YouSaid · the spoken record

Dr. Anita Phillips

lines on the record: 59
first: 2023-11-15
most recent: 2023-11-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“They're like hunger pangs. When we feel hungry, we know we need food. When we feel sadness, it's actually indicating a need for connection. When we're angry, it's usually because something that we value has been treated as less than and we need that value restored. And when we're afraid, we need safety. And so emotional pain is like a hunger pang for connection, for value, for safety. And humans need those things to survive. But we have been taught that our emotions are in the way. They're slowing me down for my goals. We're putting it aside. And so it's like we're running the marathon of our life without feeding our needs. And that's why so many people achieve their goals, but are emotionally empty.”
2023-11-15 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Anita Phillips · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For the soil, because when I looked at that neuron, that's a little plant. My heart says, God, where's it planted? You know, because that's what matters for a plant where it's planted. So neurons are the building block of the mind. But God showed me in Scripture that that plant is in the soil of the heart. And so I had to begin to look at the relationship between our emotions and our thoughts. And it's not the relationship that many of us have believed. We believe the lie that our thoughts create our feelings, but they do not. It is our feelings that water our thoughts. Our thoughts come from the soil of our hearts. And so that's a very different way of understanding ourselves. But Neurobiology is bearing it out. The scripture has been saying it all along.”
2023-11-15 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Anita Phillips · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. So early as a grad student, when I took my first neuroscience class. I saw a picture of a neuron for the first time and I was blown away by how much it looked like a seedling. Like I'm Googling, seedling, neuron, and aligning them. And they look so much alike. And then I started hearing scriptures that I'd known forever. You'll be like a tree planted by streams of water. And God will plant you in good land and you'll be like a watered garden. Isaiah 58, 11. And I thought, oh my goodness, there's billions of these tiny plants that we call neurons Planted all over the inside of us, God must have done this on purpose. The Creator had somehow.”
2023-11-15 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Anita Phillips · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I wanted to understand what had gone wrong, what had happened, first my own trauma, because when I realized it was still in my body, even in my early 20s. I hadn't known the word trauma before that, but something's happening here, and I was just starting my career as a mental health professional at that time. But also there was a nagging question. I remember my mom once saying, I know something's wrong with Valerie that we don't understand, but I still want to know what my Bible says about it. We had such a deep need to explain things spiritually as well. So I wanted to do both. So I became a trauma therapist, but I also went into ministry and worked really hard and God was good to have those things intersect for me. Can you explain?”
2023-11-15 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Anita Phillips · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Dealing with that all the time, exactly. So, as long as I wasn't in trouble, you know, it was like everything's fine, but I felt a little lost. I felt alone. And so that was its own form of trauma.”
2023-11-15 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Anita Phillips · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Completely, all of those things. First of all, the terror of her waking up like that was traumatizing for me. I didn't sleep with the door open until I was in my 20s. Because if I woke up and saw an open door in the dark, immediately my body would go into a panic. So there was that level of trauma. Then yes, I was the good kid. I was the kid who got the grades, who did the things, who got the awards. And so it was like I'm proof that the family's not a mess. There's a good kid here. But then also feeling unseen, that there wasn't enough emotional energy to go around. And so very often I feel parents.”
2023-11-15 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Anita Phillips · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That it was a spiritual attack, so somehow the devil is tormenting her. And then as she got older and began to act out and run away from home, it was just rebellion. And so then she'd be harshly punished for acting out, not realizing that she was schizophrenic and bipolar. And so she would have manic episodes, but we didn't know what it was. And then she got addicted to drugs, which really was a form of self-medication. And we lost her to the streets for three decades. Heroin addiction. on the streets. And finally, thank goodness she did get clean at the end of her life last seven years of her life. She was able to get off drugs, get treatment for her mental illness, get married, reunite with us as a family, and unfortunately had 47. She closed her eyes. Her body was so broken from those years on the streets. She had a heart attack and died when she was 47. And so even though she didn't die by suicide, I consider untreated mental illness my sister's cause of death because it stole decades.”
2023-11-15 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Anita Phillips · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No language wasn't my parents saying, oh, we believe in God and not mental illness. On the list of options, it wasn't there. We had no idea.”
2023-11-15 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Anita Phillips · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm a trauma therapist, but I'm also a third generation pastor's kid. Grew up in a very religious family and had an older sister who developed the symptoms of a serious mental illness when we were very young. She's about 11 or 12 years old. I was about six years old. Woke up in the middle of the night, one night just screaming with her eyes wide open, staring at our bedroom door, and she said there was a demon standing there. Like I said, I'm a pastor's kid, old school black church. So I figured we rebuke that and we'll deal with it. My parents will come soon and everything's going to be okay. But a few nights later, again and a few weeks later again. And so it came clear that there was something else going on. But it's the early 80s, so we had no idea about mental illness.”
2023-11-15 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Anita Phillips · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source