Coercive Control and the ADHD/CPTSD Overlap I Christine Howe & Joy Forrest

Christine Howe: And so sometimes people come saying, I think I have ADHD when they actually have relational trauma and remove the toxic relationship, and all of a sudden, I can think clearly, I can see into the future, I can break things down into steps. And I thought I had ADHD. I actually had continuous trauma from my relationships. Sometimes, because of trauma, the victim of abuse actually doesn't present well at all. And abusive people are very charming and charismatic very many times and they present a whole lot better than the victims. She will have trouble attending, she'll have a trouble expressing herself. She'll even have trouble telling her own story because when you've got trauma, you know, the memories will come all at different times and so it's a not a linear story that you're gonna get from her. It's gonna be You know, just bits here and bits there, and it just seems like it's all over the place and she she seems too scattered to really have herself together. So obviously she's the problem. Welcome to Hyper Focus and High Performance with Christine Howe, where we explore how you can work with your brain, build your dreams, and live on purpose with more clarity, creativity, and presence. Welcome to the Hyper Focus and High Performance podcast. Joy is the founder of Called to Peace Ministries and the author of Called to Peace, a Survivor's Guide Defining Peace and Healing After Domestic Abuse, and the Called to Peace Companion Workbook. So Joy holds an MA in biblical counseling from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and has been active in counseling ministry since 2005. When I think of Joy, I think of in the trenches with the people and also innovating in the space, creating new ways where there were not, and then just being available and letting God bring her the people that she wanted to work with. So Joy's been an advocate for victims of abuse since 1997, is a certified advocate with the North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and is a contributor in divorce cares recovery support group curriculum. Amongst other things. There's so much I was just gonna say, Joy, welcome to the podcast. There's so much about you that I love. thank you. Well, I'm glad to be here. and grateful for y what you're doing, 'cause I do know the need. So Yes, it's so important. And I think the the place where domestic violence and ADHD come together are a few places. ADHD leaders and people tend to find themselves in destructive relationships more often than the average person. Number two, sometimes there can be social cues that can be missed that other people would say, no, but an ADHD person might be impulsive and excited and get wrapped up in the moment and then find themselves quickly into a relationship that can end up being not good for them ultimately. And then ADHD symptoms also mirror trauma symptoms. And so people come saying, I think I have ADHD when they actually have relational trauma and remove the toxic relationship, and all of a sudden, I can think clearly. I can see into the future. I can break things down into steps. And I thought I had ADHD. I actually had continuous trauma from my relationships. And so this is where I think I really want to make it meet my audience. But you and I also share not A story that everybody has, which we're both seminary graduates. And we have degrees in counseling from our seminaries. Both of us, not everybody in my audience, shares my faith, but you and I have a heart for the church and for biblical ways of being. And so like marriage is about love. And marriage is to show God's character. And there's things that we hold as dear to us that when you get into this place of domestic violence. it gets a little murky. And so we're gonna talk in context of what's happening in our culture this week. We had a a documentary released in Netflix called The Death of a Pastor's Wife. And it is a sad story of Micah Miller and everything about being there for a victim of coercive control and domestic abuse going wrong. And Joy, I wanted you to come and talk about just some of the nuances because you have so much depth of experience, so much of the truth is in the nuances of these situations. So what has struck you about the story that has now really put coercive control in the center of our public conscience this week? Yeah. my goodness. Well, I watched it of course and I I have been doing this work as you mentioned since nineteen ninety seven. And in the very beginning I was really surprised at how many women that I was working with were married to men in ministry. Now I've come to expect it because I think that men who use coercive control and you know c have controlling abusive behaviors are usually people who go for power positions. So you see a lot of police officers in, you know, that's a profession that you find a higher rate of abusers. And so Again, I wasn't surprised. W what was so grieving to me, and I I guess I've seen it just hundreds of times over in the last thirty years almost, is that, you know, nobody believed Micah Miller, or very few people did. I think she found one person in her church and her family supported her. But other than that, this man in he fooled an entire congregation. And I've seen that way too many times over the years. And what's most grieving about it is that you know, pastors think, well, it's just a marriage problem and we're going to be able to, you know, deal with it, you know, by just doing marriage counseling. It's not something that's amenable to counseling, marital counseling, especially. And so to see how easy it is for abusive people to snow people. And so I've heard people I've made a post on my Facebook wall. last week and I had something well these church people are just so stupid. Well, not necessarily. It's called grooming. And so what the abusive pastor did was what most abusers, any kind of abusers do with everybody around them. They groom them. They start to just step over a line little by little and so it's like the frog in boiling water. So that what was would have been odd, like at the end I was used to tell people, I've lived through abuse myself and I used to tell people, Well, if my husband treated me like he did at the end of our relationship at the beginning, I would have just broken up