Welcome to Checking In with Michelle Williams, a production of iHeartRadio and The Black Effect. Coming up on this week's episode of Checking In. Is someone so near and very dear to me, Doctor Anita Phillips. She is a trauma therapist. She's one of the folks who called me in December of twenty eighteen when for the second time of that year where it felt like my world literally was coming to an end, like really, really really coming to an end,
And it was doctor Anita Phillips who called me. And I believe that that was one of the phone calls in that time that saved my life. And I'm thankful for her. And you get to hear how she is so awesome and how she is out here saving lives through her ministry. Not only is she a licensed trauma therapist, she is a powerhouse minister, y'all, And I love how she merges faith and mental health. She is the one where she says prayer is a weapon, therapy is strategy,
and I personally have known that to be true. So you guys, pull up a seat and get ready for my friend, doctor Anita Phillips. Hey, everybody, you know I count all episodes of checking it as special because everybody's special, you know. But listen, this is truly, truly, truly an extra special podcast for me today because I feel like she could be anywhere else in the world, but she is showing up to be with us today. She is trusted with Oprah Winfrey, the Oprah Winfrey now at work,
a woman Evolved. She is a trauma therapist, a minister, a life coach. She has her own podcast called in the Light. But guess what. She's on her way to be in a New York Times bestselling author. Please welcome, She's on her way. She is on her way. We can feel it. Please welcome to Checking In, doctor Anita Phillips.
Hey, Michelle, thank you so much for having me again. It's great to see you.
It is awesome to see you too. I am truly excited for you. You've made a few changes. You and your Friendily, y'all have moved from the East coast. Y'all are in the south, y'all. She might be by coastal, I don't know, but last I heard she is living it up now in Dallas, Texas. May I add you and your husband were pastors, and now you've moved to Dallas, where you are serving in another capacity. Is all of these changes going?
Let me tell you, it's been a lot of change. And not only did. We were senior pastors for eighteen years in Baltimore and then moved to Dallas, and so we're in a completely different space now. My husband is leading Bishop Jake's enterprise organization and I'm doing my work independently. So suddenly ministry is very different. Our lives, our children are out on their own. In the last two years they went out. So it's been a lot of change.
And I have enjoyed all the changes, but sometimes it's a little overwhelming because even when change is good, it still can be challenging, and I think we need to be more honest about that. It can still have as challenges even when it's good, even when we're grateful, it can still.
Yes, my older sister has three children. Her last baby is now on his way to college, so all of her babies are college students. And she just posted on Facebook she's feeling empty already and lonely. And some people are like, girl, this it's time for you to have some you time, and she was like, I don't need to hear that right now. I need to help me process what I'm feeling. She's basically saying, this empty ness syndrome is real.
It's very real. It's having a biological effect on her because our nervous system kind of balances itself out with the people that we spend time with, our bodies that really are connected to and aware of who we're spending time with. And so when your body is comfortable in a space with all these other humans and then suddenly there aren't any, it can feel very jarring. And so it's real. It's not just in our phone unquote in
our heads. It's in your body, it's in your heart, and then it also is in your mind.
Well, I don't think I've ever said this to my mom, and that is Mama. I was ready to go now.
I was ready to when I went, I.
Was ready to go. But I'm not gonna lie. College started about a week or two before Labor Day weekend, so you know that, and you're not in school. Why was home the first place I went back to.
That's a good thing. If that was a safe place for you, you know, then it's like or a safe person. I miss. Yes, our body's prave familiarity. So when we have a place that's safe and our body knows that, it asks for it back. That's why when we moved sometimes it takes a month or two to start to feel that comfort, be able to drive home without thinking about the directions. All of that stuff adds to how
we feel safe. We don't even realize it, and so it can take time to feel safe physically and subconsciously in a new space.
