(gentle piano music)
- Hello and welcome back to Couples Talk.
I'm Jonathan Decker, licensed therapist.
- I'm Alicia Decker, co-founder of Mended Light.
- And today, we are finishing our three-part series
with the Jacksons, CJ and Christina.
Our first video was talking about adoption,
and forming a blended family.
And then Christina, very bravely, very boldly,
went into her trauma with sexual abuse,
and how to heal and how to move forward,
so that you can thrive.
And we're gonna talk about this today.
A lot of times we look at recovering from trauma
as moving from a victim place to a place
of being an advocate or being a survivor, we see that.
And it is, we see it as more positive, more empowered,
and I'm not a victim, I'm a survivor.
And your story is moving even further than that still.
And so if you're okay,
I'd like to actually pick up
where we left off in our last video.
If you haven't seen it, go back and watch it,
and then join us right here in the middle of it.
You were talking about how having a strong support network
was essential for your healing.
Taking both the story, as it was,
and also, just what else was healing for you,
let's pick up the baton from there.
- Yeah, no, support is definitely a huge thing.
I didn't learn unfortunately, later on in life,
that was probably what four years ago, five years ago,
just how important it was to listen
to your friends and your family.
Because unfortunately, my story goes from
just an assault from a friend to an abusive marriage,
where I was completely oblivious for eight years
of kind of what was going on in my life.
And I went into survival mode,
which I think is different,
not to confuse with like moving
into that survivor phase of healing.
Because living in survival mode,
you just kind of go to day-to-day,
and you just try to keep yourself...
- Afloat, above water. - Afloat, yeah.
And honestly, trying to keep the rest of the world hidden
from what's going on in your life.
And so after all of that happened,
kind of the support from, from CJ was a huge thing
into me getting out of
that terrible situation that I was in.
And so trust is something else that I would,
as hard as that is for people, learning to trust again,
is huge, it's a huge,
to me, it was a huge part of the healing process.
Because CJ, I knew him before,
and he hadn't changed in any way in the 10 years
since I knew him in college.
He hadn't changed at all, which was comforting to me.
I found comfort that he was the same person.
- Let's say personality-wise. - That I left. (laughs)
I mean he grew up, obviously,
but he was still, he was consistent.
- Less hair, more maturity.
- Yeah, see?
(everyone laughs)
So yeah, trust was another huge thing, I think,
that I had to learn.
That was the hardest one,
because I didn't trust him for a long time.
But at the same time his boldness,
and having people out there that kind of tell you
the truth of what's going on.
'Cause something that was hard
was I had people who were telling me what was happening,
but because they didn't want to hurt my feelings,
they didn't put it out there very bluntly.
They would just kind of like tiptoe around it,
like, "Hey, we're gonna pull you in,
because we think that your husband's gonna progress
to this scary situation
where he's probably gonna assault you.
But you know, let us know if you're doing okay."
You know, it was very like-
- 'Cause her husband was very, I mean that was,
there's that obviously original event we talked about.
But her husband was very emotionally,
mentally, sexually abusive, too.
Like he kind of used that event almost as a springboard
into his own trauma on her, not in his own.
- 'Cause he felt like he needed to have control.
- He wanted that kind of control over her
that this man had, which is a whole sick...
- Yeah, yeah.
- But so that was...
That was what she means by trying to be
in survival mode, and trying to stay afloat,
is because day in and day out, he was
berating her, deriding her, everything she did was wrong.
And just kind of basically forecourt pressing her mentally,
and emotionally so that she was always going
to be under his thumb, and basically be his slave.
She was in the military, she was working full time,
he was not for a majority of their marriage.
He was Reserves, so he'd do his one weekend a month,
and that was kind of it.
But he would be, yeah, basically always just trying
to keep her under his thumb.
Always gas lighting her, always doing kind of
all of those unfortunate things.
So that's why she was in survival mode.
It wasn't from that original trauma,
but from all of the new trauma that he heaped upon that.
He used that as a tool and as a weapon against her.
- How do you get from there to here?
And I don't just mean your family situation,
your marriage situation, I mean who you are.
Can you tell us a little bit about that story of
going from there to a place where you are
not going to be treated that way?
- It definitely took a lot of work.
I mean it kind of...
I've had people come up to me and they're like,
"Hey, I have a friend or whoever whose in
this terrible situation, I want to get them out."
And I honestly tell them that you can't
get them out until they're ready.
