Elisha's Space: Counseling and Authentic Conversations on Healing

What happens when the doctor becomes the patient — and the diagnosis is PTSD?

Dr. Ronda Wells is a physician, author, and woman of faith who has spent her career caring for others. But after a traumatic hospitalization — one of 16 surgeries in her lifetime — she found herself on the other side of the exam table, facing a diagnosis she never expected: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

In this episode, Dr. Wells opens up about what it was like to not be heard by the very system she dedicated her life to. She shares how creative writing became her lifeline, why putting pen to paper can unlock healing that goes beyond talk therapy, and the childhood trauma she's only now finding the courage to explore in a memoir about her mother.

We also go deep into:

• The history of PTSD — from "shell shock" to "battle fatigue" to what we understand today
• Why shame keeps so many of us silent, and what breaks that cycle
• The moment she screamed "I will not yield" during a spiritual attack — and what happened next
• How faith, scripture, and the Psalms carried her when medicine couldn't
• Why "hope is always there," even when you can't feel it yet

Whether you're carrying your own trauma quietly, you've been told to just get over it, or you're searching for healing that goes beyond the clinical — this conversation is for you.

📖 Find Dr. Wells' books: rondawellsbooks.com 🩺 For authors seeking medical accuracy: novelmalpractice.com 📚 Look for: The Christmas Cherub (available now) and Harvest of Hope (releasing June 2026)

💛 If this episode spoke to you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. You never know whose healing starts with pressing play.

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Women in the Bible have been misrepresented for centuries — and it's time to set the record straight. In this powerful episode of Elisha's Space, counselor and host Elisha sits down with author Jamie Hulker to explore God's true design for women through Bible teaching, biblical history, and the stories the church often overlooks.

Jamie's book "Esteemed: God in His View of Women" unpacks how scripture — from Genesis to the New Testament — reveals that women were never an afterthought. Together, we dive into:

📖 The Huldah story — the woman God chose to authenticate His Word and spark an entire nation's revival 📖 Mary Magdalene — why the "prostitute" label was a 6th-century distortion, not biblical truth 📖 Genesis 1:26-28 — what "image of God" really means for women's identity in Christ 📖 The Blessed Alliance — how God designed men and women to co-labor, not compete 📖 Church hurt and healing — reclaiming your God-given identity after spiritual distortion

Whether you've experienced church hurt, questioned your role as a woman of faith, or simply want a deeper Bible study on women in scripture, this conversation will challenge what you thought you knew.

🔗 Get Jamie's Book & 8-Week Bible Study: 👉 "Esteemed: God in His View of Women" by Jamie Hulker — Amazon.com: Esteemed: God and His View of Women: 9781646458776: Hulker, Jamie B.: Books 👉 Jamie's Website — Jamie Hulker: Here for You

📌 More from Elisha's Space: 🔔 Subscribe for weekly conversations on faith, trauma recovery, and mental health 🎙️ New episodes every week + LIVE streams every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday 💛 Follow on Instagram & Facebook: @elishasleecounselor @elishasspace

✝️ Scriptures Referenced: • Genesis 1:26-28 • 2 Kings 22 (Huldah) • Hebrews 11 • Luke 24 / John 20 (Mary Magdalene & the Resurrection)

#WomenInTheBible #BibleStudy #BibleTeaching #ChristianFaith #BiblicalHistory #ChurchHurt #WomenOfFaith #GodViewOfWomen #TraumaRecovery #ElishasSpace

We often think that staying quiet keeps the peace. But what if that silence is actually keeping your nervous system in a state of high alert?

In this episode of Elisha's Space, I sit down with clinical psychologist and author Dr. Chloe Carmichael to explore a question most of us have never thought to ask: Is my self-censorship driving my anxiety?

Dr. Carmichael, author of Can I Say That? Why Free Speech Matters and How to Use It Fearlessly, shares how she discovered that speaking freely actually improved her cognitive clarity, emotional equilibrium, and the authenticity of her relationships — and why staying silent does the opposite.