Come on, doctor, Anita, listen. She's talking about a safe place and how we can cultivate a safe place is going to be the question that I asked next. But at the same time, a lot of those questions can and will be answered in your amazing new book called The Garden Within, where the War with your emotions end and your most powerful life, that drops on September eighteenth. I am excited because, y'all, yes, I'm a brag. I got the manuscript right here. I'm not gonna lie. It's
right here. It's right here in my iPad. I have pre read it and guess what I ordered. I pre ordered my copy. You can pre order the copies now, do. Anita Phillips has had an amazing place in my journey beginning in twenty eighteen. You guys have heard me say time and time again that prayer is a weapon, therapy is a strategy, and I always say I got it from doctor Anita Phillips. I am not one that takes people's quotes and not give credit to the person that
coined it. And I literally did buy the T shirt as well. The book The Garden Within. We want to talk about cultivating safe places, but changes that happen neurologically. You talk about the nervous system, you talk about the mind, you talk about the you talk about so many things, but you also bring the Word of God in it at the same time. But can you just share how trauma can sometimes create flowers.
Well, we are designed as gardens. That's how the Creator made us. And so that's why the Bible begins with this meticulous description of how the garden was created, because what we haven't realized is that there is insight into our biological, emotional, psychological, and spiritual makeup based on the garden. So it was like a blueprint was being laid out in the first six days of creation, and then God
made us. We are embodied gardens and the soil is our heart, our emotional life, and that sits in our bodies, and so we have to think about ourselves that way. And trauma is an earthquake. It shakes the soil, and that can change everything.
In the beginning of the book, you share with us things about your family and what even inspired you to go into the mental health space. You so lovingly and with grace and gentleness. You speak to us about your sister, but you share something that happened at the age of six, that there was a devastating moment that planted the seeds for this very book. Can you share briefly what that moment was?
Yeah, so that will We will buy the book.
We will buy the book, Yes you will.
That was the night that I was first awakened by my sister's screams. We were close sister, she was six years older than me. We shared her bedroom, and my sister woke up in the middle of the night just screaming, streaming, and that awakened me. And that was the first time that her symptoms which would eventually tell us the mental illness that she had, came the light and she was seeing demons standing in our bedroom door. And of course I grew up church. You got in Christ, you Penticople,
so you know, a demon is an door. My parents came running from to the same oil. We're gonna get the oil. We're going to rebuke this. And I have no problem with that because the devil was real and demonic activity is an issue, but it is not always the only issue, or the central issue, or the initiating issue. So I don't say that to say it's not real. The spirit of Roma is not real because I embraced my faith, it's as much as I embraced my profession.
But what happened was, over time, my sister continued to have those what we found out were hallucinations, and the prayer and the rebuking of the enemy was not doing it. So we knew it had to be something distinct because if it was the enemy, if it was the devil, he'd a big cast out of our house. I can tell you that it wouldn't have it wouldn't have stood.
And so as time passed, it just spirals my sister's symptoms that were and now this is the early eighties, so we didn't understand mental illness in the early eighties. There was no conversation my parents weren't being like religious and rejecting it. It wasn't on the table in the early eighties. We just didn't know and mentally became addicted to drugs, and then that stole decades of her life in itself. And so unfortunately she passed away young, late forties.
And even though she we thank god, in the last seven years of her life she got clean, she had married. She really lived a beautiful life. We were built a lot of our relationship. But I still see untreated mental illness as the cause of my sister's death. She didn't die by suicide, but untreated mental illness stole so much of her physical health and body that her body lastly just broke down because of the drug youth, which was
a response to the mental illness. So often we're just looking at the addiction, but the addiction is just an infection in a wound. The wound was the untreated mental illness. And so even once the addiction was cleared, it had been someone stands to her body and the mental illness still needed to be treated. And so I don't say I used to say mental illness killed my sister, but I'm now careful to say untreated mental illness killed my sister because when we get treatment, we can.
Live hand raised as someone who understands the importance of treating mental illness. Now, I'm like you as far as in the eighties, Well, for me, even being in school in the nineties, I didn't know that there was even a word called depression. Right, We heard of things like AIDS, cancer. I don't even say loupis only because my aunt had it.
Right, it had to happen to somebody, you knew. We weren't having all these different health conversations. Like I said, the HIV conversation was huge, You're right, but we didn't know about mental of them.
It was huge. Or because even being in middle school, when I can trace back symptoms of depression and anxiety, we even heard about STDs. But when mental illness was talked about, it was called well, you know she crazy, right, you know he's crazy where you know your granddaddy was.
