Tag: Mental Health Awareness Month

Trauma Has Ruined My Life: How to Recover? Here Are Six Ways to Post-Traumatic Growth

Anonymous asked a question:

I went through a traumatic life experience about 3 years ago. As it played out over the last 2 years, I feel like I’ve lost my inner drive to do anything. What do I do?

Hey dear friend, I’m sorry to hear this and thank you for sharing about it with me.

While I’m not a doctor or therapist, I can speak just in my capacity as a trained hospital chaplain. Trauma is a serious issue that’s gotten a lot more attention in the last decade, which I’m really grateful for. I highly recommend reading The Body Keeps the Score. (Warning that it does contain some hard descriptions.)


– Therapy. I can’t recommend this enough. Self-disclosure is one of the absolutely best ways to get through trauma. Whether that’s with a therapist, friend, mentor, pastor: we need to talk it out. Jamie Pennebaker’s studies about self-disclosure reveal that it’s not just about venting, but sense-making. Even simply writing about your trauma (if you don’t like writing, then recording it by audio) for fifteen minutes a day for several days can have noticeable health benefits. Pennebaker suggests answering these two questions: Why did this happen? What good might I derive from it? (Quoted from The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt.)


– Interoception. When trauma occurs, it not only leads to a loss of personal and spiritual control, but also physical control of our own bodies. We can experience fatigue, chronic pain, numbness, depersonalization, or dissociation. In other words, we can become detached from ourselves. So often this happens because our internal narrative says, “This bad thing happened to me, therefore I am bad.”

One of the ways to fight this is to “master” our own bodies again. That can be done through exercise, yoga, dance, martial arts, bike-riding, or any sensory experience that requires rehearsed and specific moves. To get to know your own body again is to own your body again. (Concept of interoception from The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk.)

Continue reading “Trauma Has Ruined My Life: How to Recover? Here Are Six Ways to Post-Traumatic Growth” →

“If You Really Had Faith …”


I’ve been told, “If you had just prayed more – read more Bible –believed more – claimed your promises – confessed all your sin—then you wouldn’t be so depressed.”

Or, “If you had just exercised more – done more yoga – eaten more kale – get more motivated – stop being selfish—then you wouldn’t be so depressed.” “If you had just – if you had just – if you had just—“

None of those things are bad things. But they never guarantee that you or I will make it. They’re not some meter to fill up to prevent depression, as if being “good enough” means you’re immune. If these things don’t work: it’s never your fault. It doesn’t say a thing about you. Depression is a liar, a whole world turned into fog. But it does not make you bad, lesser, or wrong.

At my most depressed, at the end of the tunnel where there’s more tunnel, at my very rock bottom—my tiny bit of faith was the rock that kept me going.

It’s not that when you have faith that your depression and anxiety are gone. But it’s when you’re depressed or anxious, your faith might be the only thing that keeps you strong.
To survive, sometimes, is faith enough.

— J.S.

I Have to Fake My Emotions: The Cost of Emotional Labor and Hospitality

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If you’re always serving, it’s easy to lose your own voice and identity. Those in mental health work, hospitality, church ministry, or those who simply just listen all the time don’t always get to process their own thoughts and feelings. This can be exhausting and infuriating. Emotional labor is the cost you pay when you feel one way and act another. Many of us who serve have to smile, nod, never flinch, never judge, and always get along. How do we keep our own voice while serving others? I go over Ring Theory and how we can process our emotions safely. We need room to be ourselves as we take care of others. #selfcare #mentalhealth #grief #counseling #emotionallabor #processing #boundaries #therapy #psychology #ministry #ringtheory #trauma #chaplain #hospitality #selfcompassion #safety #mentalhealthawarenessmonth #therapist #counselor #religion #church #pastor #minister #listening #emotions #process

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If you’re always serving, it’s easy to lose your own voice and identity. Those in mental health work, hospitality, church ministry, or those who simply just listen all the time don’t always get to process their own thoughts and feelings. This can be exhausting and infuriating.

Emotional labor is the cost you pay when you feel one way and act another. Many of us who serve have to smile, nod, never flinch, never judge, and always get along. How do we keep our own voice while serving others?

I go over Ring Theory and how we can process our emotions safely. We need room to be ourselves as we take care of others.

— J.S.

Book Launch: The Voices We Carry


Happy day, friends! My book The Voices We Carry is officially released.

The Voices We Carry is about wrestling with our voices, such as self-doubt, people-pleasing, trauma, grief, and family dynamics, and finding our own voice in world of mixed messages. I talk about my hospital chaplaincy, what I learned from patients at the edge of life and death, and giving a voice to those who have been silenced—those like you and me.

The month of May is also Mental Health Awareness Month and Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. My book talks about the challenges of both. I believe that the more we can share our stories and make room for our many voices, the better we become.

God bless and much love to you, friends. Thank you for allowing me to speak into your life, faith, and journey.
— J.S.


The Voices We Carry is published by Northfield of Moody Publishers.

#MentalHealthAwarenessMonth
#AsianPacificAmericanHeritageMonth