so last week we started a new series on we know all about what it is to be healthy and we define that all the time now help us know what healthy looks like and healthy tools to get healthy so what I said is we're going to go through the twelve needs and work through that and learn how to meet those twelve needs in healthy ways so just as an intro to that tonight hmm I've used this before on the right is a healthy person so high energy at the top where they we call the performance zone but a healthy person performs they serve they do their job they work with their children etc but they reach a point where they say now I need some downtime I need to recover and they know how to meet their needs so that they're able to go back and perform again and they can do that for the rest of their life perform downtime take care of self perform the difference with complex trauma is is on the left and you're in survival mode and what survival mode means is you are always on guard you can't relax you can't stop and meet your needs and have downtime so in complex trauma you push yourself until you burnout and that's the body's only way of recovering now why I tell you that is a lot of people from gone blocks trauma who have pushed themselves till they burnout come into recovery still operating that way so they do recovery push push push push they haven't learned how to meet their needs so they just push themselves to they burn out and usually that is a relapse and so to get recovery well you have to stop doing that and you have to start living on the right side and that means learning how to meet your knee in healthy ways and that's what this series is about so last week we talked about the first need which is pleasure tonight we're going to the second need which is food and some of your ears perked up last week when I mentioned that we're going to talk about food food as you are aware food and water most basic physical need that we have necessary to stay alive and our culture has done probably the greatest at giving us lots of information about healthy food choices all of that kind of healthy eating stuff so I don't want to do any of that tonight because you can get that anywhere I want to take it deeper and so what is interesting to me is that our society who has more information about food then probably hardly any other nation in the world and yet we have huge issues around food so it's like all this information doesn't seem to be helping people there's all kinds of money being spent on dieting on exercise programs on liposuction on stomach surgeries etc etc I came across this by global news there's no wonder no other industry in the world that makes so much money but fails so many people as the food industry or the diet industry so that it goes on to say this the weight loss sectors have been growing by about 6% a year since the 1980s in other words dieting programs exercise programs all of those things they're making more money each year by about 6% but at the same time obesity rates have continued to climb steadily in North America and it was estimated in 2013 Canada that Canadian spent 7 billion dollars on dieting programs and in the United States they spent 65 billion dollars so that's why the first quote says there's no other industry that makes so much money that has failed so many people so I go what's our culture missing it seems to have all the information it tells you how to eat healthy all your healthy food and we ignore a lot of it or we do it for a little while quit do it again quit and so what is going on and so that's why I wanted to talk about this because I don't think our culture has factored in how complex trauma changes people's relationship to food and so I want to look at that now and I also want to just add some extra challenges that everybody in Canada faces just because we live in Canada and so I hope that you'll begin to realize that there are deeper reasons for why we eat the way we eat other than what our society is telling us and unless we deal with those deeper issues our society can give us tons of information but it's not going to make a lasting difference so let me begin I think and it's my opinion and there's lots of evidence now I think to support it dr. Gavin might take talks a lot about it but he and I would say that the majority of eating disorders are connected to complex trauma so when a person comes to me and say says will react help me with my eating disorders I say it sure will because what comes out of complex trauma is an unhealthy relationship to food for most people so we have anorexia bulimia and then binge eating and purging this second thing that happens in our culture and it's a cultural thing is we have put so much emphasis especially for women on their body and how they look and so if you have any fight then you should feel that you're not desirable that nobody would want you and it puts tremendous pressure on women which has led to constant dieting trying to get the perfect body and we swim in a culture that thinks that way we watch TV that constantly projects that and it does influence people and it's a big concern of mine of how it's affecting young girls coming up in our culture today so we got a cultural stuff going on but some of you with complex trauma or just in your family you had family dynamics that weren't healthy and relationship to food so you had a mom let's say who every time you turn around was starting a