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In this unmissable bonus episode, Dr. Alison chats with Carlos Whittaker, best-selling author and podcast host, about his life-changing experience of going screen-free for seven weeks.
Immersing himself in the world of monks and Amish farmers, Carlos took a bold step away from the digital grind to reclaim his sense of connection with God, his community, and himself.
Tune in to discover the profound life lessons Carlos learned from his digital detox, and how you, too, can find the simple joys of human connection in your daily life. You'll leave this episode inspired to make meaningful changes that enhance your connections with those around you!
Resources:
- Reconnected: How 7 Screen-Free Weeks with Monks and Amish Farmers Helped Me Recover the Lost Art of Being Human by Carlos Whittaker
- Other books by Carlos:
- ReconnectedBook.com
- The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis
- The Best of You by Dr. Alison Cook
- Episode 136: Sacred Attachment—Escaping Spiritual Exhaustion and Trusting in Divine Love with Michael John Cusick
If you liked this, you’ll love:
- Episode 36: An Update on My Social Media Detox & How to Create Boundaries With Toxic Distractions, Numbing, & Unhealthy Coping Tactics
Thanks to our sponsors:
- Go to Quince.com/bestofyou for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order!
Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
Transcript:
Alison Cook: Hey everyone. Welcome to this week's bonus episode of The Best of You Podcast. I want to try something new over the next few months. As we've entered into 2025, I've thought a lot about the podcast and where I want to go with it.
I decided I want to bring you some bonus conversations that delve even deeper into some of the topics that resonate with you. So many of you have shared how this podcast has become a bit of a touchstone or a refuge in your week, a space to pause and feel seen and encouraged, and that feedback really means the world to me.
It's why in this new year, I'm committed to offering content that continues to encourage and empower and invite every single one of us on this journey of healing, on this journey of becoming even more of our true selves in God.
There's never been a time where that is more important for each and every one of us where we stay focused on this work of inviting God into every single part of who we are, so that we continue to grow and heal and become wise and radiate that goodness and wisdom and strength into the world around us.
Today, we're going to dive into a unique spin on this idea of a digital detox. Most of us struggle with our phones, with our screens, how to help our kids with their phones and their screens. There's no surprise that that's a hot topic in many bestselling books and in the media, but today's guest has a unique spin on the topic that really meant a lot to me.
I really enjoyed his new book, and I wanted to have him on the podcast to talk about this experiment that he did. The book is called Reconnected and it's by Carlos Whittaker. Carlos is a new friend of mine. Though I've followed him on Instagram for a while now, along with his Instafamilia, I read his new book over the Christmas holiday.
I was actually sick. We were on a family ski vacation, and while I was stuck inside the lodge, unable to join my family on the slopes, I read this book, and it really spoke to me. We'll get into more of why it's a unique spin on this topic in today's episode. But let me read you the subtitle because it'll give you a great teaser of how unique this project is.
The subtitle of Reconnected is “How 7 Screen-Free Weeks with Monks and Amish Farmers Helped Me Recover the Lost Art of Being Human”. I really loved it. What I find so compelling about the book is that it's not about trying to convince us to get off our phones or spend less time on the screens, or even give us sort of practical steps on how to do those things.
Instead, Carlos is drawing us into a story that creates a longing for something more–for a richer, deeper way of life that we tend to forget, or at least set aside, because the screens are so compelling and quickly draw us in. Back in Episode 136, I talked about the power of imagination with Michael Cusick and how envisioning a different life or a better way of being can catalyze real change in our own current circumstances.
Carlos's book really helped do that for me in this realm of thinking about technology and screens. It helped me re-imagine what life beyond screens can look like.
If you're not familiar with Carlos Whittaker, he's an author, a speaker, and a storyteller who has built his career creating authentic, meaningful moments, both online and in person. You may have come across him during the pandemic. That's when I came across his work, when he became a source of wisdom, humor, and grace-filled conversations about some of the hard issues we are all navigating.
Carlos has an incredible gift for drawing people in and talking about difficult topics in a way that's both hopeful and encouraging. He's the author of several books, including the bestselling Kill the Spider and Enter Wild. His latest book, Reconnected, is a USA Today bestseller that takes readers on a journey through seven weeks without screens of any kind.
In our conversation today, Carlos shares the story behind this bold experiment. I loved his answer when I asked him at the very end of the episode, what was it like for you to come back online after these seven weeks away?
There's a lot of really, really great gems in this episode today. I'm so excited to bring you my conversation with Carlos Whittaker.
***
Alison Cook: Carlos. I came across your work in 2020 when we were all in the pandemic, on our phones, on Instagram. I really loved what you were doing. I have a very complicated relationship with social media.
To this day, you're creating authentic, beautiful moments. So this is what you do. This is your livelihood. It's your vocation, it seems like you enjoy it. There's a joy about it, which is why I like following you. It doesn't feel forced. And then even you have this moment where you're like, I am here seven hours of every day. I have to do something. Something has to change. Tell us about that.
Carlos: Yeah. Yeah. It is so weird whenever anybody asks me, what do you do for a living? I can say I'm an author because I have written a lot of books and I'm a speaker and I talk about my books, but what I really do every day is I look at my phone and talk to it.
And then I hit send and it whooshes off somewhere and lands on some server somewhere that sends it to this guy and then to everyone else's phones. Like you said, I love this kind of accidental career path that I've landed on, where I talk to people every day.
2020 was probably the year for me that my Instagram really exploded and people started coming to listen. I was talking about a lot of hard things that we were going through. I tried to talk about those things in grace-filled ways.
I felt like people could find a new friend, like I've got this kind of, I don't know, I haven't ever been able to pinpoint this, but people trust me very quickly, they rapidly come to trust me, and then I'm their buddy. Like oh, Carlos is my friend. So if I meet someone in a book line that follows me on Instagram, they will literally look at their friend and go, so this is my friend Carlos.
And then they catch themselves saying that and they're like, I know we've never met and you don't know me, but you're my friend. So all of that to say, yes, I love it and I love that and I love everything that social media and screens have allowed me to do.
So 2020 happens and we're all really on it. Everyone's got a podcast, everybody's doing Insta lives. We're all there. 2021, I'm doing it more and more. And then it was early 2022 when I got that notification that comes across my screen that we all get on Sundays, unless you turned it off. I learned recently that you can turn that off.
But it said that I was averaging seven hours and 23 minutes a day on my screen, on my phone. I was sitting in church. I remember being like, ooh, what? I'd seen that number many times, but for some reason in that moment I was like, wait a second. How many hours am I awake? Let me do a little bit of math.
So I started doing my math, which I'm not very good at, but that kind of equaled 49 hours a week. I was like, whoa. That's two full awake and sleepy times that I'm staring at this thing. Then I kept doing the math. It was close to a hundred days a year. Then I was like, if I live to be 80 something, I'll lose 12 years or I can't remember how many years of my life, and that was when I said, I have to do something.
No matter how much I love doing social media, no matter how much good I see happening and there's been so much good that has happened on my account, this can not go on. There's no way I was created as a human with some semblance of a soul in me to do this.
It became the journey of what am I going to do? I read a phone detox book and I read all these things. I started putting rules in place and I set up screen times. None of it worked. I was like, I'm going to have to go all in. I asked anyone that's tried to fix it with all the little things that we try to fix it with, how's it going?
And nobody has figured it out yet. So I was like, that's it. I'm going rogue. I'm going completely offline for two months. And it was a few days short of two months. I did not look at a screen for almost seven and a half weeks. I didn't look at an Apple watch, an iPhone, a laptop, a TV, nothing. I didn't consume anything.
I lived with monks and I lived with Amish farmers and I got my brain scanned by a neurologist before and after. I said, I'm going to make this a thing. And so it became a thing. That's where the book you're reading, Reconnected: How 7 Screen-Free Weeks with Monks and Amish Farmers Helped Me Recover the Lost Art of Being Human, came from.
Alison Cook: Okay. There’s so much that I love here. You are a storyteller and I love how you turned this experiment into a story about how God works with us. It's like there's a nudge–something's got to give, something's got to change, and then the storyteller creates a story about it.
It's such a good book and it draws you in with the story. The other thing that is really beautiful, and I want to get into this, Carlos, is it really becomes about what you experienced in these two places, and we forget about the devices.
Carlos: Yeah, I'm so grateful you even said that, because that's what I'm trying to tell people that maybe don't know about the book or aren’t interested– this isn't even about a phone. It is for three days out of 7.5 weeks, and then day four to the end, it wasn't even about that.
There's already so much good data and research done on what phones are doing to us. I didn't need to write that book. What it quickly turned into is not why phones are bad, but why it's so beautiful on the other side. Yes, that is where the stories in this book aren't necessarily teaching us how to not be on our phone.
They're reminding us of all these beautiful things that we used to do before the phones. Now, because I'm doing those things, I'm on my phone less. I literally haven't set up any rules. I don't have screen time on my phone. I've fallen back in love with all the things I learned at the monastery, all the things I learned with the Amish.
Once you taste what life is like, once you taste that goodness, once you taste a good steak, you don't want to have the sizzler steak anymore. You're like, oh, why would I want to go do that? So yes, I'm glad that you felt that because I tried to write a book that wasn't shaming people into getting off their phones. It was more about making people excited about what's on the other side of them.
Alison Cook: A hundred percent. That is what I was so drawn into. Again, that word longing. There was a longing. Oh, I want this. This is so good. It's not, “I don't need my phone”. I was thinking back to things I used to do as a kid.
I live now back in Wyoming, which is where I grew up. It's very rural and I'll try to explain to my young adult kids the joy of cruising Main. And they cannot understand it, Carlos. They're like, why? I'm like, we didn't have phones. We couldn't text each other. We didn't know where people were. So we had to drive up and down to find people.
And you were delighted when you found people and you pulled over and you had this impromptu get-together. They just don't get it. So I was thinking about all those things, and that was not what you were talking about, but it was reminding me.
So let's talk about it. Start with the Benedictine months. You get dropped off for two weeks. Tell us a little bit about what that was like.
Carlos: So I'm on my way there. I'm flying there. I'm in the car with my friend Brian, I'd already gotten my brain scanned, and so now I'm actually starting to feel as we're getting closer, literal physical symptoms of anxiety. My heart was palpitating. I was like, oh my God, am I having a heart attack? What's happening?
The closer I got, the more I couldn't swallow. I get there and they lead me up to father Patrick. He leads me up to my tiny little hermitage at the top of the hill, overlooking the monastery. My friend Brian helps me with my bags and I'll never forget. We go back down and he gets in my car. He takes my phone and takes my backpack, takes my laptop, takes out everything and he’s like, all right, dude I'll see you in two weeks.
I was like, what? And then he left me and I still haven't felt this feeling since that moment. I don't know what the feeling is, it's the, “you're dropped off on a deserted island and someone drives away and you have no way of getting off of it”. So then all of these massive realizations start hitting me.
Immediately, within two minutes, I reach into my pocket to grab my phone and it's not there. I go back up to my little hermitage and so begins the worst three days of the whole experiment. Those first three days were terrifying. They were lonely. The Benedictines spent a lot of time in silence. I was actually spending the first three days, about 23 hours of my 24 hours, in silence.
I know introverts hear about this and introverts are like, oh, I would love to spend 23 hours that way. But I don't know that you would, except for maybe if you're a monk that's really called into that. I had a lot of physical manifestations, like heart palpitations, night sweats, I couldn't sleep, I was tossing and turning, tightness in my chest, and it was rough those first few days.
I thought I was actually getting sick, like I thought I was getting the flu. Come to find out, after talking to my doctor when I got back, I was coming off of this drug and detoxing. So those first few days of detoxing from what I was consuming on my phone screen were horrible, but then it was day four.
I'll never forget, Alison, waking up, because for three days it felt like, the only way I can describe it is like if anyone has asthma that's listening to your show and you can feel an asthma attack coming on, and then you can't breathe for a minute but then you take a hit of the inhaler and then suddenly you go from not being able to breathe to whoa.
And day four felt like I took a hit of an inhaler and I could breathe for the first time. It felt like an elephant stepped off my chest. It was the realization of, wait a second, this is maybe how we were meant to be. This, the way I'm breathing, the deepness, the stillness, the slowness, all of these things, the way these Benedictines are living, it took a few days, but when I finally got there, oh my goodness, I got there, and it was an incredible few weeks.
Alison Cook: That's amazing. It reminds me when you describe it a little bit of The Last Battle, the last book in the Narnia series by C. S. Lewis. If you've never read it, it's one of the most beautiful metaphors for what it's like to step into what we were meant for. We have so many bad cliches for heaven or eternity, but it's stepping into what we were meant for.
It's stepping out of this thing that we don't even realize is holding us back. When you go through that door, what you were describing, it's, whoa, this is the water in which I was meant to swim.
Carlos: Yes. I use the asthma example because literally when I moved to Nashville, Tennessee, I don't know, 15 years ago, I never had asthma in my life and we moved to middle Tennessee, I'll never forget, my wife after a few weeks was like, hey babe, you're wheezing every night. You're wheezing.
I was like, what do you mean? I feel fine. I'm not wheezing. She's like no, it sounds like you're not breathing. I was like, I'm fine. She says, go to an allergist. So I went to an allergist. I've been living here for a month now, but he had me blow into a tube and he's like, yeah, man, you're only using 60 percent of your lung capacity.
I was like, what? And he goes, yeah, the problem is, you're so used to it. You don't even know you're not breathing. So then he gave me an inhaler and after that first hit, I went from 60 to 100, and it was that narnia feeling you're talking about.
It was like, this is breathing. Oh, wait a second. I didn't even know I was suffocating before.
Alison Cook: Amazing. So you step into it then for these next two weeks, and you talk in the book about solitude and wonder. I loved that wrestling. Give us some highlights of some of that new awareness.
Carlos: Yes. I was living them. The first really cool realization that happened a few days in was I was sitting in the chapel. You would pray with the monk six times a day. It was a lot of chanting in Latin and a lot of praying very slowly. Those first few days, actually, I was really bored.
I was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe they do this every day. I began to wonder why they do this six times a day. That's weird. I remember when I thought that, I tried to pull my phone out and Google it. All of a sudden I was hit with this realization–oh, I guess I'm going to have to wonder. This is weird.
Wait a second. Maybe God created us to not know everything. Maybe we're supposed to wonder as much as we're supposed to know. When I tried to pull out my phone, which wasn't there, the Benedictines were having this time of grand silence. So they have 14 straight hours where you can't talk.
This was during the grand silence, so I couldn't even ask one of the monks why they do this six times a day. I was stuck wondering. So that began seven weeks of me wondering about a lot.
Alison Cook: It was so relatable how quick we are to punch questions into our phones. Now we have ChatGPT, so it's even more instant.
Carlos: I know, I call Google the wonder killer, because what happens is when we're in a group, you're at lunch and someone's like, oh man, I wonder what…everyone pulls their phones out and your wondering is killed within half a second. For me, wondering became this thing that was annoying at the beginning, but then it almost became like a spiritual discipline.
It became this thing that I loved to do, because wondering led me to wonder. The wondering and wonder are two different things. I'm talking about wondering, not knowing, and having to think and question. And then wonder, the grandness of awe.
Those two are so closely connected, but people have lost their awe and wonder, because we know too much. We were never created, I believe, to know as much as we know. Wondering and wonder was one of the first things that I got reacquainted with.
It's funny because when I got back from this experiment, I did two weeks with the monks, two weeks with the Amish, and then three weeks with my family with no screens. Whenever I would have a question, or someone would have a question, and someone would pull their phone out, I was like no. I don't want to know the answer. I want to wonder.
Now it's funny because my kids, if I pull my phone out to answer a question or something, my kids are always like, nope, dad, we're going to wonder. We're not going to know. Wondering and savoring is slowly becoming a lost art. We get everything so quickly. There's Amazon Prime Now, which means you get it within two hours to your front door.
We take our coffee to go. Everything is rushed and I think, oh, what I got to experience with the slowness of living with these monks, is I got to savor. I was drinking Dunkin Donuts coffee. I talk about this in the book, the breakfast blend. I'm, I consider myself a coffee connoisseur. I know the best pour over coffee in Nashville, Tennessee.
I know the baristas. My palate is refined for coffee. But my Dunkin Donuts breakfast blend tasted better than any cup of coffee I'd ever had in Nashville, Tennessee. Why? Because I was moving slow enough to actually really taste it. I didn't have Twitter on my phone as I was scrolling and drinking my coffee.
No, I was drinking my coffee. Savoring is something that we've lost. It's another lost art of being human. When I was with the Benedictines, I didn't have my phone to look down to as I was walking the campus, as I was walking the Abbey grounds.
I would see things and notice things that if I had my phone in my pocket, I never would have. I don't know if I shared this in the book. It's in the documentary, but at one point I noticed a little hummingbird that had fallen from a tree and I actually spent three days nursing this baby hummingbird back to health.
I would go feed the little hummingbird and then I was waiting for the mom to come and the mom never came. I thought the hummingbird was going to die. I had this Netflix story that I'd found myself in with this hummingbird. Then the mom comes down and rescues the hummingbird.
I had three days with this hummingbird that I never would have had, had I been looking at my phone and not noticed it. You can ask me this one question, Alison, and I can talk for 60 straight minutes on all of the things that the monks taught me that I was able to get reacquainted with, that I fell back in love with. Now I do those things on purpose, instead of by accident.
Alison Cook: Yeah. I love that. Once you leave the monastery, you go live with an Amish community for two weeks, which is different in the sense that there's a lot of labor. I relate a lot to what you were saying. I come from a line of ranchers who work in the land. My uncle understands weather patterns a hundred times better than weather.com.
You're like, where does this knowledge come from? My family, when we were in Boston, when the pandemic shut everything down, we came to Wyoming to spend a summer. That's where I'm from. We love it here. It's the mountains. Because of the way the world shifted and everything became virtual, we can be here a lot more, but it did remind me a little bit of what you were describing, because culturally, being in a rural, more agrarian culture, it is different.
When we're in Boston, Amazon arrives the same day. It takes four or five days here. There aren't big storehouses nearby. That's a silly example, but it’s real. I want you to share about this Amish community. There's the work, there's the kind of intuitive understanding of the earth, and then I loved this word because it is so true–the visiting.
Carlos: Yes. Visiting.
Alison Cook: Sitting around the table, visiting, tell us about that. You're going to have to read the book to get all the nuance of this–we're getting the highlights–but tell us a little bit about what happened when you joined this Amish community, this farming community.
Carlos: Yes. So by the time I left the monks, I had gotten it down. I was like a semi-pro monk. I was like, put me in, coach. I love this. I didn't wanna leave. I made all these friends. I'd learned to move at God speed, at three miles an hour, this was my new jam. I was contemplative.
And it’s a shock to my system when I get dropped off at LAX, right after I'd spent 14 days in 23 hours a day silence, and there are screens everywhere. I go to the bathroom and there's a screen on the wall. There are screens on the back of the seats on the plane. I'm looking down, like get me to the Amish, get me to the Amish.
I get there and I'm thinking to myself, okay, I'm going to be Monk 2.0. And. Oh my gosh, was I wrong. The Amish go hard. I got to the farm around noon, and at 9 pm, I had not stopped. I talked more in those nine hours than I had the entire two weeks I was with the monks. They were pouring me coffee at 9 p.m. They're drinking coffee.
It doesn't even matter if it's the strongest cup of coffee ever. They work so hard all day that they fall right to sleep. I was so tired. I tell people that it was like moving from a cave to downtown Manhattan, and downtown Manhattan was a four way stop in Mount Hope, Ohio. For these Amish people, the community, the visiting, the talking, the sharing, the stories, it was so a part of their culture.
A few days in, Willis, my Jedi Yoda sheep farmer guy that was training me to be a sheep farmer, he kept saying, okay, so tomorrow's schedule is we're going to get up in the morning and then we're going to go visit this person and then we're going to go visit this person. They love to visit.
I asked him, what's with all the visiting? He says, Carlos, we don't have Facebook. We don't have Instagram, all of the things that you have. This is the only way we know what's happening. We don't have TVs, so this is the way that we know things, and so we love to visit.
They were so hard working. I was so tired every single night when it was time to go to bed. I would put my head in the pillow and I would be drooling within two seconds, I was so tired from the hard work that they would do.
But also I started falling in love with the way they did community and the way they took care of each other. I unlearned a lot of things that I had previously learned incorrectly about the Amish. I had all these assumptions, all these things that I thought about the Amish, like why is it they don't use technology?
Why is it that they don't watch TV or they don't drive cars? I thought maybe they thought it was evil. This was actually so fascinating. One of the biggest things I took from the Amish is, I'm asking Willis one day, what is it about phones or cars or TVs? How do you guys choose what’s not okay?
Because there were some things that they had. They had a generator on their farm, e-bikes. I was like, so you have a generator to charge the e-bike, but you won't have a car? This is weird.
How are you guys making these decisions? He goes, every church community sets up their own rules. There are different orders of Amish.
There are some super conservative, there are some less so. Basically the decision that we make with any piece of technology that comes is we ask this question: Will this piece of technology bring us closer together as a community, or will this piece of technology take us further apart?
When he said that, I started thinking, oh, there's nothing wrong with cars. He says, my daughter, she's Mennonite, she has a car. Sometimes she'll drive me to Cleveland if I need something. But if we all had cars, and Miss Betty's barn burned down, and I was in Cleveland, and Farmer Joe was over here, and we were hundreds of miles apart from each other, we could not come back together to rebuild her barn in 48 hours like we can when we stay close together.
That is why we have made the decision that a car's technology is never going to be. But on an e-bike, we can't get too far away from each other. We’re going to have to come back to charge. So e-bikes are okay. Every decision they make with technology isn't about whether they think the technology is evil.
It's about, is this piece of technology going to take us farther away from where we want to be or closer to each other? And wow, if that wasn't a revolutionary idea for me with every app I put on my phone. Is this going to take me farther away from my community or closer? That was something that I brought back to literally every single decision I make with screens now.
Alison Cook: That's incredible. It's like the spirit of the law. I'm sure it could get dogmatic–anything can, all of us can, but that spirit is a question we could all be asking in our families. If we bring this new thing in, will it draw us together or take us apart?
Carlos: Yes. I mean if I could share one more story about Willis, and again, I need everyone to imagine Carlos who makes a living touching his thumbs to his phone screen, trying to shear a sheep. I'm trying my hardest. We're trying to cut the hay and it rained, and he's like, we can't cut the hay because it's raining.
All of these rules that I don't understand with farming. You talk about their intuition and you talk about being connected to the land. We've been trying for seven days to cut the hay and I'm like, why can't we cut the hay? He says, it can't rain. So it didn't rain for two days and I was like, oh sweet. It's dry enough. We can cut it.
So I walked out super excited, like today's the day we're finally going to cut the hay. I walked out my door and I was like, no, it's going to rain. You can see the rain. It's right there. You can smell it. You can see it. So I walked up to Willis and I was like, man, Willis, another day we're not going to cut the hay. He says, "What do you mean we're not going to cut the hay?"
I was like, it's raining, look, and I pointed at the clouds. He says, no, don't look up at the clouds. Look at your boots. I was like, what? What kind of weird Amish thing is this? Look at your boots. What's on your boots?
I was like, nothing. They're wet. He says, they're wet. He goes, my daddy always told me, and his daddy still lived on the property, that if there's dew on your boots, it's not going to rain. I remember literally laughing out loud when he said that. I was almost embarrassed that I laughed out loud. I was like, oh that may be a good hunch thing, but look at the clouds. They're coming this way.
He says, we're cutting the hay. It's not going to rain. So I was like, this is the craziest thing. Kathy and I, we take off. We're a mile away from the farm and it's dumping on us. It's pouring away. We spent the day at Ed, his son in law's house. It's raining the whole time. We come back, we're a mile away, it's raining. Then, literally I still can't explain this correctly how shocking it was.
We got within, I don't know, three quarters of a mile of his farm. It's dumping rain and then the rain stops and when I say stops, it's not like the cloud moved through and the ground was wet. No, it was dry. The ground was dry. We pull up into his farm and Willis is standing there with his arms crossed smiling at me with that look.
I got out and he looked at me. Sure enough, he cut the hay and it didn't rain. It was this thing, like you said, he's got this relationship with the land. There's something spiritual about that we've lost, because we look at our phone apps all the time and it's wrong half the time.
So anyway, I'd like to share that story because it showed me that maybe I'm not as in tune with my intuition as I need to be.
Alison Cook: Yeah, I love that. It's God's time with the monks, and then on the farm, there's something about being connected with the land. I felt that difference when I came from Boston back to where I grew up, where there's this precision in the city. There's this precision.
Our son got married on a small piece of land out here in Wyoming and we were going to do it outside on the land. We needed to get it hayed, and I remember it’s not a time to get it done, like at two o'clock–it will be done when the conditions are right.
Carlos: Totally.
Alison Cook: I remember feeling in my body this different way of being with the land and nature.
Carlos: What gets thrown away for us city folk is efficiency. It gets thrown out the window. We get so efficient. We want to be so efficient. What I learned is man, there's so much life to be lived on the other side of efficiency.
There's so much wonder on the other side of efficiency. What if every once in a while, we're less efficient and we move a lot slower? Maybe that actually is more efficient. All of these things are going in my head, but yes. I'm in agreement.