And Jay emotional. They just need to get theirself together. It's not being so emotional, you know. That was the blame, is that emotions were the problem. That's one of the reasons why I'm talking about emotions so much, because a lot of the stigma that's attached to mental illness really starts with a stigma attached to emotion. We believe emotions are bad, We believe emotion makes us weak. We believe emotions or something we can we should be controlling in
our everyday lives. And so then if someone has depression or anxiety disorder, that's emotion on steroids. So now it's even more of a stigma. So I really think changing the way we see emotions will eventually change the way we see mental illness. HM.
Well, speaking of that, you definitely link cutting edge scientific inquiry and scriptures ancient use of gardens to reveal what it means to truly truly flourish. Can you share a bit about how you came across these ideas and how you link them.
Yeah, you know, it was a leap of faith in a way. I in my very first neuroscience class, way back when I was a PhD student, I saw a picture of a neurons for the first time, and it looked just like a seedling, like a plant, And I was so struck by it that I thought, am I just gonna let this go by as a coincidence, or do I really believe in the God of my Sunday school stories, because if I do, then God must have
done this on purpose. What is he trying to teach us about our minds by having neurons look like it? And I decided, what if I really just take a leap of faith here and believe that their spiritual significance to this parallel. And so I went down the rabbit
hole and found out it was significant. And even now I always say science is catching up with scripture because in recent years we are learning more and more about how much we are like plants, down to the fact that plants actually communicate with each other through their roots
by sending chemicals across the soil. Our neurons communicate with each other through their branches by sending chemicals between the spaces and plants you saw the same chemicals dopamine, serotonin they are actually using in some of their communication patterns. And so you can talk that up to what you want. But I talk it up to a creator who left me very clear information, even though he knew we wouldn't see it until the twentieth centy. Yes, here it is.
And so if my neurons, what comprises my mind is based on a plant, then where's the soil. The soil is the heart. You can't understand a plant without understanding where it's plant hid. It's called a plant like it's defined by where's planet is. And so we love to talk about the mind, but if plants are meant to teach us about our mind, then we have to look at where the plant is planted. If we're going to be like trees planted by rivers of living water. If
we are planted, we have to know. And the Bible tells us that the soil is the heart. And so that's why I started researching coming to understand emotion, because if our hearts are that valuable to God that he would plant us in that emotion and faith, then we have this. We might have it wrong how we see emotions. We're not seeing emotion the way that God does.
So we're not seeing emotions the way that God sees emotions. We're taught that have any emotions is a bad thing.
Yep, we're taught there's something we have to control, manage, repress, separate, and that's just the emotional pain. Because everybody's fine with feeling good, but the emotional pain. We have come to believe one that it is a product of the mind, that is a product of thinking. But how can a plant create soil? How it doesn't work that way. It
doesn't work that way. And so when Jesus told us the parable the sower in Matthew chapter thirteen, he tells us the heart is the soil, the fruit is our behavior, the seed is the words that we believe. And we know from that neuron that the plant is the mind. And so anytime we're worried about where we're what our thinking is doing, I always want to ask, how are you feeling? Because it is the emotional pain in our
hearts that drives that are painful. And then we try and wrestle with the thought instead of being honest about the feeling. And so if we work on healing our hearts, we can often quiet our minds.
Come on, you posted something. I'm being present, but as you're speaking, it's making me go to your Instagram page as we speak to look up something you posted the other day. It was so beautiful. I actually went and looked up the artists because I was like, I want that piece of art. When you said your hearts was
never meant to be a battlefield. Your heart is a garden and the artist Sarah Alama's I believe I don't know see I think, oh sorry, Okay, so the heart and then she has these beautiful flowers and the ventricles of the heart. But when you're talking about the heart and distance, you're not actually talking about the thing that's beating in us.
I'm talking about both because our biological heart is actually a part of our emotional experience. Is amazing. So yeah, I am talking about our emotions and that also talking about our heart.
Yeah, no, I know that. But when people I just wanted information to be clear. Listen, I'm just gonna be honest. When you talk about the mind and the brain, almos two different things. So I don't want no one to get intwisted. Are you meaning the heart that? Yes, the heart? How can I articulate this the heart that's beating in you? Okay, yes, we get that. Because when you are anxious your heart, you can have physical symptoms and your heart flutters. When
you're in love, your heart might skip a beat. When you're sad, maybe it slows down a little bit, or you just feel that heavy so that.
