072: Reclaiming Faith, Hope, and Love After Spiritual Abuse with Rachael Clinton Chen

Is healing from spiritual abuse actually possible?

The worst part of spiritual abuse is that it attempts to destroy your personhood, sense of safety with others, and imagination of a good God. It can feel like you and the things you once held sacred are broken beyond repair. However, in this episode, Rachael Clinton Chen shares that healing is not only possible but worth it. Your faith, hope, and love can stay intact despite immense spiritual harm. She talks to us about the goodness that is available to us through healthy human attachment, spiritual formation, embodiment, and revisiting our stories in the presence of an empathetic witness.

Guest Spotlight ✨ 

Racheal is a trauma care practitioner, speaker, and pastoral leader. She serves as a lead instructor for the Allender Center at The Seattle School and is co-host of the Allender Center Podcast with Dr. Dan Allender. She holds a Master of Divinity from  The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology and recently had the honor of being named by Sojourners as one of “9 Christian Women Shaping the Church in 2024.”

Rachael is devoted to addressing the harm of abuse–especially spiritual abuse–at the intersection of trauma, healing, embodiment, and spiritual formation. She leads the Story Workshop for Spiritual Abuse & Healing and recently developed the Allender Center’s Spiritual Abuse & Healing Online Course, inviting survivors of spiritual abuse to journey together towards healing and reclamation.

Website | Instagram | Podcast

Links & Resources 🔗

• TAC Podcast: The Attachment Wounds of Spiritual Abuse
•  TAC Podcast: Moving from Broken to Beloved with Brian Lee
• Raising Securely Attached Kids by Eli Harwood | Amazon | Bookshop
• Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World by Serene Jones | Amazon | Bookshop
• Godly Play Foundation 
   

Other Episodes You May Like

• 068: How Writing Your Story Can Bring Healing with Megan Febuary
• 061: Healing After Spiritual Trauma with Dr. Hillary McBride
• 043: Finding Hope and Healing in our Scars with Dr. Diane Langberg

Don’t Miss the Next Episode!

Sign up for our Podcast Newsletter and subscribe on your favorite podcast app below and never miss out on these conversations with old and new friends. Is there a guest you’d like to hear from? Let us know!

Apple Podcasts  |  Spotify  |  Amazon Music  |  YouTube

Spread the Word. Leave a Rating and Review. It would mean the world if you would leave us a rating and review on Apple or on Spotify or share with your friends. 

Broken to Beloved is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that works to provide practical resources for recovery from and safeguarding against spiritual abuse. Our programs like this podcast are made possible in part by the generous donations of our supporters. Consider joining our community of supporters with a gift of $25 today.

As an Amazon and Bookshop.org affiliate, I may make a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Episode Transcript 📄

Rachael Clinton Chen
People will say, time heals all wounds, and it's like, it doesn't. You can have enstoried experiences of harm, and it doesn't matter how much time you have. It doesn't matter how much time you've been out of your house. Your parents could have passed away. Maybe one of your parents was a primary abuser, and they pass away from old age. That doesn't actually heal the wounds you carry or the stories you bear. I call it quantum work because it's like going back to a memory of the past, but in the presence of empathy synthetic witnesses who give to you and this memoried part of you that lives in your brain and in your nervous system. It gives you an opportunity to revisit a narrative in a way that you get to be honored. You get to have experiences of grief that you're meant for. You get to have people hold with you the possibility of a meaning-making shift.

Brian Lee
Hey, friends. Welcome back to the Broken to Beloved Podcast. If you're looking for compassion passionate conversations and practical resources for recovery from and safeguarding against spiritual abuse, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Brian Lee. As an ordained pastor and spiritual abuse survivor, I know what it feels like navigating life after spiritual abuse. I also know what it's like to want to prevent anything from happening to the people you know and love. It's why Broken to Beloved exists.

You're enjoying this podcast ad free because of the generous support of our donors, and we could use your help. Support our work by becoming a donor today to help make our programs like this podcast possible. Just head to brokentobeloved.org/support or click the link in the show notes.

Today, I get to talk to Rachael Clinton Chen. She is a trauma care practitioner, speaker, and pastoral leader. She serves as a lead instructor for the Allender Center at the Seattle School and is co-host of the Allender Center podcast with Dr. Dan Allender. She holds a Master of Divinity from the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and recently had the honor of being named by Sojourners as one of the nine Christian women shaping the church in 2024.