Alison Cook: I want to finish out here. One, this is where I want to come back to Carlos. Because I'm dying to know, now you're back. You're back in Nashville. First of all, I love that in this whole conversation, we didn't talk about five steps to not having technology.
I love what you're doing. It's beautiful. You are someone who is using these gifts God has given you, and it's really beautiful. How do you come back into the world that you love? How do you come back and keep some of what you learned?
Carlos: Yes. I’ll let everybody know, it's not like I've not gone back on Instagram. I love it. I'm back with a force. I miss telling stories, I miss all those things–there's a whole documentary about this that I made–more content for screens.
I need people to know, my whole idea isn't why screens are bad. When I came back, first of all, to hold my phone in my hand, when my best friend, Brian, gave it back to me when he picked me up, it felt like it weighed 40 pounds. It felt like an anchor.
It took me another three days before I turned it on. I was like, I can't do it. Then I turned it on and sure enough, ding ding. It sounded like I won the lottery. My phone's going off. This probably can stress some of your listeners out, but I hit select all, and then delete, on all my text messages.
Alison Cook: I love that. Wow.
Carlos: Yeah, if someone needs to get a hold of me really bad, they'll come back to me. So I'm back now. Two years have passed since this all happened and this is what's so cool. There are little things that I set up in my life to help me. But there were no major guardrails that I put up or scaffolding I put up to keep me away from this evil phone.
No, it's really cool. I'm on my phone three hours a day. I literally gained more than half of my life back that I had lost. I went from seven and a half hours a day to three. When I launched a book in September, my screen time was five hours. Like it'll go up, it'll go down. But what's happened again, like you said, what's happened isn't that I’m off my screens.
No, I've actually fallen back in love with living all of these beautiful things. The noticing, the wondering, the getting lost and finding my way. So there are things that now cause me to be on my phone less. I pick it up less because I'm infatuated with living by wondering. I don't look things up anymore. I don't think we were created to know everything that we know.
So a few of the things that have been helpful for me are, for instance, I bought an alarm clock. I now don't charge my phone next to my bed. That's not a big deal, but that probably saves me a whole hour of screen time a day because I'm not in bed scrolling.
This is a fun one, I no longer use Siri or GPS or Google Maps to find my way. I look it up before I leave my house. I look it up, and I write the directions down on a piece of paper. I drive, and my sense of direction is so much better. Yeah, so there are some things that I've done.
But more than anything, I have fallen back in love with, again, the savoring, the wondering, the noticing, the solitude. All of these things that we don't have anymore. I don't want to lose it.
Alison Cook: I love what you're saying. My first solo book, The Best of You, is a book on boundaries. My thesis in the book, Carlos, is that boundaries are less about what you're saying no to, and more about what you're saying yes to, what you're protecting.
This is what you're saying–it wasn't about setting boundaries with my phone. It was, oh my gosh, I want these other things in my life, and that's allowed some boundaries around this. I love that.
Carlos: Yeah. And here's the cool thing–we'll take that yes a step farther. When I was home for those three weeks with my family, at the end of the experiment with no phone, I didn't have a phone, but my family still did. They still had Netflix. They were still TikToking.
When I came home for those three weeks, I did not set up one rule for my family. I was like, you guys keep living your life. If you turn on the TV, I'll walk out, I'll pick up my book. My family's screen time went down 50%.
Alison Cook: Wow.
Carlos: Because I was not on mine. Again, this is not some scientific experiment. The whole thing's not a scientific experiment. This is one man's story, it’s what I did. But again, when I started doing these things, even the people around me were affected. Suddenly there were these boundaries that got set up around my family, and so even my kids screen times are different because of something that I did.
This book can not only impact you and your life, but it really can impact those around you. Because they're going to be like, wow, I never even thought of that. I want to wonder a little bit more too. So be that person at the party, whenever you listen to this, when somebody has a question and someone pulls their phone out, you be the guy or the girl that goes, nope, we're not going to look it up. Let's wonder.
Alison Cook: Oh, it's so good. It's so good. More is caught than taught. You're showing, hey, I want to go outside and watch the baby birds. Maybe someone else will come join you. I love it.
This is a little bit of a side conversation, but I tend to think of social media a little bit in the same category as alcohol. Some people can use it in moderation and they're okay. I can have a couple of glasses of wine a week without an issue.
I don't think I have that ability with social media, so I've had to really curb myself. A lot of that is case by case. I will say, you're one of the people who uses it in a way where it's like watching someone who can drink in moderation. Like, wow, that's amazing that someone can do that and enjoy the good in it. And maybe I'm not able to do that. Does that make sense?
Carlos: That not only makes sense to me but is such a great way for people to look at it as well. Again, because I've got friends too that do things that I think, man, I would love to be able to do it like that, but I can't. So I have to know myself.
Alison Cook: Exactly. I love that you're back online and you are telling us the story and you are showing us through the means that we need. Otherwise, how would we know? So it's such a great read. I loved it. I read it straight through. It's got your authentic self, your humor, and I know there's a documentary now that's with it.
So tell my listeners where to find you, where to find your content, the movie, the book, all the things
Carlos: Absolutely. If you go to ReconnectedBook.com, the book's there, the documentary's there, the trailer's there, all of the things are there. Instagram is where I hang out. Instagram and YouTube as I'm making things on screens for you to look at them on screens. I want to remind people that in this book, there's zero shame involved.
You will not feel shame about your phone. You will not feel, oh my gosh, I'm on my phone too much! It's going to excite you about a lot of the things that maybe we've forgotten how to do. I encourage everybody to pick it up and get reconnected, because that's the other reason why I titled it Reconnected.
When I first came back everyone was like, how was it when you disconnected? I'd love to disconnect. The more people said that, the more I thought, I get what they're saying, but I really feel like I'm actually plugged in now. I feel like I'm actually reconnected. Again, I'm trying to spin everything a little bit, but it's going to be helpful for a lot of people.
Alison Cook: It's a great read and it's a bestseller. So you're hitting a nerve and you're touching on things people really need. So thanks for doing it. Thanks for continuing to create content. Thanks for joining us.
Carlos: You're the freaking best. Thanks so much for having me.
Have you ever wondered how to transform daily stress into personal strength and resilience?
In today's must-listen episode, Dr. Alison is joined by the incredible Aundi Kolber, a trauma therapist and bestselling author of Try Softer. You’ll hear the backstory behind Aundi's latest book, Take What You Need and learn tools needed to develop and practice self-compassion. This episode covers:
* How to recognize when you're outside of your window of tolerance
* What most of us have gotten wrong about developing resilience
* The research behind self-compassion and why it leads to unexpected strength
* A beautiful metaphor from the Bible to empower and encourage you on your own journey of healing
Leave us a question or comment on The Best of You Podcast question form
Resources:
- Take What You Need: Soft Words for Hard Days by Aundi Kolber
- Past episodes with Aundi Kolber:
- Bonus Episode: Aundi Kolber & Dr. Alison on Writing & Launching Books
- Episode 60: How to Make New Friends, Overcome People Pleasing, Identify Red and Green Flags, & Extract Yourself From an Unhealthy Situation with Aundi Kolber and Dr. Monique Gadson
- Episode 45: Strong like Water—Finding the Freedom, Safety, & Compassion to Move through Hard Things & Experience True Flourishing
- Episode 46: People Pleasing as Survival, How Jesus Regulated Emotions & the Problem With Toxic Positivity and Spiritual Bypassing
- Books by Aundi Kolber:
- Boundaries For Your Soul by Dr. Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller
- Psalm 23
- Instagram @AundiKolber
- AundiKolber.com
If you liked this, you’ll love:
- Episode 129: Understanding Anxiety—A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Calm, Advocating For Yourself, and Cultivating Inner Resilience
Thanks to our sponsors:
- This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/BESTOFYOU and get on your way to being your best self.
- Get ahead of the New Year with a routine that helps you now by going to Seed.com/bestofyou and use code 25BESTOFYOU to get 25% off your first month.
- Go to Quince.com/bestofyou for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order!
Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
Transcript:
Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I'm so thrilled you're here with me this week for this week's episode. We have a great episode today. I loved this conversation with my dear friend, Aundi Kolber, and I'm so thrilled to get to share it with you today.
If you have questions or comments or topics that you'd like me to cover in upcoming episodes of the podcast, I hope you'll leave those for me. You can do that on The Best of You Podcast question form. We'll link to it in the episode show notes as well as on my website over at DrAlisonCook.com.
I've loved hearing from you on that doc, as well as through email with comments and notes and topic ideas. The notes of encouragement mean a lot to me too. I've got to tell you, thank you for taking the time to leave those for me. They mean a lot. Brenda, you wrote to me about the episode on the 12 steps with Ian Morgan Cron and Julie, you shared a beautiful message for me about the episode with Michael Cusick and what it meant to you.
I really appreciate it so much. I can't tell you how much it means to hear from you and to know how this podcast is resonating with you. It's not easy to find spaces that bring together our faith, our desire to walk with God, along with really good and helpful and wise insights from the field of psychology.
Your support and your help in spreading the word about this podcast is so deeply appreciated. It truly makes a difference in this world. This work of healing is the work that we are called to do in partnership with God's Spirit. So thank you again for being here, for writing to me, and for sharing about the podcast.
I'm so thrilled to welcome Aundi Kolber back to the podcast today. Aundi is a dear friend of mine and she's a friend of the podcast. She's appeared several times on the podcast in the past. If you're new to the podcast or new to Aundi's work and want to hear more, we'll link to those prior episodes with Aundi in the show notes. You can hear more from her.
She's a trauma therapist, author, and speaker. Her work has resonated with so many of us through her bestselling books, Try Softer, and Strong like Water.
Today, Aundi and I are going to dive into her newest offering, Take What You Need. It's a beautifully contemplative book that invites us to pause, reflect, and care for the parts of ourselves that most need tending.
Before we dive in, I want to highlight some terms that Aundi and I use throughout today's episode. Again, in case you're new to the podcast, I don't want to assume that some of this language is familiar to you.
There's a concept that underpins a lot of Aundi's work. It's called the window of tolerance. This term was coined by Dr. Dan Siegel, and it's a way of understanding how our nervous system processes stress. When we're within our window of tolerance, we tend to feel more balanced, more present, and more able to handle life's challenges.
It's very similar to what Kimberly Miller and I call the Spirit-led self, as we describe in our book, Boundaries For Your Soul. It’s that place inside where we tap into the best of who we are that's calm, clear, and creative. It's not that the stressors of life go away. It's that we can access that place inside and lead ourselves through life's challenges with clarity and confidence and from a calm place inside.
However, when life's pressures push us outside of that window, whether due to trauma or overwhelm or day to day stress, we might swing into hyper-arousal, where we feel anxious or panicked or reactive, or what we call hypo-arousal, which is where we feel numb or disconnected or shut down.
The goal is to stay within that window of tolerance. This is what Aundi's work is all about. It's about teaching us how to expand that window of tolerance so we can recenter ourselves even in life's hardest moments.
That's what makes her new book, Take What You Need, so special. It's an invitation to slow down and ask what our bodies and souls truly need, whether it's rest, whether it's nourishment, whether it's courage.
As you'll hear us discuss later in the episode, this kind of compassion toward ourselves doesn't make us weak. It actually strengthens us and equips us to advocate for ourselves more effectively. You can find Aundi's new book, Take What You Need, wherever books are sold. I am thrilled to bring you my conversation with Aundi Kolber.
***
Alison Cook: I'm thrilled to have this opportunity to talk about you. We talk often, but this is a unique opportunity to really talk about you and talk about your work. So many of my listeners are familiar with your work. They have read Try Softer or Strong Like Water.
It's a really fun opportunity for me to get to ask you about this new book and in general about what shapes your work. So thanks for being here.
Aundi: It is so fun to be here, such a joy to get to share it with you, and I know we have such a shared love of so many concepts. We always have such a fun chemistry, and I respect your work so much, so I'm so grateful that we get to do this.
Alison Cook: It's pretty neat. I was talking to Ryan, a mutual friend of ours. He shared with us about OCD and he was saying that he met Chuck, our other mutual friend, online. I was saying that's how you and I met. These are the gifts that social media can give us. So I'm very grateful for that.
Aundi: That's amazing. I love that.
Alison Cook: Okay. So I want to dive in, Aundi. Really your whole body of work, including this newest offering, is grounded in the idea of a gentle approach to healing. Try softer, right? Instead of trying harder, white knuckling it, to use your phrase, we're trying softer.
And “strong like water”, initially, you think about that and you're like, wait a minute. Yeah, water is strong, very strong, but it's not necessarily the first thing we think about when we think about strength. It's flexible, it's pliable, it has movement.
Tell me a little bit about how and why this gentle, compassionate approach to healing has been so important to you and why you think it's so important for all of us.
Aundi: Yeah, great question. The first thing I would say is that I definitely didn't start writing about these concepts or haven't been drawn to these concepts because I automatically have an affinity for them. What I mean by that is to say, I love these ideas and they have become embodied in who I am, but because of my own story of childhood trauma.
The white knuckling, the pushing hard, there have been ways that strategy has saved me in my life. It felt like it was a lot of my personality growing up–having to be such a hard worker, having to be so ahead of the game, having to be hypervigilant or over-accommodating others or having to be the “strong” one.
What's tricky about it is, it looks impressive often, right? In our culture, whether you're talking about wider culture or Christian culture, these ideas get a lot of praise, and a lot of that is because they get things done. You know what I mean? There's something about it that works. There's parts of it that work.
But for me, there came a point, really multiple points, where that way of existing was burning me up. In a way it was still effective, but my ability to even exist was diminishing in so many respects. That followed a similar line as I was doing my therapeutic work with clients. I could see that my clients were trying so hard.
It was like they were stuck in the mud, like when a car gets stuck and you spin your wheels. Gosh, you are exerting a ton of energy, but it's not getting you anywhere.
Alison Cook: Exactly.
Aundi: That really drove me to consider, what if there was a different way? All of my work always comes back to this idea that yes, we want to honor all the ways we survive, but ultimately, we cannot exist without at least some of that compassion, at least some of the gentleness. We are made for it.
Without it, we become rigid. It breaks us in ways that are simply not worth it. Compassion and gentleness make us pliable. It's a way that our body gets to experience safety, even in the midst of really hard things.
Alison Cook: Yeah. You talk about that basketball, athletic side of you, the fierce side of you, that goes hard. So to your point, this isn't necessarily intuitive, this kind of “try softer”. You've gone hard out of survival, out of God-given parts of you. Do you see it as a both-and, where we need those parts of us that push, and we also need to know when to let up? How do you see that?
Aundi: No question. Absolutely. Absolutely. But the caveat, and to borrow some IFS language, it's all dependent on, can we lead those parts? The kind of framework I use a lot is to say, do I have at least one foot in my window of tolerance?
Am I able to, using Dan Siegel's language, can I think about thinking? Can I be with the part? Again, using IFS language, am I blended with the part, or am I differentiated from the part but with? To me, it is a whole world of difference. It literally changes the game.
I know you and I have had so many conversations about parts work. What does it look like to honor ourselves, honor our parts, and yet live in alignment too? It's not to say that our parts always know what is best for our full self. But being able to turn towards those parts with compassion allows us to integrate and to work with them.
Using my own story, I call a part of myself basketball Aundi, and she is fierce. I developed that part in the midst of severe trauma, and for so many years, if I would go to that part, it actually would feel scary to the rest of my system.
It felt scary to feel that intensity. So I would have this ping pong ball feeling in my body, and I didn't know how to be with it. Over time, one of the gifts has been building that compassion and really building an internal relationship with that part.
Now, I can work with that part, and it feels like I get to call that part up. I'm like, okay girl, let's do this thing. We're about to do this hard thing, and let's work together.
Alison Cook: You're in charge of it. You're deploying it with a foot inside your window of tolerance, or from a self-led place, and that's so important. It's not that being soft or gentle or understanding the flexibility of strength means being weak, or means not looking out for yourself.
I had a conversation with a couple about marriage, and we were talking about how, when you learn to do your inner work, your inner healing, and you stop trying to blame other people, it doesn't mean that you don't still at times stick up for yourself and say, hey, I'm not okay with this.
But you're doing that from a place of calm. You're doing that from a place of self-leadership or with that one foot within your window of tolerance. The strength is stronger.
Aundi: Yes, absolutely. This is such an important sticking point for people, because this is always the thing people wrestle with. The question comes down to, will it actually work? What do you do when you're in an abusive situation? What do you do when you're in hard situations where the answer isn't always to be soft?
Absolutely it's never to allow yourself to be harmed. But what's different about this kind of approach is that compassion, often even for ourselves, is part of what allows us to access enough safety that allows us then, using IFS language, to access some self energy.
What that's doing from a broader system perspective is it opens us up to all the resources available to us, right? Including the ability to set boundaries from a place that's not from a place of punishment, for example. It's the ability to hold the line with dignity, with power, and without dehumanizing others.
This is the work of compassion. I really appreciate Dr. Kristin Neff's work around self-compassion through two lenses: tender self compassion, which is often that more soft, gentle, nurturing type, but then she also talks about it through the lens of fierce self-compassion, which is also considered a mama bear energy.
It's a protective energy. It's still rooted in compassion, but it's from a place where, as a mom, if I see someone wanting to harm my kiddos, I'm like, oh, mama bear. Not to dehumanize those people, but that's like a no thank you. You may not do that. You may not pass. We are deserving of that, not only for others, but also for ourselves.
Alison Cook: That's good. There's more agency there, when you're in command of those parts of you. Tell me about this word, resilience. A lot of your work, this idea of strength, is getting at this word, resilience. It's thrown around a lot. It's foundational, I think, to this journey of healing.
What do you mean by it and what does it look like? How do we know we've developed resilience or we're helping our kids to develop resilience?
Aundi: Yeah. I love that you brought this up because this is something I'm really passionate about. For many years now, to be totally honest, I've had a little bit of a bone to pick, perhaps because I have seen resilience really misused. What I mean by that is, I've worked with many clients through the years who've been called resilient.
And that's not a bad thing, but it's often been used at a time when what they needed was support. But what they heard was, gosh, seems like you got it. You're resilient, right? Or there could be other iterations of that.
So I start there to say, there is a lot of misunderstanding around resilience. Ultimately, I think of resilience as the ability to return to some safety, to some connection, to that self energy. That is the pathway that allows us to ultimately be resilient. I want to give a couple of caveats, because I always have to.
Sometimes we have to push through. I talk about in Strong Like Water situational strength. Sometimes we do the best we can, and that gets called resilience, full stop. My concern with that is that basically we're telling people, hey, go get traumatized. Don't think about anything else. That's resilience.
My hope is to say, look, yes, there are times when we do what we have to do. It is worth all that we can give, all that we can offer, to experience as much resourcing and safety as we go through something hard, because that will ultimately allow us to move through it with less harm.
Alison Cook: Yeah. That's a really important distinction. I hear you saying resilience is not in survival. That may be a part of it, which you lay out so beautifully in Strong Like Water. Sometimes we do go back into survival mode and there's no shame in that. But the resilience is in our ability to come back to safety.
Aundi: Yes. Yes. There's a great quote from Sharon Salzberg, who is a mindfulness teacher. she says, the healing is in the return. If I could borrow her words, I would say, the resilience is in the return. Sometimes, it's not that we return all the way, it's not that everything's perfect or figured out.
It's when we can even get a tiny little toe in that window of tolerance. Neurobiologically, if we're only living from survival brain, what that means is there is no pathway to metabolizing the hard we're currently experiencing. So the only thing that can happen in the absence of safety is for trauma to develop.
It's not to say that we can't honor the way we get through, and it's not to say that the way we get through can't even be reclaimed as we go back and do healing work. But when we only classify resilience through the lens of pushing yourself as hard as you can, no matter what, we really set people up for harm. And I don't think that is true to what resilience is ultimately about.
Alison Cook: We've talked about this, how sometimes that’s a very helpful metaphor for this reparenting we're trying to do for ourselves. If your child experiences something incredibly painful at school, we don't say to our child (and some people probably did have this said to them), “That'll toughen you up”.
Helping our children develop resilience would be honoring the thing that happened that was hard, honoring what they had to do to get through it, and helping them, through that connection to us, have that full ability to cry, to feel the pain, to feel the anger, and to experience safety. That then equips our child to go back to school the next day and know how to advocate for themselves or know how to find a different friend group or whatever the thing is.
I'm pulling that example out of my mind because if we didn't have that experience as children, what we're trying to do on this journey as adults, is teach ourselves. To use your word, that flow of strength, to find that safety where we're honoring all the pieces, which then equips us to potentially have the agency to do the things we need to do to take, to protect ourselves.
Aundi: Yeah. Absolutely. That's so well said. I don't want to reduce this down too much. But to make it a little bit more simple or accessible, what I would say is, when you have pain plus a lack of support and resources, the likelihood of trauma is high. If you have pain or adversity plus connection and resources and support, the likelihood of resilience is high.
That's, really, the difference, right? I often say, pain does not automatically mean it will become trauma. It does not. That to me is so hopeful. Because we don't have to be fatalistic and say, sorry, that's it. That's the end of the road. Instead, the harder it is, the more gentle we must become.
Because it is in that place of connection, safety, support, however that needs to be expressed, where we can do that inner work. If that's with our kiddo, absolutely, because we are probably one of the best resources our kids have available to them. This is Allan Shore's work, a “neuro psycho neuro biological regulator”. I might be getting that wrong.
But essentially, we are part of what helps them regulate their bodies. So when we are regulated, they can tap into that. That allows them to experience hardship through the lens of having enough. There's a place of abundance rather than lack.
Alison Cook: This is hard and I have what I need. Both of those things can be true. That's so good. That's so powerful. This idea of resourcing leads us right to this new book you have coming out very soon. It's a little bit different than some of the other books you've written, and it's toward the end of resourcing.
It's called Take What You Need. Tell us a little bit about what led you to want to create this offering and what's unique about it.
Aundi: Yeah, I'm really excited about this particular book. It is a little bit different than my other books, and part of that is because I've drawn on a lot of my previous writing, Try Softer and Strong Like Water, and worked with my editor to look at quotes that people have really resonated with through the years, what has stood out to people, what has been meaningful.
And as I've thought about that, one of the things that I hear a lot from people, every time I speak publicly, in my email, my DMs, everywhere I go, people will say to me, I love your work so much. This has been really meaningful, but about 40 percent of people will say to me, it took me a while before I could even start your book because I was so overwhelmed.
When I first heard about it, I didn't even feel like I could begin this particular book. A lot of times, when I post on places like Instagram or in my email, people are so outside their window of tolerance, or maybe they've got their pinky toe in their window of tolerance. They're barely holding on; they got a little fingernail holding on, right?
I get it, because I've been there. Sometimes it's hard to metabolize a lot of information. What I tried to do with this book, and Tyndale, my publisher, has been wonderful; my editor was really open to this different idea. To set up this book and think about these different categories of where people might be in their story.
Things like, take what you need when exhaustion looms large, when you need to know God is with you, when you need a strength that is soft, all these different categories. There are probably 20 categories, and we took these quotes and tried to discern, where do these fit?
The encouragement to the reader, and the way I've tried to design it and set it up, is to be very picture/image forward. There is beautiful greenery and very gentle, contemplative imagery, to invite people to actually check-in with themselves. To say that phrase I've been using for many years now–if you were to take what you need, what would your body say that you needed?
If you were able to settle your breath and your system and your spirit and your body, what is it you would need?
This book is designed to help you strengthen that muscle that allows you to tune in, so that you might participate with God in offering to the parts of yourself who are hurting, who are exhausted, who are feeling alone, who are depleted–here is some hope.
Alison Cook: I love that. I love that you're naming that. It's really true. I can remember in my own life, feeling overwhelmed by what can feel like a Pandora's box of pain during seasons of my life. I remember an early experience with a therapist where she was actually very astute in hindsight, but in that first session, she put her name on a couple of pain points in my life.
And I never went back. I was like, wow. In hindsight, she was right on, but it was too much. I love what you're saying with this book–you're trying to empower the reader to honor it, to use a phrase I hear you use a lot, to honor the pace of their own bodies. To say, I need this today, versus feeling like they have to open up that whole Pandora's box of all the different things that they could take or do.
Aundi: It’s actually a really common experience for people. I've had that experience too, where the right thing at the wrong time is not the right thing. That's why I even tell people when they're like, I'm going to read your book, 80 percent of the time I say, hey, take it at your own pace.
I say that a lot, because it's not that I don't want people to read my book. I would love for you to read my book. I believe in the work I've done, but I also want to make this work. I know you are passionate about this too–accessible care. How do we take it out of the ivory towers of academia?
How do we take it out of even our therapist's office, which is wonderful? I love that people are getting to therapy. I love that it's discussed on all these levels, but I have always wondered, how do we get these resources to the people who actually need it the most?
Alison Cook: Yeah. Yeah.
Aundi: Because sometimes you have a little more capacity maybe to read something and that's not bad. Thank goodness that there can be folks who are more resourced. And my hope for this one is it's the kind of book that, whether it's for you or whether you're thinking of someone in your life going through a heck of a season, you could say, hey, here's something to consider.