new diet and every January she was starting a new diet and a new exercise program and you just grew up with that kind of thinking all the time and then another piece that comes out of complex trauma is that shame piece and so shame says I don't like myself so in order to get good feelings about myself I need others to like me and then what happens with that is if I'm gonna get others to like me I gotta have a good body so that emphasis can come out of shame or for others with shame I need to control my eating perfectly or I'm down on myself I beat myself up because I'm failing I'm a loser I can't do anything right so shame can affect our relationship with food and how we think about it and then for some of you you got a cultural stuff you got a family stuff but then you went to school and you were made fun of or bullied because you a bit pudgy or heavy or overweight and you were teased about that and called names and it hurt you so much and you were kind of put in the outcast group because of your weight so those are just some of the things that you have probably grown up with in your culture now let me go back to the complex trauma world within the family I've had many clients say to me that they eat their emotions so when they're feeling stress they eat when they're feeling anxiety they eat when they're depressed they eat and they go back in their thinking and they remember as a little child when they were crying and Grandma didn't like their crying made grandma uncomfortable so she said have a cookie that'll make you feel better and that started a pattern that if you're sad you eat and that'll make you feel better so that's what we mean by eating your emotions so what you can see right there is that what you were doing with food was trying to meet an emotional need now food was designed to meet physical needs but what just happened is the wires got crossed and you're using food now to try to meet an emotional need and what happens with that is it seems to work but it doesn't it leaves you empty and a bit heavier afterwards many people as they realize kind of the emptiness that they feel they may not know why they just have always felt that way there's been a hole in their heart and they haven't understood that their basic needs haven't been met but what they have found is when they eat it seems to fill the emptiness and so they begin to eat whenever they feel any emptiness so again trying to meet a need and emotional need a soul need with food then another part of our culture and I was thinking about this this week do you realize that if you go to a a there's food coffee and food if you come to finding freedom there's coffee and food if you go to a social event there's food so we are a culture where social events there's an unwritten rule that you have to have food and so you're bombarded with it as a regular thing when you go out with friends or social events another thing that can happen with food in a complex drama is this children who are in complex trauma where their life is chaos they feel taught that everything is out of control and they try to gain control but they can't because the big people in their life aren't cooperating and so what they begin to do is look for things that they can control that will cause them to feel some stability and some control and will take away some of the fear that they're feeling and so some find food is something they can control and so they become very rigid around food as a way of trying to regain control the flip side of that some kids grow up with super controlling parents where parents want to control everything about them what they do who they see etc etc so they look for ways where they can rebel and give mom and dad the finger and mom and dad can't do a thing about it and food is one way they can rebel and so that to them actually gives them pleasure at a subconscious level because now they can make mum and dad upset but mum and dad can't control what they do or don't eat next one some children who didn't get much validation they got validation from Grandma because they ate so much food and grandma just felt great there weren't wasn't a thing left on the plate and she might have said I love having you come to visit cuz you eat everything and you eat so much it just makes me so happy and you go I love that validation so now everywhere I go I'm gonna eat everybody under the table and that will be my banner of pride at how much I can eat or I never leave any leftovers okay next one some of you might have grown up in a family where mom and dad portioned out your plate so you didn't get to choose how much to put on your plate they portioned it out and gave it to you and said you're not leaving til it's all gone and so you ate beyond feeling full you had to keep eating because mom and dad wouldn't allow any leftovers and so some of you had that came back to society we live in a culture where there's food that's constantly available lots of snacks do you realize and I've thought of this and some of the wacky moments in my brain do you realize that there could only be one food in the world brown rice that could be it but we have thousands and thousands of types of foods and ways of serving foods and spices for foods that appeal to all kinds of different tastes so there's an endless variety of opportunity that can be super super tasty and so that presents a problem when you live in a prosperous country where there's tons