She's devoted to addressing the harm of abuse, especially spiritual abuse, at the intersection of trauma, healing, embodiment, and spiritual formation. She leads the story Workshop for Spiritual Abuse and Healing, and recently developed their Spiritual Abuse and Healing Online course. Now, here's my fantastic conversation with our new friend, Rachael. Rachael, welcome to the podcast.

Rachael Clinton Chen
It's so good to be with you. Thanks for the invite.

Brian Lee
Of course. Your bio says that you're devoted to addressing the harm of abuse, especially spiritual abuse at the intersection of trauma, healing, embodiment, and spiritual formation. That is a loaded sentence. Do you mind if we dive into each of those a little bit and why they're so important to you?

Rachael Clinton Chen
Yeah, let's do it.

Brian Lee
So addressing the harm of spiritual abuse. Why?

Rachael Clinton Chen
Yeah, that's such a great question. Even if you had asked me probably seven years ago, I don't know if I would have had an answer. I don't even know if that language, I would have been like, Well, tell me what you mean by spiritual abuse. I've been working in the realm of trauma and abuse for almost 20 years now, which is pretty wild. It makes me feel very old, actually, is what I feel with that. But really about seven or eight years ago, was just naming with Dan, who I work with at the Eleanor Center, that I find myself most drawn to people. In the work we were doing at the Eleanor Center, we just have people come who want to address stories of harm. Some people want to come do training, and then, of course, we invite them to undergo their stories. You're learning through experience as much as content. I just put language to my Where I feel most deeply compelled to work with people is when they've been harmed in faith experiences or harmed by bad shepherds or bad pastors. He was like, great, let's talk about that on a podcast. I was like, Okay.

He was like, We're going to talk about spiritual abuse. I was like, Spiritual abuse? Okay. There was something in the midst of this. I mean, I'm a pastor by training. I have an M.Div. I had a call to ministry at 12 within the Southern Baptist church context. Lots of things that were working against me as a young little girl. Lots of spiritual abuse, really. I've always been drawn to pastor people. But there was something about this conversation we were having for a podcast on spiritual abuse, which I was like, Well, that's an interesting term, but let's jump into it, that I actually had to address that my own story held profound experiences of what I would say are just textbook cases of spiritual abuse, and that this wasn't something I was just compelled to for other people. I mean, it's such a classic two on the end of your moment. I'm just called to these people. It was like, this is my story. So much of my healing journey has been having to address the realities, not just of spiritual abuse, but certainly there's no way I could be in the healing journey I'm on without taking seriously the harm I've experienced in either spiritually abusive context or relationships, ideologies, you name the thing.

In fact, I probably could have even told you, I've experienced clergy abuse. I've been in toxic theological systems. Again, I could have just told you all the things, but no one had ever given me a language or a word for what this is. Because I worked in the realm of abuse, that connection point when I connected these terms was like, Oh, okay. This means something different as far as impact, and it means something different with how serious I need to take it. That's just a jumping place, I would say, why spiritual abuse?

Brian Lee
Yeah. Thank you. I love that you've been doing the work for that long. For me, it's much more recent, in the last five years. It's probably when I first gained language for spiritual abuse at all, let alone what it means, the impact and effect that it has. That's part of why I love all of the other words that you use and include under the intersection of, right? Like learning, thinking about trauma, figuring out what is healing, the huge role of embodiment, and then the practices of spiritual formation after experiencing the harm of spiritual malformation, I think. Would you pick one and/or all of those and dive into why those specific things, those intersections, are important for you?

Rachael Clinton Chen
It's so funny because I'm like, obviously, I wrote this bio before, something like ChatGPT or, and all the feelings people have about it. But I'm like, I'm sure if I had put that in some AI system, it would have been like, there's a way to simplify this. But I've just always been a fan of like, no, things are complex and intersections are complex.

Brian Lee
I'd rather use more words than less. Yeah.

Rachael Clinton Chen
Well, I think what I would say is, Serene Jones, who is a theologian and someone who's done a lot of work at the intersection of theology and trauma. She has a book, Trauma and Grace. I know she's done more work. She's at Union Theological Seminary. But she has this language of disordered imagination. That's language that's really has become something I've claimed as something I want to share with her, because I think for me, what I found is that's actually a word, disordered imagination that, for me, encompasses this intersection. Because I think imagination is so much more than our mind, our capacity to imagine. It's how we make meaning. It's how we dream about the future and what's possible. It's deeply embodied. How our imagination is shaped is deeply shaped by our experience in our body. For me, disordered imagination is deeply shaped by trauma. I find the work of spiritual formation, you can't do it without the imagination. It just requires an engagement with the imagination. When I think about spiritual abuse and how profoundly it disorders our imagination, it's It's coming within the framework of the imagination we've been shaped with, especially if we're coming out of Christian spiritual formation, or as you said, malformation, deeply shapes how we even understand ourselves, how we understand other people, and how we understand God.