Because the person, for me, I wasn't about,
I knew it was happening, deep down I knew it was happening.
But I didn't want to recognize it.
- Yeah, she didn't want to consciously
say that she was in the situation,
that she was in this horrible place.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- Especially, when you're kind of in that survival mode,
you're just trying to get through day-to-day.
You're not trying to internalize
all of the abuse you're experiencing.
You're just trying to get through the day,
and through that day's abuse,
and hope that the next day's not so bad.
And it may or may not be.
- But mine went from that kind of living in that state,
where I had people who going like,
"Hey, this is what's going on."
They were kind of trying to throw hints in there,
but I wasn't about ready to acknowledge it.
I started going back to church,
which is huge for me.
It gave me a purpose, other than my children.
My kids were my whole life.
So apart from, you know, and that was pretty
much why I kept up the facade was for my kids.
Started going back to church,
started kind of getting that...
- Gave you some hope.
- Yeah, the hope and just like kind of feeling
like, you can heal from this.
Because that's essentially what we're taught.
You can heal that's what-
- There is hope. - There's hope, yeah.
- And this doesn't have
to define you. - It didn't define me.
And so it went from that to kind of starting
to listening to the things that people were telling me,
to reaching out to somebody that I trusted.
And being like, "Hey, this is what's happening."
And he was just like, "No, that's not normal."
And just kind of calling it what it was.
I mean, it still had to take me being willing to hear it.
But it also helped that I had somebody that I could trust,
that it was like, this is what I'm living in.
- [Jonathon] Yeah.
- How do you see this?
- Is this normal?
- Is this normal? (chuckles)
- And once you have the realization that it's not,
and all the things that you had deep inside
that you kept pushing down,
once they fought their way to the surface
and couldn't be denied anymore.
How do you take the next steps?
- I was very reluctant, actually.
It was all kind of taken out of my hands.
I would probably still be in the same situation
if it wasn't, if things didn't happen
the way they did.
I told my therapist what was happening.
I told her, "Hey my husband," at the time,
"He assaulted me, he sexually assaulted me.
And I can't come back from this."
And she says, "Well, I'm a mandatory reporter,
and this is what we're doing."
And so she went to my supervisor,
she went to my chain of command,
which is like my commander who was essentially
the person over the entire clinic,
the officer of the entire clinic.
I felt like I had the rug thrown out from under me,
and I was just like, "Oh crap."
- Here we go. (Christina chuckles)
- And then we had somebody who worked in the clinic,
he used to be Security Forces, which is cops,
who had similar situations before as a cop.
And he's like, "Okay, we're moving you out.
We're gonna put you in a safe house."
- 'Cause they were off base in their own home
that they had lived in for awhile.
So like, "We're moving you and your family
out of your home, into a secure location on base."
- And then we're gonna make it so he can't come on base,
even though he did, but that's anyway.
- He's gonna have two restraining orders against him,
one from the military, one in civilian court.
And this is what they, basically they did,
or forced her to do, a combination of both,
as a result of this whole,
'cause her therapist thought-
- She suspected.
- She had suspected for a long time,
but she purposely-
- But once it was confirmed she's like, yeah.
- Well, she purposely hid that from her.
'Cause she's like, she's pushing for this,
she knows it's going on.
- But I had never said, "Yes, this is what happened."
Until I finally, I just showed up in her office,
and showed up at the front desk, was balling.
She's like, "Okay." (laughs)
- And here we go.
Moving forward a little bit.
So all this is happening, the ball gets rolling.
We were talking a little bit earlier off camera,
or rather you two were talking
and I was a witness to it,
about the concept of surviving versus thriving.
Because when I met you, when you and CJ,
when you came back into CJ's life,
or he came back into yours, or however the story goes.
I knew that you'd been through some stuff.
I didn't know the story.
'Cause it wasn't really my business,
and CJ was respectful of you.
But the way I was introduced to you
was you were going through a hard time
and CJ was there for you.
And what was really powerful to me to see,
especially when you two got together,
is that it was always you.
Like even the time that you two were apart,
CJ was always gonna, it was always gonna be you.
You were the one who had his heart.
- He still gives me a hard time for it.
- Yeah. (laughs)
- 10 years is a long time to wait.
(everyone laughs)
- When I met you, I met Christina.
I didn't meet trauma survivor, trauma victim.
And granted, most people don't wear that
on their sleeves, or whatever, but you were,
yeah, you were working through a lot of stuff
behind the scenes, but you were a whole person.
