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Unspoken → Spoken: Karen Speaks

Season #2

Key Takeaways:

      • Karen was interviewed by Focus on the Family and has some thoughts to share on forgiveness, "battering" and whether or not her husband rescued her.
      • Megan and Karen discuss misconceptions in the interview surrounding abuse and relationships.

Notable Quotes:

      • "...our brain is part of our body, so emotional abuse, psychological abuse, verbal abuse is all physical violence because our brain is part of our bodies." — Karen DeArmond Gardner
      • "You can't tell a woman that God hates divorce and then ask why she stayed when she's been abused, but that's what they did. This very entity speaks about how God hates divorce." — Megan Owen
      • "We are conditioned to behave how they want us to behave, how they want us to react, how they want us to respond. We're the one that shuts down our voice. We're the one that does all the changing. They don't. We do." — Karen DeArmond Gardner
      • "We [forgive] because we've been forgiven. But we can't even do that because we haven't even forgiven ourselves for allowing this stuff to happen to us and thinking that "if we'd only done this or that", and we hold ourselves to a standard." — Karen DeArmond Gardner
      • "Many say, 'Don't you want a restored marriage' -- restored to WHAT? It was never a good structure in the first place!" -- Megan Owen

Resources:

 

(0:03) MEGAN: This is Pretty Psych, the podcast where we discuss and deconstruct the impact of evangelical Christianity and cultural phenomena on the psyche, the deep and sometimes uncharted territory of the mind. We venture into raw, rough, and sometimes triggering moments, but we know that through this what we will find will be pretty fascinating, amazing, and pretty intelligent. My name is Megan Owen. I'm a pastoral trauma counselor, and I have spent decades studying the science of human behavior. I draw parallels between therapy and connection to God, self, and others. I love what I do, and I will walk hand in hand with you through the fire to help you find healing and rest. Most importantly, I want to bring you home to yourself. 

(1:14) MEGAN: Okay, hi Karen. 

(1:16) KAREN: Hi Megan.

(1:18) MEGAN: It's Megan and Karen with Pretty Psych, and we're so happy to be together. We just love our talks. We love running through things. We love debriefing on everything. I really don't know where I'd be without Karen right now. I need to be able to talk through so many things, especially as we're getting close to the holidays. Karen, thank you for being an amazing friend to me and an amazing coach. 

(1:40) KAREN: Oh, you're so welcome, and I feel the same. 

(1:46) MEGAN: Well, we decided to come together today to debrief a recent interview that you did, Karen, where you talked about domestic violence, and you got to share about your book. I have so many questions, and I have thoughts about how the interview went. If you haven't seen it, we're going to go ahead and link it here. We did send it out in a big email blast as well. It's gotten a lot of attention from the women in our circles, right? 

(2:19) KAREN: Yes, a lot, and a lot of encouragement because very few people knew in advance that I was doing the interview and when it was going to release. These were the women that knew ahead of everybody else. 

(2:34) MEGAN: Right, but it was all very exciting. There were a lot of comments. There's been a lot of feedback. A lot of the feedback I have noticed seems to be surrounding how you gave a lot of pushback during the interview, and I noticed that as well.

Were you conscious of that as it was happening? 

(2:53) KAREN: Yes, I was very conscious of it because I wanted to be careful and to listen to what questions they were asking and making sure I understood what they were saying. It was kind of like they were saying, here's a narrative that we were going, and I'm like, well, no, it's this. I would push back on that narrative, especially around physical violence because most ministries are really big no matter what they feel about domestic abuse. If he's hitting you, you should leave. You should get out. You should be safe, but most domestic abuse is not physical. That is what I wanted to make clear, and that part I did make clear that that's not what this is. I would have liked to talk more about coercive control and what all that looks like. However, I think most of the people that have responded to me understood the direction that I was going and were somewhat relieved, and it resonated with their stories.

(3:59) MEGAN: Absolutely. I was so impressed by how you handled it. The questions felt like machine gun questions. I mean, you barely had an opportunity to answer. That's hard for me. I need to take a minute, take that sacred pause, like I tell our coaches, and think about it, but you didn't have the opportunity to do that, right? 