I think that's why I fought really hard to keep spiritual formation in that intersection as just a part of my calling. Because like I said, I'm a pastor by orientation, which is actually really challenging when you work in the field of spiritual abuse because people have experienced such bad shepherds, bad pastors. I had a friend once say to me, Must be really hard to finally have found a playground to play in that I get to bring my gifts to. But she's like, You're like a shepherd who, when you move your staff at all, the sheep just flee in terror. What's it like to want to bring really good gifts to people, but to also have to be so tender and so wise and so discerning and how you bring them and so empowering? I saw Hillary McBride was just talking about this on a podcast with someone else about you can't just tell people, "You can trust me." You actually have to show them and patiently build that trust and empower them to be able to trust their own discernment. All that to say, I think for me, trauma has such an impact on the body.

Therefore, healing has to engage the body, and therefore, spiritual formation has to engage trauma and healing and the body. That's why I fought really hard to keep those words together as a very important intersection. There's so many roads I could go down. How did we get a very disembodied theology from where we are? How has that actually empowered abusers? There's just a lot there.

Brian Lee
I think I'm curious because of your orientation as a pastor, which I love how many times you've said that, by the way, about spiritual formation, because I think we've been so spiritually malformed in so many ways, especially under toxic systems, especially under abusive leadership, pastors, churches. What, to you, is a healthy embodied spiritual formation? What does that look like?

Rachael Clinton Chen
Yes. For me, this is where when I encounter the realm of psychology and especially trauma studies. I was wrestling with this intersection of trauma and spiritual formation in my graduate studies because I was looking at the impact of domestic violence on imagination, therefore on how we make sense of theological things, stories, how we make sense of biblical stories. I think trauma actually has a lot to teach us about good spiritual formation because it has a lot to teach us about, in some ways, if you do the backwork, What are we meant for? What's trauma actually disrupting and dysregulating? Why are things traumatic? For me, this comes back to attachment when I think about healthy spiritual formation, because we are wired for love. Our bodies, the way we're made, we are wired for connection. We actually can't exist apart from human connection. I have a lot of questions about that. How smart is this? We don't seem to be very good at this, but it's what we're wired for. Therefore, we're wired for care and attunement and nurture. We're wired for deep trust in another human beings capacity to honor us and to keep us safe.

When you think about early attachment with children and caregivers, we're wired for... I'm learning all about this now because I have a tiny human. We're wired for a capacity to explore our edges and ask questions and be big and have big emotions, but be in the presence of someone who can both keep us safe, but also celebrate and honor our personhood without being too dysregulated. They can be like... Part of attachment theory is like, we talk about containment, and we often think about that as boundaries, but it's like, I can be sturdy enough while you are dysregulated so that we can come back to a co-regulation. Now, I would love to say as a parent of a three-year-old, I just am always really great at that. When she's really dysregulated, I'm like, I'm good. We got this. You be big, girl, and I'll figure out what's going on, and we'll find space for you to regulate back down. It doesn't always work that way. The good news about human attachment is, at least the science says, it needs to work about 30 to 50% of the time. We got to be good enough 30 to 50% of the time.

Brian Lee
What a relief. Right.

Rachael Clinton Chen
It's such good news. Then again, we're made for repair when we think about attachment. We're made for that capacity for someone to say, I missed you. There was a failure of love. There was a failure of honor. There was a failure of integrity. If we're using adult words, if I like talking to a tiny human, I hurt you. I misattuned to you. I wasn't there when you needed me, whatever the language is. I want to make that right to you. Not just like, I'm sorry, but I want to rebuild trust. I We're not going to repair the breach. That's just scientifically how our bodies are wired. When I think about healthy spiritual formation, I think it has to have some of these realities. It has to be an environment where there's an attuning to our humanity, to our personhood, to where are we struggling? Where are we thriving? Where are we hurting? Where are we sad? It has to make space for the full expression of humanity. It has to honor that we are people. Containment has a deep value of personhood, that you are separate from me. When we hear this language of working out your salvation with fear and trembling.

