, has he lost his job recently? This is a big deal. It’s how they find their identity.
Now look at women. Again, come on now, God, women are cursed with childbearing, pain and childbearing, and that they’re going to want their husband and he will rule over them. Serious, okay. We have a natural drive. It’s within us, it’s part of a curse. And yet, we find identity through family, through being a mom and having kids in that. Now, not everybody can and so we’ll talk about what that looks like later. But as a whole society, women find their value and happiness in that role. And think about the feminist worldview coming in, we’ve gone away from that. And it may have affected us. We’ll look at it right now. See what kind of an impact it’s had.
But the curses are actually turned around by God to give us fulfillment in life, very interesting. Okay, let’s keep going. So, I want to talk a little bit about research and just what we found with women. Very specifically, we’re looking at kind of this concept of happiness right now, okay. We’re chasing happy, are we going to get it. So, we’ve had a huge increase in women’s rights, right? Feminism has been the predominant push in our society for a number of years. Obviously, I’m glad for some of us. I want the right to vote. There’s a lot of great movements that have come out of this with the right to vote, with having an ability within a relationship to be safe and healthy. There’s good things that have come but there’s also a lot that has possibly backfired.
Well, look. You have women in the workforce. Just so you know, the workforce is very glad. Companies, the corporate world loves women in the workforce because it doubles the workforce. It’s fantastic. We have women in the workforce. We ended up with single parenting because of some of this. A lot of single parents increased greatly, just statistically. I’m just talking about broad statistics in our society. A lot more women in the workforce, a lot more single parents, a lot of gender equality, a lot more just the option where you could do whatever you want, that girls and boys coming through school and looking to see what professions, it’s just open. They could do whatever they want, a lot more equality there.
Fertility control that changed the dynamic for a woman and just like sexual activity and things like that because we have the ability to have birth control. And then we have obviously a lot more opportunities in life. We have also different, what I want to say about outcomes is you have different waves of feminism. I won’t get into the details of all of it but the last wave didn’t want just more opportunities for women, they wanted to control the outcomes. So, not just you get the chance to go for something but we want women to be able to get it. So they might change other things to make sure the woman has it. And so it’s not just about opportunity, it’s about outcomes.
They’re going to have women in key places, whether they were able to get there on their own or not. And so they want equal outcomes across the board, if that makes sense. Somewhat, this is hard to explain in a short period of time but I hope you stay with me. I think it’s really important for us to know this information. So, we have soared in these areas, okay? And this is where I want you to know, I want you to understand it. But I’m here as a psychologist and a doctor with a passion for pursuing career in education and information. So there’s a lot of good that I’ve seen and I’ve experienced but I wonder if it worked.
So we’ll go to the next slide. It did not, okay. So, we are not happier straight across the board in research. There are six huge studies, huge like you don’t you can get that lucky to have thousands and thousands and thousands. But because of various censuses that we’ve taken, we’ve been able to gather really good information and across six very large studies, the happiness and satisfaction of women has gone down both by themselves and in comparison to men. So, the advances that we are so excited for from a feminist perspective has actually backfired on our happiness and satisfaction with life. Wow! It’s worth knowing that this is the case and a little bit of why? We can’t figure it all out but there’s some good reasons possibly why this could be.
Now the first one probably is obvious to you. If you look at a creation model and you understand how God created people and what He created them for on Earth, it would make sense that if we’re completely not as an individual but as a society if we walk away from that, it’s probably going to impact us. Now the reason I separate society and individual is because even in the New Testament, Paul was single and shared the value of that. And he said, by me being single, I can focus on God rather than wife and kids.
And so there was specific value he had and he shared and that’s common all along, that there might be something that you’re called to or maybe you want it and you don’t have it for whatever reason God’s slower than we want sometimes, that’s different that each individual person has a relationship with God and the Holy Spirit works with them very differently. And there can be women that flourish in leadership positions by God so that can definitely happen. What I’m talking about is as a society, if all of society moves in the direction away from what God intended, there may be consequences. And I think we have felt some of them.
Now, there’s other reasons and I’m going to look actually a little bit to psychology. Go to the next one so I can remember where I’m at here. Oh, yeah, this is just a graph showing our… of happiness. This is one of the studies. If anybody later wants to find me and then see some of these studies, it’s very interesting. They’re very clear cut. And it’s tricky because some of the studies, it’s hard to find really high quality studies. But this one in particular was kind of straight across the board. Many different people study and had the same outcomes.