In this episode, we discuss:

🔹 The hidden link between self-censorship and chronic anxiety

🔹 Why "words are violence" may be one of the most disempowering beliefs of our time

🔹 The suppression → repression → denial pipeline and how it hijacks your nervous system

🔹 The difference between self-censorship and healthy self-restraint

🔹 How people-pleasing and passive aggression quietly destroy your relationships

🔹 Why naming your emotions calms the amygdala

🔹 Practical steps to start speaking your truth — even when it's uncomfortable

Dr. Carmichael's exercises to try this week:

✏️ Journal what you've been holding back — pen to paper, talk-to-text, or art journaling

🗣️ Narrate your experience to someone you've been censoring yourself around

🪞 Role-play a difficult conversation with a trusted friend before having the real one

Your challenge: Don't stay silent. Use your voice. And if this episode helped you, rate the show, leave a review, and tell us one thing you're going to stop being afraid to say.

📖 Get Dr. Carmichael's book: Can I Say That? — available on Amazon

🌐 Connect with Dr. Carmichael: freespeechtoday.com

Until next time — be brave, be authentic, and take up space. 🕊️

Tags/Keywords: self-censorship, anxiety, mental health, nervous system regulation, people-pleasing, freedom of expression, Dr. Chloe Carmichael, Can I Say That, authentic communication, trauma recovery, emotional resilience

In this powerful episode of Elisha's Space, I sit down with award-winning writer and musician Janna Herron to talk about her journey through depression, PTSD, anorexia, and multiple suicide attempts — and how God's grace met her in the darkest places of her life.

Janna is the author of Transforming Tears (2019) and her newest book, Brokenness Restored: The Path to Recovery is a Healing Journey (2026). She has been published through the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and serves as an Ending the Silence presenter for suicide prevention. Her mission is to use her gifts in writing and music to bring God glory, and she's working toward launching a Christian nonprofit for mental health resources.

In this conversation, we explore: 🕊️ How God reveals His light through our darkest seasons 💔 The spiritual and emotional war behind eating disorders 🙏 Why mental illness doesn't disqualify you from God's restoration 📖 Biblical truths that anchored Janna's healing journey 💪 What recovery really looks like — the messy middle and all

This episode is for everyone who has ever felt too broken to be loved, too ashamed to ask for help, or too far gone for faith to reach. You are not alone, and your healing journey is possible.

⚠️ Content Advisory: This episode discusses depression, eating disorders, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts. Please take care of yourself as you listen.

🆘 If you or someone you know is in crisis: 📞 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988 💬 Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741

📚 GET JANNA'S BOOK: Brokenness Restored: The Path to Recovery is a Healing Journey  https://www.amazon.com/Brokenness-Restored-Recovery-Healing-Journey/dp/B0GGCWH2FM

🔗 CONNECT WITH JANNA: Website: https://www.jannaherron.com/

Instagram: @author_janna_herron

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/A-Lifetime-of-Stories/100090436806855/

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/janna-herron-921227188

🔗 CONNECT WITH ELISHA: 🌐 Restoring You Christian Counseling | Catonsville, MD📱 Follow Elisha's Space: Elisha's Space🎙️ Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite platform so you never miss an episode!

What happens to a family’s emotional health when tragedy strikes without warning? In this episode of “Health Goes Beyond the Individual to the Whole Family,” Elisha sits down with author and speaker Karen Whiting to share the deeply personal story of how her family walked through the sudden loss of her son‑in‑law — and how faith, family, and practical support carried them through an unthinkable season of grief. 💔

With gentle honesty and a Christ-centered perspective, Karen describes the day everything changed, her granddaughter discovering her father, and the shock waves that moved through their entire family system. Together, Elisha and Karen explore how traditional family support — grandparents, extended relatives, and a committed church community — became a lifeline for nervous system regulation, daily functioning, and long-term family healing after loss.

You’ll hear:

• How Karen’s family navigated sudden loss and early grief while still showing up for one another
• Practical ways families can support grieving children and teens in faith-based, trauma-informed ways
• How routines, presence, and consistent check-ins can protect family emotional health
• What it looks like to lean on God for hope after loss while still honoring the reality of sorrow
• Why health is never just individual — and how grief recovery is often a whole-family journey

This episode is for anyone seeking Christian grief counseling wisdom, faith-based grief support, or guidance on comforting grieving loved ones after sudden loss. If you’ve ever wondered how a family can stay “stronger together” in crisis, Karen’s story offers both validation and biblical hope. 🌿

If this conversation encourages you, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend or family member who is walking through grief. You don’t have to do this alone — there is real support, real hope, and real healing available for you and your family. 💜

How do you pray when you are completely numb? How do you trust God when you have been suffering for 20 years? In this powerful episode of Elisha's Space, we sit down with author Laura Edge to discuss the reality of walking through a long-term medical crisis and surviving a heart transplant.