of food available and very tasty treats you just live with that and the next one some people have become disciplined in their eating not just because it gets some validation at home but because it in their church it makes them feel they're more spiritual than other people and so they become self-righteous about how slim their body is and they judge everybody that's a bit overweight some of you might have grown up with that okay now I want to come to food addiction so there is such a thing we call it a process addiction it's when you take an activity that's based on a human need and you make it something you keep doing and keep doing until it becomes a problem and so food addiction for many people is they're using food to numb pain so they're eating their emotions they're using food to give pleasure to an empty life they're using food to help them cope and so that sets them up for becoming addicted to it because food wasn't designed to serve those purposes but it does give instant gratification it does numb pain it does make you feel a little better and it does help you cope for the moment but the long-term consequences are where the trouble begins to come okay so the next thing with that to understand is food especially eating with people but food plus people creates all the chemicals of connection and so when you eat food it releases dopamine in the brain it releases the endorphins that cause you to feel good and connected and so food serves the purpose of giving you the same feelings as healthy connection was designed to do and so that's where it can become an addiction now if you to have a food addiction what you've probably realized is that there could be many many different things that trigger subconsciously or consciously the desire to eat so it could be stress depression anxiety sadness boredom discontent on and on so part of recovery from food addiction is learning what triggers you to want to use food to meet an emotional need okay I say to people with food addictions all the time you actually have a more challenging job in recovery than people who are drug addicts or alcoholics because with food addiction food is something you still have to have a drug addict and an alcoholic they can have total abstinence but with food you can have total abstinence or you die from starvation and so that makes food addiction recovery extra challenging because you still got to eat you just got to learn to eat for the right reasons and to control that another thing that I say to people is in our culture today food addiction exercise addiction are the socially acceptable addictions and so you can have everybody say stop drug addiction stop alcoholism but you don't hear anybody saying stop having people become food addicts or exercise addicts it's in a culture where that is considered acceptable behavior for many many people okay so what I have tried to emphasize and I want to say it again food addiction is all about getting your wires crossed it is about using food to meet an emotional need so unless you learn to meet those emotional in healthy ways you're gonna struggle with your food addiction recovery because that still will be where your brain goes when you're feeling those needs that you haven't learned how to meet in a healthy way now let me give you one more piece around this one things I say to clients that come in with drug addiction and alcohol addiction is be prepared you're stopping drug addiction and alcohol addiction but you're letting your emotions thaw out and you're becoming aware of your needs but you are not able to meet all of your needs in a healthy way right away so you're going to live in early recovery with some unmet needs your brain doesn't like unmet needs and your brain is going to start to say I got it I got to get rid of that emptiness or that uncomfortable feeling okay what am I gonna do can't go to drugs can't go to alcohol Oh what else could I do well let's start a food addiction and you cross a dict and you realize that in early recovery studies have been done most addicts and early recovery especially residential programs gain at least a pound a week because food becomes their new addiction and then they get in a relationship and sex and then that takes over and becomes their next new addiction so the danger in recovery from drugs and alcohol is that you can easily cross into making food your new way to medicate your new way to feel better your new way to try to meet those emotional needs and that is a very challenging thing so let me say this again we live in a culture that is focusing on symptoms only so they're saying you're overweight stop eating so much go on a diet they're not asking why are you not eating well in the first place the making it sound like you just don't have good self-will self-discipline and if you just did this or you knew more about calories and stuff like that it would fix the symptom if you come from complex trauma you know that our society is basically putting band-aids on the problems that are symptoms so what I want you to understand is that a person with complex trauma they shut down emotionally because it's dangerous to feel it makes you weak to have feelings they shut down their conscience but those things still operate subconsciously you just disconnect from them and so subconsciously you still feel emptiness subconsciously you feel dead inside subconsciously you feel anxiety and depression and your brain