Alison Cook: Yeah. I could see it working in one of two ways. I love that on the front end, where someone maybe doesn't even realize, maybe as a friend, you're aware, oh, they're going to need to do some of this stuff. But I don't really want to buy them a book–that's overtly saying, you have trauma, or, you need to work through this.
I could see it working on the front end, either for yourself or someone else, where the subtitle is “soft words for hard days”, right? I love that. I could also see it for folks who have worked through your other books. It's the ongoing work that we're doing, even when we have gone into Pandora's box and we have looked at it all.
We’ve maybe pushed on some of the bruises and for the most part, we can tap into that resilience. We still have hard days where we need to give ourselves the gift of those soft words. So I could see it working in a lot of different ways for folks.
Aundi: Yeah. I love that. It's my hope. I've been calling it a contemplative coffee table book, however you want to take that, because to me, sometimes, and I am a really deep thinker, I tend to think about 12 layers for one little idea. I know you and I are similar in thinking about it from so many different angles.
Sometimes, partly because I'm a highly sensitive person, I do have a history of trauma, all these things, what I need is not more, I need less. Oftentimes having something that's smaller, that allows us to take that bite size, like here's something, see how it lands and see where it meets you. See if it could be a resource to you. See the ways that this might help.
You and I were talking about this resilience conversation I'm so passionate about, because the pain is not going anywhere. Jesus said, “In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart, for I have overcome the world”. What a beautiful promise.
Here's what we know: the pain in this world is not going to magically go away. Certainly we want to work towards things like justice. We want to work towards all the things. It's not that we want to cause pain on purpose, but I love considering, what are all the parts of the equation?
What does it look like to participate with God in meeting the needs that are present in that other part of the equation?
Alison Cook: We've talked a little bit about this, but I'd love for you to share with us more about this contemplative coffee table book and how our spiritual practices and our faith practices work into this “take what you need” approach to mental health. So for example, this book that you've beautifully put together and written reminds me a little bit of a book I got as a teenager.
Someone gave me one of those books of Bible promises where you can look up the thing you're struggling with and find the scriptures that kind of address that. I always thought that was a cool categorization. I'm angry. Okay. Here are 10 things that might meet you at that point.
I almost sense that there's that kind of energy with this offering. So how would that dovetail with your spiritual practices? How does this work dovetail with that?
Aundi: Yeah, what an important piece of this. I want to step back a little bit to say, one of the things I write in the introduction of this book regarding healing is that in many ways, in God's hospitality to us, the table is a really important metaphor. It's personally really meaningful to me.
There's this abundance and God invites us to come and partake. In Psalm 23, “he sets a table for me in the presence of my enemies”. There's this imagery of God setting tables for us in the wilderness. There's this important theme of healing as hospitality, God's hospitality, hospitality to ourselves.
In many ways, trauma has been the opposite, right? That's an understatement. Where there has been need, there has been lack, or there has actually been pain or overt harm or abuse. Oftentimes that has taken away our voice or our choice. It has cut us off from the God-given wisdom that God placed in our bodies.
To me, this concept of “take what you need" is meaningful because I see it as a repair. I see it as the repairing that occurs as we participate with God's spirit to say, no, you do not have to sit here and pretend that you're a robot. I promise to be with you. My spirit is with you. I gave you wisdom in your body. That is our birthright. God gave that to us.
When I think about this through the lens of spiritual disciplines, I think that as we restore and re-empower folks to, and on a very visceral level, that interoception, which often gets cut off when we go through trauma, it actually allows us to take this holistic posture and say in participation with God's spirit, God, what do I need?
We can take it out of the sacred into the secular and it can become, okay, maybe this breakfast is holy right now. Maybe receiving the beauty outside is what I need and it’s God's goodness to me. That also includes things like scripture.
That includes things that we're supplementing, things like The Book of Common Prayer or whatever that we're doing, we get to ask, is this in alignment? Does this honor? Is this in participation with?
Certainly, there are tons of caveats that I could name. Yes, there are times when we need to be uncomfortable. That’s not a bad thing. I'm not saying that we don't do things at times through a lens of even sacrificial giving. And I know this is something that you are so passionate about talking about and untangling, of saying, but this is different.
This is different because we need to make sure, in order to heal, we have to be able to actually connect to the truth of our experience. These things have a very significant intersection.
Alison Cook: It gets back to that idea of agency, which is what's taken from us when we've been hurt. I have a choice here, and God gives us that. He gives us that. He empowers us. I imagine that table as you're describing it, that smorgasbord of items to learn ourselves.
Maybe this is what will help. Maybe this is what will help. Ooh, that was too much. Oh, that wasn't quite enough. That's that “take what you need” idea. It’s so empowering because it's restoring our sense of selfhood, our sense of agency in partnership with God, to discern. That's so empowering.
This is what actually helps me. This doesn't. Now I know, and that's wisdom that I can take with me going forward. I love that this book is a resource in the very way it sets out an invitation for people to do that inner work of, what do I need at this moment? I love that.
Aundi: That's so well said. I geek out at the way these ideas tend to intersect. The thing about truth is that it cannot help but reveal itself and create. There's a beauty in recognizing how much these things build on each other.
Alison Cook: I love that. All right, Aundi, I want to ask you before we end. First of all, tell us where folks can find the book, how they can find your work, all the things.
Aundi: Take What You Need is available wherever books are sold. So I'd love folks to go to their favorite bookseller and that would be so meaningful to me. I hope it will be a resource for everyone who orders. You can find me on Instagram @AundiKolber, and you can also find me on my website, AundiKolber.com. I have lots of resources there so feel free to sign up for my newsletter as well.
Alison Cook: Sometimes you'll post the phrase “take what you need” in the sphere of social media. Sometimes I get overwhelmed with all the influencers that talk about an overwhelming potpourri/smorgasbord of options. People telling you different tropes or cliches or memes, and sometimes they're good, but it's like, which one of these should I apply?
I notice that you will often, when you post something, say, take what you need. Again, it's that invitation of, I'm going to offer something and you take what you need. It's that invitation to agency that is so beautiful. I love that about your online presence.
That is such a breath of fresh air in a place where there are a lot of expert voices. There are a lot of people telling you, this is what you should do. It's such a powerful phrase, “take what you need”.
Aundi: Oh, thank you so much. And, yeah, I appreciate you, and I feel like it's one of those things of trying to figure out, how do we do this work? I know you and I are always talking about: how do we innovate in a way that really honors the people that we are writing for?
It's not about likes, it's not about those things. How could it truly support folks, that they would feel the agency, even if it means that it's not supportive to them, to say, okay, I'm going to pass this time. God bless that. I love that.
Alison Cook: Exactly. That would, to me, feel like a win if someone said, this is actually not helpful to me today. Because that's what we need, that kind of discernment, that sense of agency within ourselves, where we can find that safety within ourselves to go, no that's not helpful. Or ooh, that is.
For folks listening, look for that kind of energy and that kind of approach in the people that you look to and in the people that you follow and in the ways we're showing up in the world. It gets back to that gentleness that we started with. Aundi, to close, a question I like to ask all my guests is, what is bringing out the best of you right now?
Aundi: Yeah, great question. The thing that feels most present in my life is that we were able to go to California. I had a speaking event and my family was able to come with me and we were able to go to Disney. It was a really special trip and it reminded me of the resource of play.
I can be a little bit of a serious person. I feel deeply and I have lots of compassion and all those things, but play is not an automatic thing. When I can connect to it, gosh, it opens me up so much. That is really bringing out the best of me right now.
Alison Cook: I love that. I love when you posted photos of your whole family with Mickey Mouse ears, because you're talking about serious topics. You're a very deep person, and I love when I see those because I know that's a beautiful way that you're being gentle with yourself.
Thank you so much for being here and for sharing your wisdom with us and for putting out so much goodness into the world. I so appreciate you.
Aundi: Thank you so much. I appreciate you so much.
Do you feel guilty for not doing enough—or take responsibility for things that aren’t yours to own?
Today Dr. Alison tackles the complex feelings of guilt and self-doubt—what guilt truly is, why it can feel so crushing, and how it often stems from taking responsibility for things that aren’t yours to own. She shares from her own journey of overcoming excessive guilt and the life-changing perspective that finally set her free.
Here’s what we cover:
* How to distinguish between true guilt and false guilt, and why it matters
* The #1 most important question to ask yourself when guilt takes over
* 3 buried emotions underneath false guilt
* Why excessive guilt damages your relationships
* 3 steps to help you understand and manage the voice of guilt in your life
Resources:
- Episode 138: Breaking Free from Overfunctioning—Discover the Hidden Costs of Always Being 'The Responsible One’
- The Best of You by Dr. Alison Cook
- Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No To Take Control of Your Life by Henry Cloud and John Townsend
- I Shouldn’t Feel This Way by Dr. Alison Cook
- 1 Samuel 15:22
If you liked this, you’ll love:
- Episode 93: 3 Ways to Stop Guilt-Tripping Yourself, Untangle Complicated Emotions, & Discover the Joy of Clarity
Thanks to our sponsors:
- Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
- Turn back time on the appearance of your skin with Purity Woods’s Age-Defying Dream Cream. Go to puritywoods.com/BESTOFYOU or enter code BESTOFYOU at checkout for an additional 10% off your first order.
- Go to Quince.com/bestofyou for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order!
Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
Transcript:
Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I'm so thrilled you're here this week for this episode. It's a little bit of a follow-up to the episode I did a couple of weeks ago. It was Episode 138: Breaking Free from Overfunctioning, where we talked about the hidden cost and the hidden root of always being the responsible one.
Always feeling like other people's emotions are our responsibility, other people's reactions are our responsibility, other people's behaviors are our responsibility. That was the topic of that episode. This last year, I've been on a journey of recovering from overfunctioning.
It manifests a lot as people pleasing in my life. It has a real codependent connotation to it. I've written about that a lot in The Best of You, but as I've been on a new iteration of going deeper into the roots of this in my own life, the ubiquitous, constant feeling that surfaces that I have to deal with in a better way is guilt.
I remember maybe a year and a half ago, saying to my sister, who was one of my closest confidants, I feel guilty all the time. All the time, every interaction, I feel guilty. I should be doing more. I shouldn't have done that. I should be doing this. I shouldn't do it that way. That constant feeling of guilt was with me to the point where I was like, I've got to deal with this. What is this about?
In today's episode. I want to share with you some thoughts on false guilt versus true guilt and what the function of guilt is in our lives, and why it is essential that we begin to notice it, especially if we are people who overfunction, who take on too much responsibility for things that are not our responsibility.
If you think about it, that's the link right there. Why do I take on so much responsibility for other people's emotions, other people's reactions, other people's behaviors? It's because I feel guilty if I don't.
That's the big red warning flag that goes off in my mind. I've had to learn to reorient to that feeling. Now, what really prompted me to want to record this episode today was a friend of mine who reached out. This is a woman who works on the front lines.
She is a woman who is doing more good in the world on behalf of folks who are hurting the most. She works with people who are at risk, at rock bottom, maybe they're homeless. They're dealing with incredible traumas, where they're having a hard time even functioning in life because they've been so beaten down. They've been hurt so much.
This woman tirelessly works on behalf of these folks for very little return for herself. She's a saint. I love this woman. She's one of these people that is truly in the trenches, doing so much good for other people.
She wrote to me because she's had a diagnosis that has prompted her to take some time off of her work. In the midst of a serious medical condition where she could not do the work, where she could not be on the front lines helping all these people, she wrote, I cannot stop feeling this guilt.
Here she is, flat on her back. Literally, she cannot do these things. She's wrestling with this guilt, even though she's aware, “I know this is what I need to do for myself. I won't be able to help anybody if I don't heal and recover. I've got to take care of myself”.
It made me realize how ubiquitous this problem is. I hear it all the time from friends, from family members, from clients–there's this chronic guilt that people feel, and it's confusing because guilt is this feeling of I'm doing something wrong. Most of us who struggle with overfunctioning are sensitive to that.
We don't want to do something wrong. We don't want to do something that would hurt someone else. We don't want to do something that would be irresponsible. That feeling of “I'm doing something wrong” is very motivating. This is why guilt is so important to understand, because we want to feel guilt, we want to feel morally responsible, if indeed we have done something wrong.
We want to be able to name that, we want to be able to make amends, we want to be able to course-correct, but on the other hand, we don't want to feel guilty when we haven't, in fact, done anything wrong.
In today's episode, I want to tease out this emotion of guilt so that we can understand when we're feeling what I'm going to call true guilt, a clear conviction of the Holy Spirit that we are in fact doing something wrong, versus when we're feeling false guilt, which is actually not guilt at all.
So the first thing I want to do is define guilt. When we say the word guilt, according to the dictionary, it's the fact of having committed an offense. So guilt has this connotation that we have, in fact, done something wrong. If you're guilty of a crime, you've committed the crime. You've done it. You've in fact done something wrong.
But when we're talking about guilt in the realm of our emotional lives, when we're talking about it psychologically, we're talking about a feeling of guilt. It's an emotional experience where we feel like we've done something wrong. In the psychological sense, that feeling of guilt is very different from the actual fact of guilt.
Just because we feel guilty does not, in fact, mean that we've done something wrong. I love how John Townsend and Henry Cloud talk about it in their classic book Boundaries. They say it this way: “Our conscience isn't God”.
Our conscience, the part of us that cues us to right and wrong and to being sensitive, to not wanting to hurt someone or not wanting to do something wrong or not wanting to commit an offense against God or someone else, that conscience is actually, as Cloud and Townsend say, part of living in a fallen world.
It develops, with the rest of us, psychologically. Our conscience can develop in a way that doesn't align with the facts of reality. For many people who were parentified as children (we talked a lot about that in Episode 138), where you were maybe raised to feel more responsible for your parents or your caregivers than was your actual responsibility, that conscience can get skewed.
You can have a really sensitive conscience and feel more responsible for other people or for things than is actually your responsibility. So again, I'm going to say this several times in this episode, the bottom line is that the presence of a guilty feeling or guilty conscience does not necessarily mean you have done something wrong.
It is so important, especially if you're someone that over-functions, who pleases others, who tends toward codependency, that you begin to take a look at the feeling of guilt when you feel it and unpack it so that you can get to the root of what's actually going on.
From a psychological perspective, guilt is not considered a primary emotion. Instead, it's a secondary emotion, which means it's an emotion that arises from a combination of other primary emotions.
Guilt often serves as a signal that we believe we've violated our own moral code or our own conscience. It prompts us to reflect on our actions. That's not all bad. It's not all bad. That cue is a signal to reflect. However, guilt is often, in many of our lives, disproportionate or misplaced, especially if you've been through trauma, if you've been wounded, if you've been parentified.
Guilt so often masks deeper, harder to access feelings like shame, like fear of someone else's anger, and sometimes guilt even masks our own justified, exiled anger at someone else. Sometimes we guilt trip and blame ourselves because it's harder and more uncomfortable for us to take that blame that was never ours to hold and place it somewhere else.
This is why it's so important to pause and get curious about what's underneath your guilt. Because when you understand the root emotion, it will help you respond in a healthier and more balanced way instead of through over-functioning or being stuck in self-blame.
Understanding guilt involves getting curious about it, as you would any other feeling. If you feel really hurt or you feel really angry, you have to get curious about it and ask yourself, what's really going on here? What does this really mean? That's what happened to me in my life.
Like I said, about a year and a half, two years ago, I started going, this isn't normal that I feel guilty this often. I went on this exploration, and what I have come to discover is that almost always at the root of the feeling of guilt in my life is fear.
So let me give you a quick example. This literally happened this week. It took me a while to get there, but now that I understand it, I see it so much more quickly. I had to break up with someone. Now, when I say break up with someone, I don't mean in a romantic way. Sometimes we have to break up with an employer or we have to break up with a friend or we have to break up with a hair cutter or a therapist or a church group.
Any kind of situation, no matter how small or how big, when I have to set a boundary, when I have to say no, when I have to create distance, when I have to get out of a relationship, even if it's a relationship with someone I barely even know, I've barely even worked with someone, but I've maybe talked to them two or three times on the phone and I'm actually not going to proceed further with working with them, it feels like a breakup to me.
That's the stakes that it feels like in my soul. So I had to do this. I had to break up with someone and I really didn't want to do it. But the facts were so clear that I could not proceed in this relationship. I needed to end the relationship. Now, for those of you listening who are over-functioners or who struggle with people-pleasing or codependency, this can be almost insurmountable for us.
I've been working on this for a long time, but to execute a breakup can be so painful for me. It stirs up that feeling of guilt. I just, I feel it in my being. “You can't do that. You're doing something wrong. You're going to hurt someone. How could you do that? This is bad.”
There's this tape that plays and this part of me shows me all the ways it's going to hurt this other person. Their life is going to fall apart. They're never going to be the same, and it's all because of me. I am ultimately responsible for their wellbeing. If I end this relationship, their whole life is going to implode.
That's what this part tells me. Now, in this case, it was laughable because that was not going to happen, but that's what this part of me feels. It feels like if I end this relationship with this person, their life is going to go off the rails and it will be all my fault. That is what this part of me feels. It feels so real.
It feels so real to this part of me that it is almost painful and it is almost debilitating. I almost cannot do the thing I need to do, even to this day. I noticed that this part of me was very active, but I'm so familiar now with that feeling, with that onslaught of “you can't do this”, and the parade of images about this other person's demise if I am to execute this very simple breakup.
That this isn't going to work out for me if I need to go in a separate way. It's so painful to this part of me now, as I have done this work. What I have noticed is that the presence of that kind of guilt in my mind is nine times out of 10, maybe even 10 times out of 10, but I'll say nine times out of 10 to err toward being conservative, that's actually a cue that I actually should and need to go forth with the breakup, that I need to do this hard thing.
I've learned that over time, but it doesn't mean I don't feel that reflexive emotion of, oh my gosh, you can't do this. You can't do this. This is bad. This makes you a bad person. You're hurting someone. You're ruining their life.
That whole onslaught is still there. It's that I've learned that when I notice that, it's actually a cue that I'm about to do something brave. I've recast that in my mind because what I have come to understand about that part of me is that it masquerades as guilt, but it's really rooted in tremendous fear. That part of me is terrified.
How can you let someone down? How can you honor what's right when someone else might be disappointed or might be displeased or might be uncomfortable because of you? This goes right back to what we talked about in Episode 138 about parentification, because that part of me has never had anybody step in and go, listen, it's not pleasant to let someone else down, but it's also not the end of the world. It happens.
Sometimes we have to go separate ways. Sometimes I can't keep going to the same therapist or to the same hairstylist or to the same vendor or to the same church community,. Sometimes I do need to pivot away from a small group or even from a friendship or a relationship because it's the right thing to do before God.
Yes, maybe it is going to cause some discomfort for this other person. I do not wish for that to be true. Also, I have to be brave. That fearful part of me needs to learn now what it never learned when I was young. It needs to learn that I will be there for that part of me through the fear.
That even if we let someone down, I can be the adult in the room. I can re-parent myself in that way. God is here with me now. We've got two parents now. We've got God and we've got adult me to help that fearful part of me to be brave. This is what we have to teach our children.
If we were not taught that as children by loving parents, we have to do that work of being the adult in the room for those fearful parts of ourselves now. I have learned that when I feel that onslaught of guilt, it is almost always an invitation to be brave.
In fact, if God is inviting me to be brave in this way, God will not only show up for me as I take those brave steps, God is also going to show up for those other people that I have to walk away from. He will also meet them in this place where he is not calling me to be. God is a big God.
God can be there for the part of me that is terrified and anxious about losing attachments. Because that's what it is when we fear losing someone's approval, when we fear losing someone's love, when we fear disappointing someone, even when we know we have to do the thing we need to do. We're stirring up our old attachment wounds.
God is good and so kind to these parts of us. He takes us by the hand and he leads us through it. I know for a fact that God is doing that for me. He is also going to do that for the other person.
Now, listen, this is a journey. It's a process of retraining yourself and re-parenting your guilt and allowing it to become a cue that some other part of you needs your loving attention.
On the front end of this journey, seven times out of 10, eight times out of 10, nine times out of 10, you're probably going to default to what feels most comfortable to your system, to the path you've always chosen, which is to please the other person, overfunction, take responsibility for what's not yours to take, stay with the boss longer than you should, do more for a toxic parent than God is actually calling you to do, stay in a relationship longer than God is actually calling you to stay, do more for a friend or for a child or for a community than God is actually calling you to do.
It's okay. I want you to be kind to yourself in that process, because most of us who struggle with false guilt already have a built in propensity to want to be good, to want to be kind, to want to be pleasing, to want to help others, to always want to be responsible, to want to keep the peace.
This is a built in propensity that got exploited to where our guilt meter got knocked out of whack. I visualize it kind of like an old fashioned set of scales. When the scale is balanced, they're level. You can also imagine one side of that scale taking responsibility for everything, and the other side of that scale is taking responsibility for nothing.
I'm not going to take responsibility for anything. I'm not going to care about anybody else at all. I'm going to do what I want. I'm going to do as I please. A guilt meter that's really in line with the Holy Spirit is balanced. It understands how to take responsibility for what is ours to take responsibility for, and also understands what is absolutely not ours to take responsibility for,, for what absolutely and 100 percent belongs to other people.
The scale balances when our guilt meter is in line with the Holy Spirit. We're like, yeah, I can honestly look at that and say, I should take responsibility for that. On the other hand, I can look at that and say, that's not mine. I don't wish that person harm. I don't want them to feel bad. Also, I'm not responsible for those things that I either feel responsible for, or they're asking me to feel responsible for.
So it's having that guilt meter be right in line with the Holy Spirit. This is a process. It doesn't happen overnight. We have to work at it. For many of us, we're tilted to that side of taking responsibility for everything. Our job is to tilt that scale back.
Initially it's going to feel like we're being cruel. It's going to feel like we're being harsh. It's going to feel really, really hard, but all we're doing is bringing that scale back to the center where we're in line with the Holy Spirit.
So how do we do that? How do we understand what is true guilt? What is ours to actually own versus false guilt, what is actually not ours to own?
This was the key question I had to start asking myself. Okay. What am I feeling guilty about, number one? What am I actually feeling guilty about? What did I actually do, or what am I actually about to do?
As I thought through, what is actually happening here? What is the thing I'm feeling guilty about? What is the behavior that's occurring or that has occurred? That has led me to this key question that is foundational to understanding the role of guilt in your life.
It sounds so simple, but it's been transformative for me. The question is this, have I actually done something wrong? Is it in fact wrong to turn down a favor that someone has asked of me or to decline an invitation? Is that in fact wrong? Am I doing something wrong when I do those things?
Is it in fact wrong for me to prioritize my own health or my own body or my own self-care when I'm sick or tired or run down or on a day-to-day basis? Is that in fact wrong? Is it in fact wrong to step back from a toxic friendship or a toxic relationship when someone is not changing their behaviors?
Often when I really get to the root of those questions, the answer is no, it's not, in fact, wrong. When you begin to ask yourself that question and get down to the root of it, you build self-trust. You begin to rebalance those scales. I'm willing to answer that question with yes, if I have done something wrong, but if I haven't, then it's false.
The truth is, if you're feeling true guilt, you will, in fact, be able to name the thing you did wrong. For example, I yelled at my kids. I lied to my friend. I betrayed someone's trust. I went behind their back and I shared confidential information that I shouldn't have shared. Or I was cruel to that person when I needed to depart the relationship. I said unkind things.
Or maybe I ghosted that person because I couldn't figure out how to tell them, so I disappeared. So those are things we can say, maybe there is some guilt there. Maybe there is a prick of the conscience from God inviting me to take a look at that behavior.
On the other hand, the messages of false guilt show up when you haven't done anything wrong. You'll feel this vague sense of feeling bad about yourself and feeling uncomfortable and feeling like you've done something wrong.
But when you really go to try to pinpoint what it is that you've done wrong, it's something along the lines of, well, I feel guilty that they're going to be hurt, or I feel guilty that I can't be always available to my kids 24/7, or I can't be always available to my aging parents 24/7, or I feel guilty that other people are suffering and I'm not doing anything about it.
That's a very genuine feeling, but here's the thing I want you to know. In this case, I believe the word guilt is actually a misnaming. We're putting the word guilt on it because of that overfunctioning, because of that hypersensitivity. In these cases, I believe guilt is actually masquerading to keep us from a more primary vulnerable emotion, such as fear or sadness, even.
So, for example, I feel really sad and genuinely bummed out that I'm not going to work with this therapist anymore, that I'm not going to work with this church group anymore. I feel sad about that. That's valid. That's a valid emotion, but that's very different from guilt.
Or I feel fearful and scared that I am going to hurt my kids, that I am going to hurt my relationship with this person. I feel fearful about that. Sometimes it's hopelessness. I feel helpless, like I actually can't do anything to make this person feel better. I can't do anything to fix their problem. I can't do anything to fix their pain and I’m guilt tripping myself.
Taking on the blame for that is actually a way I've learned to cope with that feeling of helplessness, and what is actually more true at the root of this guilt is I am hopeless. Nothing I can do will make this person change and actually take accountability and responsibility for their own life.
Nothing I can do will solve this person's problem, because they are refusing to take responsibility for their own pain, for their own life, for their own poor choices. I cannot affect change in their lives. I feel helpless about that. I hate that feeling. One of the ways I've learned to cope is I beat myself up for it.