For over two decades, Laura lived with heart disease while trying to raise her children and maintain a "normal" life. But as her health declined, she had to learn a harder lesson: how to let go. Laura opens up about the spiritual battle of chronic illness—trusting God when you are at the absolute end of your strength, and the humility required to let Christian brothers and sisters carry your burden for you.

If you are currently in a season where reading the Bible feels impossible and your hope is running low, this conversation offers a gentle reminder that God is working in your heart, even when you can’t feel it.

In this episode, we cover:

• 🕊️ The Long Wait: Navigating 20+ years of heart disease and the journey to a transplant.
• 🙏 Spiritual Dryness: How to read the Bible and pray when you simply don't "feel like it."
• 🤝 Community: The importance of letting others help carry your heavy burdens.
• 💪 Renewed Strength: Finding encouragement in the middle of your own crisis.

Laura Edge is an author and survivor who uses her second chance at life to encourage others walking through dark valleys.🌐 Connect with Laura:

Heart of the Matter: A Journey to Faith

Website

For the mom whose world changed the day she lost her child—this episode is for you.
Whether your loss was recent or decades ago, through miscarriage, stillbirth, illness, accident, or sudden tragedy, your grief is real, your love is holy, and you are not alone.

In this gentle, slow-paced episode, counselor and host Elisha holds space for the kind of grief that doesn’t have words. You’ll be lovingly guided through validation, comfort, and a few simple practices to help your nervous system breathe again—without rushing your healing or minimizing your pain.

In this episode, we explore:

• The lie that you “should be over it by now” and why grief has no expiration date
• How your love for your child continues, even after loss
• A simple “heart-holding” breathing practice you can do anytime the waves of grief hit
• Gentle ways to honor your child’s memory through ritual, story, and everyday life
• Why it’s okay to laugh, smile, or have a good day—and why that doesn’t mean you’re forgetting

This is a sanctuary episode: no pressure, no fixing, no spiritual bypassing—just compassionate presence for your heart, your story, and your body.

If today is a hard day—an anniversary, a birthday, a due date, or simply a day where the ache is sharp—please know: there is nothing wrong with you. Your grief is a measure of your love.

If you are in immediate emotional crisis, please reach out to a trusted person, counselor, or crisis line in your area. You do not have to carry this alone.

If this episode blesses you:

• Share it with another mom who is grieving
• Leave a rating or review so this sanctuary can reach more hurting hearts
• Subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes on late-in-life healing, somatic faith, and spiritual permission

Keywords: Christian grief, child loss, grieving mother, miscarriage grief, stillbirth, maternal grief, Christian mental health, nervous system and grief, faith and loss, healing after child loss

Feeling wired, anxious, or spiritually drained at the end of the day? This 10-minute Christian nervous system reset is designed to help your body and soul finally exhale. 😌

Close your eyes, breathe slowly, and let a soft, gentle voice guide you into calm using simple breathwork and scripture meditation. This is perfect to play as you’re falling asleep, during moments of overwhelm, or whenever your system feels stuck in fight, flight, or freeze.

In this session, you will:

• Slow your breathing with a simple 4–4–6 pattern to calm your nervous system
• Release tension from your head, neck, shoulders, chest, and body with a gentle body scan
• Meditate on Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my shepherd… I lack nothing”)
• Receive reminders that you are safe, held, and deeply loved by God
• End in a place of deep rest, anchored in the peace of Jesus

You don’t have to “do” anything right or pray perfect prayers. Just listen, breathe, and allow God’s presence to meet you where you are.

⏱ Recommended Use:

• Play this at night as you fall asleep
• Use it during anxious spikes, panic, or emotional overload
• Add it to a bedtime or quiet-time routine for consistent nervous system regulation

🕊 Scriptures Included:

• Psalm 23 – The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing
• John 14:27 (paraphrased) – “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give you.”
• 1 John 4:18 (paraphrased) – “Perfect love drives out fear.”

