Therapy And Theology // Viral Revival: Bloodline Edition // A Conversation With Dr. Anita Phillips

for you. This is session three of our viral revival and I'm telling you this one is actually going to help you from the inside out. Me and my beautiful wife, Pastor Natalie, had an awesome opportunity to sit down with Dr. Anita Phillips and talk through therapy and theology. That's right, both of them are necessary for us to live whole lives. And I just believe that what God wants for your bloodline is not a partial healing, but a whole complete healing that you're able to pass on from generation to generation. But guess what? It starts with you. This is a conversation that gets really raw. So I need you to get ready to deal with the real things that are going on on the inside of you. After this conversation, you may need to make some calls. After this conversation, you might have to forgive some people. After this conversation, you might need to sign up for therapy or counseling. That's what transformation is all about. And today, me and Pastor Natalie are going to open up our lives and Dr. Anita is going to share so vulnerably and you, I believe, are about to be blessed as we have this conversation that will change your bloodline in theology and therapy. Hey, hey. Version five, we got Auntie Anita here today. And this is Pastor Natalie's session, y'all. It's my favorite one, not going to take y'all seat. We're just going to go to a little therapy together today. I heard them, we walked in and they asked the question how many people are actually in therapy right now. Can y'all raise your hands again if you... Now, okay, hold on, hold on, hold on. Active in the last three months. Okay, we're doing all right. The reason that I say that is we do this session at a conference to normalize what actually allows us to receive the healing that we need. The altar is usually the starting point of people's transformation. But what we found is that you need actual practices and systems to help you live out what you're actually believing for. If you're going to change something in your bloodline, if something's going to be different, if you're actually going to walk in freedom. And so Natalie and I decided a few years ago when life hit us that the things that really helped us, we were going to share with people. This is our third time doing this panel right now, and we decided that this one, we wanted for all the people who were born to bless their bloodline in the room. Who are the people that are born to bless their bloodline? We don't believe in generational curses because the curse is... But there are some generational patterns that we've got to still deal with. And so we wanted to invite Dr. Anita, who we've all sat together and talked and counseled and shared life with.

We wanted to come and bring this to you again to normalize the fact that it is necessary to actually pray, watch this, and have a practice. They don't work against each other. They work with each other. And what me and Natalie have found is that God has done tremendous things in church settings, and he's done tremendous things in counseling rooms. And today we want to help you navigate some of the things that you decided yesterday that it ends with me. Like I'm done doing that. This won't go past me. And that's what we want to call this session. It ends with me. Because I believe God wants some new things to start, but we have to figure out how we do this practically. And so today I want you to open up your heart. I want you to be able to be willing to be, watch this, honest. Because right now in an environment like this, this is where people put their masks on. Like when you start talking about this type of stuff, like your family issues, and how you played a part in the story, and how you love your mama, but you don't like your mama. Okay, I just said it, or she don't like you. - You're married to somebody that is not emotionally connected to you, but it's a better business arrangement and y'all just don't talk about it no more. Like, when we start getting into real stuff, people just put on masks and like, "Hey man, amen, amen." You hear, God doesn't bless who you pretend to be. He blesses who you really are. And so today, we wanna have a conversation. Natalie, why is this session important to you? - To me, because my personal testimony is I did not believe in therapy at all. And I was like, the only reason I went is because Brie Davis told us we were going. I booked the flight, you're going to Colorado. - Go ahead. - Keep talking.

- Okay. - I'm gonna interrupt her. I'm just, I'm sorry. - We interrupt each other. So it is what it is, real life, marriage. But she is a dear friend of ours. They're the God parents to our children. And she just saw me crashing. She just saw the effects that it was having on our marriage. And she realized this was a big, big tea drama shift that just happened in our lives. And thank God she was like some steps ahead in the whole mental health, spiritual walk side. And she was like, I'm already following this place and I think it's for you. And if you will just give it a shot, 'cause she already knows. Like I'm a, I got about two or three that are in my box and that's about it. And so she was like, if you will just try. I was like, all right, I'll give it a shot. Well, my therapist ended up telling me that I had similar, my response to stuff because I was so disassociated because of the culture of how my family is. You just don't talk about it. Something goes down, you don't really talk about it. If there is an explosion, then you just kind of, whatever however that ended, hopefully nobody hurt nobody.

And I'll see you at Christmas and then we'll act like everything's fine. And it just kind of, we just kind of talk 'cause life just kind of keeps happening. Definitely not healthy, but has happened over and over again. So it just feels normal, it feels comfortable. So talking about something, I was like, yeah. So it took me probably two years to finally admit that, okay, I might have some issues to talk about with her. - Four years. - She literally said she was like, nah, I love you. She was like, but it is similar to an addict where they're in denial. They go through this phase of like, I got no issues or whatever. And then eventually it's kind of like, okay, I might, I might have some issues. So I went about a year of I might have some issues, no application yet, you know, are you still kind of convincing me? And so I think about year three, literally of therapy, I finally decided to try to hear what she was actually saying to start applying it. And I will say it took God to show and reveal that revelation to me that what I did not transform was gonna get transferred to my children. In my family culture, it was whatever, it's that false sense of control that like, I got this kind of thing and I had it. I had all the things going on in my life,

but MJ broke that. He broke that system that I had in me of like, I'm the peacemaker, I can hold everybody's puzzle pieces together that actually I might be the linchpin in of a lot of issues, but I could really shake this whole thing up but I'm gonna hold it all together because it was this false sense of safety that I created for myself. And so that coping mechanism doesn't work with MJ. It doesn't work with autism. It has nothing to do with it. So it broke, and I thank God for that little boy. He has caused a revelation to happen in his mom that never would have happened before, that he has been a blessing to our bloodline because honestly, he caused all of this to happen. Honestly, we wouldn't even be having this session right now. - That would be shouting right now. - If it was not for MJ. - It's screaming, which is fine. - Yeah. - But it does not change what's happening on the inside. - Right. - And what we want people to do is actually live the life that God intended for us, and that's a life of being whole. And so Dr. Nita, first off, we love you. - I love you. - I love you guys.

- Yeah. - You know I love you guys. - We love you. - I feel like I came back home to this. - Yeah, you already know you're home. - I'm always home. - And the truth of the matter, we just gonna do in front of the people what we do behind the scenes. I had to stop them from talking before this session 'cause they were saying so much good stuff. I said, "Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, "we're about to go out there and do this." And I was like, I need them to see this because there are a lot of people that if they get a glimpse of what it really is, it would transform their whole lives. And so I have thousands of cousins, brothers and sisters out here that are part of my family line now, 'cause we share the same DNA. And we're trying to figure out how not to use this moment as a memory, but use this moment as momentum. Like when we leave Tulsa, when we decide to go back to our situations, like what can we do to actually be the blessing in our bloodline? How do we really start, like it's jacked up back there, stuff going on, we trying to get it right, but we believe it in our heart, but now we want it to actually happen in our lives. How do we, where do we start?

- Generational shifts start with us. - You are step one. The biggest challenge, or I say the biggest error that we make in trying to shift things generationally is once we realize what has been running in the line, we try to turn around and help them. And that is not step one. We want to rescue mom, rescue dad, rescue grandma, rescue auntie, they need to know, they need to understand, you trying to educate 'em, you trying to ask them questions, you sending them video links. - You're doing it, you don't work. - But that is not your first stop. And then you get a savior complex, and then you start to play out the same codependent cycles with your parent as an adult that you did as a child. And so that's not step one, because you have to completely unplug, and this doesn't necessarily mean cut off, it means where your focus is, to you first. So the first step in me changing a generational pattern is to heal myself. I gotta get honest with what I need to do, and I gotta get honest with what I've failed to do, because too often we're focused on what we don't want to do, but we don't know what to do. - Oh my gosh, you are literally, that's my first two years of therapy. - Girl, I could've had you in five minutes, look at you.

- Oh my gosh, I could not-- - I could've saved us a lot of money. - I could not get motivated to get down in the muck. - Yeah. - I was like, I'm not going down to these emotions, and I honestly couldn't even feel them. I was so disassociated with them, that the therapist was crying for me for some stuff, and I was like, I guess this is bad, I don't know, I guess it's worse than what I thought. And, but that was the first two years of my marriage, I mean, at my marriage, sorry, my therapy. - No, that wasn't our marriage. - Not the marriage, not the marriage, not the marriage. - Therapy, but what do you do when you need to find, like, where do you think it clicks, or how can we explain to people that I do have to start with me, 'cause it's so easy to be like, the issue is so right in front of me, how in the world, it ain't got nothing new to me. If they would just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like, where do you find, for me, it was my children. Do you have to find some internal motor? Like, I don't know if there's anyone else out there that I was just like, I'm not here for this. Like, I mean something else to tell me why. Like, where is the actual benefit? - I agree with you in that we're often motivated by someone else. I think by our children, by our next generation,

by our marriage, something that hits the break point. And we all have a break point. So for you, it was your children. For someone else, it might be that they have never been married and they want to, but every relationship has been toxic. And instead of picking better, you wanna be better. My internal transformation is gonna affect who I attract. And so once you realize that, and I have lived this in real time in the last three years, where I realize, oh, people that wanna date me, but they've gotten much better. But I've been working on me. And I've noticed differences. So whatever issue seems repetitive in your life, I promise you, you're the common denominator. That's not the same as it being your fault, but it may be your pattern. And so we gotta stitch something else. We gonna have to rip this piece out and cut this piece and stitch a new thing. I gotta, y'all don't know about dressmaking, but when I was growing up, we made our stuff. We had omelette class. You laid the pattern on the material and you cut it to the shape. You had to stitch it together. And if it didn't work, you had to rip it apart. You're gonna need a new pattern. And the part of you, that's the problem,

is probably not the part of you that is causing the most pain. And y'all, stop. Wow, what? Stop it. You can't drop a bar like that and then just keep rolling through the light. Could you just say that last part one more time so we could take it in? The part of you, that is the problem, is probably not the part causing you the most pain. That was my MJ. I thought I was going. And so your focus there. I was going for MJ. But the part that's causing the problem, the dysfunctional part, is actually working for you in some way, you don't attribute the pain to that piece. And so you don't go after that piece. You might even protect that piece because you think it's keeping you safe. And so you are, get scripture a little. suffering the wrong thing long. That's a problem. That's not a fruit of the spirit. You're suffering the wrong thing long. You will be willing to stay in that toxic or abusive relationship. You want to suffer that, but the long suffering you need is the willingness to learn to be by yourself. I need to long suffer loneliness, but you'd rather long suffer toxicity.

