WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Tori Hope Petersen: Breaking the Patterns That Break You

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

In Breaking the Patterns That Break You, bestselling author Tori Hope Petersen shares the profound ways she finally found relief and healing from the pain of her past, and how you can too. Tori gently shows you why it's important to recognize the destructive personal, relational, and generational patterns in your life so you can finally find freedom. She joins WRFH to discuss.From 02/17/25.

You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. This is Erica Kaiba, and I'm here interviewing Tori Hope Peterson, who is actually a Hillsdale alum and author of Fostered, which came out in 2022, which you may know her for. It's her story of growing up in the foster care system and overcoming numerous odds and how her relationship with God developed through all of that. And most recently, author of Breaking the Patterns that Break You, which came out this year.

How are you doing, Mrs. Peterson? Thank you so much for joining us. I'm doing so well. Happy to be here with you. Thank you for having me. It's great to have you. And so I thought it would be really great if before we started talking about the book, to start with your story. Because in the introduction, what you say is that breaking the patterns that break you reveals the other side of Fostered. So whereas Fostered was a story of triumph and God's grace and how he carried you through some really difficult moments, breaking the the patterns that break you is about healing and the painful side of that and how you overcame that. So what would you like to share with the audience just to give them some background on who you are, what you faced, and what led you to write this book? Yeah. So I first went to the foster care

system when I was first old and then was read with my mom, went back into the foster care system again when I was 12 and I aged out when I was 18, but by the grace of God, came to, came to faith when I was 17 years old and that really began to transform me and heal parts of me. I was taken in and adopted by my track coach and under his training, became a five-time state champion in track. And so I tell that story in Fostered. And I said that Fostered is like this mountain top book. You know, it shows how I overcame, but there were still a lot of things left unsaid. And I think that that was the valleys and the hard parts. And I think that they were left unsaid because I just didn't know if I was ready to tell them. There were a lot of people who reached out. They're like, man, I wish you

would have talked a lot more about your healing. But I didn't quite feel like I was on the other side of my healing. And still to this very day, I feel like it's a journey that healing is, it's, I'm journeying. And I wanted to, and that's why I wrote the book, because I think there are a lot of self-help Christian books where it feels like you're being spoken at, you know, by a speaker from a stage, pointing down at you, telling you how you need to do better. And I wanted to write a book that felt like I was walking hand in hand with people saying, I'm in it with you, figuring it out with you. And here's some things that I've learned and let's learn them together. that actually brings me to my next question, which is about how we change our perspective on healing.

Because as you mentioned, in the self-help world, we see a lot of this perspective on healing as trying to get back to a place like we've never been hurt or like we've never been wounded. But then what you address in chapter two of the book, Lie 2 is Love Like You've Never Been Hurt. You kind of turn that around and make the case that actually God uses our wounds so that we can help people who have been or who are in the same place as we were. So could you say more about that? I mean, how do we go about changing our perspective on how we see healing, especially in the modern culture? Yeah, I think that oftentimes we look at healing and we're like, once I get to this point, then I'm going to be healed. And then we'll have, you know,

a reaction that is an ideal or will be hurt in a way that we didn't expect. And then we beat ourselves up. We're like, oh, I'm not healed. I'm not there yet. And I think that healing actually requires us to be gentle with ourselves. Gentleness is the fruit of the spirit. And I think it's required not just for the people that we love, but it's required for ourselves. And I think when we see healing, you know, as it's a journey and we accept, you know, that there are going to be the valleys. There are going to be the type the days that we trip up or we take five steps forward and then two steps back. And we don't see that as detrimental to our healing, but we just see it as a part of the journey. It actually allows us to heal more because we're not constantly looking at that one thing or those two

things that we must become to heal. We're just accepting where we're at. Yeah. And what you said about being honest about the Valley is the book was extremely raw and honest about so many experiences that you've had. And I wanted to ask, what did it take to be so open and vulnerable about those experiences that you described in the book? So I think that people ask me about this a lot, this vulnerability thing. And I think part of it is, I've kind of been forced to be vulnerable. And so sometimes it doesn't feel like vulnerability. When people ask me, hey, you know, like very typical questions that we ask each other, like, do you have siblings? I have to say, yeah, Yeah, yeah, I have siblings in this family and siblings in that family because I grew up in foster care.