It can actually slow down a little bit. And you do feel that heapiness, and it can even change shape in a way that can kill you. There's an actual medical condition called broken heart syndrome tackles people syndrome where the breath hormones rush to the heart under that kind of pressure in grief and change the shape of the heart, and it has been known to cause heart attacks and kill people. But what you're saying is true when because I often make sure people understand, the mind and the
brain are not exactly the same thing. They overlap, but they're not the same. And it's the same thing with our hearts. Our hearts and our emotional lives are not exactly the same thing, but they are connected because our emotions begin in our body, in our autonomic nervous system outside of our wareness, and then that system sends that information to our heart like a router almost, and it
sends the information to the brain. And so the heart is very much involved in communicating emotional information from your body, yes, brain, and so they are overlapped.
Even in the book you even tell us it's reminding me of we'd be trying to disconnect, yes, from the emotions, and because we don't want to feel that pain in the heart. We don't want to feel that.
We don't want to feel that stomach turning, we don't want to feel that breath, you know, changing all the things that happens when we are emotional pain. So we disconnect from that, and by doing that, we disconnect from our bodies. That's so dangerous.
It is so dangerous. But you are on a mission to help reverse the effects of that, especially trauma, and so I'm thankful. I'm really excited for everybody to get And I got to say it right, I missed a word. It is called the garden within, where the war with your emotions ends and your most powerful life begins.
Indeed, that's where it starts.
Yes, yes, I miss that word begins. And I'm really excited. Now I'm gonna tease my listeners as your book helps us to resolve the battle between heart and mind once and for all, and you help to identify personal pain and trauma. I wish people would admit that, hey, it is trauma. And I always say respectfully, trauma isn't always blood and guts on the ground. Trauma could be how it made you feel when you saw your parents go to physical blows. How did that it's for sure you
weren't able to get over that feeling. What's a tool you can share with us to start us in the right direction when you talk about cultivate a unique inner garden.
Yeah, so where trauma is concerned, it's important for people to realize that trauma is an event that overwhelms your body, your nervous system's capacity to cope. It changes how your autonomic nervous system is working. It can put you in a state of hyper vigilance, a fight or flight, unresolved stress responses. It's not in your mind. It's not even just a feeling that we make it sound like our mind's creating feelings. It's a biological fit. And so that's
why triggers are not something we do on purpose. These things are all happening outside of our conscious awareness and our conscious control. And so when it comes to cultivating your inner garden, that soil of your heart has been shaken like an earthquake. And so we want to begin to repair what has happened in our bodies. And we do that and foremost by finding safe basis for ourselves.
And we started out talking about that, and the safest place I want there to be in your life is inside your body, where inside of you you can cultivate peace. And that starts with making my body safe, breathing exercises, not spending time with costic people who cause my nervous systems alarms to go off. Please please sleep. There are so many things because we don't trust our bodies. We've been taught not to trust them. I want you to
start trusting your body. When your body says, hey, this isn't a safe place for me, you're like, well, maybe that's just my trauma. Well maybe it is, but that don't mean you're wrong.
Wait a matter, No I mean you're wrong, does not mean you're wrong. And that even means sometimes y'all have to get her because she she ain't tell you don't go to the family reunion. She ain't telling you not to have relationship with family members. But trust how you are made to feel. Especially if you try to have a conversation with someone, you try to create a safe
space and their response isn't so safe. Well, then you you then have to say, you know what I'm gonna I have to almost love you from afar.
Sometimes that's true, isn't.
Just what black folks will, We'll be like, I'm best family. That is your brother. You gotta make it right on. That's your mother. She brought you in this world and she can take you out.
I think that black folks definitely have a strong instansis on the family unit, right, and many other people of color, And that's beautiful about us. But sometimes we go a little too far and demand that people suffer traumatic experiences as a result of genetic connection. And I am not required to be traumatized because we have a genetic connection
and so boundaries are required. But at the same time, I want to encourage people to do their trauma therapy work, especially when it comes to thematic practices, embr thematic experiencing, because those things help to remove the visual effects of trauma from your nervous system. And I've done a lot of my own trauma work. You'll say, I'm not just a I'm not just a president. I'm a member. Remember the hairclub guy, He's rights a president. I'm a member.