is working to solve that and when it finds food it says this seems to help let's do more and now you over do food and that is the beginning of a food addiction so if you want help with your food problems don't just do band-aids start to understand why you've been eating and having an unhealthy relationship with food next thing that I want you to see is our culture is spending all kinds of money trying to help us meet physical needs so here's how to get in shape here's how to eat healthy our culture is really doing a very poor job at teaching people how to meet emotional needs and that's where that problem is and so what we're going to get to in meeting these needs in healthy ways these twelve needs is learning to meet those needs those deep emotional needs because until you do addiction will be the brains way of trying to fix those problems so that is a big thing okay so as long as you are disconnected from emotions and that world down there you will probably not eat in healthy ways you will continue to struggle so that's where we have to begin but we're gonna get there in just a minute okay let me just back up from that okay so that's complex trauma how it messes up relationships to food let's back up and say okay what what's the purpose of food anyways don't know if you think about those kind of things I do number one food is the gasoline that keeps this physical engine going it is the energy source to keep us alive physically but I think there's actually a second use for food I think as you look through history every culture used food as a way to bring people together to help create social connectedness so if you go to any culture and there's like a Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter people came together to celebrate and so guess what they did in those times everybody over ate but just for those times and the focus was not just food the focus was connecting and so I think food still can play a role in bringing people together okay next thing I want you to think about is this so we as human beings we have physical needs emotional needs intellectual needs relational needs spiritual needs so we're multifaceted beings I think that what we learn about meeting physical needs teaches us about meeting emotional needs intellectual needs spiritual needs relational needs so let me explain eating and drinking our ongoing need so a baby isn't born you feed them once and they're good for life you got to eat several times a day so what does that tell us you gotta keep feeding your emotional world you got to keep feeding your spiritual world you got to keep feeding your intellectual world you don't just say okay I got my my emotional fix or my spiritual fix I'm good all the other needs follow the same pattern as physical needs eating so there has to be ongoing so is our emotional spiritual relational and I think that's just an important thing that we need reminders every time we sit did it sit down to eat to say have I been feeding my emotions I've I've been feeding my intellect my spirit those become just little signs saying don't forget you just don't have physical needs you got other needs as well second hmm our physical needs have a built-in mechanism to tell us when they need to be met so if you're hungry or you don't have enough food you feel hunger you don't have enough water you feel thirst it's a built-in mechanism that alerts us to that nee you realize that you have an emotional thirst mechanism you have a relational thirst mechanism a spiritual thirst mechanism you have a longing you have a deep drive desire and so I think again physical needs are designed to say pay attention to your emotional hunger your spiritual hunger your intellectual hunger because they're there if you stop and listen so I would encourage you as part of developing tools to say okay food part of its purpose is to teach me a my other needs so I'm feeling hungry right now let's stop and do an inventory am i hungry emotionally intellectually spiritually and relationally and what do I do if I sense and realize I'm hungry in those areas okay third thing you can miss train the hunger mechanism you can distort it okay so what's the design is is when you are in need of food you have hunger but you realize if you overeat and overeat and overeat that the next time you feel hunger it isn't because you're hungry it's because your stomach is shrinking you're not truly hungry your stomach is just react reacting to shrinking so what you've done by overeating you've missed trained the hunger mechanism okay I don't know if any of you know what pica is or pica that's they usually refer to it with pregnant ladies where you eat mud or you drywall or you eat chalk and all sudden you've got a hunger for stuff that has no nutritional value and what it is saying is and so they're not just with people who are pregnant but what they're finding is people with eating disorders that pica is now listed as an eating disorder where people will start eating dirt and all of that stuff as part of what fills them up they've missed rained their hunger so we can miss train our emotional hunger system our spiritual hunger system and we can be eating junk food thinking it satisfies and it's making us sicker okay and then I tell people all the time about emotional and/or Exia so what happens with physical anorexia is if you ignore the hunger impulse long enough you will soon not feel it anymore so every time you