Pastoral Authenticity

Angie Andrews has crossed state lines and country borders to study family and human behavior in hopes of healing her own complex trauma. Without fear of using her own stories and experiences to highlight the topics that most choose to deny, her journey of healing has been shared with many in hopes to break the chains of secrecy over others. Addressing issues of her own abandonment and feeling unwanted, she forged research on in-utero rejection by freelancing as a special needs therapist in the “hoods” of Baltimore and Savannah. The emotional suffering of teens that she witnessed as a result of neglect and abuse, inspired her to start a youth group among her black students who were going home to crack houses. The scope of intervention swept into strip clubs and she began ministering to prostitutes and orphans who all suffered from the same depravity she had known, shame. Shame was the enemy to her spirit, the culprit to all symptomatic behavior that plagued both herself and the youth that she eventually fostered under her own roof. Volunteering with ministries unveiled the misconceptions that most hold against humanity; belief that addictions, psychological disorders or broken relationships are the lack of faith or will-power to change, but Angie found those manifestations to be a result of abuse and un-wantedness in the womb.

It didn’t feel good when someone from church said that she was choosing to sin and needed to be reminded of what she did wrong in order to make a positive choice instead. All of the girls she took in had trauma in their childhoods just like she did, but nobody addressed how to get to the bottom of bad behavior without fearing punishment over some kind of sin. The modalities of therapy she studied in college and the prayer approaches learned at seminary, didn’t prepare her for the myriad of problems that clients were bringing in regard to polarized viewpoints and problematic patterns that plagued their lives. It was her eventual study through the IFS Institute, where Ms. Andrews learned about the many parts that fuel behavior, and her approach to therapy shifted. Coupling Christianity with counseling through “parts” work, equipped her to understand that coping mechanisms are symptoms of emotional pain that need to be understood instead of negated, silenced or abstained from.

The emotions that surface in each of us just need to be understood for the “part” they play in protecting the other emotional parts, much like a family would. To the degree of dysfunction a client has experienced in life, the more coping mechanisms each “part” utilizes to cooperate or disrupt how the family gets along. Her own internal family system, began to listen to why parts acted out in fury and judgment toward itself if she made a mistake and the healing process naturally embraced acceptance and love to change instead of the performance people said would do so.

Angie now helps educate church groups to stop deeming people a certain way based on their behavior because they aren’t defined by their sin. A murderer isn’t just that, he could still be a believer but had a hateful part react out of a place of fear that was attached to a childhood memory. Instead of judging the “hateful part” as bad, we would spend time getting to know its positive intention and how it was trying to protect the person, why did it believe murder was necessary? Once understanding is felt, the part accepts the God given role it had before the trauma, and the reactive response is exchanged for balance with a positive quality. Her role as an IFS Practitioner is to remind the faithful that we have different sides to a story and that each one should be heard for reconciliation to be made inside the system. Inside a family of origin, a church family or an internal one, each system longs for all parts to be welcomed before they can feel wanted.

Satisfying the soul is the common denominator in every task she takes on, affording her the ability to explain topics that cross socio-economic, race, cultural and religious demographics. Psychologically speaking, she shares about the things that few talk about. Therapeutically, she counsels the curious types who are burnt out on religion in hopes to redeem their actions that mask deep need.

Seeking truth is at my core and I will stop at nothing in order to gain understanding behind the functionality of every circumstance, need it be a relationship in the past or present.  Fundamentally, how I have done anything points to how I see everything, with a chance to be redeemed and for the integration of use.  If I were to apply the many different facets of my personality to any one subject, I would have a mini script of sarcasm racing through my mind just so I can beat everyone else to the punchline of pointing out the pitfalls.  I have had a lot of naysayers swoop in to tell me that unconventional approaches waste time even though they have catapulted me into success behind business scenes as well as integral therapy modalities. I candidly share my journey of facing spiritual giants in the religious, medical, business and political worlds because emotional empathy is the missing piece they need.

I see myself as an innovative Pastoral Counselor because my foundational belief that we are all spiritual beings, trickles into every decision I make.  Having done extensive study on behavior through both college coursework and ministerial research, I have written enough notes in journals to stand as tall as I am.  Being a teacher, writer, journalist, preacher, prophet, speaker, dancer, designer, leader, entrepreneur, advocate, athlete and coach, pale in comparison to my identity first being defined as God's child.  

Spiritual Counseling

Two people can witness the same traumatic incident but perceive it differently based on anxieties, fears or events lived prior to that moment.  An effective pastoral counselor will be able to emotionally empower her clients to connect to the brain pathways that feel stuck, in order for personal leadership to limit outside opinions.