There's something of like, I can't work out this spirituality for you. I can co-create a context. We can wait for God to meet us there. We can have rituals and stories that help us grow our imagination. But ultimately, your spirituality belongs to you and is going to be shaped by who you are and how you're experiencing the world. I think about space for emotions and questions. Honestly, I love the curriculum of godly play for kids. When I think about a healthy spiritual formation, if people are familiar with that, it's just a curriculum that follows the curiosity of children, makes space for their questions, talks about the presence of God's goodness and God's trustworthiness, not just in this ethereal hyper-spiritual way, but in the coming and going in ordinary work of the world. They might go outside and spend time in nature and ask questions about what's happening here. So I think there's got to be enough freedom in spiritual formation for the places where there's dissonance for what we believe to be true. I think that's actually really evident in the biblical text, that there's a space for lament, for psalms, like imprecatory psalms, like Questioning God, expressing faithfulness that says, We're told that these are attributes of you, but what we're experiencing doesn't line up with these attributes.

Where do we go with these complaints? Where do we go with this making sense of our suffering? Ultimately, I think a healthy spiritual formation is going to have space for the complexity of being human, not in a way that moves to one end of the stream of tension or the other, right? We have all the answers, or there are no answers, and you're on your own. Good luck. There's no hope for you, or the only hope for you is believing these very rigid set of beliefs and trying to constrict your moral behavior through fear, shame, control, and coercion. Maybe we could just say at its most baseline, not utilizing the tools of fear, and shame, and control, and coercion to help people grow in wisdom and in doing justice and in loving mercy and having humility.

Brian Lee
Yeah, I love that. Well, you start with attachment and repair, which are obviously huge and which obviously the Allender Center does a lot of work around. But then I love that we're chasing this idea of curiosity and play as part of spiritual formation, because I think so often people hear the words spiritual formation and they think discipline and locking things down and completing a checklist and just these dusty old books that I'm supposed to follow to attain my salvation or to attain my discipleship or whatever it is. I think Just reframing that idea of what does it look like to be curious and not have the answers and to have an element of play in the way that we figure out how we live these spiritual lives.

Rachael Clinton Chen
Yeah, but that doesn't bode well for expressions of Christianity in the political environment we're in, right? That's not going to lead to people who just don't think critically and are motivated by fear and can really get on board with scapegoating people as a way to discern who and these rigid purity tests, they can be really effective in controlling people and holding on to power. It's funny because a lot of these ideas for me actually came. I went to Oklahoma Baptist University, which was a Christian liberal arts school. I think it still is. But we had to read this book called The Idea of the Christian liberal Arts College as a part of our entrance into the school. For this little Southern Baptist girl, there was this line in it, All truth is God's truth. We don't have to be afraid of the sciences or things that are maybe a different language system to make sense of what's true of the world. Because if something is true, then It doesn't have to feel in opposition to God. That was such a... I just think about the mercy I've been given in my own journey that I actually feel like I meant to give away to others of these very gracious doors and windows being opened by circumstances or people in my midst who were like, Here's some very countercultural ways for you to think about spirituality and faith within these contexts.

Texts that can be incredibly spiritually abusive, that can open your curiosity, invite you to ask different questions. I have actually been very generously gifted with tremendous amounts of possibility in the midst of places that I don't think there should have been, if that makes sense. I think in some ways, that's a privilege then that my faith and spiritual formation has been able to stay somewhat intact in the midst of incredible harm. Yeah, it's true.

Brian Lee
Well, I think you tell the stories in different interviews or different places about growing up in this really restrictive, locked-down environment, and yet encountering, whether it's teachers or professors who just offer this very open-handed view of things, which, again, like you're saying, you probably should not have encountered in some of those places. And yet was that mercy to just say, Hey, guess what? There's a different path forward for you.

Rachael Clinton Chen
Yeah. I would love to say all of those. Ask these questions. For me, me as a young 20-something was just like, Okay. But it actually brought a lot of existential angst. It does, yeah. What's the answer? So many times I felt myself being like, Well, just tell me the answer. I feel really grateful for professors who are like, no.

Brian Lee
Figure it out. No.

Rachael Clinton Chen
Go read, go see what other people are saying, go discern. I was a biblical studies major, so they were intentionally giving us tools to engage critically and think critically. At the time, that felt terrifying. What if there's not an answer? What if I don't like the answer I come to? What if I come to a different answer than you have? What does that mean? This authoritative figure. I do, yes, lots of mercy in Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Lee
You mentioned the word containment a few times. For people who may not be familiar with it, define that for us.

