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The Long Way Back to People: Creating and Maintaining Friendships After Abuse

Season #2

Key Takeaways:

      • Megan and Elle Arters talk about their struggles and strategies when it came to making friendships and nourishing relationships after coming out of their abusive relationships.
      • Megan and Elle also discuss the power of groups and what kind of people are good confidants when it comes to sharing traumatized part of oneself.

Notable Quotes:

      • "I was hyper vigilant and paranoid for every new person, [and] every old person, [I was] like [to] anybody in my circle, like are you trustworthy? Are you safe?...it really does so much damage to your relationship with everyone." — Elle Arters
      • "[Something] that I did was offering maybe 1% of my life to somebody to see how they handled that 1%, and if they proved trustworthy, I felt like I could offer 3%. But again, not flooding anybody with my trauma life..." — Megan Owen
      • "But as I've had to walk stuff in the last 15 years, it expands my capacity for their story, for what they're going through, for what they might need, you know, different things like that." — Elle Arters
      • "...we had lost our belongings. We had lost our homes. We had lost our children. We had lost our friends and our family and churches and we were in it together. We were comrades." — 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. 

(1:12) MEGAN: Hi, friends. Megan Owen here from Mountain City Christian Counseling, and I have Elle Arters with me for our podcast Pretty Psych. Elle, I am so grateful to have you today. 

(1:23) ELLE: Thank you. I am very excited to be here.

(1:26) MEGAN: Elle and I have known each other for 15 years. We are very good friends. She is an amazing advocate and coach, and she works with Mountain City Christian Counseling now. So great with web design and all of the tech things that I can't do, and we've worked together before, and I'm probably saying all of that wrong, Elle, but I'm really grateful that you are working with us again. 

(1:49) ELLE: Yep, that was perfect. Thank you. I'm excited to be back here with you, too. 

(1:54) MEGAN: Okay. Well, we thought we would talk about friendships after abuse. This is something that I think Elle and I both struggled with 15 years ago trying to navigate how to create and maintain friendships when you have just come out of an abusive situation and you do have complex trauma and are struggling with the 5F responses, fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and fold, and everybody is so different, and there aren't any books out there on how to create and maintain friendships after abuse, right? 

(2:28) ELLE: Exactly. Exactly. 

(2:30) MEGAN: So we thought we would start by talking about how easy it is to cocoon and pull in after you've left an abusive situation. A lot of us suffered from post-separation abuse. Everything felt scary. We felt like emotional burn victims. Everything felt very raw, and that's normal for CPTSD, and we still need community, and so how do we bring that together? Isolation seems very peaceful for a while, but then after a while, we can sort of get weird, right? I know I get weird. Isolation will make me a very weird version of myself, and so we do need to have each other. We struggle with abandonment wounds if we have CPTSD, and we tend to do one of two things, which are very extreme. We can either try to lock others down to help heal us, or we can do the door slam, which that was sort of my choice of coping was the INFJ door slam, so we have to find somewhere in the middle, right? 

(3:46) ELLE: Yeah, exactly. I can completely relate. 

(3:50) MEGAN: I know. Somehow, we didn't slam the door on each other. I'm not sure how that happened, but right, so it's not our fault that we have CPTSD, and we can take responsibility for the symptoms and any obsessiveness that we might struggle with at the same time. 

(4:09) ELLE: Yeah, exactly. I was thinking when I was kind of reflecting back myself in preparation for our dialogue today, and I think we probably chatted about this when we got together last month too, but how, like you said, we're wired for community. It's a critical piece in our ability to thrive, in our ability to heal, and yet the challenge, of course, is for so many of us, we also had our community betray us, so our relationship with community in general has been shattered. Our relationship with ourself has been shattered. Our relationship often with God has been shattered, so everything is flipped upside down. Everything's kind of disconnected, and yeah, we do all kinds of different, wild, weird, understandable. Of course, that's a hard place to navigate, and yet, like you said, we are desperate. We still need community, and we need friendship, so how do we do that through these different stages too? When I reflect back from almost 15 years ago when my life exploded and trauma started, how I related to friends and community in that stage was one version of crazy, and then as I continued to heal, or not heal, but as I continued on that journey, and then these different stages, my relationship with community looked different, and still difficult, and still, I don't know, it's just a challenge is really all I'm trying to say. 

