0:00:03 - (Megan Owen): 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.
0:00:43 - (Megan Owen): 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.
0:01:12 - (B): So here we are with the infamous Karen D'Arman Gardner, beloved by all at Mountain City. She is our DV trauma advocate, and we are also grateful to have Karen. She has been leading groups and ministering to women. She is the author of another one, Free, and we're so blessed and so lucky to have her here at Mountain City. Karen, welcome.
0:01:35 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): Thank you so much for having me on. I am excited about what we're doing in 2025.
0:01:42 - (B): I wish you all could have seen. Karen just did a little, like, happy dance as she said that. I am excited. We've done so many groups in this past, I don't know, three, four, five months. And really kind of starting at the retreat when everybody got to know you and love you and see you as a mentor, and then you guys. Karen so graciously agreed to work with me, and she has been leading groups for several months now.
0:02:12 - (B): Now they've sort of come to an end and we've. We're on our break. But, Karen, I would love to know about what you thought or how you feel about how groups have gone this past semester.
0:02:26 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): It was a little bumpy at first. Part of that was that I didn't really use the format that you created, which I want to hear more about that. And I was doing them groups like I did when I did other materials, but the dynamic was different. And once I adopted the format that you used, it was such an improvement. It allowed the ones that struggled to communicate. There was a set time and that they could communicate.
0:03:06 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): It pushed them to maybe say more than they were comfortable with in the beginning, but it also kept the ones that were over talkative from Mont and I, you know, from taking over all the time, taking over the whole meeting. So it kept everybody on track, so to speak. And then it taught us all, including myself, how to. To really reflect back to them that we didn't have to solve problems that wasn't we were what we were there for, but allowed us to be able to speak into the things that we heard and to encourage them.
0:03:42 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): Sometimes there were challenges in the sense that someone would ask a question that would totally help that person that was talking to see things in a completely different light and give them aha moment.
0:03:57 - (B): I love that. So it was it's perspective. You're bringing in all these different perspectives to speak into the sacred stories that women were bringing to groups. So you were leading, you did some DV groups, some processing groups, and you did the source groups, which took a tremendous amount off my plate as I was shifting gears at Mountain City and taking care of some other things and individual sessions and that sort of thing.
0:04:25 - (B): And now, of course, what we're getting ready to start doing in mid January of 2025 are the spiritual processing groups and the crisis groups. And then later will be your DV group. So I'm just going to break this down for our listeners. So starting on January 13, we offer two groups. We have crisis groups. The crisis groups are for women in crisis. Obviously we prioritize whatever those crises might be.
0:04:59 - (B): And we do have some material. It's very little. It's maybe a 7 to 10 minute video. It's a curriculum I've written. And then we either talk about that or we talk about what the women are going through. So those are in six week increments. So after six weeks we regroup to see, okay, do we want to do another six weeks? And those are $30 per group session. It's three women and either Karen or myself. And then we have spiritual processing groups.
0:05:33 - (B): Now these are for people who are untangling their faith, people who've been spiritually abused. But also, I was just talking to a lady today, Karen, who said, well, what if I haven't been spiritually abused, but I just really love theology and I want to learn more. And I said, absolutely, come on. Because we've had both. So it's deep digging into scripture, into theology, into faith. And the idea is that instead of throwing our faith away because of the twistedness, because of abuse and because of a lot of things that are happening right now in the church, rather than say, okay, none of that makes sense to me anymore, we go deeper and we figure out deeper truths and we recapture the awe and the mystery of God.
0:06:21 - (B): And it is so life giving. I love it. And those are 12 weeks. And there are three units of 12 weeks. So those are also three women plus Karen or myself, one hour per week, $30 per week. I think I'm saying all that right. Am I saying all that right?
0:06:40 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): Okay.
0:06:41 - (B): Okay. All right. And you can find this, of course, on our website, mountaincitychristian counseling.com and you just go to services and you can scroll down for more information on those groups. But we are actually closing them up really soon because obviously we're less than a month away from our first week in those. Okay, so then Karen is going to be starting some very special DV or domestic violence groups later in the spring.
0:07:10 - (B): So if you're interested in those, you want to reach out to admin A D M I [email protected] those are not opening in January. But Karen, tell us a little bit about what your thoughts are there.
0:07:23 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): My thoughts are for this group is you're not necessarily in crisis. However, as you know, in the aftermath of domestic abuse, you have crisis moments. But there is so much untangling versus using the word deconstruction, but untangling beliefs about God, who God is. This is separate from the theology, but that's included. It's detangling, well, who you believe, what you believe about yourself. And. And it's also untangling his voice from your voice.