So let’s go the next one. Today’s culture. So, these are a little bit of why and we’ll keep going with this. But if you took that feminist worldview, that activist position to give women the best opportunities in a workforce and we don’t need men, this is not every person that has a feminist worldview, but the core components of it, scene that you can do this on your own. You end up with what we have in our society, divorce is obviously up, single moms, it’s a common thing. Latchkey kids which would mean… unfortunately with women in the workforce, it also means… It used to be one person having a job was okay. Now pretty much you have to both work.
Now our society is at a place where you’re not, especially San Diego, you’re not going to be able to have a one-income home, it’s just not probably be realistic. So you end up halved in two because that’s just where we’re at today. So latchkey kids is basically those kids that don’t have somebody when they come home so they’re alone a lot. Hookup culture, kind of casual view of sex. Obviously abortion is very high. And financial instability. This is a difficulty. When you have two people in the home, there’s a different type of financial stability. And there’s a person that said the other day on something I was listening to, great way to get into poverty is having a divorce. It’s expensive. If not, and it’s just hard. So to come out of that, it’s so difficult to kind of get back on your feet financially.
So this is just an outcome. These are just kind of what we see coming from all of it. We definitely, as a society have, I deserve to be happy, me time, leisure activities which I’m a fan of. But if you look at it from a broad perspective, it’s a shift. If you think I deserve to be happy, remember expectation and reality? Worldview matters. We find this with PTSD and people going to war. If you have a mindset that says people are terrible and they could do terrible things to other people and you go to war, it’s less likely you’d come back with PTSD. If you go to war and you think everybody is beautiful and lovely and happy and nobody would do something terrible and they do, that’s when you have PTSD because your brain can’t hold that information, doesn’t know what to do with it, messes with you.
So if we have this perspective, everybody deserves to be happy, I’m going to get it, I’m going to reach for it, I’m going to go have it, and then life happens, that impacts us, our total level of satisfaction and well-being in life might be impacted. We have a lot more in our society of emotions dictating our actions. I don’t love a person anymore so it’s over. A feeling. And again, there’s a lot of these complicated situations. I’m not going to judge anybody. I have my list of things later, I’m like hmm.
But as a society, for sure, we’re going in that direction where emotions dictate our actions. And we blame a lot, our society blames. Now, I don’t even know… Okay, go to the next slide, it might be this one. I had a slide that’s not there. Okay now, go back up. But maybe I added in later, but it kind of show basically all of research lately, last 20 years. And basically, they’re focusing on how the environment impacts everybody’s life. It used to be studies on how people’s personal traits impacted their life. That’s actually a feministic philosophy coming into research to say, we don’t care about what an individual person did that impacted their life.
We want to know what does society do to them? What did everything in my environment do to me to cause me to be here? There’s a problem with that. It backfires. We know this in psychology and that can go the next slide. We’re here, we’re here. Now, remember, everything I found that it’s just, wow, that’s fantastic, it works, it’s good. In psychology, tends to have been in scripture long before. So I’m going to share these things out of psychology, but you’ll recognize them as actual scriptural truth as well.
They have this concept of locus of control, locus of responsibility. Is it internal or external inside? If inside, you think I have the ability to impact something. I have the ability to influence my life, to change something if I want to for something positive, that’s internal locus of control, locus of responsibility. External is I can’t do anything, it’s everybody else’s fault. It’s my mom’s fault and my husband’s fault and society’s fault and the boss’ fault and everybody else’s fault. If you have that external locus of control in general, in research what they find is a ton of anxiety and depression.
And I say that I work a lot with actually all men it seems, but I always say, because they always are grouchy and want to blame everybody, so I always say, “I get it, I get it.” It’s just that if you have zero responsibility, you have zero hope. If there was absolutely nothing you could have done, then the same thing will happen to you. If there’s one thing you could find that you could change then there’s hope. And that seems to make an impact, it changes. So within psychology, that fits. The broad feminist worldview of male, dominant, patriarchal society oppressing us and it’s all these other reasons why I am in this position I am, externalizing it, actually creates anxiety and depression and unsatisfaction in the person. So there’s reasons why we have what we have.
The others, I’m going to skip a little bit because actually we’re going to have other speakers talk on some of them that what you could do to kind of take responsibility and change how you think and the impact it has, but I think the ACE in brain development is really important to touch on. And, Linda, helped me remember time because I forget when I started, so just give me like a, hurry it up.