with him. Yeah. so, because it was so insidious. You just was over time and you you come to tolerate more and more unacceptable things as you are being groomed. Another thing that I mentioned on my page was that people who are abusive also play the victim a lot. And so you kind of feel sorry for them. And so there just are so many variables in this. And the the thing is that there's no way, I mean, I have very rarely seen somebody who wasn't fooled by it unless they had some specific training on what coercive control looks like. And so that's what we do, you know, as a ministry, we go in and we help train churches to know what to look for because it is very tricky. It's counterintuitive, as Doctor Deborah who teaches our advocacy training says, and I love that word. It's like it's not what you expect it to be. Sometimes, because of trauma, the victim of abuse actually doesn't present well at all. And abusive people are very charming and charismatic very many times and they present a whole lot better than the victims. Yeah, and isn't it just I mean I mean you said Quite a few things that are so interesting that I want to tap into. I want to tap into and just slow down to like what would a typical, like if there is a typical abuser, which sounds like women get in a room and they're all like, Were we married to the same guy? Like they're they are similar. And what is it that people on the outside see? And then what is it that the people on the inside see? Can we have like a picture of like a well-rounded picture because this is not something I was aware of until about a year and a half ago. And my awareness was like, psh, my goodness. Like you could actually be one way with your family and completely different with everyone else in the world. I didn't know that was possible. And so, you know, my my awareness of coercive control and intentional harm has really ballooned and it's become a passion of mine recently. And so I want people to understand this picture. Can you help paint a picture based on thirty years of seeing this again and again and again? What does it look like from just you're interacting with average people around? What does it look like? Well, it's very much like you say. We use the terminology Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, and if you haven't read that book or seen that movie, it's a man there's a man who turns into a monster at night. And that's pretty much how victims of abuse describe their relationships. He's one person and I'm I'm saying he because, you know, I we work mostly with women or f only with women and that as survivors of abuse. And it is women are more likely to be victims as well. But they will say he comes home he's so nice to everyone else. There must be something wrong with me that I get treated like this. But you know, that he does all the stuff. Like at churches, a lot of times they have prominent roles and they may, you know, be serving in ministry. And I know that it happened with me at in a church one time. I this man that I had done worked with on teams and done some business with, you know, outside the church, his wife came up to me in the restroom one Sunday and she goes, I don't know if it's abuse. I just so confused. And so When she talked to me, all I could see there was some financial control, which is very much a part of what we call coercive control, which has become the new terminology for domestic violence now. You know, because it doesn't have to include any kind of violence or punching or anything like that. And so when she described it, I was thinking, Boy, he certainly has put her in a bad place financially. And so over time as I talked to her more, I found there was a whole lot more than met the eye. But he was serving on the prayer team, he was doing all the right things and had been nominated to be a deacon. so he was nothing at home like he was on outside. And so of course, you know, the pastor really didn't believe me when I went and said, Look, I think your guy here, because he had, you know, been his mentor and all, I said, I think he might be abusive. And so the pastor said, you just don't know him. You need to hear his side of the story. And so he was not very happy that w when the pastor brought me in on a meeting, but basically it was just the whole complaint that he had about his marriage was that she wasn't submissive enough. So and it was, you know, that she didn't keep a clean enough house. Whenever you've got things like that and there's not really that's not a relationship problem. That's a cleaning problem. You could hire somebody to do that kind of thing. So you've got somebody who wants to really lord it over another person, that's a problem. And you'll see this control that can extend to every part of their lives or just be in a few different areas like finances or even he would control the narrative with her family to make her look like she was mentally ill, much like what we saw with Micah Miller. And so she was depressed. She had Really, you know, she had small children and diapers and she was not given very much money. She a lot of times she didn't have enough money for diapers and there were just so many things like that. And so but the people at the church didn't know exactly how he was treating her. Or she would say to the church sometimes, you know, she told the pastor, He's just not giving me money and then he would go, it's so silly, I left her a check in my drawer. Well he didn't tell her and he hid it up under something, you know. So there were just all these mind games and things to make her look like she was his an a hysterical woman who, you know, was much less put together than he w seemed to be. And yeah. So when they're presenting to people outside, they're saying negative things about their partner, a lot of times sounds like they're putting them down. Many times. Yeah. So I taught a Bible study on Sunday nights and you know, for women. And he came up to me and he said, I I know I heard my wife is gonna be taking your Bible study. He said, Great, that's great. Maybe you can help her. Help her what? Like and so it was, you know, they just leave this impression that something's wrong with her, but they might not say, well, she's mentally ill or anything like that. It depends on the person listening, but they will make these remarks to h make you start to wonder about that