And then people say, oh, why did you grow up in foster care? And then instantly, you know, it's this, I have to be more vulnerable than what typically people would usually be to just talk about my life. And so I think there's something there that I had to start being vulnerable at such a young age just to talk about the things that everyone else was talking about, just to talk about my family, just to talk about my everything. just to talk about my everyday life in the capacity that everybody else was. And I think having the opportunity to do that and be in spaces where there were some spaces where it would make people uncomfortable. People sometimes don't know how to react to experiences of foster care or trauma. But the more spaces that I was in where my story was being accepted, I think the more

I began to feel comfortable in just sharing it. And then the more I told my story, the more I would hear people, maybe they didn't grow up in foster care, but they also had a very traumatic childhood. Or they also made a lot of mistakes. And we're trying to figure out how to navigate those. And me telling my story or me being vulnerable, I noticed was helping other people. And so it's become easier because I've seen that there's good that comes out of it. The worst parts of our lives, God can redeem if we're willing to open up about it. it. Yeah, just to push more on the question of vulnerability, though, because in Lie 3, the book is divided into 18 lies that can compromise our healing, lie three talks about is that you have to be vulnerable always. And so it kind of gets into it's okay to guard your heart and that if you don't feel comfortable, you don't have to share everything with someone. But then on the flip side, Lie 13 was a lot about what you were just talking about just now with the lies that

you're not ready yet. Well, actually, we should be open and share. sharing our wounds because of this redeeming power that they can have and how God can use them. How do you recommend that people balance those two precepts, being able to boldly share their stories and find healing and also help other people, but without putting themselves in emotionally precarious situation? Yeah. So I think I would remove the word balance and I would replace it with the word discern. I think that we have to discern when to open ourselves up and when not to open ourselves

up. You know, scripture does tell us to guard our heart for everything that we do flows from it. And I, from a young age, when I was a young adult, would really put myself in very risky, dangerous situations. Part of the reason the book is titled Breaking the Patterns that Break You is because I learned from psychological research. So you asked me before we got on here what I studied when I went to Hillsdale. And I majored in Christian Studies, minored in psychology. And I really, really always loved psychology theory. I found it very interesting. And one of the things that I learned in psychological research is that those who grow up in dysfunction are four times more likely to enter into dysfunction. And that is because, you know, people maybe hear that and they're like,

oh, yeah, that's really obvious. But it's really not obvious to the people who do it. And for me, I knew that I wanted something different from my own family. I didn't want to enter into dysfunction. But I realized that I didn't anyway because the research shows that people do this because it's where their brains find comfort. And that's usually because it's what they've always known. These patterns, they're very subtle. They function our lives under the surface because they're what we've always known. They're what we're used to. And so for me and for many other people who have grown up with traumatic backgrounds, they're entering into these chaotic, dysfunctional, often risky, and harmful situations. And I was saying, oh, this is me being vulnerable. Like this is what vulnerability is. Yes, Lewis,

says to love is to be vulnerable. I wanted to love well. I wanted to be like Jesus. So I was just saying, oh, this is just vulnerability when really it was me not recognizing my harmful patterns and my dysfunction. And I had to recognize it and realize that there are some places that I can be open and honest and put myself out there. But then there are other places where it is wise for us to discern and guard our hearts with prudence and wisdom. What's a way that we can get to that place of prudence when we're approaching these vulnerable and potentially dangerous relationships? Because in that part of the book, I remember that you had this really interesting discussion

about how as Christians we want to show kindness and love as much as possible like you were just talking about, but that in some cases, as you were just saying, sometimes what we think is love or what we call love is actually a propelled. of our own trauma. So if somebody's staying in an abusive relationship, but they're thinking about it in terms of Christian principles, like, well, I want to love this person and show up for them. How should a person who has suffered trauma navigate a difficult relationship or a friendship and discern whether that's something to distance themselves from or whether it's worth staying in? Yeah. So like you said, we can sometimes use the word of God to put us in places that God would

never put us in. And so I think it's very important to go to the Word of God. Like I was, I was using the Word of God, but I wasn't using it in context. I didn't understand scripture and how to actually read it. And so I think going to the Word of God and understanding it in its context, like when you read a letter asking in the Bible, asking who was this written for? You know, when was this written? Why was it written? Who was it written by? That affects what the, what those, you know, verses actually mean. And I think sometimes we read scripture and we just apply it to ourselves in our current modern day life.

And that's not always the way that it should be interpreted. And so I think going to scripture and understanding what it says is really, in context is really important. Because when I started to do that, I started to understand that God would not want me to be abused. God would not want me to be in these dysfunctional, unhealthy relationships. and that God is safe and he intends for his people to be put in safe places. Yeah, absolutely.