With the ACE, this was another really big study. Now, I think we should have always known childhood matters, something like that, seems to make sense to me. But with this study, it was just a revelation to everybody. Because it was over 17,000 people at Kaiser in all different walks of life. Instead of like trapped people, usually we trapped people and research them so like college students or military or people in prison. This was everybody coming in to Kaiser. And what they found are childhood negative experiences greatly impacted the risk levels for future problems.
So those types of things will be abuse, which will make sense. Child abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse. Now, you know what was top was verbal abuse, makes sense? Number two, know what the second most common adverse childhood experience was? A tie for parents being divorced and a parent being an alcoholic. And then you had others. Those were tied directly to other negative experiences such as risk for substance abuse, risk for going to jail, risk for being in domestic violence situations, and the list goes on. So, wow, childhood matters!
Now, then we study the brain and we see this also. And what we find broadly is that those negative experiences in childhood changes the brain development of a kid, gives them a different fighting chance for the future. Now, a lot of times I’m talking to people that they’re already way over here. So, ugh, it all makes sense. What have I done with my children? I always remind them there’s always hope because the brain is fascinating, it could rewire itself. And the number one way to have a healthier brain is healthy relationships. Now that fits our Biblical worldview we’re looking at, right?
Healthy relationships can actually rewire the brain. But there’s always hope. A little bit of a change just has this ripple effect in families. So, I want you to keep a positive view on what God might be telling you rather than, oh no, if you have some of these things in your life, but I am hoping to have you see how if all society continues on the trajectory it is, with these large components of a feministic worldview, we may have continued negative consequences. We definitely already have not had an increase in happiness and satisfaction, and we are absolutely feeling the negative effects within our kids and our society in that way.
Let’s keep going. Okay. So, I’m going to bring it to the passage in a crisis moment and hopefully bring it into you personally. And when I was thinking about Mary and Martha, I was thinking that moment in time where it’s just so important and everything that’s not important fades away and you just have what’s left. And so, I was thinking of that for me in my life. I am driven. I got my doctorate before I had kids and became a dean at a very young age, and just pushed hard. I was passionate.
And there was a day that God revealed to my husband the Genesis 3. And it was very specifically Satan’s seed and woman’s seed, that spiritual work, and it was just as light bulb first in him and then in me. There’s a war against your family, you better start waking up. You better realize everything will be out against you to destroy your family. And it changed my life from that point on. And one thing that came out of it was a conviction that God speaks to my husband. He could speak to me too, I’m not saying that, but it was just deep like, you better knock it off.
He will show your husband and you need to follow Him where He’s leading your family. I’m a fighter, you should see his dance, it does not work, okay. I cannot follow if my life depended on it and he will definitely attest to that. We gave up. We go just like, that’s it. So, it was a time in my life, I’ll never forget the date that I just knew what God was saying, I can’t even explain it, I just knew and I changed. I’m still passionate, I still pursue all kinds of things. But I care what he says, I talk to him, I let him lead us. I listen to what he says that did not come natural to me. But it was so rewarding. So that’s my personal crisis moment.
For some of you, you’re all going to be in different spots and I have no idea where you’re at. So I need you to more just be open during the rest of the conference and tomorrow to see what the Holy Spirit reveals to you whatever path you’re on. Martha was convinced she was doing something good. It was probably beautiful. All laid out, all organized. She was working hard. She was so convinced that she’s yelling at Jesus, “How come you don’t tell her to help me?” I don’t know, that seems much. And I hope when Christ talked to her that she goes, “Oh, I better sit down at his feet.” I don’t know if she did.
So these two sisters saw the same situation, they were faced with the same situation. They dealt with it different. And I want you to think about that this weekend, could this be your crisis moment? I don’t know. Maybe it already happened, maybe you already have that story. But just where is God reminding you, you are missing what he has best for you. So keep that in your mind as you continue through the rest of the conference.
So let’s do the very last one and hopefully we have some time for questions. If you did have that moment, I want you to be thinking how would it change your priorities? How would it change how you make decisions? How would it change your relationships, what you spend your time on, your purpose? Chasing happy, that phrase, I hope you see it differently now. You may be fooled. But if you’re doing what God wants you to do, whatever that is, that type of fulfillment and peace is hard to even explain. It’s a good day. And it doesn’t mean what society may tell you. It means whatever that is. And so I hope that this can be a benefit.