If I did more for them, maybe they would finally see the error of their ways and change. If I found one more way to go to them, maybe they would finally go get therapy. If I did one more nice thing for them, maybe they would finally feel the happiness I so long for them to feel. The truth is, they're never going to feel what they don't take responsibility for feeling in their own lives.
We are helpless to affect that kind of change. We have to recognize that those feelings of guilt are actually misplaced. That feeling of guilt is actually a misnaming. I'm not actually guilty in this situation. In fact, I'm helpless. There's nothing I can do. That's a hard feeling to face.
We don't like facing the limits of our own humanity. That in and of itself is a really hard thing to face, but it's so much more honest than taking responsibility for what is not ours to take. In those instances, that guilt tripping part of us is actually trying to play God.
It's telling us we have more power than we actually have, and it's actually a lie. In that case, you are essentially feeling guilty for being human. You're feeling guilty that you're finite. You're feeling guilty that you're not omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent, that you don't have all the power in the world to affect change in other people's lives.
In other words, you feel guilty that you're not God. But the truth is, you're not God. You are human. You are finite. You are limited. You exist within boundary lines. You do not have the power to affect change in someone's life who is not taking responsibility for the changes they in fact need to make.
The antidote to false guilt in these cases is the acceptance of your own human limitations. This is what we mean when we talk about the word surrender. This word keeps coming up on different podcast episodes. There's a podcast episode coming up with a hero of mine and of so many of yours in this work of integrating Christianity with psychology.
We talk about the fact that so many times at the end of the day, what we are doing is surrendering to the fact that we are not God, that our power is limited to change ourselves, let alone to change someone else. When you surrender, you reframe your expectations of yourself.
You bring your guilt meter in line with the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Guilt says, I'm letting everybody down, but surrender says, I am limited, and I am a beloved child of God. Guilt says, “I should be perfect for everybody else”. Surrender says, “I will never be perfect, nor will I ever make everybody happy. God's grace is enough”.
Guilt says, I should have done more. I should do more. But surrender says, I will give my best and I will let go of the rest. I have to trust God with what's not mine to own. I have to trust God with that other person's reactions to my healthy boundary. I have to trust God with my spouse's decisions, with my parents' decisions, with my adult children's decisions, with my co-workers' decisions.
All I can do is my best within the limits of what God has called me to. Everything outside of that, I have to let go of. I have to trust God with the rest.
The antidote to guilt is a radical acceptance of your dependence on God. It's learning to bravely suffer the reality of our human limitations. Man, if I could be God, I would wave a magic wand and make everybody in the world happy, but I'm not. I'm not. I have to make hard decisions.
I have to walk away from this relationship. I have to leave this commitment. I have to say no to this person over here. I wish I didn't, but it is, in fact, irresponsible for me to play God. it is irresponsible to take responsibility for things that are not mine to take.
Braving radical acceptance and radical dependence on God, who is the one who actually holds all things together, is the work of developing faith. Allowing God to bring that guilt meter back to true north, back to the center, back to that balanced scale. Where with confidence before God, and with conviction, I can say, God, that is not mine to take.
I am not taking on responsibility for that person's feelings, for that person's disappointment, for that person's reactions. In this situation, I am going to keep my eyes fixed on you and do what I know is mine to do and let go of the rest.
So how do we do this? I've already talked about how this is a journey of healing and course correcting that guilt meter. Here's a simple exercise to help you on that path.
I'm going to use the framework from my book, I Shouldn’t Feel This Way. The tagline of the book is “Name What’s Hard, Tame Your Guilt, and Transform Self-Sabotage into Brave Action”. There's a lot more in the book, but the first thing you have to do when you notice guilt, kind of like what I was saying in my own life, is you have to name it.
You have to start becoming aware of what that feels like in your body. Because where we get into trouble is where we don't name it. We act reflexively out of it. We're not even aware of that feeling. We are doing the pleasing, perfecting, and taking responsibility when it's not ours to take.
Listening to this episode is a huge step in and of itself, of going, yes, that is me. I feel that all the time. Begin to notice it. Oh, I feel really guilty. I'm about to go to a different store in town and I feel guilty about that because I don't want my friend who owns this other store to see me. It could be that simple. Begin to notice the feeling. Oh my gosh, that's it. That's that guilty feeling. I'm feeling it right now. That's the first step.
Number two is to frame it. You've got to start getting curious about it and asking yourself the following questions. Number one, that magic question. Did I, in fact, do something wrong? Now, if you're having a hard time answering that because your guilt meter is so overweighted, go to part two of that question.
Would an objective third party agree that I did something wrong? If you need that help, ask somebody, especially on the front end of your recovery journey. Pull in some people and say, I feel so guilty about this. Maybe I shouldn't, but I do. Am I in fact doing something wrong? Because you really need to get that fact check.
What are the facts here? Am I in fact doing something wrong?
If you're not sure, here's the next question to ask yourself. Did I hurt someone else as a result of cruelty, of impatience, of selfishness, or did I act out of anger? If so, there might be true guilt.
Maybe I was harsh. Maybe I was selfish. Maybe I came down hard on my kids. I can name the thing I did wrong. I can tell a third party, no, no, no, I was harsh in that moment. I really was. And that other person, when they look at the facts, agrees with me.
Or did I hurt someone else as a result of setting a healthy boundary, of honoring my own needs, of honoring my own human limitations? So notice the difference. The first part of that is, did I hurt someone else as a result of cruelty, impatience, selfishness, or anger?
The second part of that is, did I hurt someone else as a result of setting a healthy boundary, honoring my own need, honoring a limitation that I have? I can't be in three places at once, I'm so sorry. If you start to notice a pattern of the latter, you are likely feeling false guilt.
You're feeling that thing of, I feel sad that I have to hurt this person, or I feel bummed out that I can't meet all the needs around me. But that is not in fact guilt. I have not in fact done something wrong. It is so important when you're considering these questions to be relentlessly honest with yourself. Look at the facts. Have I actually done something wrong?
It's really important to get to the root of this. Otherwise, you're going to continue in a pattern of enabling other people and taking responsibility for things that are not yours to take. That's not only not good for you, it is also not good for other people.
It's really important to begin to tip that balance of your guilt meter back toward alignment with the Holy Spirit. God, am I actually doing something wrong here or am I honoring your call? Am I honoring your call?
This brings us to step three, which is taking a brave step. If you are not, in fact, feeling true guilt, then the invitation is to be brave and do the thing that makes you feel uncomfortable because that's how you build up confidence in yourself, confidence that you can face the discomfort.
Confidence that you can face those feelings that no one ever taught you how to face and you can grow and you can gain resilience and you can gain inner strength. It feels fantastic. It's liberating. It's like, oh my gosh, I can do this. I can say no, I can get out of this relationship.
I can not do this thing that I don't feel called to do. You're aligning yourself with God's Spirit. There's a verse that has been so helpful to me in this journey of realigning my guilt meter with the conviction of the Holy Spirit. It's powerful. It's from 1 Samuel 15:22.
Here's what Samuel says: “To obey is better than sacrifice and to heed is better than the fat of rams.”
This is about obedience. If we are listening to false guilt, it's false. We're listening to a lie. We are not listening to the voice of truth. We are not listening to the voice of God. So this really comes down to obedience. God values a heart of obedience more than he values our pseudo-sacrifices that aren't really about honoring him.
They're about our fear. I don't want to hurt anybody. I don't want to be a bad person. I want other people to like me. Now, listen, we can be compassionate toward those parts of ourselves, but we cannot let those parts of us drive.
We need to honor first and foremost, the call of God before us. What is the truth of this situation? God, what are you calling me to? If you're calling me away from this person, away from this relationship, away from this responsibility, away from this habit, I have to follow you. I have to be brave.
That is what's most important to me. These fearful parts of me, they can be here. I get it. It's scary, but I will not let them lead me any longer. To obey is better than to sacrifice, to heed your way, God, is better than the fat of rams. I want to join you in this journey of aligning my conscience with your will, because that is the path where freedom, not only for myself, but for everyone around me, truly reigns.
This journey of learning to align your guilt meter and your conscience with God and the conviction of the Holy Spirit is crucial. It's crucial to not only our spiritual health, but to our emotional health, our mental health, and to the health of our relationships.
You can do it. God wants this for you, to learn to engage your conscience to the fullest of how God designed it to function. You will learn to release what isn't yours to carry, and you will learn to trust God to hold it instead. Obedience to God's call, not fear, not people pleasing, not misplaced responsibility, is what leads us to the joy of true freedom from the shackles of false guilt and over-functioning.
What if the behaviors you turn to for comfort—whether it’s overworking, people-pleasing, or numbing out—aren’t the real problem, but rather a signal from a part of you that’s desperately trying to help?
In this powerful episode, I sit down with Ian Morgan Cron—author, speaker, and renowned Enneagram expert—to explore the fascinating intersections between Internal Family Systems (IFS) and the 12 Steps. Together, we uncover why we’re all, in some way, prone to numbing behaviors and how understanding the role of our “firefighter” parts can lead to true emotional healing. If you’ve ever struggled to make sense of your coping mechanisms or felt stuck in cycles of avoidance, this conversation will leave you with tools and hope for real transformation.
In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
* Why we’re all addicts in some way—and how the 12 Steps apply to everyone
* What “firefighters” are in Internal Family Systems (IFS) and how they work to protect us
* The true source of numbing behaviors
* The surprising and liberating goal of the 12 Steps and what it means for all of us
* Practical ways to find a safe person to share your struggles honestly and vulnerably
* How we can all achieve emotional sobriety
Resources:
- The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile
- The Typology podcast
- Pre-order The Fix: How the Twelve Steps Offer a Surprising Path of Transformation for the Well-Adjusted, the Down-and-Out, and Everyone In Between by Ian Morgan Cron
- Boundaries For Your Soul by Dr. Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller
- ianmorgancron.com/getyourdownload
If you liked this, you’ll love:
- Episode 108: Inside Out—Internal Family Systems, Therapy, and High-Performing Protectors with Jenna Riemersma
Thanks to our sponsors:
- As a listener of The Best of You Podcast, you can qualify to see a registered dietitian for as little as $0 by visiting faynutrition.com/bestofyou.
- Go to Quince.com/bestofyou for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order!
Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
Transcript:
Alison Cook: Hey, everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I'm so thrilled you're here for today's episode. Oh my gosh, this one was a blast to record. You will hear how much we ping off of each other's work throughout the episode.
I first want to give a warm welcome to so many new listeners who've tuned in this month to the podcast. I'm so glad you're here. And I want to thank those of you who've been listening now for a while. You are so faithful showing up every week, and I want to thank you for sharing these episodes with your friends, with your family members.
I love seeing new people find this place where every single week, we are seeking to grow and to heal and to become what I like to call soul menders, people who are invested in this ongoing work of healing.
My guest today is Ian Morgan Cron. He is the bestselling author of The Road Back to You, a renowned speaker, psychotherapist, and host of the Typology podcast. Ian is widely celebrated for his work with the Enneagram, but today we're diving into his powerful new book. It's called
Now here's a little backstory before we jump into today's episode. Just two days before I recorded this interview with Ian, Ian had me on his Typology podcast. This was coincidental. We didn't realize it until our second interview, that we were on each other's calendars for the very same week.
We'd never met before, but we very quickly discovered through both interviews, a shared passion for internal family systems or IFS, which if you're new to the podcast or to my work, is a therapeutic approach that views the self as made up of different parts. It's the topic of my first book with Kimberly Miller called Boundaries For Your Soul.
So in this conversation today, Ian and I couldn't help ourselves from focusing on the 12 steps through the lens of IFS and in particular, we talked a lot about firefighters. If you're new to IFS, firefighters are the parts of us that react impulsively to put out the flames of emotional pain.
These are the parts of us that try to escape or avoid pain primarily through numbing. While in Ian's case, this led to drug and alcohol addiction, for many of us, these parts of us act out through binge-watching television, through scrolling social media, through a daily wine habit, through shopping, or even through fantasy. They do anything to escape or avoid pain.
Working with these parts of us, no matter what your go-to numbing behavior is, is often a recovery process. In fact, Ian really reframes addiction as a universal human struggle, as something every single one of us has to come to terms with.
Today we explore how the 12 steps can become a trellis or a structure to support growth and healing, no matter what we're facing. I loved this conversation. Ian is so real. He's so honest about his own story and his own setbacks and his insights are so wise, compassionate, and practical.
You can pick up a copy of The Fix, as well as the accompanying workbook, anywhere books are sold. We'll link to it in the show notes. I am thrilled to bring you my conversation with Ian Morgan Cron.
***
Ian: Alison, I am so stoked. We did a podcast earlier this week when you were on my show, Typology, and I've read your books and I'm a fan. I so enjoyed our conversation a couple of days ago that I got up this morning like, I'm so stoked I'm going to see Alison today.
Alison Cook: I feel like there's this really cool thing where “coincidentally”, we have these back to back interviews. I read your book and I feel like you're an old friend that I've never met, because there's so much overlap. This book is really powerful. It's really hitting me in places..
There's so much I want to dive into, especially with this idea that we all in some way, shape, or form, are dealing with an addiction. So I want to go there, but would you start by sharing with us a little bit more of your story that you reveal a little bit in The Fix, for my listeners who maybe only know you through your work with the Enneagram or through your podcast? Tell us a little bit more about your story and what led to you writing this book.
Ian: Yeah. I've been a part of 12 step communities. I'm a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, and I have been a part of 12 step communities for about 35 years. Four years ago, following a relapse, I went to treatment. This was obviously a private thing, and I haven't spoken about it publicly over the last almost five years now.
But I have been so beautifully and profoundly transformed by working the 12 steps. I felt like I got to let people know, who maybe don't self-identify with alcoholics or substance use disorders or overeaters or gamblers or whatever. I wanted everyone to derive the same benefit from the 12 steps that I have, as a program for living that is completely consistent with the gospel.
And that could really change people who don't show up in church basements a couple of times a week, but could really get something from it.
Alison Cook: It's really powerful how you recast it as something for everyone. You're so real. That's what I love about the opening few chapters of this book. There's such a raw realness, when you describe yourself as that young boy, looking for anything to numb the pain. There isn't a quick fix. There isn't a workaround, but the 12 steps do offer a scaffolding to us.
Ian: Yes, in a way, the 12 steps are a rule of life. The Benedictines and other monastic traditions had a rule of life. And the word “rule" there actually means trellis, in the original language. The 12 steps are like a trellis on which we can grow. They offer some new ways of being in the world that can help us live more comfortably with ourselves and our own skins.
I also love talking about internal family systems, which I know is a big thing for you. One of the things that internal family systems has helped me to do is to really understand my journey with addiction and that, as you read in the book, traumatized, exiled part of me. It got activated again and it resorted to addiction. My firefighter, if you will, woke up and went, oh, I know, I have a solution.
Alison Cook: Read the book, listener, because it’s such great writing, but there's this moment where you describe visiting a doctor and I saw that part of you. It was like, wait a minute, Adderall, oh, ding, here's a new solution. After I don't know how many years of dormancy where you were in sobriety, that part of you, you could almost visualize that part of you coming to life.
So Ian, I’d love to try to walk through these steps and think about this lens of the different parts of us as we're walking through the steps. Before we dive into that, for all my listeners who maybe don't identify as a typical “addict”, where we think about drugs or alcohol, tell me a little bit about how addiction applies to all of us.
Ian: Yeah. So let me give you my definition of addiction. It's an amended version that I've taken from lots of sources, but an addiction is an unhealthy compulsive relationship with a person, a behavior, or a substance that has mood altering effects and negative consequences. So who doesn't have that?
It could be alcohol or drugs, but it could be people-pleasing. It could be shopping. It could be food. It could be gambling. It could be sex. It could be porn. We're not people who have one addiction. I like to laugh and say that I can't get up in the morning without getting out of bed and tripping over one of my many addictions,
Alison Cook: You can list all the different ways that we are resorting to something, to soothe pain instead of sitting with what's hard.
Ian: And the thing is, our firefighters have good intentions. I would say that my firefighter believes that there is an external solution to my internal problem. Of course that's like going to the hardware store to buy bread. You're going to the wrong place, man. Thank you. But no, thank you.
Alison Cook: Yes. All right. So this is great. We talk a lot about numbing, about those firefighters, and to me, these are the parts of us that reach for something to put out the flames of pain. They might not always show up in stereotypical ways. When I was reading your story about being in college and being two people, it was like, I'm going to Christian groups and then I'm partying with my frat brothers, you were really living this double life.
I was thinking I've described my own college years in that way. It's the double life. The things that I was doing to soothe pain were more “socially acceptable”, things I could keep hidden or maybe “Christian acceptable”--the incessant people-pleasing or workaholism.
But that's what we're talking about, these parts of us that want to put out those flames of pain that can become more overt addictions. We're all doing it in some way. So let's talk about that first step. What's that moment of recognizing something has to change?
Ian: The first step is really honesty. It's reaching this moment where we say, you know what, I've tried everything to overcome this behavior or this dysfunctional relationship like codependency or a substance. It helps me disassociate or get out of the pain that I'm feeling, but it's beginning to have significant negative consequences in my life.
And I can't seem to stop, no matter what I do. The admission that on my own unaided willpower, I can't stop this. I've tried, and my life's getting unmanageable. If that word feels weird to you, try intolerable, like it's not working and I need help. I always say that in some ways, the three most brave words a person can say is “I need help”.
Alison Cook: Yeah. So it's that real admission, that naming, of this is out of control. And it's not immediately rushing to fix it. Which is my go-to. Is that what we mean by surrender? That first, it's here and I actually can't fix it?
Ian: Yeah, in fact, you could bundle those first three steps as: Step one, I can't. Step two, God can. Step three, I'll let Him.
Alison Cook: Wow. Wow. Okay. I can't. God can. And then step three, I will cooperate. I will work with God.
Ian: Yeah. And the word I love, Alison, is consent. I feel like so much of the spiritual life is built on that idea of giving God consent to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. And that's not easy. Because the will and the ego are pretty big forces, but basically to say, God, I give you consent to flood me with the grace necessary and the relationship with you that will render my addictive patterns unnecessary.
I love this prayer: God, help me to find in you what I look for in _____. So something like, God, help me to find in you what I look for in workaholism, or in achievement, or in perfection, or in Netflix, or in alcohol, or in porn, or in people-pleasing. Recognize that there are forces in our lives governing from the shadows that need our healing. And give God consent to rewire us.
Alison Cook: If we think about these first three steps, and you're going to get the deep dive in the book, but taking them in this way, is it something you then have to practice daily? Hourly?
Ian: Yeah. This is so good, Alison. You're a great interviewer. My sponsor, and for people who don't know, in 12 step communities, a sponsor is somebody who's been in the program longer than you and has worked the steps and helps you to do the same, walks you through them. They’re a great sounding board and counselor-advisor to you.
This guy's awesome. He's from East Tennessee, he's got a thick country accent. And he says stuff to me that's weirdly mystical sometimes, and I'm like, where did you get that? And he said to me, after you work these steps long enough, the numbers fall away.
And I thought, wow, he's right. In other words, yes, in the beginning you are very conscious of the order of the steps. I'm working step one. I'm working step two. I'm working step three. After you've been at it for a while, you discover that you're now reflexively living the principles of the program, all day, every day.
Sometimes it's very conscious. I could get up in the morning and say, boy, I admit that not only am I powerless over alcohol, but I am powerless over my fear of disappointing people. And it makes my life unmanageable today. And then I go to step two and I acknowledge that there's a power greater than myself that can restore me to sanity.
Step three, I say, listen, God, I've made a decision to turn my will and my life over to your care. I trust that with my cooperation and consent, that you can remove this defective character from me so that I can be free. And I hope we circle around to my understanding of my inner architecture and how it has been influenced by internal family systems.
It has given me language and a construct for doing internal work, for giving God consent. Like, hey God, I got this firefighter inside. It's called people-pleasing. I don't want to disappoint people. And no matter how hard I've tried, I can't seem to get this part to accept the leadership of my essential self. Can you help restore me to sanity here?
I've created kind of a hybrid of internal family systems with my recovery work. And I'm telling you, it has been incredibly helpful and I need so much to thank you for the work you've done, because it has really helped me have clarity and language for talking about my healing.
Alison Cook: I love that. When you're saying that, what it reminds me of is one of the things we say in IFS work sometimes–we're trying to get a paper's width's distance from that part of us. Especially those firefighters, because if we can even name it to God, that this part of me is so active right now, that's putting that tiniest sliver of space between us and that part.
And there's power in that. We don't have to make it go away altogether. We've placed a tiny hair of distance there that gives us a little bit more agency.
Ian: I love that. And I love this idea because when I have blended with these parts of me, I'm so over-identified and consumed. And secondly, when that happens, when I say I've come to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity, that to me is like that paper thin separation between my true self or my spirit led self and this other part.
It's, oh, there's a part of me that's not traumatized, that wasn't sexually abused as a kid, that wasn't affected by my dad's alcoholism and drug addiction, that is separate from the part of me that would seek to find a chemical solution to my problems. God placed that in me. I've come to believe that, and it's so helpful.
Alison Cook: It's like creating a little more inner awareness of other parts of you. So let's think about these first three steps. It sounds like what you're saying is that the first step is the acknowledgement of, I'm blended. This firefighter part of me is all that I am.
Ian: Yeah. And there are so many ways that we're powerless. You know what's so funny? There's an irony here. The moment you admit powerlessness, you're given a superpower. That's the strangest thing. Have you ever had a moment where you realized, I'm out of ammo?
Alison Cook: Yeah, totally. Totally.
Ian: You're like, I'm out of ammo. I've done everything. For those listening, if you're codependent, maybe over a kid that you can't get to stop drinking or drugging, or who has a behavior that you want to change and you realize, I've done everything, I've tried everything. And I am powerless.
What happens is this dilation in the chest sometimes, where everything finally relaxes. It's like all the parts go, finally, you've admitted what we've known all along.
Alison Cook: Yes. It's oddly a relief. It's not giving up. It's a very different energy–it's surrender, but it's very hard to describe. You said that so well. There's nothing more I can do.
Ian: What you described beautifully is the difference between surrender and resignation. Surrender is not resignation. People who are resigned to their life tend to be glum and resentful. I give up. We might even argue that's another part.
Alison Cook: Those are protector parts.
Ian: Yeah. When you surrender, especially when you surrender to a higher power, God as I understand Him, all the parts go, phew.
Alison Cook: Yes. You know what? It reminds me, as you're describing this, that giving up or resigning is a manager part that's actually trying to cope. Surrender is that true self. It's clarity. I actually don't have control. Our essential self from a Christian perspective understands and actually leads naturally to that step, because I'm not God, I'm not the ultimate power here.
Ian: Yeah. Yeah. Steve, my sponsor, one day said to me, Ian, we are well past any conversation about you fixing you.
Alison Cook: It's such a relief. It's such a paradox and I don't know why we fight so hard to fix ourselves, but it is such a relief. I love that. Okay. So those are the first three steps: I can't, God can, and then I consent, God. It's bending the knee in a way.
Ian: Yes, absolutely. So in a way we could say the 12 steps like this. One through three is about clarifying and mending our relationship with God. Four through six is about mending and clarifying our relationship with ourselves. Eight and nine are about mending and clarifying our relationship with others. And then ten through twelve is developing a lifestyle and a way of being in the world that supports ongoing health in each of those domains of our life.
Alison Cook: Oh, that's good.
Ian: When you get to four and five, four is a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Five is admitting to God, ourselves and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Now, some people read this and they're like, man, I don't want to go there. Yeah, those words are tough, man. I don't want to go there.
But I don't know anyone who's done a 4th and 5th step who has said anything other than, man, that was one of the most healing experiences of my life. So much of our work as therapists is making the unconscious conscious. What we do in this situation is, with a non-blaming gaze and with a non-judgmental compassionate spirit, we look inside and we take an inventory of ourselves. It should never be shaming, blaming, or unkind, but it needs to be rigorously honest.
When we make that inventory, we then go out and we admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Now, it sounds like hard language, I could reframe it in some different ways but it is really important. Johann Hari or Gabor Maté says that when you keep secrets about yourself, you are essentially at war with yourself. There's some truth in that, so we need to find a trusted other or a community where we can speak our truth.
Alison Cook: This is the one that's the hardest for me. You say it really clearly–it's being honest with ourselves, God, and another human. And I'm pretty vigorously honest with myself. I'm pretty vigorously honest with God. That other human is hard.
I imagine this could be different for different people. I'm curious for you, which one of those do you struggle with the most? One of the things I love about the 12 steps model is the sponsor, that safe person. A therapist can be that, but especially when you've been hurt by someone, it can be hard to trust others.
There are listeners who have been hurt in church settings with public confessions, where that's been used shamingly. So I feel a lot of tenderness toward folks where it's like, how do you find that trust? It’s really vulnerable when we're being really vigorously honest with ourselves and naming it to someone else.
Ian: Yeah. In the book and particularly in the workbook, I really help people through this. So for example, in the workbook, I have a sample letter that you can actually give someone that instructs them. You really do have to pick a trustworthy person. It shouldn't be your spouse, your partner, or one of your kids. It shouldn't be a friend.