What are some examples of verses that you think most often get taken out of context and that you really want to point listeners back to the original truth and what they were written for and what the purpose was? Yeah, so there's a scripture in John, and we hear this a lot, especially in evangelical spaces, more of God, less of me. And when I interpreted that scripture for the first time, I thought, yes, more of God, like look to him and less of me, make myself less, make myself smaller, I need to get rid of myself, I'm bad. And I interpreted that through the lens of my trauma because growing up in foster care, you know, I had a file and it labeled me that I was a bad kid. I was hard to place. I was troubled. And so when I heard that that scripture or that idea of more of God less of me, I thought, okay, this is just affirming the things. is that were said when I was in the foster care system or that I believed when I was in the foster care system. When we read that in context, what we see is that John is baptizing people

and people are looking to John and they believe that he is the Messiah. And John is saying, no, like look to God, not to me. Like he, he's the Messiah, not me. And it's not that he was not, but he kept doing, he kept baptizing people. He kept doing what God had intended him to do. He kept fulfilling his calling, he just was pointing to God. And so I think now one of the, I say in the book, I talk about scripts and sometimes something that can help us, you know, with these lies in our lives is replacing maybe the misconception or the misunderstanding with a different script. And so instead of saying more of God, less of me, I say more of God, more of who God has created me to be. More of God, less of me, theologically correct. We can see it right there in scripture,

but it can be misinterpreted and misunderstood. And I think that we can re-referpreted and misunderstood. And I think that we can reword things to help us better understand them through the lens of our own background. So out of the 18 lies that are addressed in the book, if you had to pick a couple, so say the top three that you think are the most destructive and the most pervasive that you want to dismantle for listeners and for readers, what would those be? We'll go with the first one. It's the first one for a reason. and the first lie is that self-love is selfish.

And this is very controversial in Christian spaces that we can't love ourselves if we love ourselves that is sinful. But in Genesis, we see that it says that God looked at everything that he made and he called it good. And so we can believe that God did a good job making us. God did a good job making you. He did a good job making me. He calls us good. And that's because we're made in his image.

And so I think that we don't need to love our flesh. We don't need to love our sin. But we can love who God has created us to be. We can embrace who God's created us to be. And when we do that, we recognize our gifts. We walk out the God-given callings that he has given us. And when we try to lessen ourselves or lesson who God has created us to be, we're actually dishonoring his creation.

We're dishonoring what he has created and dishonoring who he's made us to. be. And so I think that is the first lie is the most important, I believe. That's why I put it there, because I think it's foundational. When we believe that we can love who God's created us to be, and we don't have to hate ourselves. There are a lot of Christians who get self-hatred mixed up with humility. We self-hate and we loathe, and then we call it humility. And humility is simply agreeing with who God says we are, nothing more and nothing less. So as readers go through the process of reading about these lies and figuring out which ones perhaps have most have a hold over their lives, do you recommend that they look for someone to walk with them in that journey? And if so, what should that person look like? Should it be a trusted friend? Should it be more of a religious mentor?

Or do you recommend perhaps even someone with a professional training to help them, such as a therapist? Oh yeah, 100%. I definitely think that in the last. chapter I talk about, I think one of the biggest indicators of healing is being able to let other people in. And I think, you know, it depends where they're at and who they need. I definitely think everybody, we all need somebody. We need to live in community. Being in community, walking our lives with people, I think is one of the top healers that we often don't consider as much as we should. And so, yes. But I think when it comes to who, I think that's determined by, you know, where they're at. And so I think there have been times when I most definitely needed

a therapist to begin to understand the trauma that I went through as a kid and how to navigate that. And then there have other, there have been other times when my community has been most beneficial to me because what they've shown me is they've shown me how to love. They've shown me that I'm capable of being loved when I didn't believe that I was lovable. And they've stuck by me. And yeah, I think also I would say mentors, mentors are really important. One of the things that I think has been invaluable to me is just having people who went ahead of me. And I would say, you know, when you're looking for a mentor, you want someone whose life looks like how you would want your life to look. And so my mentor, I have a few, but I'd say the most, the mentors who've had

probably the biggest impact on my life are in ministry in some way and they're also moms because those are the two biggest parts of my life and they're good moms. And they love their community. They love their kids. And they love the church. And I look to them because, because those are all things that I want. And then when you have a mentor, well, I should say start, I should start here first. If you're looking for a mentor, you know, in our generation, we say like DTR to find the relationship. Like the same thing is true. When we're talking about mentorship, go up to someone and ask them, can you be my mentor? I need someone to walk with me and like define the relationship. Can we meet once a week or can we meet once a month? Try to figure out what is

doable for them, what's doable for you, and set expectations. And then once that's done, once you have a mentor, one of the questions that I have found so helpful to ask is what do you see in me that I don't see in myself? And I think if you can let people answer that question for you and not get defensive, there's a lot of growth that can happen there. And if we're coming from the opposite perspective, so somebody who wants to help someone who's gone through trauma and overcome their hurt and stop believing the lies that are described in the book, where do we start with that and how do we meet people where they are? Yeah. Well, I think when we are aiming to help people who have experienced hard things,