I never, ever read you as, oh she's broken.
I read you as powerful and compassionate.
I saw you, and I still see you.
In this conversation today I'm learning things
that I never knew, because this doesn't define you.
It's part of your history, it's part of your strength.
And I know you use what you've been
through to help other people, but it doesn't define you.
Can you tell us about getting to that place?
- Yeah, I mean a lot of therapy. (laughs)
- Yeah. (laughs)
- A lot, I mean I've been in, you know, pretty consistent.
But it was also, just kind of coming to terms
with, I've read a lot of books.
I've done a lot of self searching, like figuring out.
A lot has to do with him.
He has probably been the main reason for my success.
When we got together he's like,
"Hey, you used to like to draw.
(CJ sniffs)
I just went and bought you 100 and something colored pencils
let's go draw something."
Or, "Hey, you used to like to do photography."
Like, "Hey, I'm gonna go," he pushed me to do things
that he knew that I liked to do.
The old me, that I considered the old me.
And so he was very encouraging.
The broken thing was not a thing.
'Cause I'd be like, "I'm broken."
He'd say, "No, you're not."
He's like, "Would God make something broken?"
No, so I like to call it, I'm perfectly imperfect. (laughs)
- Yeah. Which is a good way to look at it.
- And he is very positive and optimistic.
And so the whole negativity thing didn't fly for very long.
And so I was like, "Well, hey, yeah I know this sucks, but,
let's look at this in a positive light."
And also, there's still days that are terrible.
And he's just like, "Hey, you know what?
Maybe you should go take a nap?
Maybe you should go take some of your ashwagandha
and go somewhere else."
(everyone laughs)
- Not that I tell her to be alone,
but she just needs a break.
We have four kids, they're very young.
Sometimes she just needs a break from the kids.
Or we need a break away, or whatever.
It's not, you know, go away from me, 'cause you're sad.
- Just go find yourself.
- You're having, having-
- Take the time to recenter.
With every single experience you had you said,
"I didn't want to recognize that, I didn't want to-"
- Internalize it.
- I didn't want to...
You were willing to say, "This is my fault, my problem,
I created it, I did it."
Instead of saying, "No, someone hurt me,
someone used me, someone abused me."
I think that's a very true principle
that everyone, who's experienced something like that,
can apply to their life.
Of that first step of recognizing for what it was,
what is was.
And then looking for the support and the help,
and to continue looking for that support and the help.
And sometimes when you looked for it, it was there,
and other times it wasn't there, but you kept looking,
and then you took the lessons, and you learned from it.
And then what you were just talking about of,
especially, creative things, that self-expression.
Because what happens when we experience trauma,
when we go either into the second stage
of flight, or flight or fawn.
Which it sounds like what you experienced
was more the fawning,
like I'll just do what you tell me to do.
And that's a second, that's like a second stage response
of what our nervous system does,
but it shuts down other parts of our brain.
And that's why we disassociate.
That's why, it's like, well, there's the old me,
and there's the me now.
And that's also why we feel like we're broken,
because we remember what it was like before then.
And so doing all the things that you're doing,
that is those are the keys for everyone.
And that self expression helps get that,
both sides of the brain back online.
- Yeah.
- And to work together the way it's supposed to,
and it's incredibly healing.
- Well, this was a, I trust for people who
are watching this, this is helpful and powerful.
And the simple fact is you said you did
a lot of therapy, you read a lot of books.
There's no way that, even in these couple segments,
we're gonna cover the breadth, and the depth
of the healing experience.
Alicia and I, we're dedicating our lives to trauma healing.
We have programs, we have counselors,
this is what Mended Light is.
It's helping you heal,
so that you can let your light shine again.
So we want to thank you both
for being part of this journey with us today.
I want to encourage you at home,
if you're digging this channel, digging what we're doing,
know somebody who's going through this,
to share these videos.
And please, if you're going through something traumatic,
or if you have tips, (computer mouse clicks)
or things that you've learned (bell dings)
that are helpful in your journey,
we want to hear about them in the comments below.
If you need extra support, mendedlight.com,
go check us out and reach out, we're here for you.
If you somehow stumbled into just this third video,
there's two other videos with this amazing couple.
Go back from the beginning,
and then go all the way through it again.
But seriously, if you feel like your light is broken,
that it can't shine to the world anymore, it can.
We have a wonderful example right here.
You guys are freaking inspiring,
thank you for being here.
We need your light, let us help you.
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