(5:50) MEGAN: You're saying it well. 

(5:51) ELLE: Yeah, it keeps presenting all these unique challenges, and so yeah, that's why I was so excited, really, that you wanted to chat about this on the podcast, though, because like so many things, I launched down this path so blindly, and that included, like I was not prepared for how my relationship with community and friendships would change, would evolve, how difficult it would be, and like you said, I didn't have any books on that, or I didn't have resources to kind of help guide me, or even just prepare me for that kind of massive shift, so I love that we're talking about this. I'm confident it'll help others, and for anybody listening who can relate, you know, like it's not you. You're not alone. This is such a normal piece in walking trauma and post-trauma.

(6:46) MEGAN: Yes, well, let's start there then, with that transition. So before our lives imploded, to borrow your term, our friendships might have been based on church involvement maybe, or what we thought healthy friendships looked like, or they might have been more transactional if you were in more of a legalistic place. That was our understanding of relationships. We didn't really have this sense, I think, at least I didn't have this sense of, okay, I'm going to be loved no matter what happens. I felt that I had to perform all the time. That was where I was at the time, and so if we think of that sort of before implosion and after implosion, BI, before implosion, we then realized, I think both, I don't mean to speak for you, but we sort of went through this together, and that's a lot of how we connected. We realized that we were right. We wouldn't be loved no matter what we did. We felt that, and that was devastating for me. I didn't know how to start over at the time. So isolation for me felt a lot safer, and it worked because I'm introverted, and I know you are too, and so we probably did something similar, but at the same time, like something you just said, we desperately need to be seen during those times, and we're terrified to be seen during those times, and we need some contact. We need some friction for our social skills and to be able to grow, but groups were terrifying at that time.

(8:44) ELLE: Yeah, exactly. Again, I guess when I reflect back, there's so many different stages, but going all the way back to the beginning for me, yeah, when my world exploded, that included, and part of the catalyst was a betrayal by friends and close friends that were in my community, and then I had some friends who remained who were steadfast and loyal and beyond grateful for that, and then I had, of course, kind of the other extreme of friends who felt like they needed to take different sides, and anyway, I think betrayal is probably the best way to explain it, and so yeah, then I remember that first year, in fact, feeling so paranoid. That was like another, I don't know what the right word is, like just another outcome, I guess, that I wasn't anticipating.

 (9:25) ELLE: I was hyper vigilant and paranoid for every new person, but every old person, like anybody in my circle, like are you trustworthy? Are you safe? Is everything I'm going to say, is it going to be used against me? Is it going to be literally given to other people who would intentionally and cheerfully weaponize it? And this is what I mean, like it really does so much damage to your relationship with everyone. There was that early season where I felt so hyper independent and distrusting of so many people, which is a really unhealthy but understandable outcome, I guess, of trauma.

(10:12) MEGAN: Absolutely, and that's a CPTSD symptom, is that hypervigilance, and I wasn't like that before, but then after going through that betrayal, right, I would panic over an email. Everything felt raw. That's that sort of emotional burn victim sort of feeling of, you know, and I was ready to slam the door. I was ready if it felt in any way threatening, but yes, I think you're describing it beautifully. 

(10:41) ELLE: Yeah, and I'll share too, in case anybody else is kind of finding themselves in a similar place. I feel like, obviously, I had some friendships that I would say were healthy and grounded, and I'd had for decades, and so grateful for those. Then I had some other friendships, probably at that time, who I was doing more like the day-to-day life, because that wasn't within my church community, and that community was very, honestly, just very codependent, right? That was like a whole other conversation, but I know you've talked about that in different spaces of just that spiritual community can often create these very codependent beliefs and relationships. Anyway, so even some of my friendships, I don't mean codependent in like a pathological way, but just generally speaking, I just felt like very needy, and other people were stronger. So even some of my friendships, again, not all of them, but some of them probably showed up that way, and over the years, as I tried to work through that, and I was healing and realizing, oh, I don't like that dynamic. I don't need to be that way, but I can look back and see how I would pendulum swing in those early years. So for me, there were times where I was it really wasn't healthy. It was far too needy, but then I would swing all the way to the other side of being hyper-independent, and for me, that was, I think, part of the motivation for, okay, I just need to isolate and withdraw. I'm too much. My world is so traumatic, and for a long time, I was going to friends to be like, yeah, can you help me fix this? And then other stages on that healing journey of feeling like, oh my gosh, that's not their responsibility. It's mine, and flipping all the way to the other side of, okay, I won't be needy at all. I won't ask. I won't come to you at all, and I'll just be very withdrawn and isolated. Sometimes that was because I felt like the world was untrustworthy, but sometimes that was because I felt like I was untrustworthy. So I'm just sharing like different, like a whole variety of different ways of trying to relate to others while on this crazy post-trauma journey, right? 