I think it's important to first recognize we've all been through something that has affected us in our relationships and the way that we interact with people in some capacity. And so I would say it's like the scripture, you know, looking at the plank in your eye before you take out the spec and someone else's just, and maybe it's not a plank that you have, but maybe just taking inventory for yourself so that you can enter into the relationship the best way possible and have so much as much to offer as possible. We know that we pour in what's put in. And so we must know where we stand. And the second thing I would say is, you know, if you are wanting to help someone who is struggling is just to be a good listener. I think that the people who have helped me, the most, they've just listened really well. Sometimes they haven't always necessarily had the right words to say or they haven't had anything to say, but they've listened and they've been there.

And I think, you know, right, people need, people need a lot less advice. And they just, people need people. And so if you can just be there, sometimes we don't realize how big of a difference that actually makes in someone else's life. And finally, I wanted to close with the concept of forgiveness, which is something that can be very difficult on its own. But then how to navigate that, especially in the context of, well, lie 12 in the book is that to love always means. to stay. And I think sometimes Christians can get caught in the trap of thinking that, I mean, like we discussed earlier, you have to stay in this potentially abusive or very harmful situation in order to show Christian love or to fully forgive someone. But can you walk us through what it

truly means to forgive someone while setting healthy and appropriate boundaries at the same time? Yeah. I've had to, I love the conversation of forgiveness because I've had to learn how to forgive and it's been hard. And I think that one of the things that I wish people would have told me sooner is that forgiveness, it's not always a one-time thing. Sometimes you have to forgive over and over and over again, and that's okay. And another thing is, so we talked about scripts, and I have scripts, like I said, for almost everything.

And one of my scripts for forgiveness is that if I do not forgive, then my transgressor, the person who's hurt me, they control me. And so maybe I can see a car that looks like theirs, or maybe I can be reminded of them. And, you know, I feel that ping of hurt again or I feel triggered again. And, you know, that's what unforgiveness does. It keeps a hold of us. And it really keeps us in this, it's like this prison. It's this jail. But when we forgive, what happens is forgiveness is like this key that we have and it opens, it opens the prison for, around the inside, and it allows us to walk out, and it allows us to be set free. So, yeah, I think if there's anyone that's struggling with forgiveness, I would just urge you

to remember that it is because Christ forgives you that you can extend forgiveness, and it is that forgiveness that sets us free. So would you say when it comes to forgiveness, I think it can be easy to conflate with an emotional state, because, like you said, sometimes, like you see a car or something, and it reminds you of the person and you have this perhaps an angry or sad emotional reaction that's hard to get over. But then, like you said, forgiveness is a decision. So, I mean, how do you know that you've come to a place where you've forgiven a person, especially when perhaps your emotions are reacting a certain way in a way that you can't control? Sorry, does that question make sense?

Yeah. Well, I do think that emotions are part of it. I do think that if you are, you know, continually being, you know, reminded and hurt and upset by those things that remind you of the hurt or the pain or the person, there probably is something deeper that needs to be looked at. You know, there are questions that need to be asked, and there's probably forgiveness that needs to take place. And I think that's what unforgiveness does, right? Like, it controls our emotions. It controls the way we feel towards the person and towards our sense. self. It often puts lies in our head about people and ourselves. And when we forgive, I think we can say, you know, forgive them God, for they do not know what they've done. And we can also see ourselves

in a right light. Like, we can realize for me, one of the reasons I've been able to forgive is because I know that I haven't been perfect either. Like, I've hurt people too and I've needed forgiveness. And so when I'm looking at someone who's maybe hurt me and I say, you know, I've needed forgiveness too. And so I'm going to forgive you rather than you don't deserve to be forgiven or I'm just still so angry at you. I think those are indicators that we, you know, we haven't forgiven. And finally, where can people get the book? Yeah, you can get the book anywhere. Books are sold. If you have a local Barnes & Noble in Barnes & Noble stores, it's also in Target stores, or you can just get it online. Anywhere books are sold, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, all the places.

This has been Torrey Hope Peterson, author of Breaking the Patterns, that break you on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Thank you again so much for joining us, Mrs. Peterson. Thank you.