person. Like what's wrong with her? It's so subtle too. It's so subtle. And so by the time things get really bad and she says, Hey, things are really bad, what is the typical support like for her when she finally comes out and says, actually, I'm not crazy. I think it's him. What you know, like I can't think straight. I have clutter because I can't think because I'm traumatized. Like what is it like for her when she does finally reach out? And maybe even specifically, let's talk about friends first and then let's talk about the church. Yeah. Well, a lot of times they don't go, well, I'm being mistreated right up front. And so what they will s come to you and say is, Boy, am I confused. I'm very confused about this relationship. It's just I know it's wrong, but I can't even sometimes they can't even tell you why it's wrong, you know, because it's so subtle. And so Even when she reached out for help before I came to the church, I would say that she talked to a lot of people and they were confused about it too. Like they thought, well, it's just a marriage problem. We need to get marital counseling, which we know that in cases of abuse it's not going to help at all. And it's in fact probably gonna make things worse because then she's not free to tell the the truth. 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Planning tools and templates, live group coaching, monthly QA, and a live onboarding session so you can begin to use the system right away. If you're ready to increase your opportunity to experience more clarity, calm, confidence, creativity, meaningful productivity, and presence while getting more of the right things done in less time with peace, not pressure, visit think-time.com slash podcast. I'd love to help you build a life that works with your brain, aligns with your design, and reflects what matters most. With marriage counseling, the client is the relationship. But with abuse, the problem is not between the two people. It's an actual character problem in one of the people. That's why. I've heard it said so many times like marriage counseling isn't good for abuse, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's it took me so long to understand that difference of like, it's not a relationship problem. It's a person problem. Like with when one person has like an addiction, abuse, adultery, those that person needs to fix the adultery, the abuse, or the addiction. And then there are going to be relational problems that fall out of this person's character issue. But that's not a marriage problem. Exactly. That was hard for me to understand for a while. Whenever the first time I heard that, I was like, how could it not be? Because the whole time I think most people are trying to solve their marriage problem. Yeah. So when she turns around to her friends, what are they gonna be thinking at that time a lot of times? Well, I think a lot of times it depends on the the people and what their priority is. So Especially in the church, you'll find so many people their priorities are you know, is the marriage instead of the person, the good of the person. They're thinking, you know, well, you just need to go for some counseling. And I remember I did this to my own sister before I went through it. I'm like, You guys need to get some counseling because we just we're programmed to think the that's the answer. And it's not the answer. In fact, you know, every time that we went to marriage counseling and my husband and I went to about a dozen different counselors and pastors for counseling. And it almost every time I would walk out there walk out of the office and be more discouraged than I was when I went in. Because they didn't they just didn't even touch on what was going on in our homes. And of course I didn't feel very safe telling exactly what was going on in our homes. So I would say, Well, sometimes he has a little anger problem. You know, and it was far more than an anger problem. But I couldn't even put it all in words, you know, because so much of the time he was awesome, right? He was he was a good guy. And I kept thinking that the the behavior where he would blow up and k get angry or try to control things was aberrant, that I wasn't it was not the norm and I just wanted him to get back to his normal self, so to speak. And yet it was the other way around. As the marriage went on longer and longer, it became much more rare to see that nice guy that I fell in love with, right? And so you will see that kind of thing happening. And but you gotta remember too that when you go to speak to people about it, they know the nice guy. They only know the nice guy. So, you know, was of course they just need marriage counseling. They just need to learn how to communicate better. Because she's not telling them the whole story most of the time. Sometimes she does and sometimes you can find people who are supportive. But the only time I really got help from people was when actually when he crossed over a line and when he hit me or, you know, he like he had a knife at my neck one night. And so I went to church the next day and told the pastor and he said, Th you know, this is not right. It's not fitting. Because at the time I would I had such a strict view of the Bible and I said, I know I'm supposed to submit, but but you know, I'm afraid he's gonna kill me. And my pastor said it says this, submit as is fitting in the Lord, and this is not fitting. Like the God the Lord doesn't want this for you. And so that set me free for a little bit. And this other family in the church took me home. But over the years, you know, I didn't really disclose the truth of what was happening. I was taught, you know, as a good wife, you don't tell all the bad stuff on your husband. And so we presented this picture that was you know, picture perfect. He became a doctor and, you know, I had a a degree, you know, a a master's degree and we we looked like the perfect couple. That's what somebody told me after the fact. She goes, my goodness, I thought you guys were the perfect couple. You see, we do free medical clinics out of our house and things like that. And so it's hard if you don't understand the patterns And know what to look for. I mean, it's gonna be very hard for anybody on the outside to understand what's truly happening without some kind of training, knowledge about what it looks like. And and you had