Again, with the feminist, coming back to it just to remind that lens. I want you to see it because it’s everywhere and it has impacted our whole society. And you might not even realize it. So I hope if nothing else, you can see it and you might see it more like, I know what that’s… because it comes in media, it comes in schools, it comes everywhere like, uh. And we’re focusing on ourselves today but this impacts our boys, our sons, our brothers, our husbands, our fathers. Think of how this has affected them. So today, it’s okay. In this conference, focus on yourself and what God is speaking to you, but have in the back of your mind, Wow, how has this impacted our men and what God has called us to?
So, yeah, that’s it. I wanted to come and see if we had time for questions. Good to go? Okay. And just have it come alive. This is such a broad topic. First time I dove in in a public setting like this to something like feminism. So I’m curious. I want to know what you’re thinking, what questions you have, how does this impact you? Anything, even from kind of the psychology side, what research says? Anybody have something that they like to ask? Or me personally, sometimes that’s helpful too. Anybody brave?
Speaker 2:
I didn’t quite understand. You said you had like an aha moment. You said you were a go getter and really press forward and all of a sudden, could you explain maybe just a little bit more what happened between you and your husband and how that… what shifted in you that you were suddenly at more peace and what were you more peace with?
There’s two times, so lumping them together probably makes it confusing but for time I was going there. But the first moment was the Genesis 3, that changed my entire life and my husband, both of us. From this day on, we are not the same. And we were more like minded. Before, he had his thing he’s really good at, I have my thing, and we’re kind of like two separate people passionate kind of side by side, sort of, that was a whoosh. And this is what we did, because we both love psychology, we’re both in the field.
It was, okay, there’s a war against the family, how can we counter this? Strengthen families? So then we started with our own. How do we make sure we make this work? How do we have a strong family? And we changed all of our decisions based on that. And even some family members were frustrated because we took away from other things to put into our family. We made decisions based like that. So it changed us and we were like a strong team from that point on.
The next was, it’s hard to explain because I remember it so vividly but it wasn’t… it was the Holy Spirit. So, [inaudible 00:40:08]. My husband sees my strengths and has always supported that. He loves it. Honestly, he kind of wrote my speech. He loves psychology and he can dive much deeper than I can, he will know anything and everything. And as he gives me stuff then I compose it into something and I give it to the world. So it’s always worked very nicely so I have my secret weapon. He’s very good at this. And he was always fine with that. To this day, he loves it. He’s so proud of me and he’ll be watching this and seeing this, proud of it and the impact it has. But I could take that too far.
Plus, I’m manipulative, and it comes natural. So I could push hard and drive, be the drive in my family. And his compassion and love might let that happen. I don’t think forever. We have a good open, hey, wait, hey. I’m like, come on now, a little too far. So we’re pretty open about that with each other. But I just was convicted by the Holy Spirit. If I’m going to be blessed, because I have a picture in my mind, we have a vision, we have a university currently and we have this whole picture in our mind of strengthening families from the ground up, it’s still there and God has blessed it.
When that was raw, that was just starting out, it was definitely, be quiet and listen to your husband. I know that’s not popular but it was very, very clear. And when I did, it was unbelievable, positive change in my family and with our vision. And God blessed and blessed and blessed. And we’re still today, if you ever want to have a great conversation, I’ll tell you where it’s at. I can’t even believe how God has blessed. And I just truly know that is me submitting to my husband. And I can be out and about all over the place but in my heart, I know I need to be in submission to my husband.
Is that okay? So that’s my experience. It’s not concrete. It’s very personal but hard to explain. Yes?
Speaker 3:
Hi. So I identify really strongly with what you’ve talked about. And my husband and I have had a hard time because we kind of have reversed roles in a lot of ways where I’m more the breadwinner and he’s a little bit more… I don’t know if you know Kyle, you know exactly what he is. He’s awesome.
So, I guess my question is, how did you as a woman and as a mother cope with those feelings of not feeling like the traditional woman. When you’re one of the 1% that marks up that personality type of a woman and you’re not one of the personality types that marks up the other 99, how did you go through relating to the Lord and feeling like there’s not something wrong with you per se that you don’t fit the mold of the stay at home mom and that kind of thing-
Yeah. I definitely felt called by God for what I was doing so that helped. It was something that I felt like he was going to use me in some special way. Not I am a working mom kind of a thing. I felt like we were doing something passionately together and we are like, I work all the time, my kids will tell you. But we homeschool, they’re with us a lot, and we do a lot of things together. I had a fight but it was worth the fight to be balanced. I’m not going to pretend like I’m balanced. I have two ladies here that they’ll probably have something to say if I say I’m balanced.