So you choose your pain instead of the actual problem. Instead of the actual problem, which has probably been seen in your family because you were little. That's why it's easy. It's familiar. You see it. Now, another thing about the family issue, a lot of times the thing that's bothering you the most about the previous generation, this thing about my mom, this thing about my dad, I never want to be like that. You won't, because it bothers you because it's not you. It's not your personality to do that. It's not in you to do that. It annoys you. So that means you don't see the thing you actually need to change because you're looking at what they did. I grew up in a pastor's house, lots of company, lots of people, and I would say, "I'm not going to have all these people in my house when I grow up. I'm not going to have all these people," and I didn't, but I'm introverted. I wouldn't have did that anyway. It bothered me more than it bothered my mom because she's very extroverted. I'm looking at something she's doing that bothers me. It didn't really bother her, but it bothered me. And I'm so focused on protecting my house when that's really not the biggest challenge. So when you're looking at that previous generation, be careful you aren't making a list of what you don't want to do. A lot of times, that's the thing you wouldn't have done anyway, because it's not natural to you. And what it becomes is sideways energy. It does. Like, you don't actually have the energy to work on what you need to, because you're so

busy fighting what you don't even need to fight. Right. Right. You started to say something that I need to make sure that we get. Yes. If we actually are going to be a generational blessing, it has to start with us. We are step one. Step one is us. Everybody say step one is me. Right. And one is me. And I'm going to give you all three steps, and then let us stop into them so they know where we're going. Okay. Step one is you. Step two is the generation in front, the next one. It's your kids, your nieces, your nephews, the kids and the one, the next generation, and then maybe you go to the generation before maybe. Maybe because there's a lot of work and time on me, there's going to be work and time on the next generation, then I might use up on, I don't know, but I may then also have the opportunity to reach backwards if they have the inclination to join me. And that's not done. What did you just say? If they have the inclination to join me, stop trying to drag people where they don't want to go, that is you still being the seven-year-old bringing them their beer, the 15-year-old trying to protect them from the abusive partner. You were trying to take care of them then, and now you're just a child disguised in an adult body still trying to rescue your parents. You can't do it, but the codependency is disguised as now therapeutic help. Start with you.

So let's get back to us. How does the childhood stuff actually show up in the present? Because if you're just trying to be different than them, then you may think you've achieved your healing, because mom was in an abusive physical relationship, abusive, and I'm not in one, so I broke the cycle, yeah, maybe, maybe, but either what did you use, did you use a nasty tool to break the cycle, or is the cycle just taking another shape? You're in a relationship that's not physically violent, but it's financially controlling. There's a different power dynamic, so we have to search for those things. So I want you to be looking at what enduring patterns in your present life are bothering you, and how do you break those patterns? That's where you're going to find your first step generationally. It may not look like what they were doing, but it still needs to be broken. So we talked about like relationship patterns, date in parents, patterns, not taking care of your physical body, your health patterns. That can be another thing where you're ignoring your body's health, or you ignore and stay away from relationships. We talk a lot about people having toxic relationships, but I need to talk to some of y'all who refuse to have any relationships. If God is your only person, you don't even have Him for real, like that. You have Him maybe in salvation. Your name is in the Lamb's Book of Life, but your relationship with Him, I'm sorry. No, no, this is this is why you're here, this is exactly why you're here. Right, your relationship with God will not even be live, because what's the Bible say? If you didn't visit this person in prison, you didn't do it for me. If you didn't feed them, you didn't do it. What it's saying is how you interact with people is how you interact with me. So if you never really ask anybody for help, you barely ask God for help. in front of a person. You probably don't break down crying in your prayer closet either.

- Yeah. - Yeah. - I know, I know. - So where do, where do like some people go that say like, I don't know if I have any of those things. I remember talking to some people even myself that there comes a point where it's like, okay, you don't think you have any of these, but it starts showing up in your physical body. - Yeah. - So maybe you're not noticing any actual patterns before you, but what are some signs that you can know, like just examining yourself that like, something's not right in my body's telling you. - Yeah. Outside of things that are already diagnosed, diabetes or prediabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease. - Really? - Yes. So diabetes, prediabetes and diabetes have a high comorbidity, meaning they overlap with depression, high overlap with depression. And we'll see that at the population level, right? So Native Americans around the country have higher rates of diabetes. They also have higher rates of depression and high rates of alcoholism.

In the black community, we see high rates of anxiety disorders and PTSD and high rates of high blood pressure and heart problems. The same nervous system components are related to those emotions and those physical diseases. And so a lot of times we think we're emotionally healthy, but our physical diseases will tell us something that we need to check on. Now I'm not saying that the physical problems are not real, but there is overlap. And sometimes the physical problem may be, and I hate the word physical versus mental, but the disorder in your body like diabetes or heart disease is real, but the emotions that are there will exacerbate it. And so you'll be taking your medication, but your levels are still not fixing. A lot of times that means that my emotional pain is energizing, it's turbo boosting my blood pressure. It's turbo boosting my blood sugar. What you're trying to tell all of us is that your body is keeping the score. God made it, God made it that way. The rocks are crying out. He made it? Because you won't cry out. The rocks start to cry out. In the parable of, and I'm sorry, in the Jesus in the wilderness, it says that the angels will bear you up.

The Satan says, the angels will bear you up unless you dash your foot against a stone. That word stone actually means rocks from the ground, rocks from the ground. Your body is made from the ground. That's so those rocks are there. They're things that are stuck points. And if you don't cry out, the rocks will cry out. I promise you. - I wanna name some things that are diseases that I have found myself and from talking to others in my own experience. Insomnia is one thing. I just can't sleep good. I just think I just don't sleep good. Hair falling out, thinning hair, hair just that won't just grow, rashes, all these out of immune type of things or whatever. Those are also signs that something's not okay. - Auto-immune diseases, highly correlated with unresolved anger. Yes, autoimmune diseases are highly correlated with unresolved anger, unspoken anger. We must release anger. This is one of our biggest killers. Why? Anger's also associated with many cancers. It's literally eating you. Because anger is a forceful energy in the body, and it is the only painful emotion that moves at something.

Sadness, we pull away. Fear, we pull away. But anger is a painful emotion that progresses. It goes forward. When you're threatened, you tend to run, but with your threatened, then you think you can do something about it. You get angry. That's the only difference between fear and anger is the whether I can address the threat or not. That's the only difference. And sometimes we can't address the threat, but we convince ourself we can, 'cause we'd rather be angry and scared, but that's another conversation. Or it might be this one. And so we hold in the anger. Let me define anger. Anger is our response to something valuable being treated less than valuable. That's anger. It is a devaluation. - I got a question. - Yes. - Okay, so this is most likely my coping mechanism that I saw growing or develop growing up. I saw anger displayed in a big way, in a lot of different ways. I am half Indian. So I saw a lot of the things that you talked about.

It's common knowledge where I'm from. But I saw anger. My relationship with anger is, it's a secondary emotion to something that really comes down to hurt. Now I know that I can logically try to explain myself, 'cause I know now knowing that I need to focus on me first, and I started getting self-aware, I'm conscious of like, are you trying to logically think this through without feeling it so it makes sense to me so I can understand why you're angry and I know that you're really hurt so in turn. I don't allow myself to express that because I don't see any benefit of it. But hearing what you're saying, I'm like, oh, we have to have a healthy relationship with anger. And what do you do if your coping mechanism has been the opposite of anger? Like I run away from anger. What are some practical things I could help with that? - I think what you're saying is a lot of times you run away from what you're feeling. - Yes, yeah. - And you're saying that if you run away from what you're feeling, it's about to show up in you. - Yes, so we have to have a safe place to process what we're actually feeling in a safe way to process. So feelings, just for everybody to understand,

we're given to us by God. I want you to know that your feelings matter. If you don't treat them though, like they matter, you suppress them, oppress them, depress them, you do that. They're powerful enough to come up in a different way, not safe way. - What'd you say? - They can kill you. You just, I thought that's where you were going. - No, that's where you was going. - They can kill you. - They can come up in a different way and kill you 'cause diabetes can kill you. Hard disease, high blood pressure can kill you. Alcoholism can kill you and cancer and autoimmune diseases stealing years off the back of your life. So you may have started it for your children, but if you don't finish it, you won't spend as many years with your children. Because they have to bury you when you're in your fifties because of the internal pain. So what do we do? So let's go back to the anger 'cause that was really critical. So primary, 'cause you said it's secondary, right? Primary anger is something valuable has been devalued. You bullied my kid, you broke my expensive face. Something valuable wasn't treated that way. You disrespected me, I'm valuable.

You treated me less than valuable. And it's right to be angry in those moments. You respond to that kind of anger, first of all, by owning that you're angry, articulating why. And releasing it from your body, anger is a force. So you might need to yell. Maybe not at the person. Maybe you just go in a room and just. - Yeah. - I do that. I'd be waiting for somebody to knock on my apartment door sometimes, they're probably like, "Is she all right down there?" But I have to let that out. I might stop my feet, I may shake my arms, I need to let it out of my body, it's physical. Stop intellectualizing your emotions. I don't even like the phrase emotional intelligence 'cause it pulls it into your mind. You have to have an emotional experience and an emotional release. And so I need to leave that. I also, sometimes, I'm confessing, if I have something breakable, I like either breaking the things. - I like breaking things too. - I'll go to the recycle bin. - I'll go to the recycle bin. You said last night, I'll go to the-- - Last night, I broke the makeover there.

- I just like break it there. - Just like break it there. - I'll go to the recycle bin and get some glass or something. I'm in a safe area and something about just that. God. And the sound just brings me back down. Anger is a massive energy. - Wow. - It has to be released. Many men know this because y'all try to work out when you're angry. - Crazy. - But it doesn't always work because anger and cortisol, sometimes the work now actually increases it because you're still not emotionally connected to how you feel. So just for the record. - Well, okay, I'll send you a check for my counseling. Thank you. - Yeah, if you're gonna work out for your anger, then while you're running five miles an hour, six miles an hour, I need you to also be thinking about the thing you're angry about. I need you to be in touch with it so it comes out of the body and not dissociated from it in the workout. That's why it doesn't always help. You gotta actually be present with it.