a degree in counseling. Certainly you had a class on this, right? Not yet. That was another master's sorry. When you did, I mean, we're both counselors. How much training did you have in your counseling degree on abuse? I counted, I added it up. It was like 20 minutes and it was not a very good. I mean, it was clear that the professor didn't get the patterns and he was talking only about physical abuse. I mean, he did the best he could again. You know, within the church especially, we did not have the body of knowledge that the domestic violence shelters had. And I was not going to go to the shelter because goodness, I'm not going to the world for answers. You know, and so I was a I stayed away, steered. clear of that because I thought for sure they'll tell me to get a divorce, you know? And divorce was the worst thing possible to me at the at that point. Isn't there a statistic about most people who are actually in coercively controlling or domestic violence situations? Do they self identify as someone who is abused? Like is that normal? No. Most of them do not. and it takes a lot, even, you know, for me, even though he had, you know, there were Times where he did harm me, they were I mean, rare over the years. It happened in a like a thirteen year marriage, I c think I could count five or six times where he got physically violent towards me. It might have been less, but most of it was at the end when I left. But there was violence in the home where he would take his hand and just wipe off the contents of a dresser or something and just send everything s you know, go across the room or you know, just throw things, break things. He would just break my things and yeah, and that's intimidating. It's scary. And so I I lived afraid of what might come next. You know, so this they are able to train you with just enough of those incidents to keep you under control. Like I don't want him to blow up. I don't want him to get angry. So what can I do? I I tell people that my every thought every day just about was how do I keep him calm today? How do I keep him from blowing? And even, you know, if I would get off my guard because we might have a couple of months that were good. And then it could just happen out of nowhere. Something happened at work or he you know, he was upset about something and I get, you know, the brunt of it. Or, you know, one little thing that happened, which I tell this story a lot because it just shows you it doesn't take much. My husband's brush went missing. My daughter had used it to brush her hair because she couldn't find her hairbrush in the morning because she was ADHD or maybe trauma, traumatized. And he went looking for it and couldn't find it and tore the house up. And so my response to that was after he got finally found a brush or whatever it was, and I went out and bought 17 hairbrushes to prevent that from happening again. And so We try to control it when we live with it. Well, you know, if that you know, if she shouldn't have used his brush, she should have put it back, right? But I thought, well, we're gonna keep that from happening again. Wow. And that's how warped your thinking had gotten, really. It just is like the ownership of that behavior wasn't in him. It was in I didn't have brushes for the house. Yeah. Yeah. Like that's how twisted up the thinking got. it's my fault. And so a lot of the women who are in these situations And Micah Miller, I feel like for her story, like so much of her processing that she verbalized was what could I do? How can I make this better? But I want to start with like the qualities of the kind of person that end up being the perfect prey, as Christine Cosciola calls it. Your former husband was a doctor, well respected. JP Miller was a pastor, and you're saying that a lot of police officers are perpetrators of domestic violence and coercive controllers. So what type of person what type of person gets into a relationship like this? Is there a certain type of person that tends to be in relationships with people who slowly and gradually erode their sense of what's true in the world so they can control them? Like is that is that the picture? Is that a good way to say what coercive control is? Yeah. Well, you know I know that the statistics say that people who grow up with abuse are more likely to get it into abusive relationships later in life, but I think that just somebody who has grown up in a healthy home can be fooled by it sometimes too. So I don't know that there's a specific type of person because I've seen victims come from all over the place and you know, s having different degrees of healthiness when they were growing up. I did not grow up with abuse. I would not say that my house was, you know, I would call it dysfunctional but, you know, in a different way. It wasn't like I didn't have alcoholic parents. I just had parents who didn't know how to they really didn't know how to communicate, you know, they would just, you know, clam up and not talk about things, but sometimes they did, you know, they would acknowledge sadness and things like that. So, you know, it depends on really, it just depends on sometimes on how good the abusive person is, how convincing I have a woman who Grew up as a k the child of missionaries and you know, a lo she's had a very loving environment. And then when she met her husband, who was a youth pastor, she really had no signs, and then he changed suddenly on their wedding day. I've heard that story several times. you're mine now, you know, and you will do what I say. And that was there wasn't even a hint of that while they were dating. So It can happen to anybody anytime, but yeah, maybe those who have been through abuse growing up as children, it seems more normal. And so maybe they're probably would tolerate more than I would have when I first entered into that relationship. So that moment where and I've heard of this moment for a lot of people that right when they got engaged, right when they got married, like the weekend of the wedding, the relationship completely changed. So the person they said yes to is actually very different than the person they committed to. And so as a believer, as a Christian who's like, I believe in marriage forever and this is a covenant and I've promised, where do you see Christians struggling to piece this together? Cause in truth, that person just lied to