Dealing with Church Trauma

What do you do when you keep hitting a wall trying to go deeper in friendship? Today, I’m joined by Nicole who is feeling hurt by the cycle of trying to go deeper with friends, but finding herself at a dead end. She’s feeling discouraged and wondering if it’s even possible to connect with people on the level that she’s desiring for friendship. I challenge her to dig deeper into some of her personal fears and triggers that might lie underneath the surface, particularly regarding rejection wounds, and then I give her practical steps for what to do next when you want to go deeper in friendship. If you’re struggling to find the right fit in friendships, you have to listen to this episode! We cover this and more, in today’s episode of Talk To Me! Dig deeper into going deeper in your friendships and connections by ordering my new book People Skills anywhere books are sold.  The Debra Fileta Counselors Network: Book a counseling session at the Debra Fileta Counselors Network and get started on your healing journey from the inside out TODAY!  DEBRA FILETA is a Licensed Professional Counselor, national speaker, and founder of the Debra Fileta Counselors Network. She is the bestselling author of eight books including Choosing Marriage, Are You Really OK?, RESET, and Soul Care. Debra is the host of the popular podcast and nationally syndicated radio show Talk To Me where she facilitates on-air authentic counseling-style sessions with notable pastors and leaders. You may also recognize her voice from her appearances on national television and radio, including Better Together, The Kirk Cameron Show, Focus on the Family, The 700 Club, and many others. She reaches millions of people each year with the message of mental, emotional, and relational health. Connect with her on Instagram or at DebraFileta.com.

Today on the show, Kevin calls in to talk to me about dealing with church hurt and trauma. He’s a licensed counselor himself, and finds himself counseling people through church trauma issues on a regular basis. He wants to know how to best serve those who are struggling with this kind of trauma. He’s worked through his personal journey of church trauma, but as a counselor at a local church, he wants to find better tools to help those who are in the thick of it. If you find yourself walking through church trauma, this conversation will offer encouragement and next steps. Dig deeper by ordering my new book People Skills anywhere books are sold.  The Debra Fileta Counselors Network:  Book a counseling session at the Debra Fileta Counselors Network and get started on your healing journey from the inside out TODAY! DEBRA FILETA is a Licensed Professional Counselor, national speaker, and founder of the Debra Fileta Counselors Network. She is the bestselling author of eight books including Choosing Marriage, Are You Really OK?, RESET, and Soul Care. Debra is the host of the popular podcast and nationally syndicated radio show Talk To Me where she facilitates on-air authentic counseling-style sessions with notable pastors and leaders. You may also recognize her voice from her appearances on national television and radio, including Better Together, The Kirk Cameron Show, Focus on the Family, The 700 Club, and many others. She reaches millions of people each year with the message of mental, emotional, and relational health. Connect with her on Instagram or at DebraFileta.com.

Rachel calls in to the hotline today to Talk To Me about her struggles with feeling secure standing alone. After the loss of her husband, she realized she’d never really dealt with abandonment wounds from the past, and is having a really hard time feeling secure in her singleness. How can a person begin to develop that confidence, and even enjoy being alone? Is it wrong to have a desire for a relationship, and how do you know if your desire for connection is healthy or unhealthy? We cover this and more, in today’s episode of Talk To Me! Dig deeper by ordering my new book People Skills anywhere books are sold.  The Debra Fileta Counselors Network: Book a counseling session at the Debra Fileta Counselors Network and get started on your healing journey from the inside out TODAY! DEBRA FILETA is a Licensed Professional Counselor, national speaker, and founder of the Debra Fileta Counselors Network. She is the bestselling author of eight books including Choosing Marriage, Are You Really OK?, RESET, and Soul Care. Debra is the host of the popular podcast and nationally syndicated radio show Talk To Me where she facilitates on-air authentic counseling-style sessions with notable pastors and leaders. You may also recognize her voice from her appearances on national television and radio, including Better Together, The Kirk Cameron Show, Focus on the Family, The 700 Club, and many others. She reaches millions of people each year with the message of mental, emotional, and relational health. Connect with her on Instagram or at DebraFileta.com.