Rachael Clinton Chen
Yeah. Containment is an attachment term that literally means... When you think about a container, in parenting terms of early attachment, containment is that capacity to bring safety and security, whether that's emotional security or physical security, to hold the boundary lines of what's going to be wise and good. But I think a piece that's often missing when we talk about containment is the honor piece. But that also honors that you're meant to, when we think about toddler development or teenage development, because our spiritual formation really mirrors a lot of these developmental pathways. There's parts of development where little brains and bodies are supposed to be pushing against the boundary lines. So what does it mean to just have that wisdom and strength to hold both the boundaries that are honoring and safe, but also to be a container for big expressions of personhood in little bodies that don't actually have a language or a critical thinking to be able to go, Oh, I'm just feeling angry right now. There's appropriate places to bring my anger. Those are all things like, containment would be like Daniel Tiger with the mom saying, Stop, stop, stop. It's okay to feel angry.

It's not, not, not okay to hurt someone. That's good containment. I love it.

Brian Lee
Multiple times a day, we're singing to our two-year-old the Mad song, and we just say, Take a deep breath and count to four.

Rachael Clinton Chen
Yeah, and he goes, Do we? It's like, Okay, you can do it. That's the work of containment, right?

Brian Lee
It is. That's the work of containment and of co-regulating for little bodies who don't know how to do it for themselves. Yes.

Rachael Clinton Chen
That's why it gets tricky when we talk about this, because in some ways, There are certain nos, like no, N-O, that are actually really honoring and good and kind. Not how we've often experienced that when we've been in spiritually abusive or spiritually malformed contexts.

Brian Lee
Yeah. In that process of bringing up new little ones, watching that experience of reparenting for myself and making vows of, I really don't want you to go through what I went through. Yeah. In the process of raising you, I'm figuring out things for myself, too. It's what's like double the work, and yet can be so beautiful when we see them living these innocent lives that haven't been stolen from them too early because of their experiences. It's really wild. You mentioned your healing journey. You talk about growing up in that environment. You talk about preaching at a young age to your friends and identifying all these markers and affirmations of your gifts as a pastor as you're growing up. And yet, talking to yourself and saying, I think I'm being called into ministry at this camp, and yet I know that it's incredibly threatening and honestly disgusting, I think is what you say, that I knew deep in my bones that girls are not allowed to do that. There's so much cognitive dissonance and tension building up and all of these things. What has the process of coming to terms with all of that and moving forward through it somehow to find whatever healing has meant or looked like for you looked like.

Rachael Clinton Chen
Yeah. Because that's a lot. I would love to say it was like, I just feel like a year. It's funny because, again, I found myself in graduate school studying a master divinity after swearing I would never go to graduate school and study a master divinity, mostly because at that point I was like, Well, I'll become a professor because the teachers in my life, that's a safe way to care for people, to pastor people, to be a part of spiritual formation. But it's like you're not breaking the rules, so to speak. You can be with it because I want to be loved. I want to belong. That's also what we're meant for. I want to be a part of something meaningful. That's what we're meant for. I want to be a part of making the world a better place. I actually genuinely believe that's That's how we're wired, and that's what we're meant for. But because of the malformation, there was so much disorder. How I found myself at Marshall Graduate School at the time, it's now called the Seattle School, is still to me, I actually went to Rwanda with a group from Portland, Oregon, and they seemed like, the best way I can describe it is really down-to-earth Christians.

Some of them were Democrats, which I had never encountered. A Christian who was a Democrat. They went to therapy, talked about it like it was just normal.

Brian Lee
Therapy wasn't a dirty word.

Rachael Clinton Chen
Right. Now that I spent 13 years in the Pacific Northwest, I'm like, Okay, so basically they were just Pacific Northwesterners who were Christian. But at the time, I was like, These are okay. I need to go be discipled by people like this because I was very unwell in this season. So much of my trauma was coming to a head. I didn't have language for that. I would have just told you I'm a mess. I'm anxious. I'm crazy. Crazy. I can't figure out why all these things are happening. To find myself at a Master of Divinity program in a primarily counseling psychology school, and similar to my liberal arts education, you have to go through this counseling practicum as a part of the core content. You have to take this integrative education. You have to take some of these psychology classes. I would say ultimately, a big part of my healing has always come through education and this reclaiming of my mind, these opportunities to develop critical thinking and to ask questions. That's just been a huge gift to me. But to do so in an environment that was like, psychology was such a missing piece.

I had to start looking at my story, and not just my familial story, but the larger contextual story. Well, what context did you come from? How have you been shaped? How has your imagination been shaped? I'm encountering people that were different. I remember one of my professors was Canadian, my New Testament professor, which was Canadian. We were doing a class on Romans, and all of us, like post-Evangelical kids, We're like, The Romans road, and we're traumatized. She was like, The Roman's Road? What is that? We're like, You don't know the Roman's Road?