them. They believe them. So do they have to maintain that covenant forever because someone lied to them and tricked them? Like, you know, like how do you how do you put that together for people? Right. Well, you know, one thing we don't do at Call to Peace Ministries is tell people they need to get a divorce or tell you know, to try to convince them of something, you know, one way or the other. What we do is we teach them what healthy looks like. We teach them what God's word really says about marriage and how even you know, it I used to quote Malachi chapter two, that God hates divorce to myself. I never read the whole passage that much. And when I did, you know, it says and he also hates it when a man covers himself with violence. And so, you know, I think that a lot of things that we believe in the church are just mis interpretations of scripture, misapplications of scripture. And so we also try to help them untwist those scriptures that have been used against them. So for me there were just several that really kept me in bondage and so helping them, you know To see what I believe God's heart truly is versus what a man is doing, using, saying to keep her under control. I think that's the path to freedom. And then they hopefully they make the right decision, you know, for them. And I think that most of the women who come to us would rather save their marriages than their lives in the beginning. So if we were to say to them, you need to get out, you need to get a divorce, it's gonna send the other way. And I know that it sure would have done that for me. Yeah, I can see that because there's such a belief in the beauty of marriage and the long term benefit and the idea that being married is better for children. All of these things that that we believe with good intentions. There's just a lot has to be put out of your awareness to not deal with actual life. Like so Micah Miller is front and center this week and You know, I think you said that the thing that really captured your heart was that the way that one person could hoodwink an entire group of people, not just, you know, say Micah was hoodwinked by him and then she became entrapped by him. But what was going on with this church? And these are people gathering on a Sunday morning singing praises to God, and yet the person who was leading them was not on the outside. Who he was on the inside, at least not on stage, or I mean sometimes on stage. as it was said, I think I overheard an interview where Neil Shorey said he was a wolf in wolf's clothing. So JP's not the best example in a sense because he was overtly saying things from the stage that was very not okay. But there are people on in the pastorate that you know, how do people work an entire crowd and an entire like Your whole life is, you know, you're entwined with your spouse and your kids who are seeing you being one way in the home, but then there's a crowd outside. How do they do that? You know? What does it look like? Well, it looks like what we call grooming. So in the beginning he might just make one little comment and everybody goes, but after a while, you know, he's making these comments and he makes them into jokes or something. And over time people go, that's just JP, right? And you know, because he says enough things that are right and true and then he mixes in a little bit, you know how it says in the Bible that he's you know, that the truth the father of lies, but basically he comes as an angel of light. Satan comes as an angel of light. So he can take a whole bunch of truth and just add one lie and it changes the whole situation, but This is what happens with these situations. And I think that by this point he had been with her and been doing that kind of thing for so long that the congregation had gotten immune to it. They didn't realize how sick it was, maybe. And he again he said, Well, you know, my wife struggles with mental illness. He announces this from the pulpit. He talks about how she's on on medication. So he's being way too too sherry with the congregation. So they all feel like that he has let them enter into his private world and that they're his best friends because who do you share that kind of thing with except your best friends? You don't go telling everybody in the world your business, but he did. And so, you know, it was just I think it was just very much grooming and I think too, like when the truth finally came out and the congregation found out about him, most of the people left, you know, but he still has a shell of people that they still think they're his best friend and that that they s go to the church that he started, the new church that he started. So again, it's just what people will push the button of what acceptable is and once people get used to that, then they push further. They just keep going until people are going That really abnormal behavior is just perfectly normal because they've been so groomed over time. That's breaks my heart. So you said that the person who has been harmed doesn't always appear well. And so like the abuser is actually appearing calm and competent and put together and has this outward composure. Meanwhile, she is basically she's been receiving his poor treatment for at that point a long time and she might have had some symptoms of in this case Micah, but we can say she has regard to the person who has been harmed intentionally over time systematically had their soft spots found and then manipulated to harm them. What happens inside most victims? Are they looking amazing or is there another story? There's another story for sure. So what we have discovered, and there's a book called Trauma and Recovery by a woman, PhD Harvard professor, I think. Judith Hum Herman is the one that coined the phrase complex post-traumatic stress disorder. So in addition to post-traumatic stress disorder, which you know you see combat veterans dealing with, there's some extra symptoms to this, and complex post-traumatic stress comes from little mistreatments over time. So it's almost it has the exact same effect as an IED going off or something in a war zone. But if one not, you know, one paper cut won't kill you, but a whole bunch like all over you, it will really do you some damage, or one D-sting won't kill you, but a thousand will kill you. And so it's kind of like this c accumulated effect. And so they have the same symptoms