0:07:58 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): Yeah, and which is often. And it takes a while because often we think things and we think it's us, and it's really not us. It's been those subtle comments throughout your entire marriage that he has said over you or his family or others that you think is you and is not. And also one of the things that depending on the age, you find this, mostly women 50 up, but I also see it. And even the younger's, who am I, who I don't know who I am anymore?
0:08:34 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): And you feel lost. And in that lost, you can also feel very alone, which is a common theme of feeling so alone and lost. And how can we. How can we speak into that? How can we discover safety, being found, our identity? Who are we anyway? And that aloneness is so tied to family. And now we don't have that family. And it seems all fractured, which is why sometimes you miss him because there's dying parts of the relationship you might miss because you were part of something and now you're not.
0:09:14 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): And that aloneness is devastating.
0:09:18 - (B): Yes. Okay. All right. So that actually really helps me to understand better because we haven't really sort of hashed this out yet. So tell me what you think about this little differentiation I'm about to make. So the spiritual processing groups, those are the ones that I'm leading, or we call them SPGs. We may talk about Empire, Eve, femininity, purity, culture, alternate community, table fellowship, Sabbath as a resistance.
0:09:48 - (B): We have these themes. But with yours, the spiritual processing is going to be focused on the aftermath of domestic violence. And we're not just talking physical abuse, we're talking all of it. Right?
0:10:03 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): Correct, correct. It's everything. Because honestly, bruises heal. Though there are some women who have lasting physical effects because of the domestic. If it's been physically violent, however, the emotional scars and the verbal scars and the psychological scars, that just doesn't heal like a regular bruise does because often we cannot see the effects. However, we can hear the effects in how we talk about ourselves, about others, about God. We can literally hear that distortion that happened during the abusive relationship or marriage.
0:10:46 - (B): Wow, that's. That is powerful. So like you, Karen, I am so excited that we are going to have so, so much to offer women and affordably, which is, by the way, how our crisis group started. Heather Elizabeth of Held and Healed reached out to me because she wants to be able to give women counseling or provide something for them. But one on one counseling, it's too expensive. And how, you know, how many women can you help one on one counseling for the amount of time that that is needed to help their healing? Well, that's how we started. We came up with this idea that, okay, we can't do one on one counseling. Let's put three women together.
0:11:29 - (B): And then, and, and because of the format that we use that you mentioned earlier, we're able to get to everyone, you know, hear from everyone, respond to everyone, and then they can communicate, which they do on their own outside of the group using, you know, a text thread or messenger or something like that. Tell me what you think about this. I think the biggest challenge is to help women feel safe in these groups. The, the number one comment I get from our clients at Mountain City and then just women in general is, oh, I don't like groups. I don't feel safe in a group.
0:12:06 - (B): I don't do groups. They're not good for me. And we have to overcome that. And the reason is because it was women who betrayed our clients. It was women they never could forge an honest relationship with because there were dogmas involved. And, you know, if you're not submitting to your husband or you're gossiping about your husband, if you talk about him and you know all of these things. For women who've been abused and were in churches, groups did not feel real or safe.
0:12:39 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): Well, and add to that the fact that you could never be real with anybody because you had this huge secret in your life, and so you could really never forge really deep relationships. And. And I. I speak for that for myself, is I always had to be this fake facade, my own mask. We talk about men. The abusers, you know, have a mask, and depending where they are, who gets to see what mask, unless you're in the household, and they take it off.
0:13:09 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): But we have to have masks, too. It's the only way to protect ourselves and finding that safety to be vulnerable with somebody else. And that is so important. I think, going back to the retreat that you had last year, and one woman had a huge breakthrough. So after the event, and we had a zoom call with everybody, and so I asked her, could you tell me, could you tell us if you're comfortable, why you had this big breakthrough? Tell us about it. We want to hear more.
0:13:46 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): And she said something that just gave me, like the bells were going off, and she said I felt safe and all this breakthrough started happening, and that we can't really get a lot of breakthroughs without first feeling safe. And that's the risk of a group. If you don't want to get hurt, you isolate and you stay in your cocoon, and you just keep your mask on, and you will. You won't get hurt because you won't connect. The risk in relationships is you're risking getting hurt or of not feeling safe.
0:14:23 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): And I know from both of us, our goal is to create a safe environment. And if someone's not being safe, that's a separate conversation offline.
0:14:35 - (B): That's right. And Karen and I have worked on this together. And we can both honestly say that we have taken a lot of steps, strides, to make sure that the ladies in our groups feel safe. And it's not always easy, but we will do that because we love our clients. We have to have. Like you said, we have to have safety in order for healing to happen. All right, well, let's talk about this format that we use for a minute.