(13:12) MEGAN: Yes. Thank you for sharing that. So it really, it feels like you were over-correcting, and I think maybe that has to do with how we feel about ourselves. I know that when I was needy, I hated feeling like that, and I can see where I did that as well, that hyper-independence, which is a trauma response, right? Swinging over, and I'm sure a lot of our listeners have done the same thing because it doesn't feel good to be the one who always needs help, and sometimes people don't give help in a gracious way either, and that can feel like a little stab or a small betrayal, and so it sort of pushes you back over it. But we, like you said, we desperately need that community, and it's a good point that you're bringing up that our friendships can change. Sometimes we do grow after trauma, and we can't relate to people in the same way that we did before, and sometimes people don't like that. Sometimes they champion us for growing, you know, really just kind of, for me, it was growing up. I had to grow up and see what I was made of, but our friends might not be a great fit anymore. Not everybody is growing, and not everybody is recovering, and not everybody is actively working on healing, and sometimes we can't put up with certain behaviors anymore that maybe we put up with before. So since you're sharing, one of the things I remember doing is allowing people to treat me poorly because I didn't want to lose anybody else, and so as I grew, I stopped allowing that, and then I lost those people. So it wasn't even, it didn't even really work, right? 

(15:08) ELLE: For sure. I've experienced similar things too where, like I said, sort of those early stages, you've got this pendulum swinging thing happening, so that's a challenge, and then once you even get to the next stage of healing where like, okay, I've kind of found my healthy space of how I want and how I can show up and relate to friends, even that healthy new growth space no longer fits for either extreme of other people who wanted, yeah, who wanted me to show up in those other spaces because that fit their own dysfunction, or even if it's not a dysfunction, it just may be just a different space on their journey. I just no longer fit in those spaces anymore, and so I think it's a positive, but it still is challenging because now you're in new spaces and trying to find those friendships and those other people who can relate or who are in those new spaces, yeah, it's just, it's a challenge. 

(16:15) MEGAN: It's a challenge, and that's why we're talking about it. So yeah, and I think that sort of being nice to a fault so that people won't leave you, that's fawning, that's the very definition of it. So that might be a phase that you go through. So it is, it's a primal feeling in us to want belonging, even if we say we don't want belonging, we secretly really do want belonging, and so how do we start to do that? And I think that's the question you asked right at the beginning, and by the way, Elle, you're so articulate. That's why I wanted you here. You have a way of explaining things that just make sense to me. So okay, so we need some friction. We need some contact for our social skills after abuse, right? I have this story I often share with my clients that within a few months of my taking my children and leaving, the neighbor at the house next door asked me why I never look him in the eye, and I realized that I had lost so many social skills by being in a 12-year-long abusive relationship and had to start teaching myself, training myself, and as I started to heal, little interactions became tolerable. Not floodlighting, but twinkle lights, and I remember sort of practicing. The second thing that I did was offering maybe 1% of my life to somebody to see how they handled that 1%, and if they proved trustworthy, I felt like I could offer 3%, but again, not flooding anybody with my trauma life, which okay, so even as I'm saying this, I know I did that at the beginning as I was trying to learn how to adjust. I was just in such crisis, I think, that I would often floodlight until I learned this term, twinkle light, but that's when as I got healthier, I began to be able to be in a group and just share a little bit.