Can friendship bring up old wounds? Today Royneka calls in to the hotline to chat about a friendship that seems to be triggering her. How can she tell if the triggers mean she should step away from this friendship, or if the triggers are revealing something in her that needs to be healed? We unpack friendship triggers, how to deal with them, and when to confront them or step away. Knowing your triggers is an important people skill, and we talk through it in this episode of Talk To Me! Dig deeper by ordering my new book People Skills anywhere books are sold.  The Debra Fileta Counselors Network: Book a counseling session at the Debra Fileta Counselors Network and get started on your healing journey from the inside out TODAY! DEBRA FILETA is a Licensed Professional Counselor, national speaker, and founder of the Debra Fileta Counselors Network. She is the bestselling author of eight books including Choosing Marriage, Are You Really OK?, RESET, and Soul Care. Debra is the host of the popular podcast and nationally syndicated radio show Talk To Me where she facilitates on-air authentic counseling-style sessions with notable pastors and leaders. You may also recognize her voice from her appearances on national television and radio, including Better Together, The Kirk Cameron Show, Focus on the Family, The 700 Club, and many others. She reaches millions of people each year with the message of mental, emotional, and relational health. Connect with her on Instagram or at DebraFileta.com.

Today I’m joined by Michelle, who has been on a journey of saying no to passivity. Being the oldest child in the family, she has had a tendency to become more accommodating than she should. This pattern has followed her into her adulthood and developed into passivity. We talk about 3 important mindset shifts that have to happen in order to see assertiveness as the best way to take care of yourself and others. In order for relationships to be healthy, they have to be balanced! Assertiveness is an important people skill, and we talk through it on this episode of Talk To Me! Dig deeper by ordering my new book People Skills anywhere books are sold.  The Debra Fileta Counselors Network: Book a counseling session at the Debra Fileta Counselors Network and get started on your healing journey from the inside out TODAY! DEBRA FILETA is a Licensed Professional Counselor, national speaker, and founder of the Debra Fileta Counselors Network. She is the bestselling author of eight books including Choosing Marriage, Are You Really OK?, RESET, and Soul Care. Debra is the host of the popular podcast and nationally syndicated radio show Talk To Me where she facilitates on-air authentic counseling-style sessions with notable pastors and leaders. You may also recognize her voice from her appearances on national television and radio, including Better Together, The Kirk Cameron Show, Focus on the Family, The 700 Club, and many others. She reaches millions of people each year with the message of mental, emotional, and relational health. Connect with her on Instagram or at DebraFileta.com.

We are so excited to celebrate the official launch of my new book People Skills today! People Skills offers 31 transformational social skills that will strengthen your interpersonal relationships, increase your influence, and help you create meaningful interactions. Rooted in Scripture and informed by science and psychology, this roadmap offers practical lessons on empathy, clear communication, listening, body language, conflict resolution, attachment styles, and more.  As we continue this People Skills series on the show, I’m joined today by Anthony, who called in to Talk To Me About how to move past the hurt he experienced at his past church. Anthony talks through the church hurt he experienced after serving relentlessly at his last church, and after giving so much yet getting so little in return.   This episode takes an interesting turn when I start to notice this pattern of “giving too much” in Anthony’s life and history…and we start to make some really significant connections. Learning to own your role in a relationship is a really important people skill, and it’s one that we discuss in depth in this important episode of Talk To Me. If you’ve been hurt in relationships, again and again, it’s time to start looking for patterns. This episode will help you learn how. Dig deeper by ordering my new book People Skills anywhere books are sold.  The Debra Fileta Counselors Network: Book a counseling session at the Debra Fileta Counselors Network and get started on your healing journey from the inside out TODAY! DEBRA FILETA is a Licensed Professional Counselor, national speaker, and founder of the Debra Fileta Counselors Network. She is the bestselling author of eight books including Choosing Marriage, Are You Really OK?, RESET, and Soul Care. Debra is the host of the popular podcast and nationally syndicated radio show Talk To Me where she facilitates on-air authentic counseling-style sessions with notable pastors and leaders. You may also recognize her voice from her appearances on national television and radio, including Better Together, The Kirk Cameron Show, Focus on the Family, The 700 Club, and many others. She reaches millions of people each year with the message of mental, emotional, and relational health. Connect with her on Instagram or at DebraFileta.com.

Will called in to Talk To Me about his journey through deep betrayal by his best friend – someone he never imagined would hurt him. How do you walk through this kind of betrayal, when you’ve been completely blindsided? Today, we talk through his story of pain and friendship betrayal, and the number one thing that helped him move into healing: forgiveness. Forgiveness is an important people skill, because it untethers you from the pain that others have caused you – so that you can be free to move forward and not stay stuck. We talk through how to do that, and why it’s necessary in this important episode of Talk To Me! Dig deeper by preordering my new book People Skills anywhere books are sold.  The Debra Fileta Counselors Network: Book a counseling session at the Debra Fileta Counselors Network and get started on your healing journey from the inside out TODAY!  DEBRA FILETA is a Licensed Professional Counselor, national speaker, and founder of the Debra Fileta Counselors Network. She is the bestselling author of eight books including Choosing Marriage, Are You Really OK?, RESET, and Soul Care. Debra is the host of the popular podcast and nationally syndicated radio show Talk To Me where she facilitates on-air authentic counseling-style sessions with notable pastors and leaders. You may also recognize her voice from her appearances on national television and radio, including Better Together, The Kirk Cameron Show, Focus on the Family, The 700 Club, and many others. She reaches millions of people each year with the message of mental, emotional, and relational health. Connect with her on Instagram or at DebraFileta.com.