(4:21) KAREN: Right, though a couple of times they had said something, and so they asked a question, and I actually answered the previous question, and I don't know how much of that was left in the interview, because we did talk more than 30 minutes, and I think the clips are just under 30 minutes, but there were times I would go back to a comment that was made or kind of a half question that they asked.

(4:51) MEGAN: I felt like there was a little bit of an agenda on their part, and I did notice that you kept everybody aligned with what the purpose of this interview was really well. My very favorite part was when one of the men said, is there like a scale so that you know if you're being abused or not? And the other guy said, yeah, like a scale of one to ten, and they were like, yeah, yeah, and then you said there is no scale. I loved that.

(5:26) KAREN: I know they definitely gave me time, because in my brain I'm thinking, a scale? No, there is no scale. You're right. 

(5:35) MEGAN: Yeah, you said that, and it was so great. I loved that moment. You did get that message across that abuse is not just physical. You spoke of emotional and verbal abuse, which is very important, and I even think you said emotional violence, and that sort of blows that idea out of the water that DV or domestic violence is only physical. Remember that old term people used to say battered women or battered women syndrome? I don't think people realize the kind of psychological abuse that can happen with a narcissistic abuser, and you mentioned, you did a great job of mentioning how in your previous marriage, how he would shoot you down, treat you as a non-person, and make you feel small, and always had this threat looming of physical abuse, which that's just as bad. 

(6:33) KAREN: Right. There are guys that are batterers, quite frankly, which is where that came from, and which everybody thought that's what it was. However, my ex used physical violence very purposefully, and that I was able to get across. There was a purpose behind it, and it didn't happen all the time. This wasn't a once a week or once a month. It could be once a year. It was just one of his tools in his toolbox, so to speak, that he would go to if he wanted to. 

(7:04) MEGAN: Right, and that is how my kid's father was, too. There were physical altercations. Maybe there were four in 12 years or something like that, and I just knew that that was in his back pocket if he wanted to use it, and that's what control is, right? 

(7:24) KAREN: Yes, yes, absolutely, and someone that I've been following her podcast, Tabitha Westbrook, in her book, she said, hey, our brain is part of our body, so physical or emotional abuse, psychological abuse, verbal is physical violence because our brain is part of our bodies, and yes, yes, it is. The bruises heal, but that healing from the psychological and the words and the thoughts, the things that they put on us, the conditioning they do to enmesh us to them, we have thoughts, and we think there are thoughts, and they're not. With my coaching clients, I sometimes say, that's not your thought. That is your abuser's. That's what he's been telling you, and you're talking like it's you saying that, and that is hard for most of us to grasp, that when you come out, not even all your thoughts are your own.

(8:35) MEGAN: Yes, I mean, you're excellent with that, and that is a big part of what you do in coaching. I do something very similar. As you know, we need to get connected to our core selves. If we're connected to our core selves, our core spiritual selves, and we know who we are, we'll be able to isolate those thoughts that are just intrusive. They're not part of who we are. They've just been spoken over us, and it's like curses that have been spoken over us, and we need to put them where they need to go. So you did a great job of redirecting. They needed to be redirected, and I thought they did a great job interviewing there. Obviously, this is what they do for a living. They're very professional and all of that. They're not trauma-informed, obviously, and you walked that balance of sort of stepping them into it a little bit. You gave them a little peek behind the curtain as to what it might be like. I really like how you mentioned that a lot of women get married and they don't know until they say, I do, and they walk into the hotel or whatever it is. Another one of my favorite parts, though, Karen, is when they said, why did you stay? Why did you stay? Which is a very insensitive question, which they mentioned was insensitive, and then you told them it was insensitive, which I really appreciated because that just kind of shows a lack of understanding. You can't tell a woman that God hates divorce and then ask why she stayed when she's been abused, but that's what they did. This very entity speaks about how God hates divorce. They work hard to keep men and women together, and then they asked you in the interview why women stay. What was that like for you? 