Find a pastor or a therapist or somebody in your life that you know is safe. And if you don't have that person, that needs to be a separate conversation. Wow, I don't actually have a real friend like that.
It's really helpful if that person has been through this themselves in some way, had done a fifth step themselves, but there are instructions about how to do it. I get fairly granular in those two chapters to help people really think through who that person is. But I don't think you can skip this.
You can't decide, I'm going to stick to God and myself. It's really important. If you can't be vulnerable with your therapist, something's wrong.
Alison Cook: I love that. And I do want to let the listener know that the workbook is so practical. I'd never heard somebody say that so clearly as you say it, that it's probably not your spouse. And that makes sense, if you think about it, because some of the things we're really admitting, honestly, could be hurtful to the people we love.
There are different conversations one needs to have with a spouse or a best friend. But it really is the role of a pastor or a spiritual director sometimes. My mom is a really devout Catholic. I was raised in a mixed Catholic/evangelical home. And I envy the practice of confession.
Whatever we think about it theologically, it's a built in place to tell another human, this is what's actually happening in my heart. And that person has the capacity to hold that.
Ian: Yes. And James, of course, doesn't let us off the hook. Bill Wilson, who wrote the Twelve Steps, derives them from a Christian organization called the Oxford Movement. People need to know that. There's nothing in the Twelve Steps that is inconsistent or discontinuous with the teachings of Jesus, and they actually derive from a tradition that was very faithful and orthodox in its understanding of the human person and God.
James does say, confess your sins to one another that you might be healed. So it's not like the scriptures let us off the hook in this regard. Here's what people typically say. They'll say, I don't have to go to another human being to ask forgiveness–I can only receive that from God. And that's an anti-Catholic stance left over from centuries of Protestant problems.
But really, that person isn't going to forgive you. In the best setting, they're going to give you an assurance of pardon that you have already been given.
Alison Cook: That's right. And it’s embodied. It is so scriptural and the body of Christ matters.
Ian: Admit it to God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs. And by the way, you could decide that there are pieces of your fourth step inventory that you’re going to share with a friend, but you have five things on there to share with a therapist.
You have to exercise discernment, and be smart with it. As my sponsor likes to say, Ian, not everybody needs to know everything about you, but somebody needs to know everything.
Alison Cook: That's so good. It's really revolutionary. I've been interested and intrigued by the 12 steps for years, but this book really makes it accessible for all of us. It really makes it make sense for how it applies to all of us. It's so helpful. So let's keep going then. What's next?
We're doing this fearless moral inventory. We're really getting honest with God, ourselves, and at least one other human. Then what?
Ian: So after that we go to six and seven. What has come up in doing that fearless moral inventory of ourselves and sharing it with God and ourselves and other human beings are some character defects, like we realize, okay I struggle with resentment with so and so. It's because I'm envious of them. That's the real reason.
For me, I had to realize that after an episode of sexual abuse when I was about nine years old, that even though there was nothing I did wrong, I built my identity in some ways around that experience and I used it as playing the victim card. That was my part in it. You know what I mean?
After the fact, not the actual event, but after the fact. One of my character defects is playing the victim card sometimes. “Character defects” always put me off when I first heard it because it's like, I'm already ashamed enough. I don't really need to be told it's my defect. I am defective. I don't like the word.
So sometimes I call it a character defense. These are things that I came up with. These were strategies a part of me came up with to explain my experience to myself and to others. And all of my worst behaviors in life are usually driven by a part of me that came up with a strategy that is maladaptive or doesn't work.
And that gives me a little bit more compassion and understanding for those character issues that keep dogging me. So in step six, we're entirely ready to have God remove these defects of character. That's six. And then we humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings in step seven.
Now, super important. This is all about humility. It's recognizing, I can't get rid of these on my own. In fact, God doesn't even want me to take on that responsibility. Most people hear those steps and they go, I'm entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. What we end up doing is trying to do it on our own with our own unaided willpower. And it doesn't work. It's an exercise in futility.
Alison Cook: So Ian, for a second, let's think about this from an IFS lens, because I'm thinking about removing character defects. You've said something so important–when there's trauma in the background, and a part of you has coped with a very real trauma that wasn't your fault, if we think about parts language and defects, I hear you saying in these steps, we're revealing the strategy that a part picked up that was not helpful, but we don't want to get rid of the part.
We want that part to unburden that poor coping strategy, that unhealthy coping strategy, so that it can be restored to its healthy, whole, and proper state.
Ian: Okay. You're so killer. I love this. Number one, what I love about the 12 steps is that they're so beautifully written and framed. Bill Wilson, who authored them, used to say, these are suggestions. And there's no single right way to do the steps. It’s very open ended and kind.
One of the things that we can do is blend it with IFS and look at it through that lens. You could say that this part of me came up with the idea that if I play the victim card, I can leverage this painful experience and use it to manipulate others to feel sorry for me and not ask too much of me.
And then say, God, can you humbly remove our shortcomings? Step seven. Can you help this part of me unburden itself so that it no longer has to rely on that strategy to help me get through life?
Alison Cook: Yeah, I love that. And that sounds like a very young part that's trying to cope. What might that part become if it can get rid of that strategy? It doesn't need that strategy any longer.
Ian: Yes, exactly. And I always remind people this might take a minute. Bill Wilson says, we are not saints. The point is, we are trying to live along spiritual lines. We live by the principle of progress, not perfection.
Alison Cook: That’s good. Yeah, that's beautiful. It's the slow work.
Ian: Isn't that beautiful? There's a prayer by Teilhard de Chardin, the great Catholic theologian and thinker. He opens one of his most beautiful prayers with the line: Above all, trust in the slow work of God. Isn't that beautiful?
Alison Cook: Yes. I love that. It's so beautiful when you think about that overlay of getting to that step, and then God being so excited to meet that part that picked up that strategy and shine the mirror, but so gently and lovingly inviting that part to release that. It's just, wow. Why wouldn't we want to do this every day?
Ian: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So when you get to eight and nine, right now we've dealt with self. Now, we move into others. Eight is, make a list of all persons we have harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all. It's a really simple step.
It's just, I'm going to make a list of people I've harmed in my life as either a direct result of my addiction or addictive pattern, and then make direct amends to those people wherever possible. It's not always possible. Sometimes the person is dead. Sometimes we don't know where that person is now and can't find them. And we don't do it when it would hurt them, if our sharing with them something that we did would actually cause more pain than be of service to them.
But again, could this be any more scriptural? It's when you go to the temple and you realize that you've harmed somebody. Before you do another thing, run out, fix that, and then come back. This is a difficult pair of steps, but so many people carry the burden of unprocessed or unconscious resentment and hurt.
And if they can be agents of reconciliation in the world again, what we're doing here isn't just healing our relationship with them. It's also unburdening ourselves of shame and guilt and unresolved brokenness in relationships. Again, these steps can take time. We don't have to rush this. You're not in a race against yourself. But it's helpful to have a plan, because most people don't have a plan for transformation.
Alison Cook: It's so good. And I love what you're saying about not rushing it. That's the willpower part of us that wants to power through right there. You might get to that point where you need to be like, I can't do it. God. Back to step one: I can't. I can't do it. I'm not there yet. The radical honesty.
Ian: Yeah. I write about this idea that I call the “Hell no, I'm never going to make up to that schmuck” list. And those are the four or five people in my life who I would rather eat glass than make amends with. You know what I mean?
Alison Cook: I love the book. There's a lot of honesty in it.
Ian: Seriously, like I've got people in my life that I feel have hurt me much worse than I ever hurt them. You think I'm going to go and make amends? And yet the steps are like, listen, pal, all you have to do is clean your side of the street. That's it. Clean your side of the street.
They may not cop to what they did wrong in the relationship, but you need to cop to what you did. And you will come out, by the way, unburdened by shame and guilt and the feeling of something being left outstanding. When that happens, the likelihood of you returning to old addictive patterns is going to be infinitely less.
Alison Cook: That’s so good. And it doesn't mean you have to become best friends with them.
Ian: Heck no.
Alison Cook: It means you're taking care of your side of the street. Yeah. One of the things in IFS work, when you have a part that's holding on to something, maybe the person's no longer with us, or maybe it's somebody toxic that it wouldn't be wise to go to, we do some visualizations.
It might be the case where you've told a therapist, you've told someone, but then in the quiet of your own spirit, you're still releasing that resentment in some way, shape, or form. And in such a healthy way.
Ian: I talk about some practices people can do to soften their hearts towards those people who we need to make amends with, because sometimes it's important before we make amends to actually have forgiven the person for what they did to us. We don't go into that conversation with some passive aggressive energy that wants to say, I did this, but you did that.
How do I really understand that this person has broken parts too? Bill Wilson says they are sick too, and they need the same love and tolerance that we would offer a friend who was sick. I find that to be so beautiful.
Alison Cook: I feel like after this interview, I'm going to go do a bunch of journaling because I can feel it. There are those places in my own heart. Everything you're saying–this is a lifetime's work. This is ongoing work, layer upon layer. I really hear that. It takes time.
Ian: Yeah. And everybody goes at their own pace. For some people they go through the steps for the first time really quickly, and they're students of it. Now remember, some people come in on fire. They get to work. They have to remove the obstacles to achieve what I would call physical and emotional sobriety.
You and I could have a long conversation about emotional sobriety, like what that means, because through the lens of IFS, we are talking about achieving emotional and spiritual sobriety. Maybe we could talk about emotional sobriety as inhabiting and living out of our Spirit-led self and having a conscious awareness of its presence in our lives.
I was actually thinking about this in a meeting this morning. So much of steps work is about activating and bringing into our awareness the Spirit-led self and operating from there more and more. These steps help to support that journey in a way that's really great.
Step 10 is continuing to take personal inventory and promptly admitting when we're wrong. It's owning your stuff every day. It's pausing to go back after a snappy moment with your partner and say, you know what? I wasn't my best self then. This part of me was upset, and I'm sorry, or I ask your forgiveness for not coming from a healthier place then.
Alison Cook: Yeah. So the daily work.
Ian: The daily work. And then step 11 is about seeking through prayer and meditation, to improve our conscious contact with God. Then the final step is, and this is big, having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we try to carry this message to our fellow sufferers.
To practice these principles in all our affairs. That is the point of the 12 steps. The point of the 12 steps is not to get you to stop drinking or taking drugs or watch porn or any of the crazy strategies we come up with to deal with our pain. It's actually to have a spiritual awakening.
That's the whole purpose. That is the stated purpose of the 12 steps. Bill Wilson would have said, to have a spiritual awakening that now renders your need for these strategies unnecessary.
Alison Cook: That's amazing.
Ian: Yeah. And then to carry that message of hope to other people.
Alison Cook: Which is what you're doing. When you said that step, to carry it to fellow sufferers, that's what I felt as I dug into your book this week. I thought, oh, you're doing that. You're giving it out of your own suffering, which has not been insignificant.
You're bringing it to others. And isn't that the beauty of the upside down gospel? I love that idea of carrying it to others and bringing that freedom to others. I want to sidetrack into what you said about emotional sobriety, because it reminds me of what you asked me when you interviewed me, about the goal of this work of IFS, and I said, “harmony”.
It's balancing all of the different states inside of us in a way that allows for the existence of different parts, but creates a melody. It's where that Spirit-led self is leading. When you say sobriety, it reminds me of that.
We'll have to have another conversation because I feel like you and I could do a whole other deep dive around this, but that's a really beautiful thought. I'm going to keep thinking about that emotional sobriety.
Ian: There's a term I love, and I can't believe I've never heard a sermon on it. It's a word that the Buddhists use. I am a Christian, but I have learned a lot from Buddhists about different things, and I'm a critical thinker, so I'm able to go, oh. That illuminates the gospel in a way I haven't heard before.
Equanimity. I would define it as the ability to maintain emotional balance and wholeness in the face of whatever life throws at you.
Alison Cook: That's it. That's the word. Equanimity. Yeah. It's not doing away with the complexity–it's leading yourself through it without losing yourself, without losing connection to God, to the Holy Spirit. That's really beautiful work.
I want to ask you as we close, I ask all my guests two questions. What would you say to that younger you who picked up some of the unhelpful strategies? What would you want him to know if you could be with him now?
Ian: You know what? I was at a conference a couple of years ago and someone was doing a Q&A with me. I was on stage and this person said, what would you tell your 10 year old self? And when something comes out of your mouth before you can edit it, you're having an out of body experience. You're like, did I say that?
I said, “you are not what happened to you”. I'm actually getting a little puddly right now when I say it, because we tend to over-identify with what happened to us in our histories. We assign it a level of truth and meaning that it doesn't deserve. And then we become strangely loyal to that interpretation of our history.
It took me a long time, and the steps really helped, to realize that I am not what happened to me, so that is something I would definitely tell my younger self.
Alison Cook: That's beautiful. What's bringing out the best of you right now?
Ian: Hmm. I guess a convenient answer would be to say the 12 steps, and get my book! But they do continue to bring out the best of me, by working them every day. I can also say my wife is bringing out the best of me. I've been married for 38 years.
We've been through a lot together and we've reached a point in our relationship where there's a beautiful, comfortable companionship and friendship. We dance well together, and also we're very different. I'm a complex artist-type and all that stuff. And she's a beautiful peacemaker type.
She loves to plant sunflowers and make meals and go to yoga and live her life very peaceably. I used to look at her like, okay, this is boring. And I realized one day that it’s an aspect of God that's being revealed to me. She's my teacher.
Alison Cook: Oh, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. Tell everyone where they can find your book, the workbook and your work.
Ian: Yeah. Thanks so much. The book is called The Fix: How the Twelve Steps Offer a Surprising Path of Transformation for the Well-Adjusted, the Down-and-Out, and Everyone In Between. We have an interesting offer right now. If you pre-order, it doesn't drop until January 28th, but if you pre-order now, we'll send a free copy of chapter one.
The way to do that is to go to ianmorgancron.com/getyourdownload. And we'll tell you how to show proof that you preordered it, and then we'll send you a link to read the first chapter so you can get a head start on it.
Alison Cook: It's well worth it. You won't be able to put it down. Please take advantage of that. This is such a good book. I would say right now, reading it is bringing out the best in me. It's been a real answer to prayer that is helping me work through some of the things in my own life.
That structure, like you said, that scaffolding, is so helpful. I'm so grateful for you and for the fact that you're sharing this with fellow sufferers.
Ian: Alison, dare I say, I hope one day we get an opportunity to make good trouble together. It would be so fun to do a gathering of people around internal family systems and addictions together and to help people find the next step in their journey toward disentangling themselves from the things that they feel powerless to do anything about.
Alison Cook: Yeah, I sense a real invitation there. It's been a pleasure. Thanks, Ian.
Ian: Thanks, Alison.
Are you always the one taking care of and fixing problems for everyone else?
Today, I'm taking a deep dive into the heart of overfunctioning—exploring why so many of us feel compelled to take on excessive responsibilities, often at the cost of our own well-being. I delve into parentification, which I believe often lies at the root of overfunctioning. I also share how understanding these dynamics through Mel Robbins' "Let Them Theory" can offer powerful insights for change.
Whether you're tired of always being 'the responsible one' or you're seeking to understand your deep-seated need to please others, this discussion will clarify the roots of these behaviors and guide you toward a path of healing and freedom.
Here’s what we cover:
*What is overfunctioning, and how does it impact your life?
*How childhood parentification fuels overfunctioning in adulthood
*5 clear signs you were parentified as a child
*3 practical steps to start healing
*How Mel Robbins’ Let Them Theory transforms boundary setting
Resources:
- The Best of You: Break Free from Painful Patterns, Mend Your Past, and Discover Your True Self in God by Dr. Alison Cook
- The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can't Stop Talking About by Mel Robbins
If you liked this, you’ll love:
- Episode 5: What is Codependency and Why Does it Matter?
Thanks to our sponsors:
- Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
- This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/BESTOFYOU and get on your way to being your best self.
- Go to Quince.com/bestofyou for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order!
- Go to puritywoods.com/BESTOFYOU or enter code BESTOFYOU at checkout for an additional 10% off your first order.
Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
Transcript:
Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am so glad to be here with you this week. It's just me this week, and I have a topic that I've been working on a lot in my own life. I've been having a lot of conversations about this with other people, and I wanted to bring it to the podcast.
The topic is over-functioning. It's incredibly relevant for so many of us, especially here in these few weeks after the holidays. A lot of us have been doing this for the last few weeks, if not the last few months. Overfunctioning is when you take on more than your actual share of responsibilities.
We often are doing this to manage our own anxiety or fears or insecurities, and I've had so many conversations about this with other people, with friends, with clients, with family members, in addition to so many conversations with myself about these patterns. I've been working really hard on a lot of these patterns, especially this past year as I've gone through some transitional seasons, so it's very fresh for me personally.
I want to talk about today why it's so prevalent for us to find ourselves in this cycle of over-functioning. I also want to explore three very practical ways to begin to heal as we head into the new year and seek to become the best version of ourselves.
Here's the thing about over-functioning. It's not that we work too hard or we get caught up in the moment. It's a way that parts of us have learned to survive. It's when we're managing other people's emotions or behaviors, or we're managing their problems instead of primarily doing the work of managing ourselves, of attuning to our own emotions, our own behaviors, our own problems, which is our primary responsibility in this life before God and before other people.
A part of us has learned to focus all that attention outward onto other people. It's often linked to codependency, when we are so focused on managing other people's problems that we miss out on the more important work that God is inviting us to do inside our own selves.
This pattern of over-functioning manifests in several different ways. It can show up as compulsive people-pleasing, where we try to please others at the expense of staying true to ourselves. It can show up as compulsive peacekeeping, where we're constantly trying to manage other people's conflicts that have nothing to do with us, instead of regulating our own anxiety.
In the face of conflict, it can show up as compulsive perfectionism, where we're working so hard to earn the approval of others through our own performance, instead of attuning to our own needs, our own values, and our own worth.
For example, you might find yourself managing your own anxiety by constantly rushing in to solve your friend's problems before they've even asked for help. In many cases, you might catch yourself frantically cleaning up your kid's rooms or cleaning up their homework, taking on tasks that they are fully capable of handling themselves because it's easier and quicker and more instantly gratifying than working through your own fears or your own stress.
Maybe you're someone who, when your mom and your dad start to bicker with each other, or maybe your spouse and one of your children starts to argue, maybe you're someone who jumps in and constantly tries to interpret their words or reframe what they're saying. “What he really means is this…”
You expend all this effort trying to smooth things over, to prevent their conflict from escalating, instead of stepping back and letting them address and resolve their own differences.
We all find ourselves doing these things in some ways, but when it becomes compulsive, when we're doing it mindlessly, almost outside of our conscious awareness, when we're so reflexively jumping in to keep the peace, to please, or to perfect instead of hanging on to ourselves and attuning to our own selves, our own internal responses, it becomes a problem.
We are managing other people instead of doing the work of attending to and managing and leading ourselves through our own uncomfortable emotions.
One way to see if this is a problem is to wonder if this is something I'm doing compulsively. Or is every once in a while, where I'm impatient and I jump in to try to fix a problem that wasn't really mine to fix? Ask yourself this: for the most part, am I acting from a place of calm and regulation, or am I engaging in this behavior to avoid, to escape or to deny or to bypass my own uncomfortable feelings?
Am I jumping in to please this other person out of a conscious desire to be kind and compassionate in this moment? Or am I behaving reflexively? What comes out of my mouth is what I know they want to hear, and I wouldn't even know how to show up with this person from a self-regulated space, where I might say the kind thing that they want to hear from me in the moment, but I'm also free to say, gosh, I'm not sure I see it the same way you do.
Am I jumping in to pick up after my child or clean up their mess, whether it's a relational mess or whether it's a literal mess, am I doing that out of a conscious desire to help them because they're in a bad spot? Or am I jumping in because I can't stand the discomfort that I feel seeing their room or seeing their relationships or seeing their homework in this state?
Am I jumping into the middle of this conflict that these two other people have with each other because I've really thought about it and prayed about it, and I'm deeply aware that I have some tools that might help them and they seem open to that, so I'm willing to step in as an objective third party to empower them to make a change? Or am I jumping in reflexively in this moment because I cannot stand how I feel when other people are in conflict?
How you answer those questions is crucial to understanding whether you're genuinely helping someone out of an overflow of your own heart, or if you're unknowingly perpetuating a cycle of codependency. This is a journey that I've been on personally for years.
And while I have healed in many ways, I'm telling you, different life seasons resurrect old wounds in new ways. I turned 52 years old, and I'm, for the most part, now in an empty nest. There are different factors and variables in my life right now that create new opportunities for deeper healing.
As I've reflected on my own journey this past year, as I've really been working through a lot of these dynamics in my own soul, I have noticed how often messages like the following rise up in my soul.
“I only know how to feel love.”
That rings true for me a lot of the time, when I'm aware I'm reaching to meet a need to feel loved and to feel comforted or to feel encouraged–to feel consoled in my own life through providing those very same things to someone else.
It's as if a part of me projects my own emotional needs onto others, and then I work to care for those imagined needs in others, instead of first pausing to ask myself, wait a minute, does that other person that needs my caregiving right now, or is it a part of myself? Increasingly, I am aware that the part of me that is constantly showing me all this concern that it has for others is actually a cue that there's a part of me in need of my care.
As I've unpacked this in my own life and helped others to unpack it in theirs, there's a concept that is often at the root of this kind of compulsive over-functioning, where we constantly work to manage other people instead of doing the work of managing and caring for the parts of ourselves. The word is parentification.
This is when you've been conditioned since childhood to take care of other people. I talk about this in my book, The Best of You: Break Free from Painful Patterns, Mend Your Past, and Discover Your True Self in God. The whole book really is about healing from this specific pattern of pain, of over-functioning on behalf of others to the neglect of your own self.
One of the stories that didn't make it into the final cut of the book was about a client, Emily. I've changed her name to protect her identity, but she grew up in a home where her mother often turned to her as a confidant. As early as the age of eight, she would remember sitting at the kitchen table, where she would listen to her mom vent about her friends or her work, or even about Emily's father.
Emily would listen and really try to help her mom, and here's the memory that Emily would constantly go back to as we unpacked this: her mom would end these conversations by saying, you are such a good listener, Emily, I don't know what I’d do without you.
Think about the impact of those words on a young child's soul. You are such a good listener. I don't know what I'd do without you. Emily took that in at a young age and she began to become a master at reading other people's emotions. She began to detect, before her mom would even say anything to her, when she needed help cleaning up.
When her mom needed space, Emily would tiptoe away and stay out of her hair. When her mom needed the right words of comfort, Emily became a master at reading those cues externally and then getting that hit of dopamine. That hit felt so good when her mom would say, you're so amazing, Emily, I don't know what I would do without you.
A young part of Emily picked up the idea that she could get a hit of love or affection through taking care of somebody else. The problem is that as an adult, Emily began to notice that she often felt invisible in her relationships.
She was really good at showing up for other people in her life. She showed up for her friends. She showed up for her kids. She showed up for her spouse. She showed up for her colleagues, but she had this chronic lingering loneliness inside, like nobody sees me. Nobody knows me.
I have all these friends, I have all these people in my life who turn to me, but why do I feel so alone? As we began to unpack Emily's past, this term, parentification, became a really helpful naming that began to set her on a path toward healing.
Parentification is a role reversal in which a child steps into a caregiving role for their parent. And in this case, I'm speaking primarily about emotional support, when a child is expected to meet the emotional needs of their parent. It might look like being a confidant, a pseudo-therapist, or a mediator between a parent and another parent or between a parent and siblings.
Now listen, this isn't about the occasional moment when a child helps a parent out. Those can be healthy and character-building and really beautiful. When a child shows us a moment of empathy or compassion, we want to honor that in our child.
But this is a really different thing. This is a chronic pattern, where the child's role in the family is distorted, where they are conditioned to become essentially the primary caregiver, the parent in the family. In this sense, the parent really abdicates their role as the primary caregiver when it comes to emotional care in particular.
It can happen in other ways, but we're going to talk about the emotional piece of it in today's episode, where the parent is supposed to be providing the guidance, the wisdom, the support. But instead of doing that, they're instead receiving the care and guidance and support from their child.
This role reversal really disrupts your development when you're a child–it affects your emotional and psychological health. Here's the thing that is so important to understand; there is a power differential in a family. At its core, parentification distorts the natural power differential within a family. Adults hold the greater power emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually. Children, on the other hand, are vulnerable.
A child's job is to rely on their caregivers to help them learn, to regulate their own emotions, to process complicated situations, and to set healthy boundaries with their own peers and even with their own family members. There are tasks children are simply not equipped to handle on their own.
The parent needs to be the primary caregiver in a family, so that a child knows what it feels like to receive care, to receive guidance, to receive support. This idea aligns beautifully with the biblical metaphor Jesus gives us for God as father or Abba, which translates to a deeply intimate and nurturing primary caregiver.
As humans, we look to God as bigger than us, as knowing more than us, as the one who provides, protects, and guides us. It's a beautiful relationship where we get to lean into God as that all knowing, all giving, all supporting being when we're feeling vulnerable or scared or broken down.
In a family system, while parents will never do this perfectly, we are entrusted as parents to reflect this type of nurturing Abba-like presence to our children. While we do this imperfectly, we still carry the responsibility that we have to shape our children's lives, and not the other way around.