So that was, there you go. He's like, okay. - It's correlating. - I used to have a long distance with tear streaming down my face, but it helped me. - That's what I was gonna say. It clicks for me more with pain and sorrow 'cause I know after you cry, there's this worn out piece that comes to you. And that feeling of like you're on a rollercoaster and it's about to break and your throat is jacked up. And then once you finally let it go, then you're like, oh my God. So I'm finally-- - They felt that. Y'all felt that here by the oh God. - That's like an easier one for me to understand it with. And that is what exactly what you're saying is the same thing. It's a literal hormonal rebalancing. Tears and crying is a biological process meant to reset your stress hormone level. - So what happens when people have not cried in decades? - When you haven't cried in that long, your sympathetic nervous system is running hot. - Hot. - So we have a sympathetic nervous system and a parasympathetic nervous system. One of them turns on when I need to fight, fly,

or just even play a sport. Do anything that is forced, it comes on, but it also comes on with painful emotion. But your sympathetic nervous system doesn't have an off switch on its own. It can't turn itself off. we call it the rest and digest system, has to come on to shut the sympathetic off. Crying is attached to the parasympathetic. It's trying to come on to release so that the sympathetic shuts off. So when you refuse to cry, you're actually choosing to stay heightened. The sympathetic nervous system releases extra blood sugar. It increases your heart rate, and so that goes to the diabetes and the heart disease. And so, it makes you hungry. It's running all kinds of stuff that isn't healthy. So if you haven't cried in years, there's probably something else going on your body. Joint pain, lower back pain, migraines. The way y'all looking up here right now, everybody's like, this headache might have to do with my heart, ache. Yes. - 100%. - These hurts in my knees. - Joints have to do with the hurts that came from people that I love. What we're trying to let you know is it's all connected.

It's all connected. God is so good that He connected everything so that hopefully at some point, you would actually be able to see and deal with, with Him, what's actually going on. And I thank God for an atmosphere like this, where while we're praising and while we're believing God and while we're declaring, we can actually say, but now there's some work to do after we've decided that we're no longer walking down these same patterns and pathways. And I'm just proud of everybody who's even in this session, that you chose this session. All the hands that went up for people who have tried therapy. Why are you saying that? Because you are making a decision at this church we believe in progression, not perfection. And so many of you, I want you to just make a step towards another level of healing for your life, for your bloodline. Remember, you're step one. The generation that is in front of you is step two. And if they are willing and desire, you can go back and hope that mom and them get it right. But the reason that that is important for all of us to know is because there's a sequence that will allow you to be okay, no matter what anybody else does. - Yes, yes. - God is not requiring you to suffer

because somebody else doesn't want to do the work. - Yeah, yes. - Did y'all hear what I just said? And as believers, we do take on many times a savior complex, like I can't be okay until everybody's okay. - That part. - That's a lie. - That part. - You can be okay if nobody else is okay. - Yeah. - Or where the church is kind of with this subject, honoring your mother and your father. And it feels like I don't want to go against that. But there is a way to have a boundary. And if going back is not the option that you need to do, can you talk to us about-- - How? - How in holding both of those at the same time? - Yeah, so we were on the right word, anger. Because a lot of times we are angry about some of the things we've suffered from that previous generation. Some of you may be in touch with the anger, some of you may not. But you must get in touch with the anger because the anger will help you articulate what valuable thing was devalued. Hold on, don't miss it. Anger is not just an agitation.

Anger is supposed to help you articulate. - Yes. - If anger comes up and out, it is a warning sign. Something's going, it's your dashboard telling you the check engine light is on. - Yeah. - And if you know what to do with it, it can help you articulate. - It'll help you find a problem. It's a strong if you know what to do with it on there. 'Cause I don't want everybody just like, you know, I'm pissed and now we're going off on everybody. - This is a different type. - That's why we're saying the right place and the right way. But I think so many times people think that our emotions are inconveniences. - Right, they're hunger pangs. - They're what? - Hunger pangs. Painful emotions are hunger pangs. - It needs something. - I need to eat something. I'm angry, this thing keeps being devalued. Keep disrespecting me. Keep not respecting my relationship. Keep not ever paying me back the money, I just lent you. You keep not, I'm hungry for the value that I have to be attributed to me. I need that.

And if I don't get it, I will stay hungry. I am afraid because I need safety. If I don't eat those things, I will stay hungry. Does that make sense? So you need to know what need is coming up for me. So with that previous generation, a lot of times we haven't articulated the anger because you're not allowed to be angry at your mom and dad. And I was told that when I was a kid. I know you mad at me, you keep it to yourself. You can't be mad, but I'm gonna give you something to cry about instead, you know, the threats. And so with that last generation, you got to articulate what it cost you. A lot of times we don't want to admit that. I wasn't kept safe. And because of that, I made these decisions in my adult life. You called me names or you devalued me and now it's hard for me to value myself. You chose that partner over me. You chose your drug over me and this cost me. And until you really aren't touched with that, you can't heal it within you. You have to be willing to say what it cost. Does that make sense? And so we start there. And then we can say, okay, they can't heal it for me. - Yeah. - 'Cause their apology will not heal it. Whoo!

- Uh oh. - No. - This is a terrible issue. Because so many of you don't think if they would just say sorry, it might make you feel less crazy or less gaslighted because they admit it and that's good, but it won't stop you from repeating patterns in your life. - Right. - And you think it will. So I have some things that my daughter, I had to go to her and apologize for because I wasn't present enough at certain times in her life. I was in school, I was in myself, I wasn't there. And I see it showing up in her life. So I say, hey babe, this was on me. I'm sorry. But in order for you to break these patterns that you've developed in defense of my failure, you have to do it. I can't fix it. I'll sit next to you. In therapy, I'll answer questions, but you have to do your healing with yourself, your therapist and God. I can't actually fix her. So if you think that mom or dad's apology is gonna heal it, it's not.

- Yeah. - It's not. - Yeah. - And that's so important. So once you're able to say, okay, I'm not that. So now it's in me. How are these unmet needs from my childhood showing up in my adult life? And how do I now meet that need? Myself, with myself, with my God and the relationships around me? I have to now get those needs met. Because if I only need them from back here, I'll never be free. Does that make sense? Okay, and I'm saying, may ask me a question so I can make it clearer. But I'll never be able to do it. I will never get. The inner child is sealed. I think by around 13, I say 14 max, but I think 13. The inner child is sealed within you. The only person who can reach them is you. With the help of God and your therapist, they cannot be reached by your parents anymore. And so they'll stay in there crying out to have a child's needs met, but you can't do it. They'll cry out to your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your friends, we gotta meet our inner child's needs. And let them know they do not desperately need that

from your parents, grandparents anymore. Because if you don't do that, every time you go to the previous generation, you come as the needy child. You come as the needy teenager. Some of y'all have an inner teenager that needs to be addressed. But you come and bring that and you still want it. Still please see me, still hear me, still pay attention. When I was a kid, I was always been a talker. But when my dad would get distracted and he wasn't listening, it hurt me. And so now, even now, if I do something, I'm talking to them and he looks off, I would feel it. I had to go to EMDR for some of that stuff. It was amazing that I was able to go home and not be triggered for days after I did some EMDR sessions. Because the memory in my body, when I step into your parents' presence, you become their child again. It doesn't matter how old you are. Until you heal that inner child, that's who you'll be every time you see them. Everybody just take a deep breath in. I know. Let it out. The Thanksgiving is coming. Yeah, Thanksgiving is right around the corner. I want to say something about the inner child, because I know that is a topic and a word,

that if you were like me and I heard that, I was like, this is foreign language. This sounds like yoga, smoga, inner child. Like, what are you talking about, the inner child? I'm a full grown adult. I don't know what you mean. And it had to do with that disassociation stuff. And the only thing, or not stuff, but the only thing that got me to, for it to click, is I literally, and maybe someone will have, you may need to do this to help trigger. It was like, I was a therapist told me, she was like, you are almost flat line, and we need to get you hot, like boiling hot. And the only thing that could get me hot to get those emotions to start to come up is I was just motivated by my own children. And so, if you're a mama bear out here, and you know of someone you see an adult, treat your child disrespectfully in front of your face, there's an automatic like, it's not happening while I'm here. No, you can get behind me, you can address me, but you're not gonna talk to them like that. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, I had to see me like little Bella. I had to see me like little Ava and what I would do for them." I'm like, "Oh, I have to do that for myself." Once I got that revelation, I was like, "Okay, I can get this inner child thing." I kind of know what you're talking about. And it helped me drop down to find that.

Did I help anybody? That was just me. I love that. Everybody, grab your phones. Well, you can't do it right now, but here's an assignment. Make your wallpaper a childhood picture of you. I've done that before. He's definitely done that. I have one of them. I have me on mine. It's in my mirror, in my little room. I love that. That's a special room. And it says on there, "How does little Natalie feel today?" I love it. And it's a picture of myself, y'all. Yeah, I keep mine on my phone. Every time I pick up my phone, I see her. And sometimes if I'm having a hard day, I say, "I got you." We're not alone, I got you. I sometimes I imagine picking her up and just putting her on my hip and walking around. "I got you, baby girl. You're not by yourself." I encourage you to literally engage with that child, talk to her, hug her, carry her, imagine her or him, because it actually changes something. I was having terrible low back pain for years and found out that it was a trauma response. After I did EMDR, it went away, but when I got divorced

and moved, a lot of childhood things needed to be readressed. And my back pain kicked up. I just put my hand back there. I said, "Baby girl, we're still okay." And I just rubbed my back where the pain was. I said, "We're gonna be fine. We're gonna have adventures and a different life and we're gonna do all our dreams and fun." And while I was talking, my back just loosing right up. Pain went away, but I knew where it was living. I promise you, your body is trying to call on you. And so go right to swing. Buy a coloring book. Come on. This is some sound story. Right? It actually worked. I said, "This stuff sounds crazy. It actually works." And like, why does that actually work? 'Cause I remember thinking, she was talking to me, I was like, "What are you saying?" You're still them. You're still them. You're still her. You're still him. Go ride your huffy bike. Go get your bike. Go play kickball, play.

Put some, put some, put a wretch in your hair. Put some, put a wretch in your hair. Yes, I'd love them. When you see me with my little two cornrows, one down each side. Come on. I was feeling youthful in that day. It gives them a chance to get finished what they didn't have because they are still starving and they still need to play. When that sex abuse ended your childhood, you gotta go finish it. You gotta go finish it. Put a stuffed animal on your pillow. Do, just go and rescue her. We've tried to leave it behind. And you're abandoning yourself the way you were abandoning. Go get him. Go get her. These childhood things will change you. And then you might run into tears. Do it. Let them go because that child's been needing those tears. And you learn to keep them safe so that you don't respond to their needs in a pathological way. If you need it to be told, I love you. Every, I love you will draw you. If you needed to be assured that you were attractive, anybody saying it will help you.