Brian Lee
You don't know? Yeah.

Rachael Clinton Chen
You're probably going to hell. In that moment, what? I Just having these moments of realizing not everyone had the same formation I had, and what did that mean? What did that mean for me? Certainly started with actually doing some therapeutic work around what's the context I've been in? What was some of the harm, and doing some attachment work, right? Because how was I ever going to lean into something that was going to rattle? I mean, we've got pastors coming on the air They're saying women shouldn't have the right to vote. Women shouldn't work outside the home. What has stayed underground is just out there. Like, oh, yeah, this was actually what was in the water, right? We've got abuse that's been pervasive in certain context and was hidden or users being protected. Doing some of that work around letting my body actually heal and not be so traumatized to where I could step into work knowing it would be disruptive to other people and not feel so disrupted in myself. It meant having relationships with men and women and lots of people who could say, Oh, my gosh, we see these gifts in you. Of course, this is true of who you are.

In an ironic twist, I would say my parents have been some of the biggest supporters of my call to ministry, and even in pastoral work. I think it's where it's that enigma of they became Southern Baptist because they were coming out of the Jesus movement, and the Jesus movement people got a little too crazy for them in Oklahoma in the late '70s. They were all going to move to Tulsa because the end times were coming, and they were like, Wait, this is where we get off. But we want our kids to have spiritual formation. We'll join this Southern Baptist Church on campus that has a great kids program. It's like that started their trajectory of being a part of this denomination. They always had a cognitive dissonance. They felt a safety in that context, which makes a lot of sense with their story. But as far as they could really bless my gifts and be like, My dad used to joke when I was in seminary, this is my daughter, Rachael, and she's looking for a pastor's husband who could play the piano. That was his joke that he would say to people. I would be like, Oh my God, dad, you know.

I also had that sense of a great, merciful gift in the midst of this context. Parents who were like, We support you. We see this call in your life. You've got to go. I was a really good pastor to them, too, so I think that's a part of it. But yeah, I think having to do some therapeutic work and that getting to be a real gift of making sense of why I was anxious, that it wasn't just I'm an anxious person, but getting to do some of that meaning-making shift of like, Well, I've been in the midst of some pretty terrifying things. Of course, my nervous system. That's such a compassionate shift. Instead of this just a part of my personality. There's some way this wasn't formed in a vacuum. Getting to be in a context like the Pacific Northwest that said getting acupuncture, getting massage, or pursuing body care in ways that are really restorative to your body is good and well and not outside of the framework of healing or safe enough healing or whatever. Yeah, I think, again, getting to study deeply and bring questions and be in the midst of people who said, your gifts are good, and then finding this realm of this intersection of trauma and realizing, yeah, I always want to pastor in a more vocational sense in a church setting, but I just feel like I'm Probably going to be out here in these weird trenches doing this work.

I also think finding community to play with, playmates and a playground that actually felt like I got to bring this unique intersection protection that I do think churches, some churches are more ready for than others. Some people try to take this and make it the core of their church, and then things get really messy because, again, there are certain structures of containment that are needed if you're going to step into healing work around trauma. There are certain structures of safety and confidentiality and trained and informed people that are really helpful when you're doing this.

Brian Lee
Thank you. You mentioned story work, which is obviously very important to you. The Allender Center offers all kinds of training on it. For people who have heard it, because I heard it for years and I kept figuring, I was like, This sounds really important. This sounds really cool, but what the heck is it and who was going to explain this to me? For people who hear about story work, help them to understand what it is, how it works, why it's been so important for you.

Rachael Clinton Chen
Yeah. I mean, obviously, I want to just say I think story work is an aspect of healing. I I think sometimes when something works for us, we can make it like, it's the only way. It's everything. It hasn't been my experience, but I think it's very core because we are in storied people. When you start to study neuroscience, you see that the way we hold memory is so deeply impacting our nervous system, how we experience the world, how we make meaning. It's those idioms. People will say, time heals all wounds, and it's like, it doesn't. You can have enstoried experiences of harm, and it doesn't matter how much time you have. It doesn't matter how much time you've been out of your house. Your parents could have passed away. Maybe one of your parents was a primary abuser, and they pass away from old age That doesn't actually heal the wounds you carry or the stories you bear. A lot of our work is making space for people to actually, in some ways, I call it, it feels very like quantum work Because it's like going back to a memory of the past, but in the presence of empathetic witnesses who give to you and this memoried part of you that lives in your brain and in your nervous system, not just like an inner child, but like the you that was a 13-year-old that remembers being 13.