feel hunger you ignore it you push it down and pretty soon you can go months without eating and you don't feel any cravings for food that is physical and erect sia you can do the same with your emotions you can ignore your emotions ignore your emotions to the point where you no longer feel your emotions so what happens in people with food eating disorders in getting healthy you got to retrain your hunger mechanism and so what you do in recovery is you retrain your emotional hunger mechanism your spiritual hunger mechanism so that it gets to be healthy again and it takes time to retrain that number four we are not naturally discerning when it comes to food so a child everything goes in their mouth it could be dog poop could be a paper clip it just all goes in their mouths and then once they find sugar and sweets that's their preference over anything healthy so we have to train a child to eat healthy and so we have to train ourselves in recovery not just eat healthy physically but to have a healthy emotional diet healthy intellectual diet spiritual diet etc and so those are all things we can learn from the physical need part the food part ok let me go to practical suggestions and like I said at the beginning I'm not going to go and give you kind of all of the research the Society gives us around healthy food choices and healthy eating and different types of things you can find all of that very easily but let me say this up front don't start a diet if you're not dealing your underlying issues you're setting yourself up to fail so some of those underlying issues are your shame stuff your body image stuff so that's where you have to begin if you're going to deal properly with the food so eating is a sin your eating has become a symptom of those deeper issues deal with those issues so with that as you deal with the issues now you get like any addict what are my triggers is stress a trigger is anxiety is trigger so you start become more self-aware and as you become aware so let's say you realize as soon as I'm feeling anxious or stress I started eating or as soon as I'm feeling bored I start eating or as soon as I get home from work tonight and at night and I start relaxing I start snacking so you go all of those things are triggers now what safety nets do I need to put in place so I don't give in to those triggers so you're building your recovery plan so you're dealing with underlying stuff on one hand but you're also dealing with here and now and putting plans in place to help you in those triggering times okay other practical things I've picked up over the years in dealing with people coming out of addiction number one it's important if you want to get eating under control they begin to have some menus so you don't just get home from work and say huh wonder what I feel eating like eating tonight okay I'll get a bag of potato chips you have a menu for each night and you start to do that and that takes discipline but if you're able to do it it's a great thing portance of a shopping list don't go shopping and go wonder what I feel like and pick up whatever comes to your mind that's a problem and I always say this to clients be careful about taking your little children shopping with you for groceries because a lot of parents and recovery feel guilt and their children will say mummy mummy can I buy this and you don't want to say no because your child might cry and be mad at you and not like you so you let your child basically do half the shopping and you want to know I read a study if you go next time to superstore Safeway guess where they put all the children's things the bottom shelf rate at their eye level because they're trying to get the children to influence the decisions of the parent when it comes to shopping so I encourage people write your shopping list out ahead of time hopefully based on the menus that you've laid out and stick to it when you go shopping and then obvious one don't go shopping when you're hungry that tends to backfire and be careful how much you eat out that can really mess with your whole food stuff and like I said hunger pan hunger pangs don't necessarily mean that you're truly hungry so begin to learn all of that so that's what I wanted to say around this food issue I think what I've seen is this I don't deal with many addicts from drugs and alcohol who don't also have food problems and so at some point in their recovery this becomes an issue for them and it becomes an issue that can be such a difficult struggle it leads to getting constantly down on themselves and they might think it's okay to do when you're young and your metabolisms high but once you hit 40 and your metabolism starts slowing down all of a sudden all of those things that you used to do and got away with start coming to haunt you and you begin to say man I've got problems and now they want to start dealing with it so I hope this just gets you started on the right track for developing a healthy relationship with food hmm so last week I told you with the Christian part that I was going to start a new little soup mini series that the best illustration that I can find in the Bible of people with complex trauma are the Jewish people when they were in slavery in Egypt and so we're taught about that in the second book of the Bible the book of Exodus and God uses a guy named Moses who is a Jewish boy but he was raised in as Pharaoh's son and he God uses Moses to bring the people