Anything they say because the child is starving. So I'm gonna feed me what I need so that my child is satiated. So I don't need you when you try me 'cause it's like, oh, no, thanks. I ate. I'm not hungry. I'm not that hungry. Yeah. You know? It makes a difference. So yeah, get the child involved. Let me say this in a point so everybody can really be able to process. It may not have been your fault but it is now your responsibility. I just want everybody to recognize like the blame doesn't even matter as much as the healing that is necessary now. And it happened to you but you can actually be the one to change, transform and bring a different pattern into your bloodline. And the reason that we're talking, I know we're using some language. If you've never been in the world of therapy or actually getting healed mentally or doing those things, I know some of these words even feel foreign but what we're trying to do again,

like I said at the beginning, is normalize it. The people that you listen to and get prayed for from and that the pastors that you watch, I'm telling you, the ones who are healthy are doing these practices behind the scenes to actually be whole. Jesus called us not to live disintegrated lives. Like, oh yeah, that's my church life. This my real life. That's my sex life. This is my business life. God says he wants all of these lives to be one. And until the church realizes that the unhealed parts of you are just as important as the hallelujah part to you. It said in the word, I came that you might have life and life to the full. He didn't say multiple lives. Come on. He said, one life that's full. That's different. And I just want everybody to recognize and realize that you deserve to have what Jesus paid for. He paid for a full life for you. And that means that we might have to address, readdress, keep addressing some certain things in our life that have been points of pain, points of problems. Even right now, we all, if we got super honest, could think of something that we've been avoiding.

Oh, come on. Hands, if you know there's an issue that inside you that you've been avoiding, come on, let's be humble, open, and transparent. That's everybody in this room. I'm scheduling it. I'm scheduling it. What I'm saying to you right now is I'm praying for an impartation of boldness, not for anything you have to do out there to actually face what's going on inside here. Because I'm telling you, you want to transform your bloodline? It starts with you, that you were going to ask a question or say something. OK, yes. Going back, the option of going back-- and we're talking about the inner child-- because I was saying there is that part with that codependency of wanting to abandon yourself to go back here to make it right, to make it feel OK. And I think what I'm realizing or what I believe were noticing in the generation before us, that was also not-- I'm not trying to glaze it over like it's OK or an excuse. But the culture back then of when they were young-- and we're talking about bloodline-- it was so non-existent and just kind of-- What happens in this house, stay in this house? Yeah. And like, don't you take our business in the streets?

Like, it was kind of like, let's not talk about what's really going on. Which, that pattern passes on. It does. That's what a lot of us fight is like, let's not talk about that. Let's focus on the happy things and all that other stuff. Don't embarrass us. Don't embarrass us. Honor and respects was through silence. Yeah. Like, honor and respect was silence. How do we, if we're-- Still honor. Realizing at this current moment, we don't want to do that no more. Yeah. How do we take ownership of our story when our story involves other people? Perfect question. That's exactly where it's going. Because we want to tell-- part of healing is coming in touch with your story and then telling your story. Yes. A lot of people think they're telling their story, but they're really telling their story. Because you haven't healed from the wounds the story caused you, so you don't have a story yet. So you can tell the story of what they did to you, but you haven't told the story of how you have changed,

how you have grown, how you have recovered. And something-- because if you can't pass it on as a lesson to the next generation, then you haven't gotten your story yet. If all you can do is tell the next generation what was done to you, that's not helping them know how to live. So if I haven't gotten there, I don't have a story yet. I have a tattle. A tattle? You're tattle-telling. This is what they did to me. That's for the therapy room. And you begin to work, but then you have to have your own story, right? And so that's a part of your healing. If your story is 80% about what was done to you, you haven't healed yet. Because you haven't gotten into the nitty-gritty of what the wound was, and then how it affects you in your personal current life, and then how to heal that and move forward. And then that will become your story. Your story will be around your unmet needs. Your story will be around your abandonment wound, and how you learn to catch it when your body responds a certain way. You know you're about to open yourself up to a new co-dependent relationship when I get that feeling right here. But that feeling right here is my inner child saying,

are you going to like me, are you going to leave me, are you going to like me? And I've learned to say, you with me? I'm keeping it real here. That's your story. Your story becomes how you caught yourself and stepped out of the line of fire before you got hit. That's a victory. That's a victory. When I saw the first red flag, I bounced. Not the 27th red flag. And how you taught yourself to do that, that's your story. But if your story is how daddy left, that's not your story yet. And so I think that's where the challenge, it's so hard to not go back first. But you have to start within you. Where are my patterns? And not look for the ones and for all. Let's talk about that, right? I'm delivered. It probably will. But there's a proverb that says, the way of the wise winds upward. We grow or devolve in spirals. We go up. So let's say this is your parent died when you were young and you lost them in middle school. Boom, big grief. And you go on with your life.

And then when it's time to graduate high school, you feel the loss again. And at that moment, it may send you into depression, you might spiral down. Or you might use it as inspiration and do great in college, and you spiral up. And then you get married. And you notice them not there and that's a fresh pain. And now does that take me down? But you will come around again, but that doesn't mean you're not progressing. The spiral will get bigger and bigger. The way of the wise winds upward. So when I hit it again, do I go spiral down? Just spiral up. And so the goal is I want to spiral up. See, I'll be here again, but this time, oh wait, I learned this. This time, I got this. Oh, I saw you coming this time. Oh, it was dress different, but I recognized it. And you didn't get me this time, baby. I bounce back faster. I jumped out sooner and I spiraled up. I might see it again, but I'm gonna keep getting quicker. You see what I mean? And so stop thinking, once I heal this, I'll never see it again. And when I see it again, it means I'm falling backwards. No, it's my next opportunity to level up.

- Right. (audience cheers) - Spiral up. - Yeah. - Spiral up. I preached a message about that a couple of years ago. I'll find it and send it to y'all. - Send it to me. - It's critical. It's critical 'cause that will be your whole life. Because of this, we are gardens. We are gardens. Soiled, seed, soil, plant, fruit. The garden don't change, but I am in the soil. I work on it, I get it healthier. I didn't dig it all up, pull it out and back up a truck and get fresh soil. That never happens. Your past will remain in the ground. It's a part of who you are, but what will we do with it? - Yes. - Can I tell a personal story? 'Cause I live in this. So when I moved to California after my divorce, I got this beautiful place. God sent me to a place of peace. I love it. The next spring, I was washing dishes and there's a gardener all around my building. And this new bush had sprung up and I looked real close. Can I tell you a Calla Lily bush was growing right outside my window. Calla Lily's wore my wedding flower.

So here I'm a year later, it's like life's starting to get decent. I'm getting used to it, I'm washing dishes and I saw those Calla Lily's. I mean, right outside the window, they shouldn't have even been there. There was nothing else around. And I looked at them and I was like, and my thought was, I'm gonna go out there and destroy that Calla Lily. - And dig that bush up. What we're not gonna do devil is be jumping up in my face. Your devil, oh, I did it. Oh, the enemy's trying to distract me. The sitting there just. The enemy's trying to bring back pain and remind me of things. And then it was like Anita, breathe, breathe. And I decided I didn't wanna attack them. I wanted to get to such a place of peace with the story of my life that God is writing. That I don't need to pretend that some past chapter was erased. I wanna be able to see a Calla Lily in peace. And so it's gonna be there. I now am on my third year, 'cause every spring, they come back. Guess what I did this year? I went out there, I cut a few. I brought 'em in the house. And I made an arrangement on my desk in the living room.

They were so pretty. I brought 'em in the house and made an arrangement. Why? Because he is the author and the finisher. My story is beautiful, but I've spent those years with my therapist, with my tears, with my growth, stop trying to break up the story of your life and who you are. All of this is you. Does that make sense? All of it has to be integrated. It reminds me of the scripture that all things. All things are working together for the good of those who love God. I actually love God. I love you enough that you can take the hurt chapter, bad chapter, frustrating chapter. And you can pull all, I don't know how it's gonna work, but you can pull all of this together so that you get glory from this story. Thank you for sharing that, because as you were saying that, at one point you loved Cattle Lily's. Yes, and I love 'em again. And now you love 'em again. I do. That's what restoration can look like for you. Yeah. Is that places of pain can actually become places where you find peace and pleasure. - That was the work.

I have a therapist. I talk to my friends. - The therapist has a therapist. - Oh, you better. If your therapist don't have a therapist. - You at the wrong therapist. - You at the wrong therapist. Because we are humans too. We are bodies are running too. We have blind spots. I always say, I'm like a surgeon. I can cut you, but I can't cut myself. I don't have the vantage point. I couldn't do surgery on my own body. My eyes, I don't work. I need someone else to do surgery on me because their vantage point and sight is better. And so if I'm not, and I also do it because I don't ever wanna ask, someone asked me this. Have you ever asked a client to do something that you couldn't do? And I said no. And on purpose. Because I wanna know what I'm asking. If I can't sit in the chair, then how can I be a good person for you? And if you think that you can get away with helping someone without doing your own work, it's not gonna work. It's not gonna work.

So yeah, I definitely have a therapist. And sometimes if I get to skipping, she'll text me and be like, hey you. I'm like, ah, you're right. I've been busy, but you're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. And come on back. And so doing that work, but a garden is like those cycles. Things that are in the ground grow back at their season each year. And we get scared when we see it coming instead of trying to tend to it and address what might need to be addressed. Now if it's a weed, I gotta pull it up. And okay, so that's different. So weeds are things that are not healthy with these cannot be here. But in order to stop a weed from coming back, you have to change the soil so that it's not fertile for it anymore. You have to. Pulling it will only get rid of the current weed. There are seeds in the ground that are waiting for next time. And so you have to change. You have to change your tolerance and relationship with pain. What does it mean for me to be in pain?

A lot of you have a script around pain that says that I'm hurting everything's bad and nothing can be good until I stop hurting. That's not true. - Wow. - That goes to something that we've learned in this last season. - Yeah, with MJ, so being parents of a child or if you're a caregiver in any type of way, whether you have elderly parents or a sibling or someone that you have to care for, some kind of tragedy happened. And it seems like not a passing has ended and now I'm grieving the loss of them. It's like they're present here, but I'm consistently grieving something that is alive and how to deal with that pain because I feel like the church has made this ending, like there's this supposed to be like, you're gonna give it to God and he's gonna heal you or he's gonna make it to where the load is light. And you're like, yeah, I really want that, but I'm up at 2 a.m. figuring this out, like, and it don't feel lighter. And you can get frustrated, sometimes it feeling like, where is the finish? And for some people, there may not be an actual line that seems finite as if it is the finish and how to endure with, how do we endure well with life?