(10:24) KAREN: You know, I hate the question, and yet I like it at the same time because of the fact that I want to. It's a time to educate, and the odd thing is I don't remember quite what I said except probably something along that line. 

(10:40) MEGAN: No, you said when women are hearing that God hates divorce, then why would they leave? And you even mentioned women who stay at home as though to help them understand when this is your whole world, this abuse, and you don't have anything outside of it. You don't go to a job where you're treated well, where you understand that it's not a you-problem. It's a him, you know, all of that. You brought that in. 

(11:09) KAREN: Yeah, I did. Thank you for reminding me. I should have listened to the interview today again because I had forgotten that. Those were moments to me that were just holy because I don't know what they were expecting, but I know that even with each question, I wanted to get across to the women that would be listening, talking about hard marriage or going through hard things or the fact that, you know, well, before you leave, you should make sure it's really abuse, knowing that it takes women so long to recognize what they're experiencing even is abuse by time they recognize it, then there's no doubt because they've actually been doubting it for so long. And I didn't get to answer that the way I wanted to, and I'm not sure why. I mean, it took me almost 30 years to admit he was an abuser and that I was being abused. And it was a horrifying moment. It was easy to say that about him, but to say I'm abused, then what the heck is wrong with me that I would even allow someone to do that, which I will tell you right now, I tell everyone when I talk to you, take that word allow out of your vocabulary because nobody allowed him to you did not allow it. You did not give him permission. You did not sign up and sign on your marriage certificate as with a small print saying, go ahead and abuse me because I'm allowing it. We do not do that. 

(12:48) MEGAN: No, no. And if you could answer that question now, is that what you would say? Is there anything else you would add to it? 

(12:56) KAREN: I would add that it is gut-wrenching to finally have it hit you that this is not normal, that you finally realize you can't do this anymore and you don't care if God's mad at you. You just don't care. You just know you have to get out because this is not what they said. You've done everything. And I heard one woman say, I had to know I did everything. I had to know I did everything to give him the opportunity to change. And as I listened, I thought you could have never done enough, but she didn't know that at the time because she was actually listening to programs that was telling her to try harder and to forgive and to do better that you just needed to do. If you did enough, there would be change on his part. But I think what I, and we didn't talk about this, but I've been thinking about this a lot about the change. He didn't just change. That question did come up in the interview. So when did they turn abusive? And that was sometimes right in the honeymoon night. I know people who the wedding was beautiful, it was amazing. He was so loving. And as soon as the door closed, everything changed in an instant, in an instant. And it's not a change. He didn't change into this kind of a man. He's taking off his mask. He was always this man. He didn't change. So we're trying to do enough so that they will change, but what are they going to change too? They were never the man they pretended to be. This is him.

(14:48) MEGAN: Right, right. That reminds me of this sort of restoration talk that we sometimes hear in marriage therapy or in churches, like, don't you want a restored marriage? And I always want to say restored to what? It was never this way. He didn't start off some sort of great godly man. And then he, you know, became more, you know, when House gets old, what is that like? Dilapidated. And the marriage became dilapidated and we need to breathe life to it and restore what was there. No. And I am one of those people that on my wedding night, I knew I had made a terrible mistake. I was very sick that night. There had been a terrible virus going around and I had to do EMDR for our wedding night. You know, it was horrible. And I hung in there for 11 more years, 12 total. But it does, it's agonizing to leave that. And part of that, I think, is that sort of sunk cost fallacy. You've put so much into it. We put so much effort. We changed. We were doing everything we could. If we do this, then it'll get better. Maybe if I do this, maybe, you know, all of this. Sacrifice more. Get thinner. You know, all of the things that you think are going to make it better. And it doesn't. It's almost as though he enjoys watching you spin your wheels and try. And I want to riff off of that sentence you said a minute ago about how agonizing it is to make that decision. You have children. You know, you might have little ones or it doesn't matter. They might be grown. You know, people are now going to know that this happened to you. And there's just no way around it. And it tears your life apart. It is a breaking open. Back to the interview, I felt a little bit like they were very fixated on forgiveness. So at the end of 30 minutes, you're already smiling. At the end of 30 minutes of you sharing your story, they were very concerned about whether or not you had forgiven your ex-husband. And that I was fine until that moment. And then I just had to do the giant eye roll because really this is what we're concerned about is whether or not Karen's forgiven this man. Of course you have. We know that. Of course you have. But I just felt almost as though here they were putting a brick on your shoulders when it belonged on his. Right? 