(18:33) ELLE: Yeah, definitely. I definitely relate. The 15 years is just such different stages of this kind of healing journey with friends and community, but yeah, oh my gosh, the first two and a half years, like a full two and a half years, my world shattered, my boundaries were shattered, there was just so much that was just shattered, and you're just leaking out. I knew I had so few healthy coping skills and tools at that point, and yeah, any person who was in front of me who was willing to listen, I just trauma dumped. I didn't know that term at the time, but looking back, that's very much what I did, but yeah, I agree. Just like you said, the longer, the more we heal, the longer we're on that journey, of course, that shifts and you start to find those boundaries. I love your tip. I love how you put those words to these specific boundaries of when you're starting over with friendships, acquaintances. I've used this with dating. You don't just like, here is 100% of me, I'm sure you'll be fine, or 0%, going back to what I said on that pendulum swing. It's very normal then to be, if you feel like, oh, I've shared too much, I'm too trustworthy, then to flip all the way to the other side, and I will share no things, and I won't trust anyone. Obviously, it's like, what are those good tips of finding something more in the middle? I think that's so wise to like, okay, well, I could start with 1%, I could start with 3%, I can start and continue on. If that other person, of course, is honoring and respecting and knowing how to hold space for that incremental amount that you keep sharing, yeah. 

(20:25) MEGAN: Well, and that's what's important right there, is that relationship that we're able to find somebody. In the therapeutic relationship, that's where we do all of this work. It is 90% relational and 10% modality, in my opinion. That's where we practice almost building healthy relationships and having clients know that their feelings are validated. And even we say the words trauma dump, and we both did that. I know we both did that. I remember doing it. And there is a bleeding out quality to it, but I don't want anybody to feel shamed for that. The reason we call it bleeding out is because we can't stop it. We desperately need help. And it's an emergency protective measure. That's an emergency protective measure, just like the other side of the pendulum, which is totally shutting down. That's also an emergency protective measure. And at the time, that's what we needed, but it's not a way to live our whole life. And so when you're able to work it out with your therapist or coach or whatever, and you want to begin to make some of those connections, shallow connections at first are okay. That's normal. We might've gotten used to floodlighting, bleeding out, trauma dumping. Those are the words that we're using today, apparently. But that is not sustainable for anybody, including us. And it really is a cry for help. It is our saying, we're not able to find what we need anywhere. And right now we are the weaker brother, right? We need somebody to step in and say, hey, have you thought about this and this and this? And of course, those are the things you and I have been offering for all of these years because we didn't have those things. 

(22:26) ELLE: Yeah, exactly. And for sure, no shame at all, no shame or judgment for anybody who's in those stages and myself as well. I don't shame myself for that. Those early years, exactly what you just said, I was in genuine need and needed help. And I think that's so wise to try to be as aware as you are able in that stage to know where do I go? Who are the safer, I don't know if the most appropriate is the right word, but it made me think of how you and I met in my first year. Some people might know, but you and I met on a Facebook private group for other women who were walking in a similar situation. And that was such a gift for so many reasons, but that was a safe space. I was on fire. I think we all pretty much were. We were all in the thick of it in the earliest stages. And to have a place where we could dump, we could share, and we could receive encouragement, we could receive, it was trustworthy, and we could receive validation and everything that we needed in a community, that was a game changer. Even though it was online, I didn't know anybody, really, initially. But yeah, that was so, so, so precious and helpful at that time. I'm so grateful for that. And just learning, okay, who else in my community at that time was safe, and then who else in that community just wasn't. I shouldn't go to them at 100%, or I shouldn't go to them at 80%. I could go to them for five. 

(24:16) MEGAN: Right. So what are those qualities? What would you say are the qualities of somebody who was safe during that time? 

(24:25) ELLE: Yeah, that's a great question. I think part of why that online group, as an example, was safe was, one, it was other people who were walking what we were walking. So there wasn't judgment. It was just full of grace, full of mercy, full of empathy, full of compassion. There was a lot of wise women in there, even if we obviously, we did not have all the answers. So many of us were walking blindly. But there was also, and I think at that time, it was, I think it was like a Christian group. I think that we were all of the same faith background. 

(25:12) MEGAN: It was called Joel 225 or something like that. And it was started because there was nothing out there for Christian women who were looking at these marriages that were abusive, and we just didn't have anything. And it was confidential. There was safety in the confidentiality. 

(25:33) ELLE: Yes, absolutely.

(25:34) MEGAN: So the flip side then for the unsafe would be lacking in those things. You just, those positive qualities of, it was full of grace. It was full of mercy. There was understanding. There was compassion. There was safety and confidentiality. And so an unsafe, and I don't want to label people as unsafe. It just might not be a good time to be open with somebody because they haven't learned yet to keep confidentiality or to honor your story without judgment.