with flashbacks, you know hard to focus, like you said earlier. So they were gonna have a lot of the symptoms that you will see with regular post traumatic stress, nightmares, dissociation where they zone out. There are just so many different signs of trauma. But in addition to that, people who've been through complex post traumatic stress really have more trouble because the it happened at the hands of somebody that's supposed to love and care for them. So they have this betrayal on top of all of that. And so she even said that it will really affect their reason their view of the world in general even more than post traumatic stress and even their view of God 'cause they start questioning. It really starts to feel like that this abusive person is omnipotent. He's the one with all the power and he's more powerful than God because he keeps getting away with it. That's the way I felt. You know, it's like, you know, he there were no consequences for him. And so it just really does it's what we call crazy making and sometimes then the survivor will not look very good on the outside. They have a lot of anxiety and they have post traumatic stress symptoms that keep them from being able to present very well. Now some can, but I've found for the most part that anxiety that just scattered, you know, where she can't sometimes can't even make a sentence like me right now. So but, you know, she will have trouble attending. She'll have a trouble expressing herself. She'll even have trouble telling her own story because when you've got trauma, you know, the memories will come all at different times. And so it's a not a linear story that you're gonna get from her. It's gonna be, you know, just bits here and bits there and it just seems like it's all over the place and she she seems too scattered to really have herself together. So obviously she's the problem. Yeah. And I think that, you know, if she's presenting that way, even in in a court, she might remember something at one point, but not the other part. And then if she brought up that other part later, she's gonna look what they would say uncredible, right? And she's not a credible witness when if the court personnel were trauma informed, they would know, you know, the the part of the brain has attention and time. Like I think that was one of the most im influential things for me. I was taking a course by Bessel Vanderkolk recently, and he was talking about how trauma impacts the part of the brain that has to do with time. And so, like a lot of people listening right now can't see time. They're time blind. Their attention is struggling. They're distractable. Sometimes they'll hyperfocus and they don't mean to, or working memory. What was I just thinking about? Why did I walk in this room? I can't manage this. My emotions are like I'm fine that I'm Cannot find rejection. I feel rejected easily. I'm literally, I'm actually going down a list right now while I'm talking. I looked up ADHD and CPTSD, because listen to this, these are all symptoms of both emotional regulation difficulties, rejection, restlessness, sleep, memory, self-concept, relational struggles, trauma symptoms, dissociation, executive dysfunction. So the overlap between ADHD and CPTSD is so profound and that's why I really wanted to talk to you about this today. Because a lot of people are coming, they're thinking, I may have problems, you know, with ADHD, when in reality with an informed listener, whether that's a trained counselor, a trained pastor, a trained women's ministry leader, a trained teacher, when they can hear those symptoms, they can say, Tell me more about your relationships. How does it feel? How you know, and just find out more about that. you and I have a mutual friend Leslie Vernick who was seeing clients and was it ninety five percent of the women who were presenting with clinical diagnoses and disorders, turned out that their marriages were actually toxic or disruptive. Or she doesn't use the word toxic, but she would say the word what's her word? Destructive. Yeah. And so she she sort of turned the course of her whole work to say, actually it's not this individual who's having the struggles of mental health illness problems. It's actually a relational, in that sense, a relational, not between them, but this person is having the symptoms of the harm that's been done to them. So if someone's out there and they're listening and they're thinking, my gosh, maybe I don't have ADHD, maybe the person who I live with who's mean to me every day. who comes home complaining, who won't take the kids so I can get a break, who's keeping me isolated from my friends, who's penny pinching the money, who's like all of these traits that seem kind of harmless or kind of quirky or maybe just that guy. But then when you get to know this pattern, but then you feel the the things inside you that aren't quite right. What's a good thing for them to do? What's a good first step? Well, I think that's actually the hardest part where you to realize that it's abusive. So There are checklists. We have one online at Called to Peace Ministries, so you could go to called to peace dot org and there's a checklist there and just understand that it's not all physical harm and it is in one way because if it's emotionally destructive to you, then it's going to impact your body. But again, if you're feeling very confused in your relationship, then I I would suggest, you know, starting to to do some reading. I would recommend like our website and Leslie Vernick's website. Well, I think it's under her her name at Leslie Vernick dot com. But she has these groups, you know, to help people regain. We have restore groups. Ours is more a spiritual, you know, scripture based restore groups. But also that, you know, hers are a little bit more, she was a clinical social worker and hers are a little bit more, you know, from the I say more practical than ours. Ours are more spiritual healing and just healing from a really strong emotions. So with there's some overlap between what we do, but I think that would be very helpful for anyone. I did a podcast one time with betrayal trauma recovery. And so they're not necessarily faith based either. And they talk about betrayal trauma Which a lot of times could be something as simple as you've got a husband who's addicted to porn or he's having serial affairs and things