0:14:59 - (B): It's very important to me, as we both know, because it does give each client, each lady, ample time to share, either share her story or share her thoughts on the reading or the video or whatever type of group that she's in. And after that time, the allotted time is over. We actually hold space for the sacredness of her story. We take time to let it sort of sink in. We. We listen. We actually really listen. We take it in. We focus on her.
0:15:34 - (B): And then the other women and the moderator, whether it's Karen or myself, we share a brief reflection on what we heard. We don't give advice. We are only showing compassion and companionship. We're creating connection, and that's part of how we create the safety. If you're receiving advice in these groups, we don't feel safe. Right. Unless somebody's asking for it, like, you know, what do you think about this? Or whatever.
0:16:03 - (B): But we try to refrain from sharing advice because we don't feel like we need to insert anything into the women who come into the groups, because the women who come into the groups have everything they need inside of them. And so that's why we have the specific format. Now, will we give you ideas and thoughts and ask permission to say, may I speak into this? Absolutely. And if you want that, we're there for it. But again, we want to create that very safe ecosystem for all of the ladies to have a very different experience than what they've had before so that we can grow together.
0:16:42 - (B): These women bond, don't they, Karen dating?
0:16:46 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): Yes.
0:16:46 - (B): Yeah. And then because of that ecosystem, healing does begin to happen. It is risky, but I think it's so worth it.
0:16:56 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): Yeah, it truly is. And I found that it worked so well because I think that if you're going to be in a group talking, sharing, even if it's not super deep in the beginning, but the saying words out loud kind of takes the. Take something off of it. I can't think of the word I want to use right now, but like.
0:17:19 - (B): The mystery or the sacredness or something. Yes, yes.
0:17:23 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): It just takes all the in sometimes, you know, we're afraid that it's so ugly we're going to shock people. But the point is, is we're. It's talking about how we're feeling. We're not recounting stories of what happen to us because it's too easy to like, slip into that activation, which is another word for trigger. I like the word activation. And it could activate us and to where then we have these reactions that we can't. We don't want to do when we're in this group, necessarily.
0:17:59 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): And so the goal is not to talk about and rehash of what are all the awful, terrible things that happen to you, which we will totally hold space for when needed. But in the group is. What was the feeling behind that? Can you attune to your body? Because our body tells us what's going on. As one video said in your source group is our brain will lie to us. Our body is telling Us the truth. And that tension there that we feel, because that vagus nerve goes from our brain all the way down and lands in our gut.
0:18:35 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): And so you wonder why sometimes we have butterflies or we got this knot in our stomach. It's because there's an activation that's happening. That vagus nerve gets activated to simplify that process. But we want a place where you can talk about what you're feeling. And that's something that you may have never done. You may have only talked about all the horrible things your abuser did to you, which are valid.
0:18:59 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): But what did you feel? What were those emotions that you weren't allowed to feel at the time? And that's hard, because touching those emotions to where we can sit with you in it. So think about Job, when his life fell apart and his friends came and for seven days just sat with them, and then they opened their mouth and there's the problem, which is why with this way that you have this design, that we are not trying to explain what happened to them, or we don't have to defend God, we don't have to defend Jesus, we don't have to defend the church, we don't have to defend anybody.
0:19:44 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): That we are literally just holding space for them, like Job's friends did when they just sat with him.
0:19:53 - (B): I love that. Absolutely. And, Karen, I have to tell you why I developed this specific format. I learned this several years ago. I did my chaplaincy internship at one of the hospitals in Denver. You know, I. And I. I was counseling and leading the nonprofit. I went into chaplaincy, and one of the first things I realized was there's nothing that I can say sometimes and I can't fix it. There's nothing I can do for somebody if I'm using this idea that I have to say something really smart or brilliant or try to fix whatever their situation. You can't fix a situation when somebody's dying.
0:20:33 - (B): And I learned from chaplaincy how to hold space for the hard things. And it's so freeing. Isn't it freeing to know that you don't have to. You're not responsible for situational pain that people are in or to make it better. And it's comforting. It's companioning. There is a deep connection to just be able to say, I. I am listening. I hear you. And now when we are sharing those burdens together, which is so Christian, I can't even say how Christian that is, to share the burdens with each other, then that person who's been so isolated like you mentioned, is no longer alone for a little bit. They're not carrying it by themselves for a little while.
0:21:20 - (B): They have people surrounding them. And that is healing and powerful.
0:21:25 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): And it's oftentimes when you've been domestic abuse or grew up in. It is. You're not comfortable with silence. Silence. And ask me how I know. I realized I felt like I always had to fill the space. I was not comfortable. As I learned inner healing, which I love, the inner healing. It was learning to not have to always speak and to be able to even look in someone's eyes. I couldn't do that. And my husband told me when we were dating, he said you would never look me eyes. Your eyes were always darting.