(17.29) KAREN: Yes. And I also like the question because I was able to say what I believe about forgiveness because I did do that. When I first got out, I was like, I'm a Christian. I'm supposed to do this. And yet I was still angry at him. But what I have learned about forgiveness, when you put it all together, you take the Old Testament, the sacrifices that had to be offered, and it wasn't open to everybody. Not everybody got offered forgiveness because if you were impure, you couldn't go offer a sacrifice. I mean, there were all these things that you had hoops to jump through. And then Jesus comes with radical forgiveness. But even he said, if you don't forgive, you can't be forgiven because it was very conditional at that time. But then in Matthew, he expanded and said, but if you refuse to forgive from your heart, because it's easy to give lip service to anything, but it dawned on me, we don't refuse. We can't forgive from our heart until we deal with what's in our heart. But then you jump to after Jesus's death and resurrection, and now forgiveness has become you forgive because you've been forgiven. There's no, God won't forgive you. There's no, how many times do you forgive? We do it because we've been forgiven. But we can't even do that because we haven't even forgiven ourselves for allowing this stuff to happen to us and thinking that if we'd only done this or that, and we hold ourselves to a standard. And so we often though, in that forgiveness, which I think comes out of healing, we naturally forgive, we naturally release because we don't want them to have territory in our lives anymore. But even then it's easier to release them than it is ourselves for the choices that we made when we were in survival mode. 

(19:44) MEGAN: Right. And that's where we need that self-compassion. 

(19:47) KAREN: Yes. 

(19:48) MEGAN: Especially if you come from a family of origin that didn't value you, that abused you, you have to understand that there was conditioning there. In some cases, not all, but in some cases, you didn't have really a choice. This is what you knew. This is what you thought was normal. There really was no way for you to choose any other way. So we have to see that we don't come out of the womb with all of the tools and all of the savvy and all of the understanding and being able to tell what good character is. We just don't come out that way. We have maybe one tool. And then now as we're older, we have a whole toolbox. You spoke so wisely to these questions when they asked you about forgiveness. It is natural. It has to come from healing. I think about Joseph. Joseph had to name it. He had to name what they had done. He had to look at it, probably looked at it from several angles. He had to cry a lot. Joseph was always crying. He had to cry. He had to grieve. And then he had to go back and say, I'm going to forgive you. We don't even know if his brothers understood at all what they had done to Joseph. I think if I went up to my ex-husband and said, I forgive you for what you did, he would just roll his eyes. He doesn't get it. He doesn't care. But it was for Joseph, that release that you spoke of. I think though, even the very last chapter of Genesis, the last verse maybe is Joseph went off and wept again. And I think that's because his brothers never got it. They just didn't get it. So it's good to see the humanity of people in scripture, to see that we're just doing the best we can and forgiveness needs to be held loosely. Just hold it loosely until it comes. It's going to come. Forcing forgiveness, that's never a good idea. Then you have a bunch of people just giving lip service to it, right? 

(21:49) KAREN: Yeah. Well, and I've met women who did not deal with their pain, did not name what was done to them because they had forgiven him because that's what good Christian girls are supposed to do and never deal with their pain and then would feel tormented. And I'm like, it's not torment. It's your pain screaming for release. It wants to be named. It wants to be heard. And so forgiveness can actually stop the process of healing because you think once you've said that, you can't go back and look at it and say what he did to you or what you, or the things that you never got from him, the neglect and whatnot. And so it's not always healthy because, but it's become a badge within Christianity and it causes spiritual bypassing. It causes people to think that they're fine. I don't need to do that. I'm just fine. And you're anything but fine, but you don't know that you're not fine. And I say that because that was me. I did that for many, many years and thought I was fine until one day I wasn't fine at all. 