Yeah, a life, a life grief, a life suffering. I don't know how else to say it, then alive? - No, no, I think what you're talking about, we call it ambiguous grief because what you're grieving is the alternate future. - Ooh, it's getting good, it's getting good and y'all, it just gets good and good, better and better. I'm telling you, stay locked in because I believe there's something in this talk, this conversation that is going to transform your bloodline. Speaking of transforming your bloodline, you missed this year's conference in person, but you do not have to miss it, 2026. We're actually moving it to the summer so that you and your whole crew can come. So join us June 16th, 17th and 18th as people come from all over the world and gather in this place to see God move. Right now, you don't need to wait for another moment. This is your time, the tickets are already halfway sold out and I believe that God has a specific encounter that he wants with you right here. So get your tickets right now and if you cannot wait until next year to continue to take the spirit of conference with you, I want you to go right now and run to your favorite DSP and download, buy and listen to the brand new bloodline EP. This is music that came specifically from conference that gave us a language to worship God to and to be transformed to.

And this is your sign. I want you to see victory in my veins. I want you to sing inheritance. I want you to know that the blood of Jesus will never lose its power and that you're living an abundant life. It's in your bloodline. It's available right now. Go listen to it and make it the soundtrack to your life. Now I heard that the conference ain't over yet. Like this is just the third session but the next session is taught by pastors. Like right now, come up, subscribe, hit the like button. And I'm telling you, you will get the notification when we drop another message from the viral revival. This is all for you for your bloodline to be changed. Now let's get back to the conversation. - And you know I'm right 'cause then you just felt it come, that's it. I'm grieving what I thought it would be and it wasn't. That's the loss. I'm grieving what I thought I would have and don't have. I'm grieving what I thought would have happened by now and didn't happen yet. So the life that you've imagined, its absence is a living grief. And so you're not grieving the thing that is happening as much as you're grieving what didn't happen. So if we can turn our emotional and mental energy towards addressing that to doing doing that work.

Because a lot of times our pain is amplified by these underlying griefs. And how we define it. And so that's what actually needs to be grieved. I imagined that my child would walk down the aisle one day. But maybe they're paraplegic and they won't physically walk. How do I then deal with the dream that I have to release? That's what's actually alive. Is the thing is still nagging at what you imagined having and then we're either sad, scared or angry that we don't have it. And some combination of those things. And then begin to work through each of those emotions around the thing I don't have. Otherwise, it will paralyze you in spaces that you do have. It's really important not to let your greatest pain become the flavor of your life. - Whoa, whoa, the flavor of your life. - The flavor of your life. It's the Kool-Aid packet. If my pain is cherry, my whole life, that's gonna be cherry. Whatever the pain is becomes the flavor of everything else. That cannot, you'll never, it's not good for any human. It's saying about Jesus and joy, if the pain becomes the flavor of your entire life, that's the loss. That's where we have to get in there and do the work. How do I have this pain exist but it not be my whole life? How do I not let it steal from every other area of my life

so that I never have abundant joy because pain flavors and whatever the pain is doing is what I'm doing? That's the texture. - And realizing that that work is for you and not the other person and not feeling like you're abandoning the person or the child or the spouse and realizing that at the end of the day, this is what's actually going to benefit them at the end of the day and it's going to help you live and go this journey that you have that may not look like everybody else's journey. You may find yourself crying way more than everybody else or you may find yourself where I had to begin to allow myself just to be sad. Like, I just got to allow myself to be sad sometimes and my goer and my mommyness nurturing me, I'm just constantly thinking of other, other, other and then I have to realize like, oh, this actually kind of sucks. And then realizing like, oh, those tears actually make me feel like, ooh, okay, I'm still here. I was on the top of that roller coaster. I'm down now, it's okay. And I got enough grace to go to the next part. Two things, one, the tears that get you over the top of the roller coaster, you come down, but how do you do in being aware that you're on your way up? 'Cause when you go up the roller coaster, you hear that sound. Yeah, oh yeah, you hear them quick.

And you're waiting for that thing and then you hear the tars in front of you, you know you're getting ready to go down. What if on the way up you realize, I'm on my way. Oh, I realize that make a turn. Maybe this next hill is smaller because I didn't let it get that high. That not waiting to break. It's good to break if you need to break, but eventually let's see if we can live more balance because we're not just riding with the pain until we can't take it anymore. And for those who have high tolerance for pain, you undermine your healing because you only move when you hit your tolerance point. How about we start before that? Wow, this is, as long as my pain is at a seven, I can live at a seven. And you never work to get it to a four because you can handle a seven. I can handle it, but I don't want to. Yeah. And I don't have to. I don't have to. I don't have to. But because, right, we'll stop doing the work when we're at a level we can tolerate instead of when we're at. I feel like I'm just here. (audience laughs)

Watching y'all, and I wanna pose one question 'cause we're about to come to the close. Is this helping me by the y'all? Is this? I thought we had 90 minutes. I know. I know. Heather, how much time we got? You just, the game. Oh, we still got a lot of time. We got a lot of time. Oh, shoot. Okay. We chillin'. And that's more than that one. What I want to do, I want you to get a matte mic. 'Cause since we're in this thing, would y'all like to ask some questions in this session? 'Cause I know some of y'all have been doing, here in just a moment, I wanna take it around and take this off the big platform and really have just a few more minutes of just therapy. And now somebody just got like, oh shoot. - I love it Q&A. - I need to ask this question and I just hot all over my body because I think I can get some healing. I want to help somebody who feels like they're always helping. - She said right there, right there.

- We see you sister, I see you. I wanna, 'cause there are people, there are uneducated therapists in this room who have, they have become the healthiest person in their family business, friend group, and they don't actually get the help they need because they're always the one helping everybody else. Is there anybody in it? Put your hand down, don't point it to a wife. He's like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. - Okay, some had to parent the parent. - Yeah, yeah. - To parent the parent. - That was the number two. And I said two things, one, interrupt the cycle. Number two, eventually it cannot be about your kids, it has to be about you. - It has to become about you. - I just think there's some people in here right now who haven't done the work, 'cause you always workin'. And there is, watch this, because there has been progress for them, you stunt your own progress. 'Cause the only way they can get help is when they call you. You're like, I don't even have the emotional capacity to deal with your stuff right now. But I guess I am the only person that understands your whole story. And so, since I understand your whole story,

and I do love you, and what it does, it almost conditions you to neglect yourself, because you actually are helping somebody. - Right, yeah. - How do we actually start moving forward in what will help us when that probably, in might mean, we'll have to draw a boundary to how much of us we can give to them. - That's a lot of pastors, too. - Oh. - Is that an actual question? - Yeah, my question is-- - Yeah, I don't know if you were just asking myself. - I was gonna answer you, you want this? - I don't know if you was leading into their questions, so I'm saying, dang. - Do you want this? - It's okay, little Michael. - Is it a question? (audience laughing) - I was asking, it's okay, I got you. - I got you. - I was at-- - I got you. - I got you too. - I got you too. - Come on, thank you, thank you. Thank you, thank you for listening. - I was saying, I didn't want to answer if I wasn't supposed to answer.

(laughing) - Are you dumb, little boy? Oh God. (audience laughing) - No. - Crazy. - No, I really am, I feel like, in a room full of this many people, there are people who have done more work than the people they love. So then they feel like it is their responsibility to give what they know to them, but they haven't arrived at the healing that they actually need. - Yes. - And so they will neglect their next steps forward to help them at least get out the mud. But I don't think through this conversation, I'm hearing it being said that maybe we need to do a little more work, and I just need you to help all of us, like if they're the therapist in their family or the answer person in their family group or the one doing it, like help us understand why it's valuable to maybe draw some boundaries. - Yes, we love a boundary. - For this next season of their healing. - Yes, well, a boundary is not just about keeping something out.

A boundary is about protecting something within. So when the Bible says guard your heart, that word guard actually means guard like a prison guard. Prison guards aren't trying to keep the world from getting in. They're trying to keep the prisoners from getting out. So a boundary helps protect my joy from escaping, not keep you out. See, we've made it about being against the people, but it's about me not letting this circumstance get let my hope escape me. So we're protecting self, but not against people. That's a really important thing 'cause people don't have to be our enemy. We just stop looking at other humans as dangerous to us. And that's another reason why we like to give because that's just we throw and meet at the lion in and then we run away and they're not giving, we're not receiving back. Does that make sense? And so there's that. Then is your overgiving? That's because if you stop giving for 15 minutes and you start getting that feeling you don't like to feel, then you get back to giving because it's a distraction from what's actually happening within you, which means it's not really love, it's actually busyness and distraction. - Hold on, hold on, we got to stop there because I think we just hit something that I haven't seen in that way ever before.

It's a revelation that many times our helping is to avoid the actual issue. So we know something needs to be done and I ain't really willing to work on myself like that 'cause if I get still enough and if I get, if the mirror's like in front of me, that's too much for me right now. So let me keep helping you, let me keep helping you, let me keep helping you. But honestly, it's not even out of a love for them. It's actually out of a preservation. - And avoidance of something in us. - Yeah. - So we manipulate in ourselves. - Absolutely. And we're manipulating the opportunity to help. What is wrong with us? - Desperate, we're just desperate not to be in pain. But this is how you know you're moving in love. One, you feel it. If you don't feel warm and open when you're doing it, then it's probably not love. If you feel annoyed, if you feel rushed, if you feel tired, if you... - Oh God. - That's not love. - What? What's okay, Ted? - Yeah, all right. We're in the phone room.

- Oh Lord. - So that's really important though. - Okay, can we be honest? Who's ever felt that when the people, they call it, you don't have to, oh Lord. - My phone on do not disturb 99% of the time. - Stay on do not disturb. - Stay on me indeed. You best detect me first. - Yeah. - But... - You got to detect me first. - You gotta detect me first. - Tell me what's going on. - But this is really important because love, when we're feeling loving, that parasympathetic nervous system, the one that keeps us healthy and well is awake. But when that's not awake, we do things that are supposed to be loving, but they're being powered by a different emotion. Because everything you do is powered by a feeling. You never do anything away from emotion. You try to say, I make an emotional decision. That's impossible. It's always an emotion, but which one is it? So if it's not love driving you, but you think it is, it's probably fear obligation or guilt. Because they masquerade as love extremely well.