0:22:03 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): And he just mentioned that again recently. And I went, of course, because I couldn't look anybody in the eye. There was shame that was so deep within me that I was. I just couldn't do that. And I understand that now that I didn't obviously understand at that time, because shame was always going to tell us that what you have to say or what you're feeling is not valid. And that's why what you've created here is. We're saying it's valid.
0:22:32 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): And this is not about comparing stories. Or her trauma was worse. Mine was. Or mine was worse. And hers wasn't as bad. It's not about that. Because trauma, whether big T, little T or in between T, we all end up in the same place. The effect that it has on us is the same whether it happened once or a thousand times.
0:22:56 - (B): Right? That's right. And groups are one of my favorite things to do here at Mountain City. The other thing I want to highlight and lift out of what you just said is we get to know each other. And when I'm saying no, I'm saying not just, you know, what do you do? What do you like to eat? What's your favorite color? I mean, we have an emotional intimacy that is unmatched. And there's no judgment. Judgment free zone. That is not allowed. And that's part of why Karen and I are there to moderate is we just make. And I don't. I don't feel like that's ever really happened in any of the groups over the years.
0:23:34 - (B): Nobody's judging anybody else, but we do handpick and make sure that everyone's in the right place where they need to be. I will say also to something you said earlier, that if people are activated, that's okay too, because that's going to happen. And then Karen and I are there to enter into that wilderness with you. Just like Jesus entered the tomb of Lazarus and went to to find the man who was cutting himself in the graves.
0:24:03 - (B): We will go in with you and companion you in that wilderness, give you tools and help you to be able to breathe again and come out of that emotional flashback place that you find yourselves in. As hard as we try to make sure that doesn't happen, we can't control that always. But we're there for you. We're there for it. We're not afraid of it.
0:24:24 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): I heard today I've learned a lot of grounding techniques, and one I heard today in a book that I'm listening to, and he talked about in the physical, when you're face to face, that he would get down on the floor and put his hands on their feet to ground them. And my thought is, that's what we're doing in these groups. We want to ground you. Even though you can't feel it, you could actually sit with your feet in front of you flat and imagine that we're there helping you to just ground.
0:24:58 - (B): Oh, I love that. Wow. That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. And we have so many grounding techniques and sometimes just looking at us and seeing that we're with you, we're here. Look, look, this has passed. It's over. And we're all here with you. You're not alone. Well, Karen, do you want to say anything else before we wrap up?
0:25:20 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): Like, Megan, I love groups. I think they're so important and yay to Zoom and all these resources that we can meet in a place no matter where you live, we can all come together, be from all over the country, and I will tell you, it is as good as, like, yes, it's good to be in person, but this does not take. It's one of the good things that came out of the big isolation, I'm going to call it that. I have had some major inner healing encounters over zoom.
0:26:04 - (B): Yes.
0:26:05 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): And what I discovered in these groups that I facilitated this last fall was we had the same impact as if we were all sitting in the room together.
0:26:18 - (B): I agree. It does not deter from the healing work that happens because connection and communication, they span the distance. It doesn't matter, you know, and when you're exchanging your thoughts and your feelings and your experiences, those things can't be quantified. They. They're not material. They enter into our lives and make an indelible mark on all of our lives. And. And that, you know, I think I'm going to close with this Karen, relationships have been so broken for so many people.
0:26:52 - (B): I was going to say DV survivors, but it's everybody, right?
0:26:56 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): Yes.
0:26:57 - (B): And we don't have that beautiful river like flow of communication in our lives where we can trust and share and feel safe. And that's part of why we have these groups. We believe that we need to be whole W h O L e within ourselves. We need wholeness with God and we need wholeness with other people. And Karen is so relational. She's so perfect for this. And when you come to her groups, when you come to my groups, you will find a relational healing that opens up in you. And it feels so good.
0:27:37 - (B): It feels so good. Karen, I'm so thankful that I get to have you. I'm. I'm grateful that I sort of snatched you up and brought you in. Karen is amazing. So remember this, go to our website, mountaincitychristian counseling.com and you can sign up for the crisis groups there and you can sign up for the spiritual processing groups there. They're closing pretty soon, so. So scurry, hustle. And then if you want to be part of Karen's DV groups that start later, then just send us an email at admin a dminountaincity Christian counseling.com
0:28:17 - (B): All right. Karen, thank you for doing this with me. You know, I treasure you so much.
0:28:21 - (Karen DeArmond Gardner): You're so welcome. Thank you.
0:28:28 - (Megan Owen): 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 mountain citychristiancounseling.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.
0:29:04 - (Megan Owen): 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.