of Israel out of Egypt but what you find when they come out of Egypt is Egypt didn't come out of them and so it's like you can take an addict out of the problem but the problem seems to go with them and so you begin to realize that these people even though they have freedom from slavery they're still slaves to them their dark side and you see all of these complex trauma behaviors starting to come up and so I want to take you through part of the book of Exodus so you can see yourself in the people of Israel but also you can see how God responded to them so here's what we're gonna look at tonight so let's say you are God some of you think you are but let's say you you are your God and you are looking at three million people with complex trauma and you're going okay where do I start in helping them heal what is the very first thing that needs to be the foundation stone that everything else will build on and if I don't get that stone right then nothing else will matter so what is the very first thing that God as a therapist has to help these people coming out of slavery and trauma get and I love what it says and you're not gonna like hearing it but guess what it is trust and God is saying unless they can learn to trust they'll never get healthy some of you just groaned inside because what does complex trauma teach us you can't trust anybody but yourself if you trust people they'll let you down and you'll get hurt so trust gets beaten out of you and what God is saying right up front is that trust piece is so important to the healing journey now if God was to put up a sign-up sheet saying who wants to sign up for trust classes nobody would sign up so you know what I've learned nobody learns trust happily we all learn trust kicking and screaming through the first lessons and so what you're gonna see tonight is that God is leading Israel to trust but what he's going to do is put them in a situation that they hate and get mad about it doesn't lead them to trust but it leads them to see that God cares for them and that he's trustworthy and that is the starting point so God begins to reveal to them who he is and that he is trustworthy but that is not something they want to do so let me kind of take you into that what does God have to do number one you can't trust somebody totally unless you know certain things about them so they have to be trustworthy so what does that mean that means that they care about you that means that they love you that means that they're reliable they keep their promises but to do that they got to be powerful they got to be able to defeat enemies they got to be able to come through at difficult times so you you need that kind of person and they have to be constant so God says I have to show Israel who what I am like and then I got to put them in situations beyond their ability to handle where they're going to say I'll help help I'm in trouble God don't you care don't you care and then I'm gonna come in and rescue them and that'll show them in real-life example how powerful I am and how much I care and how much I am committed to them so that is the first thing God is going to do so I am going to walk you through now the first three therapy sessions God gives the Israel okay here we go therapy session number one this is the one everybody loves because God says sit as a spectator and just watch me work so God began to do in Egypt while Israel was still slaves God began to do these miracles to try and get Pharaoh to say there's no point fighting against Israel's God he is way too powerful so he is defeating me I am going to let them go so he turned the water into blood he sent this darkness he sent frogs all over the place etc and God was putting on a power show and Israel was saying WOW is this guy ever strong ever powerful now to help you understand that there are ten plagues each one of the plagues was directed at ten of Egypt's favorite gods so Israel Egypt didn't have one God they had all kinds of gods so guess what their main God was the Nile River that was their source of water which was their source of life so they believed it was a God that gave them life so God turned it to blood and he says our gonna take on your Great God the Nile and you'll see if I'm more powerful than that God and he turned it the blood and showed that he was more powerful then their next big God was the Sun that was the other source of life so God says I'm going to turn the Sun to darkness so God took on every one of Egypt's ten gods that was in all their gods but he took on those ten gods and he defeated each one and so Israel got this front-row seat watching God show his power they didn't have to do a thing they were spectators you know that's like in recovery you come and learn in class and you get this head knowledge you go boy I'm loving learning all of these tools this is so much fun problem is when you got to go home and apply them it's not so much fun but it's sure fun to learn okay and so that's what God does therapy session what number one he puts his power on display secondly and this is the one nobody signs up for he says I got to put them in a situation hmm that is way beyond their ability to handle now Israel is going to get backed into a corner and they are going to kick and scream the entire time they are not going to enjoy one second of this time much like early recovery much like certain parts of recovery where it's like God backs you into a corner and