It gives you an opportunity to revisit a narrative in a way that you get to be honored. You get to have experiences of grief that you're meant for. You get to have people hold with you the possibility of a meaning-making shift. Because especially when we're... And most of the story work we do at the Allender Center is around childhood stories. But kids are great observers of reality. No kid has the luxury of being a good interpreter of reality, because you're going to interpret in a way that allows you to stay attached. Eli, Harwood, who's the attachment nerd on Instagram, and she's written some great books. But she talks about how there's this misnomer that if you don't have healthy attachment, then you're not attached, you're detached. It's like, no. Attachment is like, we're always attached. It's just you might have a more insecure attachment. Story work is that opportunity to revisit a story that helped establish insecure attachment and to help those parts of us that made meaning to keep an attachment, which is usually going to be shame and contempt. Taking in shame, I did something to deserve this, or this must be me causing this, or contempt.

I'm bad, I'm Why was I so foolish? Why did I think this would go a different way? Just whatever those mantras are, however we made meaning of these moments of harm, the world is scary. It's better for me to be afraid and vigilant. Again, there's just so many ways this plays out. But our stories deeply shape our style of relating, like how we relate to the world around us, how we make meaning. Story work is just an opportunity to revisit some of those core stories. With the help of kind, compassionate, and courageous others, take another look and not just have a cognitive shift, but it It's an actual embodied experience of healing a part of you that needed it then, but also really needs it now. Because we all are also wired for survival, so we will develop coping mechanisms that help us survive. There's something really beautiful and brilliant about that. It's just that usually once we get out of those contexts, we still respond in those ways and it starts to be detrimental as opposed to helping be resilient.

Brian Lee
Yeah, that's really helpful. But I love that idea. It's revisiting the past and going back to our 13-year-old selves, our 8-year-old selves, our 18-year-old selves. It's going back to find the attachment that we were missing, the attunement that we were missing, making repairs in the present with our old selves, like you're saying, that are not just about an inner child, but embodied experiences that we still carry with us because we didn't have that empathetic witness. Getting to retell that story or relive that memory in the presence of empathetic witnesses. It's been huge for me, I know.

Rachael Clinton Chen
In some ways, that's the work of what a lot of therapists are doing. Not all therapists, but a lot of therapists. In some ways, that's part of what you're getting. There's just something really powerful. A lot of our story work at the Allender Center, we do in groups. There's something powerful about being in the presence of other people who are taking the same risk of vulnerability and witnessing other people get good attunement that then increases the desire. Well, maybe I want. Okay, maybe. Maybe I want to be attuned to in that way. It feels really scary.

Most healing doesn't necessarily feel good. Initially, it feels threatening. I don't know what to do with this. Can I trust this? Yeah. I think it has profound impact for how we move into the future because that's what's so powerful about our brains and our bodies. We're not We have brain plasticity. We can create new neural pathways of attachment. There's really no age where you just stop having new possible pathways in your brain.

Brian Lee
Stop forming. I love That invitation to possibility. We're running a couple of story groups now, but it's that feeling of stepping into vulnerability, which is really, really scary. But then seeing it happening in real-time with a group of usually total strangers who have never met before. I can't tell you how many times, and I'm sure you've heard this, too. It's like, I've never told this story to anyone before. That shows up to the group and just like, All right, we want to hold it with you. There's so many sacred moments happening, I I think for me in those groups.

Rachael Clinton Chen
Absolutely, because there's something really sacred about our stories, right? It's very sacred work. It is. It's also very human work, and not everybody has to love it or it be the right time or context. But I think it can be because it shifts what's possible for us in our bodies, in our imagination, and therefore what's possible in our relationships. We long for different things. We have an imagination and a taste of different things. In many ways, if we're playing with the realm of faith, hope, and love, when we have an experience of goodness in the present that maybe we've been hoping for and longing and needing, and maybe not even knowing that we need it, it's like it actually increases our faith in some ways. This belief that goodness is possible because we have tasted it, and then we hope for more, which is the scary part, I think. It is.

Brian Lee
Well, especially when it's been so hurt or weaponized or whatever in the past. It makes sense why we feel that way, and yet we still secretly desire that hope. It's I think the invitation to say that just because you're feeling crazy or sad or anxious or unsure doesn't mean you're condemned to that for the rest of your life.

Rachael Clinton Chen
It's the end of the story. Yeah.

Brian Lee
There's always more story to tell.