In one of the most vulnerable conversations of the year, I sat down with Pastor Shawn Johnson and processed the moment that literally almost took his life -- the moment he broke mentally and emotionally. After suffering from intense and continuous panic attacks behind the scenes for many years, one day he could take it no more. Thank God he chose vulnerability in that dark and desperate moment, and reached out for help, because it was vulnerability: letting people in on his darkest moments, that ultimately saved his life. We spend some time talking about the series of events leading up to this dark season in his life, what kept him from opening up before this moment, and how he's keeping track of his mental health and well being today. If you suffer from mental illness, panic attacks, depression or anxiety -- his journey will truly challenge and inspire you to continue moving toward healing, and to learn to let people in. The Debra Fileta Counselors Network: Book a counseling session at the Debra Fileta Counselors Network and get started on your healing journey from the inside out TODAY! DEBRA FILETA is a Licensed Professional Counselor, national speaker, and founder of the Debra Fileta Counselors Network. She is the bestselling author of eight books including Choosing Marriage, Are You Really OK?, RESET, and Soul Care. Debra is the host of the popular podcast and nationally syndicated radio show Talk To Me where she facilitates on-air authentic counseling-style sessions with notable pastors and leaders. You may also recognize her voice from her appearances on national television and radio, including Better Together, The Kirk Cameron Show, Focus on the Family, The 700 Club, and many others. She reaches millions of people each year with the message of mental, emotional, and relational health. Connect with her on Instagram or at DebraFileta.com.

What do you do when your people pleasing tendencies continue to come up again and again? How do you navigate the desire to please people, but ultimately continue to strive to please God? Today, I talk to Judah Smith about his tendencies to care too much about what people think, and the self-serving, self-protecting, selfish nature behind being a person who cares too much about what people think. We unpack the idea that ultimately, the root of people-pleasing is actually selfish -- because it's the desire to be wanted, loved, accepted, and validated -- is actually a desire to meet a deep, unquenchable need in us. If you struggle with people-pleasing, you need to tune in to this one.  The Debra Fileta Counselors Network: Book a counseling session at the Debra Fileta Counselors Network and get started on your healing journey from the inside out TODAY! DEBRA FILETA is a Licensed Professional Counselor, national speaker, and founder of the Debra Fileta Counselors Network. She is the bestselling author of eight books including Choosing Marriage, Are You Really OK?, RESET, and Soul Care. Debra is the host of the popular podcast and nationally syndicated radio show Talk To Me where she facilitates on-air authentic counseling-style sessions with notable pastors and leaders. You may also recognize her voice from her appearances on national television and radio, including Better Together, The Kirk Cameron Show, Focus on the Family, The 700 Club, and many others. She reaches millions of people each year with the message of mental, emotional, and relational health. Connect with her on Instagram or at DebraFileta.com.

It's hard enough to deal with feeling offended by people, but what do you do when you feel offended by God? In this on-air session with Alexandra Hoover, we talk about healthy vs. unhealthy ways to handle offense from people who hurt us deeply, and then we move into healthy ways to deal with feeling offended by God. We talk about important mindset shifts that need to happen, in order for us to be able to deal with our real and significant hurts, disappointment, and pain. How can offense bring us closer to God, rather than push us away from Him? If you've ever felt disappointed by God or by people, this conversation is just what you need The Debra Fileta Counselors Network: Book a counseling session at the Debra Fileta Counselors Network and get started on your healing journey from the inside out TODAY! DEBRA FILETA is a Licensed Professional Counselor, national speaker, and founder of the Debra Fileta Counselors Network. She is the bestselling author of eight books including Choosing Marriage, Are You Really OK?, RESET, and Soul Care. Debra is the host of the popular podcast and nationally syndicated radio show Talk To Me where she facilitates on-air authentic counseling-style sessions with notable pastors and leaders. You may also recognize her voice from her appearances on national television and radio, including Better Together, The Kirk Cameron Show, Focus on the Family, The 700 Club, and many others. She reaches millions of people each year with the message of mental, emotional, and relational health. Connect with her on Instagram or at DebraFileta.com.