- Wow. - Because I'm scared, so I fear says I can't. Obligation says I have to. Oh no, wait, no, sadness says I don't. Fear says I can't. Obligation says I have to. I don't remember sad. And sadness says I'm bad. I'll be guilty. If I don't do it, I feel guilty because I'm a bad person. I should answer the phone. I should give the ride. I should lend the money. I should let them stay here. I should, and if I don't do it, I'm guilty. That makes me feel guilty because I've been a bad person and I feel sad about that. Afraid is I can't. I can't handle this. I can't not talk to them. I can't not answer that call. I can't not do it. I have to is obligation. That's fear with like some anger seasoning on it. I have to do it. I have to do it. Those three things are not love, but we think they are. So good. Love is patient. Love feels kind.

So if you're not feeling those things, then it's probably not love. And then our love chapter, what's it say? You could give your body to be burned. Give your arms to the poor. You can do all these things, but if you have not love, they're nothing. So that means the actions are not synonymous with the love. So when you say love is an action, that's a lie. 'Cause I can do an action that's not loving, but looks loving. I can give all my money. I can give my body to be burned. But I have not love. So that means they're not synonymous. So every action needs to be inspired by love, infused by love. But if it's not, you can do the action instead as fear. You can do the same action for obligation. You can do the same action because you feel guilty, but that will tear your body up. It will enhance your depression. It will enhance your insomnia. It will enhance your sciatic nerve pain. Because those emotions don't burn clean. They're not clean burning fuel. They're like coal and gas, but love burns clean. It will reenergize you when you finish doing it. So I need you to stop doing when you didn't really mean it. Stop giving when you really didn't want to. Because every time you push yourself over that boundary, you remove the guard and the good things escape.

If you owe me now, if I'm gonna be mad in two weeks, when you don't do for me when I something, then I shouldn't have did the thing because it wasn't free. - It wasn't free. - Yeah. - It wasn't free. - It had an invisible call. - Eventually, I'ma be like, "I did all of this for you," and snap, 'cause it wasn't free. And so when you give it in the first place, it needs to be free, it needs to not be, I have to. Y'all been married a long time, you have your moments, but you know also your marriage can't survive if love feelings don't show up again soon. You can't run like that for five years, but people run that way in their life in different areas. And so I need you to step away from fear, obligation, and guilt. So the next time you're about to answer that call that you don't want to answer, just try to let it ring a few times. And notice what happens in your body when you don't pick up. That's your work. Ooh, that's a good one, that's a good one, that's a good one. 'Cause some people ignore their body so much. You don't even know that they don't even know. But all y'all, think about the person that if they called you right now, something would happen in your body. Some of y'all right now, if you saw a number, come up on your phone or a name, some of y'all's heart would start beating fast, some of you would get immediately,

oh, some of you would get scared, and it's like I'm not ready to have that conversation. Why is that? And what she just said is when you feel those things, that's like your dashboard on your car going off, hey, you're left tired, don't got no air in it. And instead of ignoring that thing, we might have to address it, or it might affect more than just the left tired. Does everybody understand what we're saying up here? This is what we gonna do. We gonna, I feel healing coming to the room right now. My sister over there is writing, like you should have just chat GPT the whole thing, 'cause her hand is hurting. I'm saying to you is if there are some questions in this room, how I wanna do it, I actually want them, you guys not to, you got a question? Okay, yeah, and if you have one, I think I want them to come to a certain place as opposed to us running the mic around everywhere so we can come to that place. Do you have more in the room? Okay, we'll make it happen. Let's go, Jay. Do we got the mic? - Check, check, check, hey y'all. - Hey. - I have Sierra from Atlanta, and she has a question.

- Let's go. - Okay, I'm gonna see if I can piece it together. - Okay, do your best. - But Dr. Anita, hi everybody. - What's up, girl? - So, when you were talking about this mic, when you were talking about the pain tolerance, being at seven, and allowing it to come down to four, like I was visualizing like my life back at home. This is a great space, but when I go back home, I was like, how am I gonna like look everybody in the face and be like, just wait a minute, 'cause I gotta let myself get to a four. I've been in survival mode for years, and I had a therapist. I haven't seen her in a little while, but, this is good, this is so good. (audience applauding) She was talking about the Maslow's triangle, right? And she kept telling me like, you're in survival mode, so you gotta let yourself come out. You gotta like, you gotta go do what's fun. I don't remember. - Yeah, so real. - So, how do I practically, I don't know, allow myself to maybe, what was it, decrease the tolerance? - Okay, so yeah, I was saying, we'll have a certain level of pain we get to, and when we hit that point, that will go into action.

Like, I can take it, I can take it, I can take it and not do anything, but when it hits level, say seven, you'll be like, okay, now I'm gonna take the talent off. Now I'm gonna do something. So, but, I want us to move before that, if there are ways for us to mitigate it, before we get to our breaking point. But when you're in survival mode, a lot of times you just go so far before you try to change anything. But I feel like I hear you asking a little bit different question. You ask, how do I play? - Yeah, that's what I heard you ask, and that's a huge question. - If I've been in survival mode for so long, how do I, like, I feel like I'm trying to, but it's still like over-productivity. - Yeah. - Like, I say, like, you know, I work out, but like, that's not, it's not play, I guess. - Can you give me an example of something you're surviving when you say I'm in survival mode? - I mean, I have a baby. I just finished school, but I'm unemployed. - Okay. - And I live with my mother, and, like, the whole house is just-- - And so you're just like, I'm not--

- Everybody's just tense, and we're just getting by. - Yeah, do you like chocolate? - What's your favorite thing to eat? - Ice cream. - I just had a reaction in my body when she said. - Ice, you and me both. - I can't do your whole ice cream with the floor. - Oh, you know about me, though. You know about me. You don't, we'll talk later. - Okay, but you like your ice cream. - I love ice cream. - Get your favorite ice cream. Put the scoop in the bowls and you're saying you don't eat the whole pint like I do. That's fine. Go sit in the corner of the yard or somewhere that's quiet and all I want you to do is turn. Don't take your phone. Is eat the ice cream slow. Put it in your mouth and notice how it feels melting on your tongue. Notice how good it tastes. That is real, I'm. (laughs) - Moments. - Yeah, just moments. - I'm healing. Listen, I am healing right now. But that is moments, right?

We must, we must engage pleasurable things. Because they are strength for us to walk through harder times. - Wow. - Yeah. - And a lot of us are trying to run the marathon of life without being nourished. You can't run a marathon without having eaten anything in the last two days. You will collapse. And so joy is eating and to move through. So you sit in there alone for 20 minutes. If you didn't have a job at nine o'clock, you're not gonna have one in nine 20. (audience laughs) So sit down. - It's true, yeah. - You know what I'm saying? So sit down. If you spend 20 minutes worrying about it, it's not gonna change one hair on your head. So sit down with your ice cream, put your favorite song in your headphones, listen to the music, feel the ice cream on your tongue. Remember how good it tastes? That's your 20 minutes. And give your body that joy. Little things like that heal your body. See, you guys don't believe what will change you. - Yeah. - Because you want the change and the solution

to be as big as your pain feels. - Yeah. (audience cheers) - I understand what you're saying. I was like, she would, I said the exact same thing to my therapist. And I was like, I need to get to a base. She said, we need to get you to a baseline first. And then when we get there, then when they say, you should exercise. You should go get some sun. You should do this. You do all these things that are gonna be good for you. But I was so far down. I had to go back to my therapist. And I heard you say it's been a while. So sometimes some work that you need to do may be a little bit more under there. Some more support that you may need to get to the baseline to where you have the motivation to feel like I can do some of these things. - So let me be. - And some of those things for me was like joy. I was like, I don't know. I have so many things to do. I was like, I mean, I like watching documentaries. Like I used to draw, but that, you know. And so it was small things. What I'm realizing now is like, if it's just five minutes,

I like looking at the sun come through trees to think. So now I purposely try to silence myself and be still whenever I'm underneath a tree or by a tree. And if it's just that little moment, and this is the same thing for me, I know this is right, but it's the same thing that what I feel like when you cry and you get that, oh my gosh. That's the thing that she's saying, what do you find? Do something that's fun. Do something that it's trying to give your body just a little bit of that little bite at a time because it's not gonna be a huge. Whoa, I know everything's fixed. But that's not the God told us that this world wasn't gonna be sprinkles and cupcakes and easy or whatever. But there are practices that we can do when you live in a home or you're in a life that has a lot of stress on you all the time. I don't know if that helped by, I wanna say, oh, it did. Okay. - That was a great idea. - I would like to say this 'cause this is a big caveat that nobody talks about in church, but I've seen it in our own life. And I wanna, I feel like my apostolic authority can say this in this atmosphere. Sometimes when you have experienced so much trauma and so much pain and so much has taken from you,

you do need help getting to your baseline. Medication is a miracle. - God help us, God help us, God help us. - Hold on, let me say, just say love for one second. - God help us, God help us. - God gave somebody a formula. - A gift to be able to figure out how to help what is naturally missing in your body. Give it the ability to have that so that then you can begin to function. Not necessarily be depended on it for the rest of your life, or maybe it will be something that you have to be supported by. But I just want to let you know that some of you that are denounced And like, that's like going up to your car and being like, you're a car, but you not gonna run on gas. Like, uh-uh, it can be a liquid, but not gas. Or you have a broke leg and you're not gonna use crutches. We gonna just heal. And then your leg develop, you can walk. But you wanna call that walking? If you wanna call that walking. I just, I want to, again, under supervision, with the doctor's help, with under, I'm not saying go. But sometimes to get to your baseline, to even do the things, that you need to be able to do, your body needs help because of what you have endured. And I wanna let you know you don't have less faith because you might have to take some medication.

Yes. And again, you can give three claps to it, but the life that you are living right now, is not indicative of what God has designed for you. Yeah. And I would encourage you, I'm sitting here next to my wife who we had to get to a baseline for her to be able to get. And when the doctor said, and I'm the pastor of a church, I'm sitting up here and she is like, your wife is gonna need some medication to get the thing. I'm like, well, let's just pray. Let's just believe, let's just-- That is how it went down. And we tostled back and forth. Yeah, I was like, you don't need no medicine myself as well 'cause of the culture you grow up in, especially if you're a minority. It is just-- Yeah, Native American blacks and both of them, see like medicine. You don't have to play. You don't have to play. Like, you have to hit it. You don't get a medicine. Jingerail! All you need is gingerail! That's it. You need some seven up! What is wrong with us?

Seven up in gingerail! Do not do anything! And there's really no ginger in Canada. And there's really no ginger in there! There's really no ginger in there. But I'm saying like, we'll literally deny ourselves years of actually getting better because of a cultural generational mindset that we don't do this. And I'm just, I really wanna help people get that it's okay to do what you need to do to get healthy. I wanna ask Dr. Nita because what I found out through this was that God created our bodies to have certain levels of certain hormones, of certain things. And if you are in a state where you're feeling some of the things we've been talking about, I promise you if you get tested, there might be some things that are off. And it's not something to look at yourself or judge yourself for. It's like literally, it could be something that's like fish oil. There's so many benefits that fish oil can do for the mind, for your heart, for your cognitive, all kind of things. So there are things that are in our body the way that God created them to be that may need supports. - 100%. - 100%.