(26:24) ELLE: And I think too, in that group and just in general, I think there's a humility. And while so many of us would probably also be experiencing maybe a form of a humiliation a little bit, but I'm not saying because we deserve that or anything. I just mean out other people. It's- Yeah. But there was also a humility in having to walk something where we don't have all the answers. And there was a humility in walking just the raw, real parts of some of us had lost homes or some of us had, there was just a lot of loss. It created, or I think it cultivated this very humble space that we all were inhabiting. And so again, very hard to be judgmental when we're all at like a rock bottom of sorts. And so there was this really unique sacred beauty, I think, that we got to inhabit then because of these very humble spaces. 

(27:37) MEGAN: Memories just flooded for me as you were talking about, as we had, we had lost our belongings. We had lost our homes. We had lost our children. We had lost our friends and our family and churches and we were in it together. We were comrades.

(27:55) ELLE: Exactly. And I really, I love this because I really haven't reflected on this in a long time. But again, it was just this, the other aspect of humility is again, none of us had the answers. We had no idea. Most of us were like, so many surprises. A lot of us, like you said, we lost belongings, we lost friendships, we lost respect, we lost reputation. We lost so many things and we didn't have answers of quick fixes, but there was again, just this genius of that. And so all we could do was witness one another, not even knowing how powerful that was. I would never have been able to articulate that or had the vocabulary for that at the time, or even an awareness at that time. I remember goodness in those early years, again, just feeling so blind, just so blind and just being so at God's mercy. I have no idea. I barely know if this was, I think this was still the good decision, but I'm reaping so much pain and suffering. So you're just walking so blindly and so humbly. And yet, again, I just think that's where the power is. And we were all doing it in a similar season. So yeah, I think witnessing without trying to fix, witnessing without a judgment, witnessing with just compassion, feeling like we didn't have enough. And now looking back and realizing that was so brilliant and adequate. And yeah, it didn't fix our circumstances, but it was just this really powerful, humble love.

(29:42) MEGAN: It was, it was profound in that, you know, the more I'm listening, I haven't thought about it this way either. And I'm really getting emotional. But it was profound in how we just companioned. Because like you said, there was nothing we could do to fix anything. It was just belonging. 

(30:05) ELLE: Yeah, it really was. And it wasn't, we could offer encouragement, you know, and we could offer the cheerleading, and you've got this. And obviously, we might have resources, and we can offer these tools. But none of us were in a power to fix it. And yeah, wow, that was exactly what we actually needed. So yeah, we can find those communities in those stages. 

(30:32) MEGAN: You know, eventually, that was the catalyst. I think just that modeling for the nonprofit that I started Give Her Wings that you were a part of also with me. And that's where I remember Brandy sending us all roses that first Valentine's Day, which was I'd never I just I can't even tell you what that did for me. And that's what- Yeah, you remember too? 

(30:59) ELLE: Yeah, I remember that. I saved-shout out to her here. But I saved the little card that came with the flowers for years and years and years. Because yeah, it was so it was just so encouraging. You felt so alone and isolated. And yet, yeah, she's wonderful at saying, “Nope, I see you.” 

(31:21) MEGAN: Yes, yes. And that was, I mean, those were the things I learned for starting the nonprofit. And now of course, we offer groups for women going through those things, crisis groups and deconstruction groups that start in January. And all of that started with that group that you and I were a part of that, that witnessing that compassionate witnessing of our grief, of our pain of our loss. It was profound. That's, that's all I can say about it. So yes, so finding groups like that. It's, it's everything. It's everything. And, and Elle and I and Karen and, and our new coaches coming up and everybody who's in this business of, of empowering and loving women into healing, none of us will ever judge you. Because we know what that's like. We were judged so harshly. So, so harshly during that time. And it does nothing to help or heal anybody. It's so unloving. So, and you feel that you can feel a smidge of oppression will set us off a smidge of judgment will, will make us want to run like we know that you all would feel that from us. And so you'll not experience that with any of us. 