says we're gonna learn this lesson now and you go I don't want to learn this lesson now this is too painful too hard and God says I'm gonna force you to go through this and we kick and scream the whole way so here's what happens Israel when they were leaving God said I'm gonna give you a guide which will be in the daytime this huge thing a cloud and at night that's going to turn into fire a pillar of fire and you're just going to follow that and that will lead you and so that you'll have a sense that I'm with you a sense of my presence and that I'm guiding you and that'll be there every day so they come out of slavery and the pillar of fire starts leading them away from Egypt and then all of a sudden that the cloud and the pillar fire turns and starts to turn them back towards Egypt that's confusing God what are you doing here and then in the distance they start to see sandstorm and they begin to realize that's not a sandstorm that's a whole bunch of people coming so here's what happened Pharaoh didn't let eat the Israelites go until the tenth plague which God said I'm going to take on your son Pharaoh who you considered to be a God who can't die and I'm going to put him to death that was the crushing blow and Pharaoh out of a broken heart said get out of here I don't want to deal with this God anymore but shortly after they left within a day or two he's going what was I thinking those three million people were my main workforce that did all kinds of stuff for free and they kept our economy going without those three million people our economy is going to crash and we are going to be in huge trouble as a nation so he has a change of heart and he says I got to go recapture them and so he calls for his army and he says I want the best of the soldiers as many soldiers as possible to go back out capture the Israelites again and bring them back into slavery so he imagined the Israelites as they see this cloud of dust coming and then all of a sudden they see chariots and they see soldiers and they flew into what is happening Pharaoh is sending his army to recapture us now do you realize that none of the Israelites had been soldiers they'd been slaves they don't have any weapons they don't have any fighting skill and here is the greatest most powerful skilled technologically advanced army in the world a few miles away imagine the panic that's set in but what happened is the panic turned to anger at Moses and God why did you lead us out of Egypt was it so that we had died because that's looks that's what it looks like is going to happen so they start getting super angry at Moses and God and say it would have been better if we had stayed as slaves if you never got our hopes up in the first place this is terrible we hate you we wish this never happened and so they are not in a good place so what they have done is a very complex trauma thing they went to the worst-case scenario we're all going to die it's hopeless let's give up and let's get angry and they got super negative and they got all worst case they forgot that God said I will get you out of Egypt and make you a free people and he had just given them a power show that showed you is greater than anything Egypt could throw at him but in that moment of time they forgot all about that you all know what happens to us often in recovery we're going along great and then a bad things happens and we forget all about what God's taught us and who he is and we just go to worst-case scenario and we're mad at everybody and we're panicking and that's what they did and so what does God do he says don't be afraid stand still and watch me go to work and here they're going okay it's not looking like you're doing anything but what he is trying to say is Stan still and get out of your limbic brain and start thinking again I am going to rescue remember I just did it I will continue to do it so get back to thinking about now and what I've been doing for you for the last number of months get out of your limbic brain the Egyptian's you see today you will never see again because I'm gonna fight for you stay calm so what God is doing is a grounding technique to try to get them emotionally regulated again it doesn't work real well they're not the most willing subjects but then a couple things start to happen number one a wind starts blowing and they see the Dead Sea or the Red Sea start to open up and then but the chariots are still coming so then God takes this cloud and pillar fire and he moves it behind the Israelites between the Egyptian soldiers and Israel so that it stops the soldiers from advancing they hit this cloud so Israel should be saying WOW God's protecting us look at them work no there's still panicking the wind blows all night as the cloud keeps the army at bay and when they get up in the morning there's a pathway across the sea and they start going across it the cloud lifts they start to panic again because they see the soldiers starting to chase them again and they're getting across the sea and they see the soldiers coming down into the sea and they're really starting to panic and God says just hang on because all of a sudden all of the chariot wheels started getting stuck in the mud and they started falling apart and it held up the army again and then finally they got to the other side and the sea closed and the whole army was wiped out so God provided now many you had those lately where God put you in the situation and he