But I have always in my mind, how’s my daughter, how’s my son and how’s my husband, as far as like not going too far over here with ambition. Stop it all. And to this day, I work on this every day, it’s not easy, is stop everything, play and have fun. I’m going to Big Bear tomorrow. This is a big deal. Stop everything, talk to your daughter. Stop everything, spend some time with your husband. And so it had to be very kind of… I had to be very aware not to let something that seems so good, so important by God, let me miss what my true priority is.
And so it’s been a fight every day. I’m still on this mission. Everybody knows, I have a therapist. And I don’t know, he’s great, but I mostly just needed somebody to remind me like are you present, did you actually sit in and relax and enjoy your kids? So it’s a little bit more of a battle but I have a lot of compassion as a therapist when I work with people. I can bring that in and it helps. So I hope that answers a little bit. These will be tricky to answer but I’ll do the best I can. Do we have others.
Yeah, that’s good.
Speaker 4:
So, what is your suggestion to the woman who wants her husband to lead her spiritually but he is not willing to take the reins.
Sure.
And you kind of feel that woman feels naturally led that she should be like the Holy Spirit in the family. What do you suggest?
Well, I do think that you have what God has called you to, and tell me if I’m wrong, I don’t think the day is going to come when a woman will change a man. That is up to God, right? So, we want God to work within our timeframe and he just does whatever he does and it’s better than what we will come up with. So it’s almost that faith that however long it takes, you have to do what you’re called to and that’s very personal. It’s not going to come from me. You’re going to know between you and God certain things you do. For example, maybe you take the kids to church, even if you’re not going with him but are you frustrated at him and reminding him that he needs to be the spiritual head of the home, that kind of a thing.
So it’s going to look different for each person but if you can figure out what is God telling you to do in context of what scripture says, not what you made up, I’m not saying you but you know how we are. And it’s, “God’s telling me.” I was like, “Wait, the Bible also says.” So in context of scripture, God, the Holy Spirit talking to you and then it’s God’s job to do the rest in your husband. That’s just how it is. It’s got to end if you’re not married. If you don’t have that person in your life, same thing. We have no idea what God’s timing is. I do tend to see broadly if that yearning is there. I really do hope God does have somebody but he doesn’t always work within our timing.
So, you doing what you need to be doing right now. Not everybody here is a mom, I bet you everybody here is a leader. To whatever extent, you have influence about those around you. You’re a leader so the same concepts can be applied. You’re not pouring into your children possibly but you’re pouring into this person. And you’re the only person in that woman’s life that is saying something that’s helpful and supportive as they grow, as they move on.
So I would say for those that don’t have maybe a classic view currently in their family, that’s okay. What has God called you to do and how are you influencing those around you to have strong families, to have health, to be on the road with God, you can still have that powerful influence. Anybody else? Yeah?
Speaker 5:
Hi. You had mentioned PTSD. Does your brain change after PTSD?
Kind of, cool information so I’ll make it really short. If something happens that has a really strong emotion, usually like fear or something like that attached to it, that your brain can’t make sense of instead of it organizing it nightly in your left hemisphere that’s organized and analytical and it has language and make sense and it has a filing cabinet, it floats around randomly in your right hemisphere with creativity and all your strong emotions all over the place, floats around to be activated when something brings it out and you bring back that memory as all the emotions tied to it as if it’s happening in the moment. That’s PTSD.
So broadly, it’s basically whatever that experience is, your brain couldn’t make sense of it. So it’s stuck floating on the right hemisphere. Absolutely. These two ladies over here, there’s really good strategy… They’re doing a training this weekend on one of the most common tools for that EMDR that basically uses how dreams work to process memories. You still have the memory without the emotion. It’s pretty cool. I know it seems scary but it’s really just the brain at work, how it naturally works. So there’s a couple other ones that work really well. It’s not the case in every situation but you’d be surprised how many situations are greatly helped by that. Basically shakes up that memory and files it over in your left hemisphere. It’s pretty cool.
Speaker 6:
You were talking about how you had a revelation with the Genesis 3, could you share if you don’t mind how that looked more practically like some ways you said it changed your entire life. So what was that?