(32:44) ELLE: Yeah, I think, you know, after kind of, at least for me, after that most intense season of trauma, and I kind of, I loved what you said, like bleeding out, this is exactly how I described it. There's this two years, two and a half years where I just bled out or like hemorrhaged. And, and then I, for me, I had this very distinct timeline and memory of when it was stopping. I remember thinking like, “Oh, he's binding, God is binding my wounds.” Like I was in a new season where he was beginning to heal. But I share that to say again, for anyone listening, if they're farther down their own journey a bit, because I probably would have thought, okay, there I have now, the hemorrhaging has ended, the intense trauma is over. And now I'm just gonna like, like this very binary, like, and now I'm going to go into the healing stage. And not realizing Yeah, or maybe thinking like, okay, like, it's just this one, you know…

(33:49) MEGAN: Linear… 

(33:50) ELLE: …all uphill. That's what I'm trying to say. Thank you very much. Yes. And not still not fully, fully prepared for like, “Oh, I definitely am moving into healing stage that is real.” But it is a whole other new bag of worms. It took me a little while to realize all the different stages are needed, and they're good, and they're valid. But again, still can be challenging to find other people who can hold those spaces of zigzagging. 

(34:23): MEGAN: Yes, yes, that I'm so grateful that you said that because it is and I, I can name on one hand, you know, on one hand, the number of people who were able to do that with me. And we're still friends. And you're one of those. Because I have been up and down and in and out. And it's been a lot of things in my life are steady as far as like my mothering, or my, my counseling business or the nonprofit or chaplain, you know, the things I do are steady. But as it relates to being vulnerable, even now, 15 years later, sometimes this little part of me goes, “Oh, my gosh, I was too vulnerable. I shared too much,” you know, and, and then, and you have been there the whole time. You, you are a safe container. You always have been for me. I've always known I could reach out to you. 

(35:16) ELLE: Oh, that's so sweet. I love that. And same like, truly, truly same back. And, and I think, my guess, I think part of the reason why you and I are able to do that is a little bit because we have walked very similar things, you know, and that's another aspect that is such a blessing and you hold on dearly when you can find those people. And we just kind of have to walk maybe a little soberly or humbly to know that they are a little harder to find. I let me say like, again, over the next, I mean, over the last decade or so, my community and my friendship circles have ebbed and flowed multiple times, not like every year, not like unstable and chaotic, but they have just ebbed and flowed as my life has not just circumstantially changed, but more again, just along my healing journey is really what it is, is as I have either healed or grown, or just as I have changed my different value system, or if I've changed different boundaries or different things like that, as those things have changed, the people who have stayed that course, again, are just usually people who are walking something pretty similar in their world. So they're not shocked by the zigzagging or the new changes, or they're not offended, or they're not confused. And I'm not even like necessarily judging somebody else who is responding that way. It's just okay, like their life journey is taking them in a different space, or, you know, they're just somewhere else, you know, on their journey. But you know, I guess what I'm trying to say is like, when you go through trauma, and you go through some of these things, you've seen some things that you can't unsee. Right? And so, you know, I can think back, gosh, 20 years ago, if somebody had shared a story, I wasn't like a terrible person, I didn't, I didn't not care about them. I just didn't have the capacity to hold their story yet. I just didn't. But as I've had to walk stuff in the last 15 years, it expands my capacity for their story, for what they're going through, for what they might need, you know, different things like that. And that just takes living, in my opinion, you know, like, you don't go to a 20 year old, not because they're not amazing, but you just don't, they only have 20 years of life experience. Yeah, I think that's just another part of what to expect in your like, community changing journey. 

(38:00) MEGAN: Yes. And it's good for these changes to happen. And that will kind of end there, you hinted at that a few minutes ago. It's important that it does change, change means of growth, even when it's crazy painful, there's something waiting, some new blooming in some way, that the breaking means there's resurrection, it's that cruciformity. And so try to write it out, if you can, when those changes happen, and know that it can get better and will get better. So, Elle, I just I can't thank you enough. This is just filled my cup today. Thank you for coming on Pretty Psych. And for all the work you do for us behind the scenes. I just love you to pieces. You're so precious to me.

(38:51) ELLE: Thank you. I love you too. Thank you so much for letting me have this conversation with you.

(38:56) MEGAN: I hope this conversation has encouraged deep thought, as well as helped you draw parallels between therapy and your connection to God's 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.