(23:04) MEGAN: Right. Because that emotion lodges into your body. Emotion is energy and it can actually make you ill. You have all of that inside of you. I've also known women who finally opened up and shared their pain and were immediately shut down, called unforgiving, called bitter, when they were trying to just express that they've been in pain and not just shut them down. And then it could be another decade before they're brave enough to say something again. And that again, that's more of the healing work that we do here is we listen, we honor, we companion through that complicated grief of all of that loss from after you're coming out of an abusive situation. 

(23:48) KAREN: Yes, absolutely. And something when we, I want to go back to the whole change process, because it occurred to me while we were talking back and forth, you know, who's the one that changes us? We change. We're the ones that change. We are conditioned to behave how they want us to behave, how they want us to react, how they want us to respond. We're the one that shuts down our voice. We're the one that does all the changing. They don't. We do. 

(24:20) MEGAN: And if there's any hope in that, it's that we know that we can change and we can grow and become the version of ourselves that we were supposed to be, because we know what it is to change. 

(24:34) KAREN: Yes, absolutely. So that is a beautiful end of that is because if we changed, that means we can change not back to some former version of ourself, but as you said, to our truest self, nothing gave me more pleasure than last week at looking at one of my coaching clients and to say, I want to introduce you to your true self. And, and she just lost it because I, she said, I don't know who that is. And I go, well, that's what we're going to learn. We're going to discover her. And, and another part of that was scary to realize a true self because what if you don't like her? And and, and honestly, sometimes, you know, as I discover my true self, sometimes I am too much and sometimes I'm too loud. Sometimes I'm too quiet. Sometimes it doesn't matter. I have learned to be okay with who I am as long as I'm still in this healing process. 

(25:37) MEGAN: Yes, yes. And that's, and we will be it. If we are changing and growing, we will always be healing. And we, we just don't finish that, you know, during this life.

And so that, that self acceptance is very important. I don't think you're too much. I don't think you're too loud. I love all versions of Karen that, and I love all versions of my clients as they're growing and they're changing. And, and as they're getting to know who they actually are, and that's a huge part of healing after abuse is, is getting people connected to who they are on the inside, because those, those things have just been decimated, but you're in there. You're in there. You're in there. Your soul can't be destroyed by your husband. It can't be, it might feel like it can be. It might feel like you have heard people say soul murder. That's not possible. That's not possible because that's the breath of God in us. And that part is going on from this life. So your soul is in there. It's just, sometimes it takes a little while to connect to you, right?

(26:42) KAREN: Yes, it does. So one other thing that I would like that in the interview that I really didn't like how I responded was that about Tom being my knight in shining armor… 

(26:55) MEGAN: That's what I was just going to talk about! But they set you up for that, Karen. 

(27:01) KAREN: I know. And as if he had to rescue me. So first of all, I was single for five years before I met Tom. And when I came out of the abuse, I literally had man haters scrawled on my forehead. Heaven forbid that a man even look in my direction. I would give, I apparently, I just would give them a look that was like, like, come near me at your own risk. I didn't realize I did that until someone mentioned it to me. And all of a sudden I went, oh, so that's why they all of a sudden didn't come towards me. Oh, I was giving them a look apparently. So anyways, he, Tom did not rescue me. And well, he said it to me one time, he goes, I think some of the things I did while we were dating were things that abusers do. And I'm like, no, you, they actually mimic what you do. 

(27:54) MEGAN: Because he's genuine. Tom is very genuine.

(27:56) KAREN: He's genuine. He's a good listener. We went deep where we're not good at small talk. Neither one of us. So we went deep. We didn't go like everything all at once, but we spent a lot of time talking. He's never wanted to rescue me. And he told, when he told me that he loved me, he knew I couldn't say it back. And I couldn't, he didn't even want to tell me, he felt like the Holy spirit says, I want you to tell her. And he's like, yeah, I really don't want to do that. Cause he thought it would scare me off. It didn't, but I, he was okay that I didn't say anything. And so a few days later I said, okay, I need to know why do you love me? And everything had to do with who I was. Nothing about what I look like none of nothing about, it was just all my qualities and my strength. And, and I'm not even that person that I was even then, but he saw all those things in me. And that's what he loved is who I was. And that was the first time I'd ever heard somebody talk to me in that way and tell me who I was. And the other question they asked is, did he redeem all men? No, he did not redeem all men for me.