protects you but man you're panicking in the whole time you're not trusting yet but you are getting kind of this demonstration of his commitment love and power you know what really frustrates me about this story and about God he waited till the eleventh hour to rescue them he couldn't he didn't have to wait till 11:59 he could have saved them at 3 o'clock in the afternoon do you wanna know what God did and this justifies what I do all the time so pay attention God says you're feeling anxiety sit in it it's not gonna kill you God could have taken all those uncomfortable feelings away he could have transported them to the other side of the ocean or wiped out the army right away and they never would have gone through any of that anxiety and he said sit in it boy that just justifies a lot of what I do but the second thing I want you to realize is there some lessons that we don't enjoy for one second and we go through them and we go why are you doing this God what's the point of this this seems so cruel this seems so wrong and we get all kinds of reasons why it's a dumb idea but then 10 years later we look back and we go wow that lesson that I hated started a trusting process that I never would have got if I didn't have that lesson and so some of the greatest lessons are taught by the most undesirable lessons and we hate them in the moment but over time we are grateful for them so we do not learn to trust by signing up for it you realize that they're still not trust in God but God rescued them anyways but they saw God in new way up close and they saw God in a panic situation and how he came through when they needed him the most and that started a trust thing now there's a third thing that God had to do thirds therapy session it would have been really easy for Israel to have said God it was great that you showed us those 10 miracles back in Egypt and it was great that you got us through the Red Sea we trust you now thanks for the lessons do you wonder what happens to us when we get past a crisis often in a crisis we run to God and say we need you I need you I need you I'm trusting you soon as a crisis is done we say by God I don't need to trust you right now because I can handle it from here and God knows this if we aren't desperately trusting him on a regular basis we drift from him and if we drift from him we get into a darker place spiritually intellectually emotionally so if we're gonna stay in a healthy place we have to stay close to him and if we harder to stay close to him we have to be put into a living situation where we have to trust every day because if we get a week or two where we don't have to trust we drift from God so what does God say for Israel it's a therapy session number three I'm gonna make you need me every day is what you get in an in a desert no food no stores can't grow anything three million people God could have said here I'm gonna take this part of the desert and make it fertile and I'll reign there and you can be farmers no he didn't do that you went on he said every day I'm gonna send some bread bread from heaven in the morning and I'm gonna send some quail in and you're gonna have your meat and bread every day and then after that day you're going to be out of food again and tomorrow you're gonna start saying god please provide and there's gonna be manna which is what the bread was called and quail and that's only gonna be enough for one day and then the next morning you're gonna say God please provide you're gonna keep being forced to trust me every day you want to know something God doesn't give you this strength for tomorrow's problems today he doesn't give it till tomorrow but we want God to give us the strength for the next years problems today so we don't need to trust him anymore and so what God has got to do with us is teach us to trust every day you want know one of the things that I sometimes think is a downside of living in a prosperous country is that we can easily think we don't need God and that's why God gives some people physical health problems emotional mental health problems addiction problems because every day there's not a solution that the world can provide that's going to satisfy it totally so every day you come and say God please provide because I'm struggling again and it teaches us daily dependence how do you like those three therapy lessons all around trust do you see how important Trust is if we're ever going to get out of complex trauma do you wanna know the sad part of this three million people came out of Egypt forty or a year later do you know how many people trusted God after one year of watching God provide man every day Quayle every day Moses Aaron and two other people and Miriam five people trusted God that means almost the three million that came out still refused to trust and they died a miserable life and so what you begin to realize that those five that learned to trust they moved on to fruitful great lives I made a huge difference the others just wandered around empty lies until they died in the desert they never got to experience all the wonderful things God wanted to give them but they wouldn't trust him enough to ever get them and so this trust piece is so important and I just hope if it's an area that you're really struggling in you'll say God thank you that you're patient you're sure patient with Israel and helping them learn to trust but just keep teaching me and helping me to grow in this area