I've done the trauma work, and over the years, as I engage that work, when I would go home to visit family, I would have less physical responses to the space. There was a time where there was so much trauma from that space for me. When I would lead home from visiting, nothing bad might have happened, but my body still would feel tense. But there may come a time when you don't have the same reaction in their presence because of the trauma work that you're able to do.
And so then you also the boundaries as needed. You can move them closer or further as needed on your journey.
So when you are doing the work, it is left up to you, but you are saying that it is possible that you, once you do the work, you can go into those spaces again and not feel.
I GUESSCT Yeah. Sometimes absolutely, this is not a life denting.
It's so good.
Trauma's not a life dentsing.
Doctor Nita Phillips is actually she told me about EMDR towards the end of twenty eighteen, and I was okay with therapy, but there were certain techniques that I didn't know about, or certain techniques that I was like, wait a minute, is this going to take me into a different spiritual realm? Is this gonna be you know? And there are times I've done EMDR and I felt like
I could fly. There was a freedom that came because there were certain lies that I believed, and I will never forget having awakening in a therapy session once saying, oh my gosh, that was a lie.
I was, y'all.
Probably I got up and I said, that was a lie. Y'all. I felt like I could fly. I felt like I could jump on go in the building and have some wings. And I was like, Okay, don't do that. You don't, don't. You don't want to do that, because it's gonna be a different type of ending. Don't do that. And then there are moments of e M d R. Eye movement, resensitive.
Movement, desensitization and reprocessing. Yes, yes, Dr.
I'm glad we got the doctor in the building because I said, resense, it's decent. And there was a time I felt maybe low, some regret or something. And then this one session I had a couple months ago, Doctor Phillips, I let out a cry and well, I feel like it came from the pit of my belly butt where the umbilical court used to be like. And I think therapists sometimes even feel like I cannot hug my client. But my therapist came and consoled the little girl.
Yes, good for her good good for her because the little girl is who was traumatized and being able to get back there and let her let that cry out.
Yes, any chance I get you, guys, I think doctor Anita Phillips to her face on the phone or through text, because since then that's a technique that I've used. Em dr. It must be with us licensed practitioner who the safe. The space is safe because you might cry, you might laugh, you might get up and dance. I don't know what your response is gonna be, but it must be with someone safe and someone licensed to do what you do.
You found a beautiful bridge to connecting church with therapy, and you have shared your emotional pain is not mutually exclusive with your spiritual power. Jesus taught us that holding the pain doesn't make our faith stronger. It weakens us physically, mentally and spiritually. Keep it real. That's what Jesus did. So the question is how much as a culture do you feel that we as a culture have to unlearn holding in trauma?
One hundred percent. We have brought culture to church. The culture around us says emotion is bad. The mind is where your power is. Change the way you think you'll change everything, but honey, it's heal the heart and you'll change everything. Jesus never held in a painful emotion. We see him crying, we see him mad, we see him afraid in the garden of Ysemone, begging God for a break. I mean Jesus never repented, which means no emotion is wrong,
because Jesus never said sorry. And so I think we really need to pay close attention to that example and then look back and see that every time Jesus expressed a painful emotion through his words, through tears, through his body expressions, spiritual power showed up quickly. After that, he cried at Lazarusum and he raised them from the dead.
He flipped tables at the temple with anger, and then he healed people from diseases, rying in Goosemite begging God to let him off the hook, and then walks out of Goodsemite and says, I am he and soldiers are knocked off their feet by the power of his voice. So every time Jesus allowed his emotional pain to flow out of him, spiritual power followed. And so there's a connection between my emotion and my spirit. And if we would stop trying not to break down, we might have more breaking through.
Come on, Okay, wait now, in this interview, you have vacillated between therapists and co and a powerhouse preacher.
Y'all.
She preaches across this world, and some recent sermons have been at the Potter's house. I want to know how has that been or as far as seeing churches people of faith embrace mental health being talked about in the pulpit.