So if a parent subverts that natural power differential and begins to lean on the child in a way that exploits the child's vulnerability, that family dynamic really shifts. Instead of being taught how to understand and regulate your emotions, you were leaned on as an emotional co-regulator for a parent or for a family member.
Instead of helping you process your own struggles, your own fears, your own insecurities, your own sensitivities, whether at school with friends or in your own family, you were groomed to serve as your parents' personal sounding board.
Instead of modeling healthy boundaries to protect emotional well being and physical space, you were constantly boundary-fouled. Your parent constantly overstepped the boundaries and placed inappropriate burdens on you.
So if you go back to Emily's story, let's say she's listening really attentively to her mom, and her mom says to her in that moment, Emily, you have such a kind heart. I love your empathy. I want you to know that these are my problems and I have other adults to work through these problems with. These are not your responsibility.
In fact, I want to be sure you're not feeling scared or anxious because somehow you've picked up on the fact that I'm feeling scared or anxious. I want you to know I'm okay. I'm getting the help I need. It's my job to be here for you. How are you doing in this moment?
When a child is over-functioning or stepping into the role of a parent or stepping into a role where they're taking on more responsibility than is theirs to take on, it's a parent's job to point that out. “This actually isn't your responsibility to step in here. So tell me a little bit about what that's about. What's going on inside of you?”
That's what a parent needs to do. As you can imagine, if that didn't happen for you, as an adult you're going to show some symptoms of that. Not only were you stepping into over-functioning through caring for your own parent, but you were being validated for it. You're being told, oh, I love this about you. I couldn't live without you. You take that with you into adulthood.
Here are five indicators that you may have been parentified as you struggle not to over-function in your adult relationships.
Number one, you struggle to identify your own needs. A part of you finds it easier to focus on others than to connect with your own feelings, desires, or needs. And this part often measures your self-worth based on your ability to satisfy the needs of others.
Number two, you feel responsible for other people's emotions. A part of you is hyper-attuned to the emotions of those around you. You feel responsible for their well-being, and this part of you feels guilty as if it's your fault when others are upset, angry, disappointed, or down, even when it has nothing to do with you.
Number three, you avoid conflict. A part of you tends to avoid conflict, and that part of you cannot stand the thought of someone else feeling uncomfortable as a result of your actions, even if they should feel uncomfortable because they're actually doing something that is wrong and you need to speak up and say, hey, I'm not comfortable with this.
That's going to evoke discomfort in them, and this part of you cannot stand that. It feels like anathema to you, and instead you sacrifice your own needs in the relationship so that they always feel good about themselves and never have to feel the pain of conflict. Conflict is healthy in relationships–we need to be able to enter into conflict to navigate through pain points in our relationships.
Number four, you experience hypervigilance, where you're always on duty. You're always on watch. I experienced this as an antenna part of me that's always out ahead of me, gauging what's happening in other people, gauging other people's facial expressions, gauging other people's subtext, gauging other people's moods.
It's constantly scanning for what others need, for what others are worrying about, for what others' expectations are in the moment, and feeding that information to me so that I can meet it, often before they even ask.
And I'll be honest with you. This vigilant part of me is often driven by number one, either a fear of abandonment, that if I don't anticipate and meet that need, I won't have a relationship with that person anymore, that I'll be cut off from that person. It's the only way that part of me knows how to experience connection.
Or number two, that part of me genuinely and sincerely believes that the other person can't manage without my help. And that's been a big one to unpack in my own life. What if there are other ways to experience healthy two-way connection? What if that other person not only can, but needs to learn to manage?
The fifth indicator that you have developed this pattern of over-functioning is that you have a lot of difficulty trusting others. A part of you, having been relied upon so heavily as a child, struggles to trust that someone else could actually show up for you when you need support or when you need a listening ear.
As a result, this part of you makes it hard for you to form balanced relationships where your needs are acknowledged as often and as frequently as you're acknowledging the needs of the other person.
If you've noticed any of these five indicators in your life, please know this is not your fault. This is a pattern that develops usually early in childhood and often as a result of parentification. It often begins with parents who were struggling in their own ways. So there's no blame here, but we do need to name it.
I have been over-functioning since I was eight years old. It's not going to change on a dime. There's a pattern here that I need to heal. And here is the good news–healing is possible. It's the work we're invited into. It’s the path that God invites each and every one of us on.
Naming is the marker at the beginning of the path. Oh, this is where I am. I'm an over-functioner. I tend to over-function. I have codependent patterns. I have no clue how to honor my own needs. This is the truth that sets us free, and we set down on the path of healing. We're getting there. God becomes the most wonderful sort of companion as we work to establish new ways.
The first of three steps to healing I want to share with you today is naming the pattern. Not only in general, but to begin to name it in the moment. Oh my goodness. I'm pleasing this person right now. I can't stop in this moment, but I'm aware I'm doing it. My reflex right now is to say whatever they want me to hear.
Just that awareness in and of itself is a huge step toward change. You might name it after the fact–oh my gosh, my spouse and my eldest son were in a conflict and I could not stop myself from intervening, from getting in the middle of it and it happened.
Noticing is what allows you to begin to blaze new neural pathways in your brain. It's going to take a few of those, where you notice it while it's happening or after it's happening, until you finally get to the point of realizing it before it happens and making a different choice.
When we can notice and name what's happening without shame, we get some distance from it and we begin to ask ourselves, what would it look like in that moment if I did make a different choice? What would it look like if, when I felt that anxiety inside of me, when two people in front of me are starting to fight, what if I got up and excused myself and left the room?
Could I really do that? It really starts with that internal what if-ing? What if I could make a different choice?
And this leads us to number two, where you reconnect to the part of yourself that has learned this strategy to survive. Oh my gosh. Right now, a part of me is scanning this Christmas dinner table and noticing which person is about ready to get angry or which person is about ready to feel hurt.
Instead of focusing on the other person or on other people, shift your attention to the part of you that's doing the scanning. I wonder what that's about. What is that part of me that is so invested in taking the temperature of everyone in the room? What does that part of me need from me right now?
What fears does this part of me have, if it weren't to do this job? What if I were to stop scanning everybody else and notice what I'm feeling in this moment?
Inevitably, when I start doing this work, when I slowly notice that part of me that's so tempted to read everybody else and I begin to attune to my own inner feelings, inevitably, I notice anxiety. I feel anxious right now. I don't like conflict. I want everyone to feel happy. And I begin to do the work of reparenting the parts of myself in need of care.
I let that part of me know it doesn't have to work so hard anymore. I play the role of the parent for that part of me, because that part of me is young. It's back in that eight year old self, thinking its job is to scan the needs of everybody else. And I let that part of me know, thank you so much for working so hard, but you don't have to do that job anymore. I'm here. I can handle it. You can rest inside my soul.
You begin to parent that part of you in a way that it never got parented.
Lastly, number three, as you begin to notice more of your own internal anxieties and fears that lead to the over-functioning and you begin to reorient to your own needs instead, then you can begin to set healthy boundaries with your impulse to over-function. Now, notice I didn't say set healthy boundaries with other people. I said, set healthy boundaries with your own impulse to over-function.
And here's why that's important to me. Part of why I wrote The Best of You is because I was concerned that most of the conversation about boundaries is written through the lens of saying no to other people, which if you think about it from this over-functioning lens, can easily become about managing other people.
I need to say no to other people because then they'll stop doing this thing. The focus is on other people. And that isn't helpful to those of us who over-function by managing other people. Instead, think about boundaries as figuring out what you want to say yes to inside your own self.
So for example, I don't like family conflict. I feel anxious. Instead of managing others, what other choice do I wish to make in this moment? Do I wish to leave or excuse myself from the room? Do I wish to limit the time that I'm present at these types of gatherings? You flip it from “I'm going to say no to other people”, to “What do I want?” instead.
What would I do if it weren't my job to intervene in this conflict that someone else is having? What would I do with my time if I weren't compulsively fixing other people's problems? What would I want to do in this moment if I wasn't cleaning up other peoples’ problems?
Let yourself wonder. It might take a while to answer those questions. This is the harder part of the equation. What would I do instead right now if I didn't race in to clean up that mess that someone else made?
One of the tools that I have found recently that has been really helpful for me on this boundary setting journey is by Mel Robbins, and she's got a new book out. It's called The Let Them Theory. It's everywhere. I highly recommend it. I would love to get Mel on the podcast. She's super busy, understandably, so I'm going to briefly use her words, but go check out her book to get the full deep dive on it.
She uses these two steps in the context of over-functioning. The first part of it is to let them have their mess. Let them have their disappointment. Let them have their emotions. Let them engage in that conflict that's not in my control, that's not mine to manage. That's the first part, recognizing that it's not mine to manage.
The second part of her theory, and this part is a lot harder and it gets at boundaries work, is let me. What can I control? What can I manage? What I can manage is myself. So I'm going to let them have their reaction, have their conflict, but then I'm going to let me choose to remove myself.
I'm going to let them work through their own problem that they created, and then I'm going to take a deep breath and I'm going to let me do something really nice for myself, because it's really hard for me to watch someone else suffer the consequences of their own actions.
That second part, what she calls “let me”, gets at this proactive side of boundary setting. We have to go, what do I need to do in this situation to take care of myself, to manage myself, to regulate myself?
This is a tool that honors our own agency. We let other people be responsible for themselves, and that allows us to take responsibility for what's ours, for our own anxiety, for what actually helps me. When I feel anxious, what soothes me? When I'm fearful, what makes me feel supported or connected or cared for?
Man, that is next level healing, when we actually start to tap into what we need from other people, what we need from God, what we need from our family members and from our friends to thrive and feel supported and loved.
When you shift away from managing other people to leading and nurturing and caring for and reparenting the parts of your own soul in partnership with God's spirit, you create an oasis of goodness and kindness and calm inside your own soul. And from this place of taking charge of your own self, you can begin to empower others in their own healing journeys.
What’s the secret to healing marriage struggles and fostering deep connection?
In this heartfelt and incredibly vulnerable conversation, Ron and Nan Deal share their journey of rebuilding a marriage that almost unraveled. Drawing from their new book, The Mindful Marriage, they reveal how understanding and managing your own pain cycles can transform relationships. Whether you’re married, single, or navigating any relationship, this episode offers profound wisdom and practical tools for emotional and personal growth.
Episode Highlights:
* Explore one couple's journey through shame, blame, and rediscovering connection.
* Learn 4 Pain Cycles that disrupt relationships and how to break free from them.
* Uncover practical steps to nurture your relationship’s “us-ness” without losing yourself.
* Learn what to do when you're willing to do the work—but your partner isn't.
Take the free assessment Ron and Nan mention in the episode here
Get your copy of The Mindful Marriage here.
Resources:
- The Mindful Marriage: Create Your Best Relationship Through Understanding and Managing Yourself by Ron Deal and Nan Deal
- www.worthypub.com/assessment
- Matthew 7
- Philippians 21
- Corinthians 13
- rondeal.org
If you liked this, you’ll love:
- Episode 115: 4 Ways to Transform Your Relationship: Expert Tips to Heal Pain Points and Deepen Intimacy
Thanks to our sponsors:
- Go to Quince.com/bestofyou for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order!
- Get ahead of the New Year with a routine that helps you now by going to Seed.com/BESTOFYOU and use code 25BESTOFYOU to get 25% off your first month.
Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
Transcript:
Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am so glad you're here this week. This is a first for The Best of You Podcast–it's the first time we've had a married couple on, as they tell their story of how they came back from the brink of their marriage almost unraveling.
It's also the first time we've really had an episode devoted to the topic of marriage. Whether you're married, divorced, or single, this episode has something for everybody. My guests today have written a brand new book that is all about the secret to a healthy marriage.
This episode touches on so much of what we talk about regularly on this podcast, which is learning to manage our own emotions, learning to be more in tune with our body, with the messages we're telling ourselves, more in charge of our own responses to other people.
All that work is, in fact, the foundation for a healthy, long-term, two-way relationship with someone else. So in this episode, we're going to get deep into what my guests call the four pain cycles–the four ways most of us tend to cope when we feel threatened or hurt or fearful or controlled or even annoyed with another human.
We’ll see how it's our responsibility to learn how to shift from that pain cycle into a healthy response that honors the other person, but also reveals the best version of who we are in that moment.
My guests today are an incredible couple, Ron and Nan Deal. They've been married for 38 years and they've worked for decades to bring wisdom and incredibly practical advice for couples everywhere.
Ron is a licensed marriage and family therapist. He's a bestselling author and podcaster, and Nan is the co-founder of Connor's Song, which is a non-profit organization founded in honor of their son, Connor, who died at the age of 12 in 2009.
In this new book, The Mindful Marriage, Ron and Nan partner with pioneering therapists, Dr. Terry Hargrave and Sharon Hargrave, whose transformational restoration therapy has helped millions through the practice of emotional mindfulness applied to marriage. The book is called The Mindful Marriage: Create Your Best Relationship Through Understanding and Managing Yourself.
That subtitle really says it all. The more we grow and heal and learn to manage our own inner turmoil and become the best version of who we are, the more we show up effectively in our most cherished relationships.
This is such a rich episode from start to finish. Ron and Nan share incredibly honestly and vulnerably about each of their own journeys and how there were periods of time where neither of them was doing their own work and it really hurt the other one. They share how they not only survived those rough patches, but learned to thrive as a married couple.
This method that they're laying out in the new book and that they share with us today on this episode is what helped them heal their own marriage. You will hear us talk about an assessment you can take to help pinpoint your own pain cycle, which is the way that you tend to react out of pain when you feel hurt by someone else.
I took the assessment and we discussed my results in today's episode. If you want to take that assessment, it's free. It's at www.worthypub.com/assessment. I will send that link out along with an excerpt from the book in this week's email newsletter. It's free and it goes out every Tuesday. You can sign up for it at dralisoncook.com.
Without further ado, I am thrilled to bring you my conversation with Ron and Nan Deal.
***
Alison Cook: Let's dive into this because you're both very real and honest in the book, which I so appreciated. Ron, you've worked with couples for years as a therapist. You’ve helped so many other couples and yet your own marriage was at a real crisis point.
Could you take us back to that moment where Nan, you really sat down with Ron and said, this isn't working. We've got to change. What was happening in your marriage at that moment?
Nan: I like to go back to the beginning. We both brought in some real hard baggage to the marriage, and we didn't unpack it back then. We actually didn't know how much baggage we were bringing in from our families of origin. I honestly wanted Ron to fix it.
He did go through graduate school and became a therapist, and I wanted him to fix it and I didn't want him to fix it. I wanted him to fix it on my terms, when I wanted him to fix it. You know what I mean? We brought in a lot. We brought in our pain, and we started unpacking that on each other, unknowingly.
There was a season, a decade or more, where Ron was really overworking. I would say he was a workaholic. There were multiple times I tried to get him to see, or I tried to coerce him into seeing, or I tried to blame him or shame him into seeing this bad pattern.
It was never enough for him. He was going after the next thing and the next thing, building this kingdom, so to speak.
Alison Cook: Good things.
Nan: Right. Yes. Our boys were middle school and under. So I'd say they were 8, 10 and 12 at the time. It was like, wait a minute, they need their dad. These are young boys who are going to become young men, and where is Ron? Why are we always walking into church by ourselves?
Why am I feeling so lonely on this side of the couch? He's gone all the time, and when he comes home, he's completely exhausted because he's given 150%. I had had enough, and we had made a move, too. I thought the move would make things better, when in fact it made it worse.
I met him one night with a suitcase and it really wasn't a kindness, it wasn't even a care-frontation at that point. It was, you get us some help or you're out of here. Or maybe I'm out of here, I don't know, but it’s either me or you kind of thing. I was done and in real desperation. He was like, okay, I'll get us some help. And that landed us into Dr. Hargrave's office the next day.
Ron: Alison, a lot of people can relate to some of that story. We just drift in our marriage and wake up one day and go, wow, you're way over there. How did we get here? That was certainly us then.
What we came to learn from Dr. Hargrave and the principles that we are now sharing in The Mindful Marriage, is that what was driving us, underneath my working, underneath her loneliness, was far more important than the fact that I was working a lot of hours.
It was far more important to understand that, because what was driving us would have continued to drive in all kinds of wrong directions, and we needed to get at that root.
Alison Cook: Yeah. The root. You had to get at the root.
Nan: That's right. In that office that day, I met them both at the door and I said, because I'm an early childhood education major, I have this doctor and a therapist staring at me and I said, no funny business.
Alison Cook: Yeah. I love that.
Nan: I'm like, none of this psychobabble stuff. Terry said, by all means, go first. He let me unpack and unpack my pain. Then he turned to Ron and he really nailed him to the wall.
Ron: He did. He really did. He was talking to Nan. He was doing a reflective statement to Nan, but boy, he was talking to me.
Nan: At that moment, I sat and I thought, yay, somebody's finally seen me and heard me. But Ron starts crying. At that moment, he starts a journey of humility. And I'm sitting there in my pain and in my anger going, good. You sit in that. You sit in that for a little bit because you have been so awful to me.
I did not see his pain. I was so glad that somebody else saw my pain and was calling him out on it, which was wrong on my part. So fast forward two years to when the bottom drops out and our son, our middle son Connor, passes away. We are back in Terry's office, hanging on by a thread.
I will say this about him. I love him dearly for how he tenderly and gently stepped into that space and was present for us. I am so grateful because of how hard it was for us and how broken we were. I hate the stat that people throw out when people lose a child, and they come at you and go, well your marriage is in a terrible crisis now.
95 percent of all marriages are gonna end because you've lost a child. First of all, that's not true. If you're in a crisis like us, you could become a statistic, but Terry was God's provision for when this crisis, this deep dark night of the soul comes on. I'm thankful for those two years we sat in his office and worked.
But I will say this about those two years. Ron starts his journey of humbling and Terry turns to me that day and he says, Nan, this brokenness in you, if you'll allow God to heal it, it'll be the most beautiful part of you. I sat there and I looked at him and I went, what? I've been trying to scrape this pain off my whole life. What do you mean the most beautiful part?
It wasn't until 2020 that I understood that for the first time. Oh, this is what you meant. So this journey with him and restoration therapy and our journey of grief has been a long windy one.
Alison Cook: Yep, I appreciate the honesty. You said something really interesting, and this is so relatable for people. When you were upset with Ron working all the time, not being available, that was real. It was valid.
But you also said that the way you were trying to get him to see that wasn't helpful. This is what gets tricky, I think, for people when we're in a marriage, when we're in a relationship—where it's not that what we're seeing in the other person isn't valid.
We hear the tropes of, I need to do my own work, but maybe he actually is the one with the problem!
Ron and Nan: You're right.
Alison Cook: It gets into what you lay out as these reactive styles.
Ron and Nan: Yep. Reactive coping.
Alison Cook: So this is where we can lose each other as a couple. It's a subtle, but really important shift. It's not that we're trying to gaslight ourselves and say, he's got to do him, I've got to work on myself. There is an issue, and we need to figure out how to come together in that. That feels like such an important spotlight you're placing. I want to dig into that a little bit.
Ron and Nan: If there's abuse, then there definitely needs to be safety. There needs to be boundaries. I sat with a woman last week at a recovery meeting, and she was setting a boundary because her partner was doing drugs. She asked me, do you think that was okay? Am I not showing forgiveness? I'm like, oh, most certainly you need to get to a safe place.
Alison Cook: I love that you're giving that caveat. We're not talking here about patterns of abuse or toxicity. We're talking about disappointments. Maybe the other person is really growing or doing their best. Maybe they are hurting us, but it's not in that category of abuse. I really appreciate that caveat.
Ron and Nan: Yeah. We never want anybody to hear us saying that. So let's get into that reactivity. Sure. First of all, this is the universal experience. Every person on the planet does it, anywhere from a couple of times a day to multiple times, if not constantly during the day.
Dysregulation is a natural part of our life. It happens when somebody cuts you off on the freeway. It happens when your 2 year old or your 16 year old or your 25 year old looks at you and says, I don't care what you say, you're stupid. You feel that disrespect. Those are moments of dysregulation.
When your spouse looks into their phone rather than looking into your eyes, you feel that gap. Where'd you go? That's a moment of dysregulation. What happens neurologically is our brain goes into fight or flight reactivity. Everybody's heard of that these days. We talk a lot about trauma, and you're an expert, Alison, at that.
Fight or flight really takes on four different expressions. Blame, shame, control, or escape. Those are the categories. There are different things underneath that. But blame is basically that I'm against you. This is your fault. I'm going to point out what you did wrong. It's Adam and Eve in the garden. It's somebody else's fault.
Shame is, it's my fault and I'm unloading on me and there must be something wrong with me. So it's not the feeling of shame. It's the activity of shame. It's putting ourselves in a corner and saying, this is about me. I'm not good enough. That's why you would rather spend time on your phone than talk to me. That's shame.
Control is, I'm going to take charge of the circumstances. I'm going to try to prevent this thing that's causing me pain from happening anymore. So I'm going to tell you to do that. It's criticism. It's defensiveness, where I talk you into liking me better than you like me now. It's argumentative-ness. That's what control looks like.
Escape is 20,000 things that you can run to that will numb you to your pain. So it's running into working all the time, or running into alcohol or drugs or porn or your kids, or lots of things. Food, overeating, exercise, all the things that we can do excessively because we're running away from something.
Now, some people are one of those four, and as it turns out, some people do all four, or a combination. That would be me. This is the start of understanding yourself, which is why we have an assessment now online that people can go online and do. I know you're going to put a link in the show notes for that. It's very eye opening.
In about 10 minutes, you'll go, wow, that's me. As I've been on this journey, I did a lot of blame and shame when I was younger. I'd vacillate between the two, because I was in a very shameful home. I would blame the situation, but then I'd shame myself because maybe it was me. I did a lot of blame, shame, blame, shame.
Then when I got with Ron, it was like, I'm going to blame, shame, but ooh, now I want to control you. After our son passed away, this was the straw that broke the camel's back for me as far as the pain. There was nothing I could do. I went to escape, and for a decade, I numbed with alcohol and prescription medication because it was instant.
But the pattern was already established with the blame and shame and control. This took on a life of its own. I can still, though, in certain situations, find myself going, what are all four of these things doing? Why are they still here at the table? Alison, did you get to take the assessment?
Alison Cook: I did. I found it very eye-opening. I actually had parts of me that were like, wait a minute. So I want to get into that. I'd love to get into that and let you guys dissect it a little bit for me, because I have one very clear one. Part of me can feel like, how is this hurting anybody? The escape one.
So I want to get into that, but before we go there, I want to ask you, because you're saying something really important with these reactive styles. I'm going back to “Ron's working too much”. There's something legitimate there. Maybe feeling you're wanting to blame him. You're feeling shame inside.
What I notice in marriages, and I'd love for you to speak to this, is often it's not *what we say to our spouse. It's the place from which we say it.So if I'm feeling shame, the way that I come at my spouse is going to come out of that shame. That shame is what's going to spill out of me when I get tipped over.
I'll say to people, as you get healthier, you may be even more able to go to your spouse and be like, hey, what's going on with this? You might be more empowered to actually say, this isn't working for me. It doesn't diminish your voice.
Ron: It gives you agency at the end of the day. You have more agency to speak into the relationship from a position of calmness, from a position of strength, rather than dependence. See, that's the thing. I'm leaning on Nan to finally act right and do right, so that’s my sense of inadequacy.
There's my pain. That's what drove me to work all the time. I didn't know that. I knew I worked a lot, but I didn't know why. But once I discovered my pain, inadequacy, that was driving my control, I had to face myself with that. Rather than going, Nan needs to love this out of me, which is what most of us do our entire lives. I've become convinced of this.
We spend our marriages saying, if you were more _____, then I wouldn't feel inadequate. I wouldn't fight. I wouldn't be controlling. I wouldn't work too much. And the truth is, that's not accurate. You have something driving you from within that you gotta learn what it is and take charge of it.
Nan: Believe me, I tried. I tried so hard to love that out of him, or be what I needed to be for that. All of a sudden you look up and you go, but he's still working a ton. Wow. That didn't work. Mine comes from abandonment. I have so much abandonment in my family of origin story.
I'm with you and I'm feeling abandoned by you. Then we lose Connor, and I'm feeling abandoned by God. It's this abandonment, abandonment, abandonment. Then, Ron’s drive to work and travel and be gone and conquer and do for all the other people in your world taps into my abandonment.
It is nasty and ugly–I don't even want to call it a dance. It's dysregulation, a cycle we can't pop out of.
Alison Cook: That's such an important nuance, because we do need to speak into our spouse's lives. That is part of it, but we have to be able to do it from a place that isn't coming from my wounds.
Ron and Nan: Right.
Alison Cook: It is coming from my love, and this isn't okay.
Ron and Nan: Alison, we are dancing around Matthew 7. Judge not that you be judged. By the way, the measure you give will be the measure you get, so when you stand in pride looking at your spouse saying, you're the one with the problems, I'm okay, but you're messed up, then what happens?
They return fire, and now you have a cycle. So what does Jesus say to do? Stop focusing on the speck in the other person's eye. Start dealing with the log in your own eye. Then, what happens when you take the log out of your own eye? Then you will be able to help them with the speck.