And absolutely don't wait. Go ahead and get started because it can take four or six weeks for the effects of an antidepressant, for example, to start really working at level. So stop waiting till four to get worse. We're gonna keep going there. And I take medication for my ADHD every morning. - We just wanna take-- - I better, why not? Why am I fighting through? My brain needs the balance that it needs. Every, and you know you need medication. And I always tell you, this is how you know that body sometimes needed. Who when they were feeling really sad and depressed? All you could think about was eating a boneless, skinless chicken breast. - No, that has never happened for me. (audience laughs) Not now. - What do you wanna eat? - Ice cream. - Ice cream. Fried chicken, cookies. Because those chemicals affect how you feel. So you are looking for things to take in that will alter your emotions. Cheesecake helps with that. But the saltine cracker don't make you feel better so you don't want that. - That's why it never will broccoli that I'm going through. - That's why.

That's why. You are wanting to alter your body's chemistry and you're using foods to do it. So you know that your body's emotions can be altered by something you take in. - And that's your diabetes, your high blood pressure. - But that gives you the diabetes, but the medication won't. That was practical enough for y'all. So you're already medicated. - You're already medicated. - We cheesecake Night Quill. - Yes, I was there asleep. - Night Quill is the Saint's whiskey. (audience laughs) - It come with that little shot glass on top of everything. That is so good. - Missionary, the Missionary wouldn't drink, but you can't-- - Cheesecake will hit you with the-- - Hit that Night Quill though. - Don't even use the cup. - Oh my, that is the truth though. You are medicating. So, I just think this is important, y'all. Because, oh thank you, God. - Thank you. - That practical. - Thank you for the permission to be human

and to be how God created our bodies and taken off the stigma. - Yes. - It's not just because. - They get out of balance. - Yes, God created to have a balance and if you don't have it. - Oh my. - That is no judgment to you. And you should do the things. If you have cancer and you need treatment, who's gonna talk to you? Why are you getting blamed because you need treatment? It makes sense when we put it in that context. But if we put it as far as our mental health is concerned, it doesn't make sense. We get judgment, we feel shame on ourselves and that's the way God created our bodies. If you need support, get the support. - I'm gonna say this, 'cause I'm being fully, I'm having a moment over here. You see it happening. - A night quill, mister. - That night quill. (congregation laughing) - The alcohol content's crazy and like. - Yeah, I see. - Yeah, I don't know about that, but I'm just saying. - It sure is. - I can tell you that food

is literally a medication for those who won't get education. (congregation laughing) I saw it so clearly. That's why many times at Thanksgiving and Christmas, we're full after the first half a plate. But it's almost like this is the one time or the two times a year that we get to, and I'm just thinking about the fast food and the places that we go and the things that we take in, that honestly, it's not even about being hungry. - It's not, not for food anymore. - Not for food, but you're hungry for something. - Yeah, to feel different. - To feel different. - You're right, it doesn't. - Already medicating. Y'all, let's do this in a way that is healthy and that actually gets us what we need. Question, I know you've been standing over there for a long time. - Yes, she has. - Are you, is that all questions over there? (congregation laughing) - But she was so here, yeah. - Oh, about 70 y'all need, 17 of y'all need to go sit down. - 'Cause we're not gonna make out, just stay. - You never know, stay in faith. - Okay, no. - No, no, no. - That's a big line.

They just, they're standing for exercise at this point. - Yes, but that's right, we are looking for a way for them to submit questions for us to answer it on the back end, because we know we're not gonna get to all of them. - Oh yeah, they're gonna have to come back next year. - Absolutely. (congregation laughing) - To come friends, 'cause y'all lining up that whole back half. - They can text questions to a two-way two-way two. - If you stretch in your legs, God bless you. - Go ahead. - I'm sorry, I'm away from Oregon. What's your question, Machari? - First, I wanna say, I bring greetings from my husband, Emon, and our family. We see your walk with MJ, and it makes you wanna cry. I was celebrating with you yesterday. - Thank you so much. - The milestones that he gives you guys, I know our fuel for you to have faith. We have a kiddo, Caleb, and our family, who's 11 with autism. And only parents with autism, no, and other special needs families. You can be a high-capacity couple, but your child might need beyond your capacity every single 24 hours. Will you just share behind the scenes what are a couple, either practices

or systems you and Natalie use that keep your family feeling like you're thriving? 'Cause even though you pour tons in, the reality is it's exhausting, and you have to have faith. Will you just share some secret sauce from behind the Todd doors? - Yeah, first off, I just would like to say, I'm proud of you. - Thank you for sharing. - And thank you for sharing your journey. When we got into the reality of what living with the special needs child was, I almost felt bad because I didn't care about people that had special needs children before I had a child with special needs. And when I say care about, I just, it wasn't on my radar. I didn't think about everything they have to think about and prepare for and all the different things. And so we literally had to change our whole lives. Everything changed. And you should see the amount of locks in my house. I am a professional at finding types of locks, and you know what I'm talking about. I know how to get some locks anyway, but yes, our whole world changed. - Our whole world, the reason she said, see, you. - Okay. - There's like locks, which I'll be doing past.

What kind of locks do y'all need? - What's going on? Just breathe, there's a lot of kids on the spectrum or with different kind of special needs to have a thing called elopement where they may try to leave and get out the house or get away from you when you're outside in public and not because they're being disobedient, which is sad because a lot of parents aren't aware and they, you know, beat their kids or matter their kids 'cause they don't understand that is part of the disorder or whatever. So a lot of times parents would have kids with autism. We have special locks that we have to find and MJ is so smart, he will figure that lock out or whatever. So that's what that was about. - So we're not freaky or weird and that all got all locks in the house. - I mean, that's your business, you know what I mean? You're just saying that's not what I was talking about at that moment. (audience laughing) - Locks. - We'll leave that alone for right now, but. The truth of the matter is like what she's saying is with all the locks on our house, my wife has become a professional at making sure MJ has a safe environment to do. But that's not just at our house,

that's at hotels, that's at, that's when we go anywhere. And so like, we literally have boxes from Amazon of locks 'cause if we go anywhere as a family. - And that is something you said feel like you have a win or some joy is we have had advice to not go nowhere and it's easy to say we can't go because of all of the stuff that you have to think about. What do they eat? Do they have anything that, what they particularly like to eat? What is the, is it safe? And so we have decided to not let autism stop us to whatever degree that we can. And I know, you know, it's a lot of research to figure out some of those places. Getting help, I pray, not everybody has support and outside help, but I pray God, if you don't already have it, sends you help that if you go out with your children, you have a friend or someone that can stick with them and that if you're a child or adult, we forget these kids grow up. So they're not just kids. You're a young adult or adult that has a special need that they may wanna do something completely different. So I've also realized that I needed that support so I can feel like all of my children are enjoying. So what place to inject joy in our family is I try to make sure that MJ can do stuff that he wants to do.

So if we go to, SeaWorld is a great place because they're very knowledgeable about kids on the spectrum, but there's somebody that I can switch off with and go ride that same ride 50 times because MJ wants to, where everybody else wants to go somewhere else. Yes, there's that mama grief in there that I'm missing out on what my other kids may be doing 'cause I'm here with him or vice versa, but injecting and allowing yourself to have those little moments of joy, even though it feels like I'm kind of sacrificing in other parts, but I think it's just allowing yourself to try it and trying to let go of that stigma of if this all blows up and it don't work and they end up crying and having to melt down and we tried, we tried and give yourself a pat on the back and do what you can and give yourself some grace and realize that you're not alone. You're not alone. There's so many people out there that want to support you. I support you from one to another that we're praying for and we love you and just to try to get out there and do something for the whole entire family. The last thing that I'll say is one thing that we have decided is to be more kid-like. Oh, absolutely.

Like MJ is growing and I know this isn't applied to everybody, but the specific need that you're asking about, you can't really talk to many pastors about 'cause they won't talk about it. And what I've decided is I'm MJ's best friend. So as his dad, like if you came to my house, right, like at any moment of the day, it don't matter if I just finished preaching or doing anything, me and MJ are running and screaming around the house 'cause his favorite thing to do is to play gold tickles and he will come up to me and one of the sentence that he says very clearly is daddy, I wanna play gold tickle and what that means is he wants me to chase him around. We gotta stay in shape. What did you say? We gotta stay in shape. We gotta stay in shape. What I work out is because one of the real motivations of why I work out is because I have to be healthy 15 years from now, if my 20-something-year-old son still wants to play gold tickle with his daddy. And I have decided that if that is the way that we are gonna connect, is that I'm 50-something and he's 20-something and we are running around our living room, I don't care what anybody thinks about that. We decided to take the shame off of what it could look like. We, anyone that knows us in our home personally, we all speak MJ.

- Oh yeah. - And if MJ, like we know if you're in our circle, we're gonna sing Happy Birthday more than once. - Oh yeah. - Because Lovey loves the Happy Birthday stuff. - We love Happy Birthday. - And we all join in. So that is a way to inject joy into our family as we meet him right where he's at. Everybody speaks his language that's in our circle and we celebrate those differences. Even though sometimes I may cry sometimes. I don't wanna make it seem like it's just tied up with the bow. Sometimes it does hurt, you know. But I allow myself to be like, I'm just gonna have fun with him. Now those little ticks that he does, he like when he jumps, I say he about to fly up out of here when he's happy. - When them bubbles happen yesterday. - Oh, he's about to explode. - The bubbles in the balls, MJ, you about to fly. - You about to take flight. - You about to take flight out of here, y'all. - He almost flew away. - It took a while for me to find joy in that, that I can have some laughter in that, know that he's actually having a good time. Yes, I can grieve that that's actually happening

and feel like, oh my gosh, that's not normal, but now it's gotten to a place where I can be like, you know what, I can feel joy in this moment because I know that he actually is having some. - Yeah, that's good. Thank you for asking that question. (audience applauding) I just wanna pull a couple of lessons there 'cause a couple of times he said I noticed it doesn't apply to everyone, but there were things that do. There were things that apply to everyone in the room. I hear the removal of shame. You're not alone. Not a single one of you is having an issue that nobody else is having. The sooner we can recognize how not special we are, the freer will be. Because a lot of times pride keeps us from getting the help. - Come on. - It's pride. You're not special, somebody else is having the same exact issue that you're having, and when you get over the shame and you connect with other people, you can learn more things. I also heard you letting go of a future that you probably imagined. If I'm doing this at 50, then I'm doing this at 50, letting go of a future that you imagined,

grieving that future and living in the life you have, will change things a lot. That you're stepping into that joy of that moment now, whereas the more there be grief for what's not happening. You've gotta grieve and release your other imaginations and live in the space where you are. - That is such a powerful concept. - Grieve your alternate life. - Yeah, grieve your alternate life. And church pushes that off, especially if it's something that feels changeable. If you're 35, and you haven't gotten married, and then they're like, "It's coming, it's coming!" Okay, maybe it is. And also, it didn't come by 30, though. So you can grieve that. You can grieve that. You maybe imagine having kids by this age. And there's no way to change that. You are allowed to grieve that. - Wow, right. - And we don't let people do that at church. Well, just keep believing. And you think if you grieve, you stop believing. You're allowed to grieve what hasn't happened yet, and still believe that God can write a different story. If you don't do both, you will ruin the story that comes, because you're still stuck. - Yes. - All right, next question.