Yes, okay. First of all, I’ve always struggled with anxiety. I didn’t even realize until I knew what it was to not have anxiety. Wow. It’s a whole new world. So that’s kind of in my past and it was interesting. I will wake up in the morning, I am in a war. I am in a war, pay attention, know what’s going on. Now, we’re doing a lot. And I think as you move forward with what God has, spiritual war is a real thing so we hit all over the place. This concept allowed me to handle adversity so much better. I’m in a war and you think I’m going to let Satan win? Oh, no. So all my fight gets to be used for good and I was like all my energy is, I’m watching.
So, I made decisions on what am I going to do this weekend? Am I going to overcommit for, I mean, just how many years did I overcommit to everything, feeling like I needed to and I had to and to do whatever? I started to say, no, and playing with my kids, doing something specific with the family at home. And then I would view things differently. When everything is falling apart around me, it will give me energy. And I will talk to my husband, “Oh, we must be on the right track. Oh, Satan’s mad today.” And so we had like a passion and excitement differently.
And I will see, I need to keep my family strong. I will put myself in check. Is this going to help? And my husband, he’s very honest too. We have a great open communication now of, “Don’t forget, if you do those three things in a row that are going to take every second of your time, we’re here, that’s going to impact your kids.” He’ll say that to me honestly. And like, “Okay, not doing it. It’s not worth it.”
So just trying to figure out how to make good decisions and keep my priorities straight if nothing else. But then definitely how I handled difficult things in life became just like an exciting battle instead of feeling like it’s coming to me, on me, and taking me out. And I train my kids differently. I mean, my kids have fire in them. They have spunk and they have fight because I’m thinking they’re in a middle of a war, they got to be ready for it. So I actually changed my parenting style with them. My mom not always likes this but I did that for a reason.
I have a 10-year-old and a 12-year-old. I don’t even know if it’s going to work fully yet, how was this going to impact them. But I wanted them to have a voice to stand up for themselves, to come back even to adults, and of course, this is a balance every day we’re trying to figure out, but I wanted that because I believe we’re in a war. And then I’m a therapist and I deal with people so I want my kids to be ready for whatever is coming to them in life in that way, so it changed my parenting. So, if I think more along the way, I might throw them out but those are a couple that that come to mind.
Speaker 7:
I’m coming. Hello. So, when you’re in that place where you’re constantly stressed out like fight of depression, anxiety and you’re like constantly fighting, is there a point where you reach where it’s like medicine has to be involved to balance out chemicals in your brain or like how do you get like that trauma from childhood and those like constant negative thoughts that keep coming back like your old way of thinking when you’re like raised? How do you kind of like maneuver that to renew your mind like God wants you to and like kind of move on?
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I do think medication can help. It doesn’t fix, sometimes that will oversell medication. It doesn’t necessarily fix a problem, a lot of times it alleviate symptoms for a time so you have a fighting chance to learn new tools. So, I’m not a huge fan of medication but I will say that’s how I knew there was such a thing as not anxiety. And so, I would have never known that you could live without anxiety unless I had taken medication and I’m like, “Wow!” This is how people can live and then I fought hard for tools.
So, I’m not a huge fan of medication but I did it and it worked. But I will say we understand diabetes and heart medication, everything else. And then we are scared of medication that alters our chemicals in that way, but they weren’t very similar. So, there’s negative consequences. So I want you to take it carefully into consideration and we could talk later of pros and cons because there’s risks involved too. But for very severe types of situations like that, sometimes it brings you to the point where you can learn tools. Now I’ll give you my favorite tool.
Spend a week thinking about your thinking, just pay attention to it. Notice what comes into your mind. Notice your thoughts, just pay attention, okay? Spend a week thinking about your thinking. Don’t do number two until the second week. Secondly, think how else can I think about this? How else can I think about this? How else can I think about this? Third week, start keeping what’s in your mind only what you think is accurate, healthy, as close to reality as possible, and start choosing.
We didn’t talk about this but broadly… Oh yeah, we talked about responsibility but if you can really fight to keep control of the thoughts in your head, it can impact. For some reason this three part seems to work really well. If I tell you change your thinking, you’re going to be frustrated that you can’t do it well. If you spend a week thinking about your thinking and then you think how else even if it’s negative, five negative things, that’s fine, you just notice, notice, notice. Third week, you start trying to hone it in. It seems to work well. So we could talk separately and there’s a lot of great strategies like that.
And number two, when you wake up in the morning, list everything you’re grateful for. You’d be surprised how that impacts depression and anxiety. Just something so simple can have a ripple effect. So, if you haven’t already done that, I would every day. And then when you have a bad moment… I am so thankful for and you start listing, list whatever you’re thankful for. Those are two, my favorite tools that I used.
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