When I take agency over my pain, I manage me, rather than expecting Nan to manage me, to fix me, to help me, to love it out of me, whatever is going to happen there. When I take agency over myself, deal with my own log, my own pride, my own issues, my own pain, I am in a better position to be self-giving toward her.
It empowers my ability to love her at that point in time. So this is not about me pulling away and fixing me and not worrying about you. No. At the end of the day, it moves us.
Alison Cook: That's right.
Nan: It happened last week. I'm getting ready to go to a meeting on Thursday night. I asked him, what are you going to do? I'm going to be gone for two and a half hours. He's worked a full day. He's had a long week. It's Thursday, the book's coming out. There's a lot, and he said, yeah, I'm going to work.
I said, no, why don't you watch something? You love that. Just get lost in that and give yourself a little evening. You work so hard and you should do that. He’s like, okay, yeah, I'll think about that. Then I left him to it, because that's not mine to manage, but I can love you.
Old Nan would have said, yeah, that's what you're probably gonna do and you do that all the time because all you can think about is work. That's the love of your life. I came home and I said, what'd you do? He goes, I took the evening off for myself. I was like, this is a miracle. In my mind I'm going, God, did you see that? He's like, yes. I didn't need your help. I need you to love him like I love him. Then you need to back away.
Alison Cook: That's a great example. You were in that moment trying to love him, not control him, not blame him, not shame yourself. It is so much more freeing and so much more powerful. That's an incredible example.
Nan: I wasn't trying to get something out of him. That was genuinely for him.
Ron: I can tell you on my end, I immediately felt her compassion and I know the difference. A decade ago, it would have been contempt and anger, and it’s what motivated me at that point to take her suggestion.
Back then, I would have said I'm going to do what I'm going to do, and here we are against each other again. Both dysregulated, both reacting at one another, and nobody is giving love. But when she came softly and gently, and we've done so much work together, I knew where that was coming from.
I heard it, and I didn't think I had to do it. I wasn't being controlled by her. I had complete options. But it landed on my heart in a way that I could entertain it.
Alison Cook: Yeah, that difference is powerful. Early on, and I've shared with you a little bit in previous conversations, Ron, when I was dating my husband, he'd been married before. His wife had died and he was a widower, so he had a little more experience than I had coming in.
Some of my own abandonment and attachment issues came to the surface that I tried to put on him. He very early on would say, I don't think this is about me. And he was right. There was something about how he said it though, because he said it so clearly–there wasn't a hook, there wasn't blame, there wasn't control.
It was the truth. I could feel that he was actually loving me in that moment, because I then had to go, wait, if he can't solve this ache in my heart, I’ve got to get to the bottom of the ache then. Because this marriage isn't going to solve that. That's going to set us up for defeat. That was life changing to me, to do my own work.
I love that you're putting your fingers on this in the book. You do such a beautiful job through your own stories, through such practical wisdom on how to apply it. I want to talk a little bit about this assessment and encourage folks to take it. I took the really short version, and very clearly came out as someone who escapes.
It’s my primary go-to. I was feeling so proud of myself because I don't try to control people. I don't try to blame people. I don't really shame myself.
Ron and Nan: Hahaha!
Alison Cook: Oh and here's what's interesting about that one. I'm curious about your thoughts for those of us who avoid conflict, who escape it. There's a way in which we can tell ourselves, the only person I'm hurting is myself. I do it through disappearing. Nan, you talked about this in the book, disappearing into books and movies.
I know when I'm disappearing into a world of my own instead of wanting to face what's hard in a relationship. It's taken me a long time to recognize, and I can tell myself, I'm not hurting anybody.
Ron and Nan: Yeah. Let me say, there are some things that are socially more acceptable to escape into. Binging Netflix. Shopping. Religiosity is something people escape into, and they call it being Christian, and really they're running from their pain. They're still running from something.
Yes, some things have more negative consequences, such as drinking alcohol and doing drugs. That's not the point. The point is, what is this telling me about me? That is what we call chasing your pain. That question has been life changing for us. Not when our marriage came to a crisis, but every day since.
If I'm driving down the road and somebody cuts me off, and I have a few choice words for them, as if they could hear me, why do I do that? What is that? That's dysregulation. There's no thoughtfulness to that. It's reactivity. Then I ask myself, Ron, what is that telling you about you? What is going on with you right now? Why did it bother you so much that the guy cut you off on the freeway?
That little question will lead to amazing insights and discoveries about what you're running from. Then I know what to do with it. I know how to face it. I know how to move myself. We've mapped the peace cycle out of my pain. The book helps outline that for people.
I'm learning the vulnerabilities in me, the issues in me, and I'm seeing what I can choose to do to put on my new self and not be that anymore. With both control and escape, what I was doing was defending my pain. Because I had found something that took the edge off that made me feel better.
It was a false sense of better. It has to do with trust in God. Because in this life, we're gonna have trouble. We're gonna have pains. We're going to be disappointed in relationships. Grief and loss are going to happen. God has to be the carrier for me.I had to trust Him with my loss, with my grief, with my pain.
He doesn't take it away. There are some things He has healed. He has healed our marriage. There are things in my pain He has taught me from childhood. With the loss of our son, he's not taking it away this side of heaven, but I can trust Him to help me carry it.
Boy, if one glass didn't help, or 10 shows didn't help, or three blouses that I bought, or whatever the numbing is, it can be pornography, it can be food, it can be all kinds of things. That's me not trusting God to heal or help me carry or take on that pain and to learn from it. You do that for 10 years and you get further and further and further from what the truth is and further from the light.
That's what was happening with me. I didn't trust him with it. I got one more thought, Alison, and then I'd love for you to respond to what we've been rambling about here as it relates to you being an escaper.
Yes, sometimes you can escape into things that aren't really immoral or causing great difficulty. You think, I'm the only one who's suffering here, so it's not a big deal. But the other thing I would say is, what are the opportunities you miss as a result of not taking agency and facing whatever pain is behind it?
What are the things that you're having to give up? Yes, you're the one suffering, but are there other choices you could have made that would have brought about different things if you faced the pain rather than ran from it?
Alison Cook: I love what you're both saying, and it takes me right back to the core of your book. In my case, because I can be very autonomous, I can exist in my mind. You talk about us-ness in the book. My escape is not only depriving God of the opportunity to enter in, but it's depriving my most significant people of the opportunity to bear those burdens together, or to bear the hardships together. It's preventing intimacy.
Ron and Nan: That's beautifully said.
Alison Cook: One of the things I love about your book that is so different is that you talk about how a marriage becomes its own entity. There's an us-ness that's its own thing that we have to nurture and nourish. I love that because it takes us out of the 50-50 or compromise or negotiations.
It's this thing that's bigger than me or my spouse that I need to nurture. When I'm in avoidance or escape, I'm not nurturing that us-ness, because I'm leaving somebody out of that. I thought about this after I took your assessment, as the Lord has tapped on my heart. You are depriving yourself and others of something when you refuse to walk into pain with others.
My husband's very active. I could curl up on a couch forever. He's very active. He loves to hike. He loves to be outside. He's always out. To nourish our us-ness, we do those things together. I could tell myself I'm doing those things for him, but that's the escaper part of me. The Spirit-led side of that is, I love solitude, I love contemplation, I love to ponder, and when we're cross-country skiing together, I get to do that in a far healthier way.
I take his invitation to us-ness and we're doing something together that I might not choose on my own. There's fruit in that for me, and I've discovered that. Suddenly I'm like, when can we go hiking again, and he's like, that’s what you want? I’m like, not only because I want to be with you, but because the us-ness that we've created to establish those rhythms is also good for me.
Ron and Nan: That's exactly it.
Alison Cook: That's what I realized. The us-ness invites me into, wait a minute, this hiding that I do actually can be redeemed into something that's more contemplative. These things I want to be, I do that far better when we're an “us” and we're coming together. It's so much deeper than, “I’m doing this for him. He does this for me.”
Ron and Nan: Exactly. Us-ness is like a baby. It's a thing you gotta feed and care for and grow and nurture, and it's a living, breathing thing that you created on the day that you got married and dedicated your lives to one another. The word picture I would give you is the unity candle.
Normally people walk up and they grab their individual candles and they light the “us candle”, if we could say it that way, and then they blow themselves out. Which never should you do in marriage; it is not designed to blow you out. Marriage is designed for you to be able to thrive and flourish.
But now there is this third entity that you both need to feed and care for and fan that flame. By the way, that flame, as the us-ness grows and gets stronger, feeds each of you individually so all three candles are lit. That's the design for marriage. All three candles are lit and your us-ness becomes that thing that requires something of you to give to. And it gives back.
Here's my quick example, similar to yours. My wife was a runner for years and had a little injury. She became a walker, and she's not a walker, folks. She is a walker. I can't hardly keep up with her. I've had knee surgeries and now I'm doing better than I ever have physically and I'm joining her.
Guess what? Ron does not like walking. Ron gets tired. Ron gets sore. Ron can't keep up with Nan. But our us-ness likes walking because it's time together, it's conversation. I know it feeds her for me to be with her. It feeds me to hear her thoughts as she walks and talks.
Yes, I pay a price for the us-ness to be fed and our us-ness enjoys it. Ron probably won't walk at all, if it were up to me. I probably wouldn't do it. But together, that's something that really feeds both of us.
Your us-ness is gonna ebb and flow and change and grow and look differently than it did 39 years ago. You're gonna have seasons where it looks different. You've got to be a student of your us-ness too. We're an empty nest right now. So that's a different season and we're grandparents. So that's a different season with our us-ness.
Alison Cook: Yes. I love that. You have to be intentional about it at each of these seasons in your marriage.
Ron and Nan: To tie it in with our previous conversation, when I am at my worst, when I'm bringing dysregulation and reactivity, blame, shame, control, and escape to our us-ness, I'm not feeding it. I'm not nurturing it. I'm not contributing to something that is loving, stable, and emotionally safe for both of us.
I'm bringing the worst of me to us. I need to manage myself to bring the better parts of me to us. And, at the end of the day, that's the message. By the way, this is the New Testament calling us out of our old self into the new self. We already have the new self in Christ, but not yet, because I'm still trying to work out my salvation every single day of my life.
It's a discipline of putting on the new, putting on the new, putting on the new. At the end of the day, that's why we are so grateful to the Hargraves for their work, to help us take off our old selves and learn how to put on the new self. Every once in a while, we slip right back into the old because that thing doesn't want to die. It resurrects every single day.
We gotta kill it all over again with humility, and try to put on the new one more time. It gets easier as we grow and change. It was really hard in the beginning, but it's so much easier now. It's easier because we've practiced and worked at it and worked at it. Like muscle memory, when you're building a new skill, it does get easier.
Alison Cook: I love the word practice. The title of the book is The Mindful Marriage. What you're teaching us to do is to be mindful of these patterns in ourselves. It does take practice. That's a good word. I love that you talked about how in marriage, we don't snuff out the individual candles. They still exist.
The us-ness doesn't take us over. But it takes mindfulness. So for example, it takes mindfulness for me to say, what is feeding our us-ness? It actually feeds the us-ness for me to have this interest, or for my spouse to have this interest over there. It actually feeds the us-ness.
Versus when I'm being selfish and I don't want to do this thing. It takes that mindfulness to really stay on top of ourselves. You lay out in the book four practices, essentially. Could you talk us through those a little bit?
Ron and Nan: It's a little bit of a workbook. People are going to do exercises. They're going to put pen to paper, and they're going to identify, oh, wow, this is my old reactive self. This is what I do. Huh. Wow. Then they're going to map out, what's the truth?
What’s rooted in God, rooted in the truth I'm learning about myself, about our us-ness? How then am I going to respond differently to the same circumstance? I'm still going to get dysregulated. She's still going to do something that from time to time triggers something in me.
It's my job to manage me in those moments. Not to expect her to fix it, because it's my job to manage me. That culminates this whole journey. This book is one journey. Not a chapter on this or that. It's one journey to help you identify these four steps.
When I know what they are, then that is my way out of dysregulation, back into self-regulation or self-control, so that I can put on a better me, so we can deal with whatever the issue is at hand. That's in a nutshell the journey that the book takes you on. Those four steps are very intentional to say out loud.
Your old self. The new self you're trying to work into. You're going to love this as a clinician–the psychology of this is when you get dysregulated and go into fight or flight mode, you're in your midbrain and your prefrontal cortex isn't working anymore and you need to turn it back on.
The four steps actively turn back on the better part of your brain. The part of your brain that knows what love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and goodness are. You can say, I gotta move toward that. You are using mindfulness and taking back control. You're renewing yourself by renewing your mind. It’s helping you stop being the old and start being the new.
The four steps do that.
Alison Cook: Love that. It's so practical. Because we can’t really will ourselves into being more loving, which is often what we try to do. Like you were saying, Nan, earlier in your marriage, “I'll try to love them out of my own willpower.”
Ron and Nan: So let me give a quick example. When I get triggered about something, it often sounds like, okay, here's step one. Say what I feel. I'm feeling inadequate. Now, by the way, I used to say, I'm feeling controlled by you and you need to knock it off.
See, I focused on the speck in her eye. Now I'm focusing on the log in my own eye. I feel inadequate. Because that's at the root of it. What I usually do, Nan, with my inadequacy, is I usually blame or control you by making it your fault or pointing out the one thing in your argument that's wrong. That's what I normally do.
The truth is, I might have something I need to listen to in this moment. The truth is, God loves me and I'm not inadequate and I'm actually very capable of managing myself in this moment. Number four, this is the key. What I'm going to do differently based on the truth, is I'm going to slow my heart rate.
I'm going to slow down. I'm going to listen. I'm going to try to hear what it is you're trying to share with me and put my defensiveness aside. Okay, deep breath. Alright, you can go. So what I did is I talked out loud to myself and to her. I talked to myself. I told myself, get in charge of your log, Ron. Don't go into reactivity. Move in a better direction.
Number two, I talked to her out loud and told her what I was doing in the moment. She's used to me being reactive right back. But when she hears me saying this, she goes, oh, Ron's putting on humility. Ron's taking charge of himself. I don't have to control him. He's controlling him. That's a good thing. It relieves her of any hook, to try to jump in and do what she used to do. So now we're both on a better plane.
The biggest thing it does is neurologically, it's slowing you down and reactivating your mind. We are transformed, Alison, by the renewing of our minds because our mind renews our brain, and the brain renews the body and how we respond. When we get the mind, then the rest of us follows.
Step four is, so here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna calm down in this moment. My example is, I'm gonna try to listen to you and put aside my defensiveness. It's the doing that helps us reinforce this.
Neurologically, again, the more you do it, the more your brain gets used to the new activity rather than the old, and it replaces the old with new. That's the neuroplasticity of our minds, that we're actually able to restructure the neurological ruts of our brain.
Literally, you're not just renewing the consciousness of your mind, you're renewing your brain structure. It is physical, what happens as a result of this process. Not immediate, but over time, the more we do this, the easier and easier it gets.
Alison Cook: When you're both doing that, you're aware. It's a cue when one of you takes that first step, for both of you to essentially slow yourselves down and be present to the other in a different way.
Nan: Or it could be, I went off the rails, and I really got dysregulated, and I may go into blame. I may go into control. I've caught myself, and I'm gonna come back, and I'm gonna say, hey, earlier, here's what was happening with me. This is what I did. For that I am so sorry. That is old Nan talking.
I know I had to have God speak to me, the Holy Spirit, and I needed to hear from Him, and I know now that it was pain, that was my abandonment talking. I hate that I do those old things, but I'm gonna move towards you, I'm gonna ask for forgiveness. I'm going to move towards you, and I am going to now walk in truth.
Sometimes we get dysregulated. Some of those things happen in a nanosecond. Those ruts can be so powerful. Early on, when I was in my recovery and I was implementing these practices, I cannot tell you how many times I would get dysregulated and go, man, I could use a drink right now.
Years down the road now, that's the last thing that comes into my mind. And yet I still get dysregulated. It's the last thing, because that rut is not there anymore. But there are others, and you're peeling back the layers. It's a humility posture.
It's still triggering to me. Let's talk about this. What I want to do is this, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to move towards you. I'm going to trust God with it, and I'm going to come to you with it.
Ron: Alison, what do you think happens in my heart when I hear her doing all that work out loud? It absolutely softens my heart.
Alison Cook: A hundred percent.
Ron: A hundred percent. Like, all of a sudden, instead of being on guard and dysregulated, I'm going, okay, wow, beautiful. I see you working. I see in that moment her sacrificing something about her for our us-ness.
That moves me toward her. That makes me want to invest in this and look in the mirror at myself. All of a sudden, both of us are putting on humility, which softens the whole dynamic. Again, I don't want to pretty this up for people. This is a hard journey.
If you've been to really hard places like we've been, this is not a turn on a dime sort of stuff. This is sledging for quite a while. But my goodness, what used to take us two weeks to even begin to try to deal with happens in a minute and a half in this season of our life. It's so different.
Alison Cook: I'm so glad you're saying this for people, because especially when we've dug those ruts internally and with our partner for a long time, they're deep. I so appreciate your honesty and vulnerability, both of you, about your personal struggles and how that affects the marriage.
This picture that I get as you're describing the process are these circles where we go into our individual selves with all the reactivity, but you're coming into that us-ness circle, and that's the space where the defenses melt away.
Let's come back to us, and the word you keep using is humility. You talk about it a lot in the book. It melts the ego and the pride. Oh, I got to apologize to him. Let's go back to the us space. This is for us.
Ron: What does Philippians 2 tell us about our Lord, who put on humility and became obedient to death, even death on a cross? In that whole section, Paul lays out, this is how you do your relationships. This is how we do marriage. This is how we do friendships. This is how we do parenting.
Humility says, I'm not going to rule over you. I am managing me. Did you know the Latin root word for humility is grounded? You get grounded with humility. You know who you are and what you're not. You know where you fit in the world. You know who God is and that you're not him.
That posturing softens my heart, and it absolutely makes it easier for her heart to soften towards me.
Nan: I want to say this, because it's not perfection you're going after, because you're not going to get that. It's not that we do these steps and then Ron never blames me for anything. Our flesh is there, but, when he blames me, I can go, wait a minute.
This is causing me pain, and what do I normally do in my pain? I'm gonna come at you. I'm gonna go in this loop of, you always do this to me. No, I can slow this roll down, and I can say, that's shaming, and that's on you. I'm not going to receive that.
But I don't have to withdraw. I don't have to control him. I don't have to beat him over the head. I don't have to do all of the stuff that's in 1 Corinthians 13, the record of wrongs. I love to be an archaeological digger, and just, yeah, you've been doing this for years. Your dad did this, and on it goes.
Alison Cook: Even if it's in your own mind and it's not coming out, it's still building that rut.
Nan: That is the pain talking. What does Nan normally do? She goes to all four of these things. No. Take a breath. Look at him as God looks at him, because that's the truth. He's having a moment here. I don't know why, but I can say, you don't need to be shaming me right now. I'm not gonna withdraw. I'm gonna move towards you, and I'm gonna listen to the truth.
Alison Cook: There’s that agency piece. He may or may not take accountability for that. Hopefully he will as time goes on. You don't need him to, because you know what's true. That's so empowering.
Nan: It’s so empowering. It unhooks you from that loop and that rut. We hear from couples all the time, “we do the same thing all the time”.
Let me tell you, there are times when he can say something and my flesh goes, oh, here we go again. It's so freeing to go, wait a minute, no. I'm going to walk in truth. I feel a lot of freedom in that. By the way, I want to go full circle before you ask that next question.
We said earlier, we never want somebody in an abusive situation to hear us saying, suck it up and stay. Oh no. I want them to listen to what we just said. The empowerment is in recognizing what is true about me from God's point of view. God says you're a worthy person. That means you're not worthy of being hit or beaten or pressed down upon, or whatever you're receiving in your current marriage relationship.
That is not how God sees you. It's not what you're worth. So God's truth empowers me to take agency to act out of my worth. That's very important. If I'm acting out of my worth, I'm not gonna stand here and be subject to that.
At the same time, I'm not going to close myself off to the relationship, or the possibilities of change, or whatever. But I am going to take action, so that doesn't happen anymore. Boundaries.
Alison Cook: Yeah. It's such a nuanced thing because sometimes, for women who are in abusive relationships, the shame makes it hard for them to leave. Being able to get to this point of, “I have to remove myself from this situation–this is unsafe for myself and my kids”, comes from this work of turning inward and the confidence that it can give you.
I have a question for you before we wind down. I appreciate you staying a little bit longer. I can hear a listener in my mind wondering about, let's say it's not an abusive situation. It's not toxic, but one member of the couple is not willing to do their own work.
One is sitting there going, I'd love to do this. I want to do this. Let me start tomorrow. But my spouse or whatever is never going to. They're sedentary. They're not growing. What do you do in that situation?
Ron: We do address that in later chapters of the book, and it's a very important question. Let me say, in our own journey, both of us had seasons where we were not doing our work, for sure. In 2007, when our marriage blew up and we found ourselves in Dr. Hargrave's office, I wasn't doing any work on me.
She was the one who needed all the change as far as I was concerned, and that was my pride talking. Dr. Hargrave helped me begin to go on a humility journey that continues to this day. During the worst season of her drinking, I was every day trying to self-regulate. Every day I was trying to say, how do I put on love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness in this moment with her?
I was working on me, trying to take off control and blame–stuff that I was really good at. It was a lonely experience. My prayer was, Lord, since I'm not doing the same dance with her anymore that I used to do, let her get tired of dancing all by herself.
I don't know if that ultimately played a role or not. I know eventually she came to the end of herself and she made some really hard, amazing decisions that brought about recovery for her. I do think I was doing what I could. She was “managing me and staying in my lane”, as she's come to say it.
I love that state. I needed to stay in my lane instead of crossing into her lane, and eventually that created an environment where it was more likely that she started looking in her own mirror, doing her own work. But I'm not gonna guarantee that to anybody listening. I wish I could. I can't guarantee that, but I do think it is the right way to respond.
Nan: It doesn't do anything for your us-ness. If we can go back to that season where Ron wasn't ever seen, when I would say, hey, this is too much. I think, what about us? While I'm doing this for God, and he was so into his pride, that did nothing for our us-ness. Our us-ness was stagnant, and it was very isolating and there was not any intimacy.
Same with the season that I was in it. There's gotta be some grace there. There's gotta be prayer on the part of the other person for that person, but ultimately it's got to be them doing the work together, and God working in them.
Alison Cook: Yeah. Again, it's just, you're being so real about this. We're talking about nuanced situations, but if I can do my own work, stay in my own lane, I might be more able when the other person is ready to meet me there.
It's not easy. It's hard. Marriage is a marathon, not a sprint. It might be a series of marathons. It's a long journey, but these are tools. I like what you're saying. These are tools that really can help you regardless of the season you're in.
Ron and Nan: Yeah. The alternative is to be reacting out of your own pain. When you react out of pain, that ignites their dysregulated pain, and now you're in the couple pain cycle and you are stuck. When one person starts pursuing peace by self-control, it has to change something. You're not doing the same dance anymore.
It has to change something. Ultimately, it will. You don't know exactly when or how quickly, but it will. There is power in taking your agency.
Alison Cook: There might come a moment, like for you, Nan, where you say, I'm not doing this anymore. Or where you have to say to a spouse, this isn't okay. I'm not going to leave you, but I'm not okay with this. Again, it's coming out of that self-regulated state.
Ron and Nan: You're right. That's right. My prayer for couples is that they will do the work together, and that they will do the work. I do like to tell people, don't gloss over it and read it real quick. Do the work and dig in and stay in your lane.
Do the work for you, but also if they're doing the work and you come together and share, it's going to be beautiful. Don't do the work because you want that person to stop doing whatever they're doing or get off their phone. Don't pick up this book if you want your husband off his phone.
No, it's a Lord, what do you have for me? What do I need to work on so that I can bless my spouse, my significant other, and our us-ness? That's my prayer for people. But I'm not going to lie. It's work. I'll never forget this man that came up to us at a conference that we did. He said, thanks for helping me open Pandora's box.
He goes, I'm dealing with the pain of a mother. They had lost a daughter. He's like, man I had shoved that so far down, and I don't want to deal with that. Here's what I would say to him. Oh, man. Buddy, you have been living in light of that pain. You don't think you have, but it affects you every single day. So do the work.
Alison Cook: This is an invitation to a more beautiful, vibrant flame for each of us, for the us-ness with the people in our lives. Thank you so much for putting the work into sharing your story with us and creating this resource. Tell people the best way to find you and find the resource. We'll send some information out in the show notes as well.
Ron and Nan: Yeah. Thank you so much for the opportunity. We appreciate it. rondeal.org is our website where people can get tapped into the book. We have bonus material available there for free. We're doing a mindful marriage conference for churches where we're talking and walking couples through this process. We'd love to get connected to anybody interested in that.
Alison Cook: I love it. That's great. I'm so glad you're bringing these tools into church spaces, because I sometimes feel like we don't get the richness of what you're trying to describe here. It’s the paradox that as we tend to our own healing, our own selves, we are nurturing us-ness.
Ron and Nan: Yes. Thank you so much for your time. It's been an honor.
How do you experience loving attachment when trauma leaves you feeling shattered?