(29:22) MEGAN: I noticed that too. 

(29:33) KAREN: Yeah. I couldn't think fast enough. He did not redeem all men, but he is a reminder that there are good men out there. They're just very, very hard to find and that abusers are really good at mimicking good men. And they're hard to tell apart, which is a whole ‘nother conversation. But that was one, I really wasn't satisfied with my response because I didn't need a knight in shining armor. Like I said, I didn't date. He was the first man I dated. I did not date for five years, ‘cause I just couldn’t.

(30:01) MEGAN: I highly recommend it by the way, at least two years, if not more, yeah, take that time. They also sort of insinuated that he taught you what love was. And he may have, because he's a very loving man. And he's an example to all of us women, like there are good men out there. We all love Tom. That's not the only way though, to learn what real love is. You can actually learn what real love is by watching what Jesus does. And that's how I learned how to raise my kids. That's real love to me. So sometimes we do show each other who Jesus is. We really can love each other that way. But that's not the only way for a woman to.

(30:43) KAREN: Yeah. And that's a really good clarification because I actually said that because Tom loved me in a way that I didn't know was possible. I didn't know. And the clarification of what love is between a man and a woman and what it's supposed to be. I was married to a man for 30 years who took everything from me. And Tom just kept giving of himself, even when I couldn't give. And that like, this is like one day it just hit. This is what marriage is supposed to be like. Now it hasn't all been easy. We've had difficult times in our marriage. But that's different than having a hard marriage. You will go through difficult times because God never promised that everything would be nice and easy. I mean, I wish it was, but it's just not. We've experienced some challenges, but you go through it as a couple. He is not my leader, though I will tell you because he's a bodyguard. If we're in a crowd, I'm like, get in front of me and I'm grabbing your belt loop and I'm hanging on and you get us through the crowd. And because I don't do well in crowds. If he all of a sudden tells me hit the floor, I'm going to hit the floor because he knows something's going on that I have no idea about. But when he's talking to somebody about trauma and that, he's going to pay attention to me. He's going to let me lead in that. So we never talk about who's the leader because it's a partnership that we do together. And we don't talk about submission because it's just not a topic of conversation. I called it the S word for a really long time. 

(32:23) MEGAN: Right? No kidding. No kidding. So we're going to have to wrap up in a minute, but I love your relationship with Tom. For those of you who don't know, Tom was attracted to Karen's strength. She's always been a strong woman. He has showed her love, but there are other ways for us to learn. We can learn love from just watching what Jesus did, you know, how he did things, not even looking at the words, but how he did them. So yeah, I thought that was interesting, but it was a great interview all in all. I hope that women listen to it and I know that it's important to you to just say, even if it reaches that one woman, that one woman who needs to hear it, that then it was all worth it. Right? And I love that about you, Karen. Okay. So I think that's it for today. We have so much. We could just go on and on, but we'll stop there and we'll do another podcast soon. Karen, thank you so much for what you did for so many women by having this conversation and being so brave and just holding your own. I just loved that.

It was amazing. Thank you. 

(33:34) KAREN: You're so welcome. Thank you. 

(33:38) MEGAN: I hope this conversation has encouraged deep thought as well as helped you draw parallels between therapy and your connection to God, self, and others. If you'd like some one on one time with me unpacking some of your most precious life stories to find healing and rest, contact me on mountaincitychristiancounseling.com. To help this podcast reach more people, do subscribe and review this podcast and share it with someone who would benefit from healing and rest. My name is Megan Owen, and thank you for listening to this episode of Pretty Psych. Catch you next episode, and in the meantime, do find healing and do find rest.