I'm not gonna start crying, but I could. It is everything because my sister might be alive if we had this. And I asked God to give me the chance to be a voice in this movement, and why he said yes, I don't know, but I'm so grateful that this is the message, these are the sermons, This is the book that my family needed. Yeah, and every other family can now have. It's not just about illness. It's about how
to be well. It's about how to live your spiritual life in full power with your heart and your mind and your body. It's everything we were created to be. This is the definition of an abundant life, god suitful garden. Yes, I'm so grateful to have been a part of this shift in the body of Christ. It means everything to me.
Well, we certainly thank you so much for your yes. People don't understand the cost just saying yes, you know there is a cost.
Yes, there is a cost.
To living in purpose. I was, you know, thinking this morning. I don't know if I was having an out of body experience, a grad I don't know what it was, but I was like, I am a living being, walking and sharing, and I think I was getting fearful of assignment. But so much breakthrough is attached to when we are walking in purpose and doing what God wants us to do and speaking of purpose and walking and talking and teaching. You will be at the Woman Evolve conference this year.
Yeah, I'm so excited. We're just move September fourteenth or sixteenth. It's going to be incredible.
We are excited. And the com conference is kind of on the eve or the week of your book release, and we are so excited. I'm going to be their honey, oh yay bells, bring in. My older sister is gonna come with me, And I'm so excited. I'm just so excited, y'all. Please please please the garden within. Yes, there are people who have inflicted pain on us and I've heard the same over and over and over again. We're not responsible for that, but we are responsible for the healing part.
Yeah. Yeah, we're not responsible for what happened to us, but we're responsible for healing.
Are responsible.
No one's going to do it but you. No one can do it for you, but you.
You say, your most powerful life begins, y'all, Your most powerful life can begin when we do the hard work. Somebody said, choose your heart.
Yeah, for sure, choose your heart. And now do.
You want to live in healing or continually in the fruit of dysfunction? That's hard, That's got to be hard. I refuse, Yeah, I refuse. Well, sister, I'm excited. I'm excited y'all. The book The Garden Within, where the war with your emotions ends in your most powerful life begins. You, guys, I promise you you want to get the book. There are just certain details I'm not sharing because I want y'all to read it. And y'all have been good about
your pre orders. You guys send us DMS or all kind of messages holding up your book saying you got the book because of checking in. You've got the book. So let it be that. Because of checking in. We are going to add to those numbers. She didn't ask me to say this, but this message has to be. This message has to get out there, authentic, fruitful and powerful doctor Phillips.
Thank you, thank you for having me.
Wasn't this powerful, Doctor Nita Phillips is a force I hope you felt empowered. And we're so forceful with the healing topic because this is what she said off air. Sometimes you don't know how sick you've been until you get well. Sometimes you don't know how sick you've been until you get healed. And so I just encourage people do the work of healing. Cultivating environment in your home and on your job of safety, cultivating environment of healing.
Maybe plants, good soothing music, even what we put in our bodies, drinking more water, you know, watching the conversations that we have with people, Do people bring you life or do they bring you mess? Do people bring you life or do they bring just anxiety and foolishness and shenanigans. Yes, we love a good key key. Now I'm not saying not to key key with your friends. But if the majority of the conversations are not life giving, I don't know.
I think, check your surroundings, check your surroundings. I want every listener of Checking In to have amazing testimonies about their healing journeys. You know what I mean. And if you have never dealt with trauma, abuse, betrayal, neglect, abandonment, broken relationships, you probably won't understand. And that's okay. I
love that testimony for you too. You know, there are some people who could say, honestly have had be beautiful childhood's parents who were able to love on you because of the love that maybe they received from their parents or the love that they get from God that continuously fills them up. And that's what I want for all of us. Maybe you didn't get the love from both of your parents growing up, but press into the one and only God who can fill you up with his love.
Because once you get filled up with love, then that is what you will give to other people. Is love, all right, That's what God is. God is love. I'm so thankful for y'all. I'm so thankful for this journey with all of you. Guys. Again, make sure you get doctor Anita Phillips's new book. I'm really excited about it. I got the pleasure of writing an endorsement for her book, and Sarah Jakes Roberts has done the forwards to her books.
So I'm excited to be in a good company. All right, Okay, everybody, I love of you, Bye bye. Checking In with Michelle Williams is a production of iHeartRadio and The Black Effect. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.