- Oh, good, let's go. - Okay, so we actually have people tuning in online. So I'm gonna ask an online question really quick. And then my friend Elizabeth is gonna be our last question in the room. - I told y'all. - Yes, all right, so Brandon is online, and he says when you are in a marriage and doing the work of an individual therapy, is that you? Oh boy, I didn't know he was writing, why did you see that? - Oh, he was smart. He was like, I'm getting it both lines. - Well, I'm still gonna ask you a question, so let me know. - Let him ask his question, bring him to the mic. - All right, I love it. - That's perfect. - Thanks for following instructions, Brandon. - Okay. - He got in both lines. - That man, that man. - I was here, I was there, I'm everywhere. - I'm everywhere. - I'll expect that, Brandon. - How you gonna talk to him? - All right, let's go. - So, gotta get serious. - Here, read your question.

- Here, read your question. - Boom, that's good, that's good. - Basically, long story short, I've been in a relationship for 10 years, we've been married for five. I've been doing the individual work, doing the therapy, making the adjustments. How can I grow the patients to let her see that is genuine? - To let her see that is genuine? - That is genuine. I've done the work, I'm still doing the work. I wanted her to come here with me, and I was upset that she chose not to, but then I came to the realization, through Pastor Rowe, that this is an individual journey. So for this to be the topic of bloodline, and I'm standing here looking you, eye to eye, you and you, I don't know how else to express it. Sorry if I sound nervous, I just caught up. - We get it, Brendan, thank you number one for... - Yeah. doing the work because I wasn't. When she requested that we go to marriage counseling I went without hesitation now that I'm requesting it is met with resistance. So this is this is where I'm saying this is a time for you to actually lead by example. I'll just tell my story. When that was in the beginning of starting to do the work in her own life I was kind of tagging along and being her support in the therapy sessions and all the other stuff and so I started picking up some

of the language and picking up something like yeah we really here for her so I'm the pastor. I wrote crazy faith. She crazy but I'm the faith. Yeah yeah I'm saying like God had other plans and and what ended up happening was I started through some of the sessions seeing like there was work that I needed to do and and the work that I needed to do I actually was in a spot where I needed to be the leader in healing in her home. And I had let her healing journey start leading but as God has set it up the man of the house is actually supposed to be the one to go first and so I knew that I had to be consistent on this journey of my own healing whether that was emotional and even physical whether she went or not. So what ended up happening was there was a season where she was counseled out where she was like I don't want to talk to nobody else I know what I got to do but I ain't ready to do it all this other stuff and so then usually as a couple you're like well I guess we just gonna be here and God was like no no you're gonna keep doing what you're supposed to do even to the point on our health journey God told me that I was supposed to stop going to work out at a gym that that was away from the house and I was supposed to bring the drink gym to our garage because I needed to show my wife what consistency looked like in the gym even if she didn't come. Like I had to lead and I was telling God it wasn't fair you know what I'm saying this ain't fair like I like going to that gym I like the atmosphere I don't want to be in my house he said your wife needs to see your consistency in this area before she participates because you're the head but she's the neck and if you start taking a direction it only is a matter of time before she feels like okay I need to follow and that's not a two-week journey that's not a two-month journey sometimes not a two-year journey but I remember even just talking about the workout journey that I was doing that and I was asking that sometimes like you won't come work out with me and she was like absolutely not and and then it went from are you working out tomorrow and I'm like yeah because I work out every day and but I saw she was interested in it once I out context it's once I reached my baseline yes for that young lady before then it felt like okay maybe I could I did not

have it yet all before then so so then and so then one day she just one day not tell me she just had a gym clothes on and was down in a garage with me and I was like hello and it wasn't like this aha moment or anything happened she she she wanted to be a part but she saw my consistency and then she started coming two days a week three days a week now if we run the story back she act like it was her idea for us to start working out and I sit back and let her have it but what I'm saying to you is and this is a a practical example you can lead your wife without dragging her do you hear what I'm saying but it will come in the moments where you're disappointed and how you respond to that disappointment is going to be the moment whether it's something that pushes a wedge and you you go down or it's something that you can go up with so I just want to hear I want you to hear me say you're really a dictator of how this seed lands in her life by how you respond when you're disappointed and if and have a safe place to process and have some brothers that don't pray for you and talk to you and you got your brother. Hey, he came with you. Good brother. That's what I'm proud of you and I believe that can really be a helpful thing. - Dr. Nina, what do you say? 'Cause we have had this within our own selves as well in our story that a lot of times with husband, wives, girlfriend, boyfriend, that trust is lost in buckets but it's getting back and drops. And that frustration that can come with a man that if he is trying and those drops are not-- - You had no faster than that. - They're not dropping in there. It seems like enough and there is that frustration.

I think that's kind of what you're talking about. Yeah, and realizing like these drops should have had more in that bucket by now or whatever. Just speaking to maybe what's she and what he's feeling in some practical things. - Yeah, about that. Two things, one, flip the word trust to the word fear because trust is really about fear. When I say I don't trust you, what I'm really saying is I'm scared you're gonna do a thing that hurts me. And so we want people to trust us and when they don't, she might still be afraid of you. And that's a different feeling then. Yeah, that changes the body, right? That changes the thought process and it can make us more compassionate, make us move more slowly. There's still fear here. Okay, it could be that, it could be fear. So you were saying like that she'll know I'm changed. So of course I don't know your story but it sounds like saying that there was some behavior that upset her and you're trying to show her different behavior. There may still be fear that I'm not safe, that that behavior will return. And fear is different. He has capacity, we're speaking for you but you have capacity now by doing your work that you can hold that space for her

that she may feel still afraid and you don't feel shame and condemnation for yourself. Right, and so yes, that's exactly it. So you don't feel that shame. The other thing is hopefully eventually you can look at some of the other issues in the marriage because if it was infidelity we don't know it but that's a common one. It's not happening in isolation. And so we need to look at the other things in the marriage that might not have been going well. Were there, oh, could we never talk about money? Could we, you know, is the boundaries poor with family? There may be other things and those things need to be addressed as well and when the picture gets pulled back, maybe we can be more empowered because we're working with the bigger picture. But as far as the change, it's about fear and motivation. Are you changing social change? Or are you changing because you're changing into the man you want to be if she walked out the door tomorrow? It's who you want to be. 'Cause we'll never lose patience with becoming who you want to be. That's good. The motivation matters. That's good.

Motivation matters. Thank you, brother. Oh, it's time. I was thinking, we could be here all day. Has this been helpful to anybody? And again, again, most people will never put this at a church conference because it creates a need for action. Like, I hope you don't leave this and be like, oh, that was a good session for them. Right. If you said through this whole 90 minutes and never thought, oh, maybe, like, I need to do something with it, you missed a layer of what's important for you to actually be the blessing in your bloodline. I want you to actually be the blessing in your bloodline. And that means not ignoring what has happened in your bloodline and actually being a part of the transformation in that. Oh, Dr. Anita, thank you. (audience cheers) Oh, come on, y'all. Can we thank God? (audience cheers) Wow. I love y'all. We're all gonna stand here. (audience applauds)

Come on, let's just come out here. Resources, Jesus. We didn't have enough time. We're gonna figure it out. We're gonna figure it out. Well, any of Dr. Anita's books-- Yes, she might have a book. The Garden. The Garden within. Still out there. Now, what's the last book, or have you released it yet? I have been a little busy. Okay. Oh, I know some of my ones supposed to say. Never mind. Leave your church a little thing. A little bit busy, but it'll be out next year. But the Garden within, can I give a couple websites for people? Mental health America, MHA. They have tests that you can go where you can take some self-test, depression, anxiety, different things that give you a field of what you might be struggling with. Mental health of America, check that out. And nommy.org, N-A-M-I. that's a good place for you to help as a caregiver for loved ones, we're struggling as well. So two good places.

- Hey, everybody grab the hand of somebody next to you. Nat, I want you to pray. I just want you to pray for everybody and we're gonna get out of here but I just feel like as we're making this decision to transition into being a blessing in our bloodline, the work that we have to do to change some of these patterns is gonna be a blessing to our children's children. And today, we want you to feel encouraged, that you're not too far, you're not too broken, you're not too abused to actually be redeemed. Today God's gonna heal, help, and give you wisdom for it. - Lord, I thank you for this time that you gave us God that was so sacred. We got to witness and talk about our humanity and how you created us to be in your image. I thank you God that light was shined on how you created our bodies, how you created this wonderful mind and our emotions Lord. I thank you God that you shed light on whatever individual person needed. I hope and prayed Lord that they heard something that was just for them even if it was just a whisper. I thank you that senses were open to where they could hear the word that you had for them. Lord, I thank you God that you do give us wisdom on what it is that we are supposed to change and supposed to handle we are responsible for and what we are not.

Lord, I thank you that we give you our heavy hearts Lord, and I thank you God that you come and you hug us God and give us comfort. I thank you Father God that you surround people with others to help them. I thank you anyone that needs to find therapy, that needs to have someone close to talk to Lord. I thank you supernaturally, make that person aware to them, let them find them Lord, let them seek them, give somebody the courage to go out and seek help if they need it. I thank you God that whatever intimidation and stigma may have been around their mental health or their family or their bloodlines that we have encouraged them today God to make that step. So Lord, I thank you that today was a holy time Lord. I thank you that you blessed this in every person in Jesus name. Amen. - Amen. - Amen. - Amen, we love you so much. (audience applauding) (air whooshing)