like that. And when I met the founder who Ann Blythe, she was saying that they basically do the same thing that they would do for an abusive man and they teach the women the same patterns you see with abuse. So, you know, finding some kind of help for you know, for the situation, but really getting yourself stronger so you can deal with those things. But it is really hard to heal. If it is trauma, it's really hard to heal while you're in a situation like that. And so it's gonna be it will be challenging. And I will say too that Call to Peace Ministries has free advocates, the volunteer advocates. We've got about a hundred and sixty or seventy of them around the country and around the world and you know, you can call and you can do everything via phone. And so it's just good to have s someone to talk to to listen and You know, if you don't have faith, you can just s state that up front. We don't have to talk to you from a faith-based perspective. So just reaching out and having somebody who understands the patterns would be helpful to you, I think, to listen to, to start understanding. And I would do some reading. You know, I have a book, Leslie's got a couple of books, one called The Emotionally Destructive Marriage, and mine's just called to Peace. So written from a Christian perspective. And then we have the called to peace workbook now, which is very much is trauma informed and also scriptural. So we have groups of those that meet online too. So there's plenty of help out there nowadays. Yeah. And one thing I think that you said that I really value in especially with the context of my audience is that yeah, I think in five to ten years, the idea that emotional abuse is separate from physical abuse will just be completely ridiculous because it's it Cells. I mean, when your telomeres are dying and you lose ten years of your life because of the constant trauma, the idea that those are separate is so unintellectual. It drives me nuts. So I want this to be a place where we are just obliterating the idea that there's emotional abuse and there's physical abuse. Emotional abuse is physical abuse. It is through the body. It is when fight flyer freeze hits, that executive function comes off, the whole body is engaged to protect and defend. And then if you can never get out and that stress gets stuck, whether you're a child or a victim of any sort, whether you're in war or in your own home, that impacts your body. And so I just it's very important to me that that is forefront in this conversation too. And so, you know, if there is someone listening who's involved in churches and they're humble enough to say, ooh, I didn't know that. I wonder if I would know enough to tap down when that woman comes to me and says, He might have an anger problem, but otherwise he's great. Like, how would you know that that's a sign that she could be dead in a year? Right? Like there's no way they're gonna see that coming. What do you have for the pastor or the elder who's curious about how they can serve the women and children in their population and the very, very, very occasional men. I always like to say there are not men's shelters in every city, but there are women's shelters. There's that's that for a reason. Statistically, it's very, very rare that it's a man that that is under this. Not to say that if it is happening to you that it is not valid, it's a hundred percent valid if you are being coerced and controlled and threatened. It's just very rare. So the gender language is just statistical, not intentional in any way in that way. Right. Right, right. Well, one thing that we do, I mean, w as I was trying to help women and I had become an advocate for With the North Carolina Coalition against domestic violence. And of course, I had lived through it and you know, had my counseling degree and I saw that they did not how know how to address it. And then as I started doing counseling within my church, I saw, whoa, they really don't know how to address it. And so I decided we have got to do something. And so I thought, I need a pastor to speak on this, because a lot of times You know, churches really didn't want to hear what I a survivor of abuse. I'm just living out of my abuse. So, you know, i it was almost like wasn't valid. I've I actually heard a few people say that. Well, you're just you know, you just see everything through your lens. And I'm like, Well, you know, I had done a lot of healing at this point and I was pretty sure that I was seeing it clearly. But anyway, I thought, well, we had some people on our we had a man on our board who's a pastor and he was taking our advocacy trainings one year training. And so I I just kept thinking, I should hire a pastor pastor, I should hire a pastor. And so finally I just called him up and I said, Hey, would you be interested in working for Called to Peace Ministries? You know, maybe just three to five hours a week. And he said, Well, yeah, actually I was thinking about going by vocational. And so when I hired him, of course, the, you know, some other churches listened a lot more to him. And so that turned into a whole program, which is our church partnership program. And we've hired, we've got three pastors on staff now. One is actually our new executive director, but those pastors come and they do they present this training that we do all over the country and in Canada and you know, anywhere we can get to, if the people will just pay for our travel, we will come out and train you. So, you know, I've got one coming up this weekend in eastern North Carolina. It's gotta be too late probably by the time you get this out. But anyway, it's good because we have one presenter most you know, who's a a man, many times either a another pastor that's volunteering with us or a counselor. And we also have one woman to present, and usually that woman is a survivor or either has lived through the abuse with somebody like a family member or someone they love. And so they get to hear both sides. And what we want to present it that way because, you know, after somebody's healed and they can speak in a sentence that makes sense that they're not try it's not tr coming out like trauma, trauma, trauma. Or they can get a better idea of what abuse really looks like. They don't see just this traumatized woman up there who can't put her story together anymore. And so yeah, we have found