Rachael Clinton Chen
Yes. There's, I think, more healing possible and available. I think healing... I don't know if we ever are healed. I think healing is a process and a journey. I think sometimes that can feel despairing when we're in a place that we just need a taste enough to know that it's worth going forward. It's worth to keep going. I think we can have very acute and palpable and life-changing experiences of healing and care and integration. I'm a huge fan of medical interventions and care that also are needed in different seasons to support our brains and our bodies and our nervous systems.

Brian Lee
Yeah, agreed. Rachael, what is the hope in the work that you do for all the people you interact with, or at the end of the day, what is your hope?

Rachael Clinton Chen
I think a big part of my hope for people is, sometimes I say reclamation, and I think sometimes it's actually tasting something and claiming something for the first time. But there's something of this hope of reclaiming, probably at its most basic sense, a possibility and capacity for secure attachment with ourselves. A reclamation of trust in our own bodies. Because spiritual abuse so distorts our capacity to trust ourselves. Because how could we have gotten into these contexts? How could we have not seen what was happening? Why did we want the care that we wanted? Just the barrage of accusation and distrust. The capacity to trust other people, to be in relationship that we need. The capacity to trust God or experience God or maybe meet the divine. I just think this attachment, the secure attachment with the divine, is like a birthright of being human. I think ultimately for me, my hope, and it's not a demand, and I don't think it's the end-all be-all. It's just that if people want to be able to reclaim something of a spirituality that leads to flourishing, that leads to greater connection, that leads to greater meaning, making, that they would have the opportunity to make that choice, that that choice would not be made for them.

I guess ultimately more freedom and more flourishing, not just for individuals, but for how that has impact, how we love and receive love, how we imagine flourishing possibilities for our communities, and are no longer bound by the very poor imagination of toxic systems and oppressive systems.

Brian Lee
I love that. Well, I think it ties right back to what you said at the beginning that we're wired for love and connection, that it's this desire and hope for secure attachment with God and with ourselves and with others is in the service of being connected to the people around us.

Rachael Clinton Chen
Absolutely.

Brian Lee
I love it. Thank you for sharing that. I am super excited to be hosting you at our upcoming gathering here in just about a month. Would you share a little preview of what you're planning for us?

Rachael Clinton Chen
Yeah. Ultimately, I want to talk about what is some of the work of healing from spiritual abuse, and I want to get into some of those categories of reclamation and reclaiming personhood, reclaiming attachments, reclaiming spiritual formation, spiritual imagination, is how I would talk about it. What are some of the steps to start that work? It's always hard because you want to give people, Here's five practical tools. But I think the work of healing from trauma and abuse is so much. It's so nonlinear. But there is healing work, and there is the next step, and at least some imagination for what are some of the wounds that need to be tended to and get to be tended to. That's part of my hope.

Brian Lee
Yes. I can't wait for everyone to hear that. Rachael, if people are looking for you online, where can they go?

Rachael Clinton Chen
To be honest, the easiest place to find me, at least at this I'm sure is theallendercenter.org. I co-host a podcast there. It's a weekly podcast with Dan Allender. We have some offerings for healing, whether it's more in the realm of abuse or primarily spiritual abuse or racial trauma. We have some different offerings, sexual abuse as well. I have an Instagram. You can find me @rachaelclintonchen on Instagram. But fair warning, I don't post as much there, and I'm primarily just posting stories stories that help alleviate my nervous system of our current cultural moment. I'm just letting you know that's what you'll find.

Brian Lee
Fair enough. Rachael, thank you so much for this conversation. I can't wait to see you in a month.

Rachael Clinton Chen
Yeah, very much looking forward to I look forward to it. Thank you for creating this space for survivors and for folks to come together and feel so much less alone.

Brian Lee
Yeah. Thank you for your work. See you soon. I love any chance that I get to talk to Rachael. If you enjoyed this episode as much I did, be sure to follow her and say thanks for being on the show. Rachael and I will be together at our gathering on October 10th and 11th here in Richmond. I'd love to see you there. Information and tickets are available on our website, and we'll provide the links and all the things in the show notes as well.

Subscribe or follow the show to get new episodes automatically. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and review or share with your friends. And a special thank you to our listeners who make this show possible through their financial support. If you find the show valuable, consider donating today at brokentobeluved.org/support or at the link in the show notes.

This episode was hosted and executive-produced by me, Brian Lee. Editing by Heidi Critz and postproduction by Lisa Carnegis. Thanks for taking the time out of your day to listen. I hope it's been helpful. Here's to moving toward healing and wholeness, together. I'll see you next time.