If this brought you peace, you can:

• Replay this anytime you need a reset
• Save it to your “Nightly Calm” or “Quiet Time” playlist
• Subscribe to Elisha’s Space for more Christian mental health, trauma-informed support, and guided calm practices

You are not alone.
You are not too much.
You are held. 🌿

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What does it look like to invite God into the very places you’d rather avoid—your grief, your trauma, your flashbacks, your church wounds?

In this honest, tender conversation, Elisha sits down with Cassandra Armstrong—US Navy veteran, doctoral student, and author of Growth and Grief and The Grit of Grace—to talk about how God meets us in the middle of our mess, not just our Sunday best.

Together, they explore:

• How Cassandra learned to bring her trauma and military experiences into God’s presence
• What “growth” can realistically look like in the middle of deep grief
• The stigma around therapy in the church & why getting help does not mean you have weak faith
• How suffering can shape spiritual gifts, compassion, and calling
• What it means to hold both faith and flashbacks without shame
• Gentle ways to begin healing in your body, nervous system, and relationship with God

If you’ve ever felt like your pain is “too much,” or worried that needing help makes you “less spiritual,” this episode is a safe space to exhale. You are not a burden, and you are not alone.

About Cassandra Armstrong:
Cassandra is a US Navy veteran, doctoral student, and the author of Growth and Grief and The Grit of Grace. Her work centers on helping people make meaning of their suffering, walk with God through loss, and discover the unexpected gifts that can emerge from grief.

📚 Connect with Cassandra & Her Work:

• Books: Growth and Grief & The Grit of Grace
• Website
• Rooted Podcast

Resources from Elisha:
If this conversation is stirring something in you and you’re wanting gentle, guided support in your own healing journey, Elisha has also authored books for people navigating trauma, anxiety, and depression from a Christian, trauma-informed lens.

📖 Explore Elisha’s Books & Resources:

• Mental Health Handbook
• Mindfulness Biblical Affirmations of Forgiveness and Grace: An Adult Coloring Journey to Peace and Restoration
• Restoring You Christian Counseling

🔔 Stay Connected:

• Subscribe or follow the podcast so you don’t miss future episodes on trauma, the nervous system, and Christian faith
• Share this episode with a friend who’s grieving or healing from church hurt
• Leave a rating or review if this conversation helped you—it really does help others find a safe space, too

You are allowed to bring all of who you are—your grief, your growth, and your questions—into the presence of a God who isn’t afraid of any of it. 💛

What happens when your deepest pain becomes your greatest platform? In this episode, we sit down with Pastor Emily, founder of Redeemed Ministries, to share her powerful testimony of moving from a place of hidden darkness into the light of true freedom.

📚 Get Pastor Emily’s books here: ⁠https://www.amazon.com/author/pastoremily

About This Episode:For years, Pastor Emily wore a mask. To the outside world, she was a "religious Christian," but behind closed doors, she was fighting a silent battle for her life, navigating deep mental struggles, trauma, and the exhaustion of trying to hold it all together.

This conversation isn't just about the diagnosis; it’s about the deliverance. Emily shares the raw reality of what it took to drop the religious performance and truly encounter Jesus. It is a story of how God stepped into the mess and turned a life of "survival" into a ministry of hope. If you have ever felt like your past disqualifies you from a purpose-filled future, this testimony is for you.

In this conversation, we explore:

• The Double Life: The exhaustion of hiding severe pain behind a "church face."
• Religion vs. Relationship: The pivotal moment she stopped following rules and started following Jesus.
• The Turning Point: How she found the strength to surrender her secrets and receive total healing.
• Pain to Platform: Her journey to becoming a voice for the voiceless and helping others find their own freedom.

About the Guest:Pastor Emily is a Certified Trauma-Informed Coach and the founder of Redeemed Ministries, an international cyber ministry dedicated to inner healing. She lives by the powerful motto: “Show me your pain, and I will show you your platform.”

Connect with Elisha's Space:

• Subscribe for more authentic conversations on healing and growth.

#Testimony #ChristianTestimony #InnerHealing #Redemption #FaithOverFear #ElishasSpace #SpiritualGrowth #GodsGrace