those to be very effective. It's called our protect the flock trainings and we would, you know, we travel and and I think that pretty soon because we're getting so many requests that we might start doing something regional, you know, in different regions. of the country so people can access it a little bit easier. Well, I just I appreciate so much the the work that you've done, Joy. You are the quintessential creative leader where you threw yourself into a cause you believed in, you cared and loved about the people you were serving, and boy, did you work hard. You were available and people just came to you and it has ballooned into this massive, beautiful ministry that is serving so many people. And at this point, Micah Miller's story, it is heartbreaking. It is sad. It is at the front of the conscious right now. And with the people that I know in this space and the people I've been able to meet over the last year and a half as my awareness has just been expanded in this area. This is a passion for think time. When people purchase think time, we have a percentage of what we have is going to ministry called to peace ministries and some like it as well. There are a couple of partnership ministries that I also love. That this is a passion point for me personally. And so if you are a person who is is looking around, you're like, my ADHD may not be just me. It might actually have something to do with the relationships in my life, whether it's someone you're married to, someone you're in partnership with or Even at work, sometimes a coercively controlling relationship can melt you down. It can be really, really impactful as well. But if you are in a power under position in a relationship, coercive control can take hold. And so they would come to Call to Peace and take the quiz, call to Peace dot org to take the quiz. And so they take a quiz. It's on the when you go to individuals, there's a it says take the quiz. I know it just says that some you know in some places. So Just take the quiz. Okay. We'll put the link. We'll put the link to the quiz in the show notes here. So you can go straight to it from the show notes. And then if you are a pastor or an elder or a counselor or someone who works in the courts with children or a judge or anybody who interfaces in any way with caring for people and you don't want to miss something that could really be as impactful as life and death, you can either do the half day training, which is the protect the flock training. Or there's an advocacy program that I am taking and I'm learning about how to become an advocate over time. And so that's part of my passion is like, my gosh, there's so much to learn. It's only a hundred hours. So this is the next level of care. So if you are a lawyer, a counselor, a church, if you work with kids in a church, for heaven's sake, a women's ministry leader, a pastor, an elder of any sort. And you don't want what happened to Micah Miller to be the story of one of the people that you're caring for. This is the place to come to get introduced. And Joy Forrest, Neil Shorey, and Dan Beck and other people are there as well. And then I'm just gonna put a little plug in for as well. Andre Turentine works with those who are harming with intention, but don't wanna be that kind of person. Called the Peace even has a ministry for them as well. So you guys have really covered all the bases. And so if there's a redemptive hope for the situation, you guys have that covered too. It's not just about the victims. It's also about those who are potentially able to transform their life to become a better person too. And I know that most pastors would want that for anyone in their church as an option to at minimum rule out that that's not possible. So Joy, thank you so much for coming and for just enlightening us. This is something that is Counterintuitive, as you said, and you've got thirty years of experience. where can people follow you if they want to learn more from you? well, I have my own personal YouTube channel and it's you know, just Joy Forest Counselor and Advocate on YouTube and then Call to Peace Ministries has its own YouTube channel as well as a Facebook page. Well, I'm on Facebook as well, and I do a lot of posting there about things like this because it's just my heart. And I just have to say, you know, that I feel like that if Micah Miller had some help, you know, just I I get women telling us that call to peace saved their o lives all the time. And I'm going at first I thought, sure. And then one day I realized that it's just giving somebody community and being there for them can give somebody hope. And that's the thing that must have happened with Micah Miller if you watch the whole thing. It's not that he killed her n physically anyway. He stole all of her hope. And so even the church, not believing her, you know, not having anywhere to turn, that takes away somebody's hope, but we can help restore it by becoming helpers that understand what this looks like. And it can make all the difference in the world for somebody. I do. I I believe that had she been able to be plugged in and connected during that time, it could have been different for her, that that lack of clarity, the things, you know, thinking she needed to to give up that hope. or even protect others, as twisted as the thinking might have become in that moment. You guys help people to untangle the thinking and even in a scriptural way, untangle the scriptures that are used to entrap the women in these relationships. So when scripture is used to harm, it is not being used properly. When it is used to love and marriage too. When marriage is a an excuse to hate and harm, it's not marriage. Marriage is designed to be loving and show the character of God, which is not harm. So it is hope, actually. It is very clearly hope. So thank you so much for joining me here. Thank you for all of you who are listening. Whether you are part of a church or not, I hope the conversation was a blessing to you and you know what next step to take for where you are today. Joy, thank you for joining us today. Thank you, Christine. Appreciate it. This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. And isn't a substitute for individualized medical, mental health, or professional care. Every brain is different. Results will vary. 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