In this incredibly profound and insightful episode, therapist and author of the brand new book, Sacred Attachment, Michael Cusick joins us to explore how our darkest moments of brokenness are not just moments of pain, but pivotal opportunities for forming a deeper, more secure attachment with God. Michael shares about his own healing journey as a result of complex trauma, and we unpack how our pain can bring us even closer to encounters with God’s love. Today’s episode is for everyone who has ever felt broken. We discuss. . .
*5 way of understanding brokenness (and why the "sin" paradigm falls short)
*Why mystical encounters are for all of us
*A jaw-dropping moment when Michael experienced God's love
*The role of imagination in healing
*How to restore exiled and wounded parts of us
Resources:
- Sacred Attachment: Escaping Spiritual Exhaustion and Trusting in Divine Love by Michael John Cusick
- Restoring the Soul, a trauma-informed, intensive counseling center in the beautiful mountains of Colorado
- Surfing for God: Discovering the Divine Desire Beneath Sexual Struggle by Michael John Cusick
- Amazing Grace Hymn
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
- Isaiah 55
- An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison
- St. Francis of Assisi by GK Chesterton
- Jeremiah 1Ephesians 1:18John 7:36-38Isaiah 55
- Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation by Martin Laird
- restoringthesoul.commichaeljohncusick.com
If you liked this, you’ll love:
- Episode 16: What are Attachment Styles and Why Does it Matter?
Thanks to our sponsors:
- Go to Quince.com/bestofyou for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order!
- Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
- This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/BESTOFYOU and get on your way to being your best self.
Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
Transcript:
Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and Happy New Year! I'm so thrilled you've joined us for this week's episode of the Best of You Podcast. If you're a returning listener, I'm so glad you're back with us. We have an incredible lineup of guests along with some solo episodes on topics you've been asking for lined up for this new year.
If you're a new listener, we are so thrilled to have you with us, where every single week we come together to talk about a mental health topic using the best of current psychology research from a faith-based perspective. I'm so thrilled you're here for today's episode. This is an incredible episode that is hopeful and inspiring and empowering and so rich and meaty.
There's so much in this episode. We are diving into a powerful conversation, all about sacred attachment and how we forge a healthy, secure attachment with God, with others, and with the parts of ourselves. Joining me today is therapist and author, Michael Cusick. You'll hear Michael talk about his profound journey of healing from complex trauma and how he learned to restore the intimacy of a secure, loving attachment with God.
I love this quote from the episode where Michael says, “Our brokenness is not the barrier, but a bridge to where we want to be”. You're going to hear incredible examples of how God helped build that bridge in Michael's life from brokenness into these beautiful moments of being surprised by God's love.
There's one point in the episode where we both got chills at the way God showed up in some beautiful and surprising ways. And spoiler alert, often God shows up for us at the moments when we feel the least worthy.
As you are heading into the new year and you've been wanting to really dive into your healing journey and healing those places that still feel broken in your own life, whether with God, whether with loved ones, whether with the parts of yourselves, there is something for you in this episode.
Toward the end, Michael shares a real-time exercise that you can do right along with us. I do it with him in the episode. It’s about how the power of our imagination can help us heal and envision a life beyond our toughest challenges.
If you find something in this episode that is really helpful to you, I hope you'll share it with a friend or with a family member who might need some encouragement or practical tools along their own healing journeys.
Part of why I continue to create this content each week is because I believe we need practical tools and we need to hear each others’ stories of healing, so we learn how to name what's hard, but we also are inspired and encouraged and empowered by what's hopeful in our shared experiences. We need to hear about how these tools from psychology and from our faith keep us moving forward to restore these broken areas of our lives.
Michael John Cusick is a licensed professional counselor, spiritual director, speaker, and the author of two books, including his brand new book called Sacred Attachment: Escaping Spiritual Exhaustion and Trusting in Divine Love. It's out next week. It's such a good book. I hope you'll pick up a copy of it.
I know you will be blessed by both the practical tools and spiritual wisdom in the book. Having experienced the restoring touch of God in a deeply broken life and marriage, Michael's passion is to connect life's broken realities with the reality of the gospel. In addition to being a therapist, Michael leads Restoring the Soul, which is a trauma-informed, intensive counseling center in the beautiful mountains of Colorado.
He also equips Christian organizations around the world and formerly served as a professor at both Denver Seminary and Colorado Christian University. Michael holds a master's degree in both pastoral counseling and in counseling psychology. I'm so thrilled to bring you this beautiful, rich healing conversation with Michael John Cusick.
***
Alison Cook: Michael, I am so thrilled to have this conversation with you today. I read your new book. It's called Sacred Attachment: Escaping Spiritual Exhaustion and Trusting in Divine Love. I read an early copy of it and it really moved me, in a way that I hadn't been moved in a long time by a book, by your story, by how you frame love and his journey of attaching to God and healing. I'm thrilled to have you on the podcast today. Thanks for joining us to talk about it.
Michael: Thank you. It's so good to talk with you and thank you for your kind words and for the wonderful endorsement that you gave for the book.
Alison Cook: I would love to start a little bit with your own story. Michael, the book really speaks to this gap between what we believe about God, what we want to believe about God, and the reality of our experiences.
You pull us right in at the beginning of the book by showing us some of these contrasting experiences in your own life. You share a story about being surprised by love. It's a really amazing story with your aunt, who's a Carmelite nun, and it’s juxtaposed with going back home into significant emotional and sexual and physical abuse.
Tell me a little bit about those competing stories and how they shaped your understanding of yourself and God.
Michael: Absolutely. I would love to. I've shared elsewhere and even in my book, Surfing for God, about being sexually abused as a child. Most of that I remember beginning around the age of eight, but around 2003, I started to have body memories, not images, but body memories and was diagnosed with complex post traumatic stress disorder.
That unfolded over a number of years and was, to this day, the hardest thing that I've gone through in my life–much more difficult than overcoming depression and various addictions in my life. My story started to be corroborated by various family members in my immediate family and beyond based on a lot of knowledge that was always known about an uncle.
He sexually abused me and a number of other family members, and I was trafficked to other men that he made me available to. Back then it wasn't called trafficking, but it filled in so many pieces in my story. My abuse wouldn't be dealt with, much less remembered in full, until I was released around probably 16 years old.
I was four years old when that abuse started and I had an aunt that was a cloistered Carmelite nun. Carmelites were cloistered, so they made a choice to live behind a wall and they could not have contact with the public, except through a metal grate, which was like a prison cell. So when I was four years old, it was always a scary thing to go visit the nuns.
I was the youngest of five Irish Catholic kids. On this particular day, my brother lifted me up into this cabinet, which was in the corner, in the space between visitors and the 17 or 20 nuns that were there. It's like prison bars, but it's a crosshatch. My brother lifted me into this cabinet and it spun around on a lazy susan so that food and gifts could be passed over back and forth to the nuns.
I spun around thinking, I'm going to die. I didn't like being dizzy or spun around. I was terrified. I remember this very acutely. Finally, the door opened and I thought my brother was there, but my aunt, this cloistered Carmelite nun, was on the other side and she gave me this big embrace. She took me on the other side of this grid where I was not supposed to be.
I remember being terrified even more then, of the Pope or the Bishop or some priest coming, and I'm in big trouble. It really became a metaphor for later, when I came to a very personal kind of faith. Although I was baptized and confirmed as a Catholic, for many years, for two decades, I saw God as someone who was catching me on the wrong side of things, where I was not supposed to be, not measuring up, not following the rules, and that I was going to be in trouble.
But what actually happened on the other side of that grid is that my aunt embraced me and kissed me and held me and rubbed her fingers through my hair. She couldn't even go to her own father's funeral about 10 years before this moment. Then other nuns came in and began to embrace me.
What ultimately happened was, they put me down on the floor and we created a circle and we started singing Ring Around The Rosie and dancing in a circle. That moment became this metaphor of spinning in life, where we're disoriented and we lose our bearings and yet there's this place where we're actually held and embraced by love.
I've come to see that in many cases with the people that we work with in our therapeutic and pastoral work. Maybe many of the listeners of this podcast are experiencing some kind of disconnect like that as well. They want to believe that love is there to embrace them, that love has them if you will, and yet there's an external reality where they're spinning, they're disoriented.
There's this disconnect between what they want to experience with God and what they were told the Christian life would actually be like, but what they actually experience is something very different from that. They don't have any idea how to connect those two or to close that gap.
Alison Cook: That was such a powerful story. It reminds me of the title of the classic CS Lewis book where he talks about being surprised by joy, and it's almost like being surprised by love in that moment. There was pure love for you from these women.
That metaphor is so powerful, and you talk about being surprised by love, where God comes into the unlikeliest of places in the book. You also talk about the long-term damage in your life as a result of the abuse that doesn't go away magically, even though you have these moments of love and grace.
Tell me a little bit about that. Once you began to realize the devastation that had occurred to you, what was that like? How did you try to heal? How did you try to address that? What worked? What didn't work?
Michael: Yeah, I had some very pronounced survival strategies that kicked in at a very young age. As the youngest of five, I was the family comedian or the mascot. I got a lot of my emotional needs met by making people laugh. I made this commitment very early on that I would be a people pleaser, that I would get people to like me, that I would try to mediate conflict and anxiety.
There was a lot of that in our home, and I mediated with humor. One of my earliest memories that I write about in the book as well, is when I was probably five years old. I would steal food out of our pantry and we were a blue collar, lower middle class family, and food wasn't always plentiful because the older people would eat it.
I stole a bag of Nestle chocolate chips and I went under my bed and I tucked them up underneath the mattress. Some of my earliest memories are going under that mattress and eating these sweets, rationing them out to myself to kill that emotional pain. That lasted through my whole life.
I currently attend a 12-step group for freedom from compulsive overeating. That has been really revolutionary. So today, for anybody who's listening, freedom and healing and integration are possible, but we always have to continue to do our work. There's no end point where we go, okay, I'm good. I'm whole.
I do believe that we can get to a place where we're whole, but we need to cultivate that in the same way that we have to cultivate a garden.
Alison Cook: I love that. In the book, you keep us on that journey with you. You have these moments of breakthrough. You have these moments of discovery and of healing, and also, it's an ongoing process of continuing to do the work. It's beautiful in that sense. It's so realistic and also so hopeful.
You've described brokenness, and this is a really powerful way to describe it, as a gateway to divine attachment. Tell us a little bit more about what you mean by that. You don't mean that glibly.
Michael: No. I believe that with all my heart. I described the gap as this Delta, and in science, a Delta is the triangle or the Greek symbol for the distance between where you are and where you want to be. It represents that gap, but a Delta is also like the Delta of the Mississippi, where two things come together to create something new.
The brackish water and the salt water in that Delta becomes something new. I believe in the “gospel reality”, when we bring our brokenness plus our hope and what we're actually made to be together, and something altogether new is formed. There's this third reality that is developed. We therapists talk about non-duality and dialectical behavior therapy; there's this other way, this third way, that's really based in paradox.
Our brokenness is not the barrier, but a bridge to where we want to be. What we often focus on as believers is, why do we struggle with X, Y, or Z? The average pastor, unfortunately, or the average person in the pews might say that it’s because we're sinners, but it's actually because we mishandle our pain and we mishandle the disconnection that is there spiritually, emotionally and relationally from others.
In that disconnection, we're going to move towards something that gives us that sense of being seen, soothed, safe, and secure, those four foundational elements, and behind it all is attachment.
Alison Cook: Pain becomes an opportunity. It's something deeper than simply healing the pain and making it go away. When we actually take the pain out and we face the brokenness and we continue to take that into relationship with God, something transcendent happens there. Something new is formed.
Michael: Absolutely. I'm not sure when this will be broadcast, but Advent starts in a week. Advent is all about becoming and waiting. It's the journey of Mary's Magnificat, of saying yes to God in this very unlikely situation, and it culminates in the birth of Christ.
We take that for granted. The birth of Christ and the Incarnation, as well as the conception in Mary by the Holy Spirit, is really one of the very first proofs in the New Testament that God loves to inhabit anything and everything that is seemingly unfavorable. A situation that is a crisis, a situation that is tragic, like the homelessness of the God of the universe, the fact that he was conceived in an unwed teenage peasant womb, all of those things are unfavorable.
They become precursors that in our life, all of those moments, God inhabits those things. That's the very first secure attachment, is that God is with us, God is in us. In Christ, we are in union with him. Like the Irish Celtic proverb that says, we can't put the ocean in a thimble, but we can put the thimble in the ocean. We are in the ocean of God's love.
We can't acquire that, we can't attain that, we don't have to strive for it–it's something we rest in, through spiritual practices and spiritual training, beginning with silence, solitude, stillness, and awareness of our body. Through so many of the things that you speak about and write about, Alison, we can actually begin to embody and to experience that kind of attachment in the midst of and through the brokenness and the pain and the suffering in our life.
Alison Cook: I love that. You give some very vivid examples of this in the book, and I've seen it in my own life. My husband and I had, for years, led Bible studies in a homeless shelter in Boston, where every single week we were with folks who were coming out of prison who, because of addiction, mental illness, all sorts of things where they'd inflicted harm on others, also were survivors of incredible trauma.
I've never felt such holy ground where God showed up. It wasn't because all the lives were suddenly cleaned up. Many of these folks were there, like I said, out of prison, in the unfavorability of those circumstances, where the Holy Spirit is invited in. There's a closeness of God when you feel like your life is at its lowest moment.
I've had moments of this in my own life, where God has shown up the most powerfully. I've turned toward him. Sure. But in the midst of some of my worst moments is when he's shown up the most powerfully.
Michael: Yeah, and he shows up and sometimes he doesn't say anything. It's merely his presence, which brings, occasionally, a sense of comfort, but not always an embodied sense of comfort, but the sense that it's going to be okay.
You're absolutely right. Especially if we read the Beatitudes, it's almost as if the worse a situation is and the less expected it is for God to be there, the more consistently he is there. Of course, he's everywhere, including when we visit the sick, when we take care of the homeless, when we see people in prison, what we've done unto the least of these, that's where God is. It's in the least of our situations, suffering, and circumstances, where God is as well.
Alison Cook: You talk about these five W's and I thought that was such a helpful and powerful framework. You talk about this in the book, because of your own woundedness, because of what was done to you, you did end up finding yourself in situations that hurt your wife, that hurt others.
This is this really hard thing for folks who are coming out of complex trauma, where we find ourselves doing things that harm others. You give us this framework of these five Ws and it's so important for us to understand all the nuances of that framework. Could you share that with us?
Michael: Absolutely. Hurting people hurt people. Pain that's not transformed is transmitted, as a number of spiritual writers have said. I took these five W's as a way of helping people to understand what's going on below the surface. I'm assuming that people who are coming from a Christian framework have been told, the problem is your sin, and you need to repent.
The problem is, that doesn't work, and that didn't work for me as a very disciplined, high-level willpower Christian early on in my faith. For the first 15 years, I was memorizing Scripture, studying the Bible, leading others to Christ, starting a Young Life Club in Cleveland, Ohio that is still running 40 years later, far beyond my expectations, and really doing a lot of the external things that I thought would somehow give me the grace.
That God would be appreciative or impressed, and that would somehow turn the lock in the door that would open into this life that was called the abundant life and freedom. That never worked.
I started to ask the question, what else could be going on here? I did therapy and I got some graduate degrees, and along the lines, I was approached by a professor. I've taken my own experience, my own understanding of the scriptures, and my own understanding of some of the best of psychological and spiritual writing.
The first of the W's, and I want to forewarn your listeners, this first W might be offensive, but it's the word wretched. We all know the word “wretched” from the song, Amazing Grace. It's interesting how many secular versions there are of this song, because it's such a classic song in melody, but also the lyrics.
Presumably, people that aren't even religious are moved by this song. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. If you look up the word wretch in the dictionary, it says something like despicable or vile. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a despicable, vile person like me.
Here's the good news. That's not actually what that word means. There's a small context where that’s what that means, but at the time that song was written, the word wretched meant impoverished. It meant homeless. One of the most poignant images is in Dickens’ writing in the 1800s, A Tale of Two Cities.
We all know A Christmas Carol, but in A Tale of Two Cities, he wrote of wretches as homeless children that were out on the corner begging. What if we thought about our personhood, because there was this sense of disconnection from God way back in the Garden of Eden, that we've lost our way, that we're homeless, and that we're impoverished?
I'll speak for myself, that all the resources I've used to try to make my life work, to try to manage my trauma and my pain, none of them work, and yet I keep thinking that if I spend my money, or spiritually, emotionally, relationally speaking, if I utilize my survival strategies, that somehow I can earn love.
The scriptures actually tell us that we are impoverished. It was St. Thérèse of Lisieux, that Doctor of the Church who passed away at age 24, who left behind this wonderful spirituality of childlike simplicity. She called it “the little way”. She once said that our poverty (and she was referring to spiritual poverty) alone is our capacity for God.
If I've got game, and if my credit card has $20,000 of spiritual spending power on it, and if my wallet is full of $100 bills, and if my piggy bank is full, then I really have no need for God. That's why in Isaiah 55, the prophet says, “Come all you who are thirsty, come and drink. You who have no money, come and buy wine, milk, and bread.”
We actually have to acknowledge that we're impoverished in order to experience the kingdom and to experience the love that is there. So I prefer, instead of talking about wickedness, which is another W, to talk about wretchedness, or our poverty.
The next W is our weakness, and that's simply our vulnerabilities and the human limitations we have. Jesus was weak; he emptied himself of divinity, and part of that meant that he had to sleep, he had to eat, he had to go to the bathroom. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he turned to his friends and said, hey, stay here and pray for me. Not once, but three times.
We tend to come into the world and reveal to others our strengths and our abilities and our gifts, but we take our vulnerabilities and our limitations and we hide them behind our back, or we relegate them to some faraway place. In IFS work, we call these exiles, the parts of us that get lost, the parts of us that get relegated.
People then love us, not based on who we really are, but based on who we think they want us to be, and we become performers, either getting larger than we actually are, or becoming smaller, either expanding our sense of self and performing, or dialing down who we are.
So there's wretchedness, there's weakness, then there's woundedness, and that includes trauma and wounds of presence, things that shouldn't have happened that did happen. But especially related to attachment, and oftentimes more difficult to address, are those things that didn't happen.
Long after I dealt with a lot of my complex trauma, I was left going, now I need to learn how to attach to people and how not to be anxious and avoidant in my pattern of attachment. So there's wretchedness, weakness, woundedness, and then there's warfare. By that, I don't mean devil possession or anything like that, but that we have an accuser who wants to tell us that love doesn't have us.
I believe that the ultimate goal of evil is to whisper in our ear and to shout in our face that we cannot trust love and that love doesn't have us. This is ultimately revealed in the person of Jesus on the cross.
Finally, the fifth W is wiring. So if I had those first four Ws listed, I would draw a circle around those other Ws and say that we are embodied people, that we have this neurobiology, and that our nervous systems are shaped and formed by living in the world and having all those experiences of the other five Ws.
In that inability to self-soothe or regulate or reacting in the world and in relationships, we mishandle our pain in an attempt to try to find that secure attachment, where we can rest and know deep in our body and in our being, not in our left brain and our intellect, that that the Lord is our shepherd and that we shall not want.
Alison Cook: What I love about that is it's so holistic. As I go through this process of sozo, this healing, this becoming more of my true self, I've got an eye on the wretchedness. When you said that about exiles, when I started doing parts work early on, those parts of me that I had shut out showed up in my system as little orphans that I was completely neglecting.
It was life-changing for me to realize, oh my goodness, I need to actually invite these parts of me in. I'm addressing my weaknesses, like you said, I'm addressing the reality of warfare. It is a reality. All of these things matter, and we're looking at things holistically. It's not one size fits all.
I love that you include that. So I thought that was really a powerful way to think about the complexity of healing, the complexity of restoring our relationship with our self God and others.
Michael: Yeah, thank you for pointing that out, because if things are not holistic and don’t represent all the different parts of our humanity, we end up believing that our faith makes us actually less human, and to be more spiritual is to become less human. But to become more spiritual is actually to become more fully human.
Alison Cook: In working with folks about those five W's, I am always thinking about what's going on here in this marriage that's hard or in this friendship that's hard. Is there some woundedness? Is there some wiring? Is there some warfare? It's really important to have a sense of the primary thing at the root of this. When we have that framework, we can be more astute and more discerning when we're trying to be in this space of healing and walking with the people we love.
Michael, you bring in both this really refined psychological lens with this deeply spiritually-informed contemplative lens of there's something bigger going on. We have to do the work - and also, there's something bigger going on. There are two things you talk about in the latter chapters of the book that I loved, because we don't talk about them enough.
The first is this word mysticism. I loved this. Tell us what you mean by that and why that's important in this journey of healing. This isn't something relegated to saints and hyper-religious people or hyper-spiritual people from the past; there's a mystical component to all of us that can really be a part of this journey.
Michael: Thank you for asking. In all the podcasts I've done about the book so far, no one has talked about this and I actually feel like it's one of the more important chapters, even though it's later in the book. Because it's really the goal of everything.
Attachment, even though we can now see on spect scans and MRIs and things like that what happens in the brain, and therefore we can have a scientific aspect to it, it's really fundamentally an imagination, mystical-driven process. So first, let me define mysticism.
A mystic is somebody who seeks inner experience with God. So they're seeking experience, which is a kind of knowledge biblically, but it's not left brain. It's not intellectual. It's not cognitive. It's not knowing about God. It's having an encounter with God. I would argue that's the whole point of why human beings were created–not to have more Bible studies and to learn more about God, but to live in that ocean of God's love.
I want to quote Karl Rahner, who was a German Catholic theologian, a philosopher. He wrote in the 1960s, “The devout Christian of the future will either be a mystic, one who has experienced something, or he will cease to be anything at all”.
I'm afraid that what's happening in the church today, is that many people who were Christians, who now can't use Christian language, or call themselves by certain identifiers like evangelical or even a Jesus follower, are ceasing to be anything at all, and yet their hearts are still longing for the transcendent. Their hearts are still longing to be attached to love.
Part of what I tried to do in writing about mysticism and in the whole book is to give people a new lens by which they can see their spirituality and their relationship to God in Christ. Also, to give a new language to speak about what's going on inside that blends the contemplative and the psychological and then ultimately to give people a path to experience God.
Mysticism and that conversation really is linked to the conversation around imagination. We can go there if you want to in a minute. When we start talking about mysticism, it makes the religious professionals and denominational leaders very on edge, because it feels woo-woo.
It feels like we're throwing out Scripture. But the more deeply I have delved into Scripture and seen Scripture with my imagination, and tried to place myself in the stories rather than try to learn facts about God, it not only brings more transformation and healing and spiritual and emotional rest inside of me, but it also draws me into more of a mystery.
So it feels like there's more experience of God, but there's less ability for me to explain Him, and there's less necessity for me to have to defend God, which I spent a lot of the first decades of my life in faith doing–apologetics and trying to convince people of something that they simply didn't believe.
Alison Cook: I love that. I often now have that experience in nature, hiking in the mountains. We have this horrible fire up here in the Rockies. That was devastating to so many of us. There was a large background to it, but I was walking in the mountains and I had a moment and it was what you described.
It wasn't like I was annoyed with God. I was trying to avoid God, but there was this moment outside, the leaves were crunching, where I felt that connection with love. It was palpable. I wrote about it. I sent it out into a blog. I usually write much more practical things. That blog got more responses, to your point.
There's something about, this isn't this woo-woo thing. We're trying to cultivate that experience of God with us. We don't always live there, but we want to feel that. We want to feel that experience of God with us, Emmanuel.
I love that you're naming all of this work that we do; our deep breathing, to learn how to soothe our nervous system, to work out hard things in our relationships, to heal from our past trauma–there are these moments, these glimmers, to use Deb Dana's word, of something divine, something beyond, and we can maybe put ourselves more and more in that path.
I'm curious, personally, how those moments have shown up for you and given you encouragement and kept you going on your own path.
Michael: I've had many moments like that, but I've had to develop awareness and attentiveness. Sometimes there's still a voice in my head. I would argue that the scriptures and disciplines and liturgy for people that are part of that background and community, that those are all really good and essential things, but we all hit seasons of our life, particularly when trauma and anxiety and dissociation and depression or other mental health disorders are there.
We can't walk in some of those same paths that we once did. We have to look for ways to experience beauty in the midst of our suffering. I have the strange habit of memorizing first lines of books, and Kay Redfield Jamison wrote a book called An Unquiet Mind. It's about bipolar disorder.
I've read all of her stuff, and the first line in her book, which is her memoir of bipolar, says, “People go mad in idiosyncratic ways”. Brilliant idea. There's no two people that develop a disorder, even if it's the same disorder, the same way. I've become fond of saying, “people heal in idiosyncratic ways”.
So when I was a brand new Christian and discipled by my Young Life leader, he sat down, he said, here's what you do. You have a quiet time and you pray this way and you read this way. That was really great for me, but within a couple of years, especially in the midst of my struggles, I needed something else, and there was no one who pointed that out to me.
One of the most profound examples of this is about 12 years ago, when I went to a family reunion. As you might imagine from some of the stories in my book, my family has been fraught with conflict for decades and there's been estrangement. This was the first time that we'd gotten together as a nuclear family.
We did this evening sunset cruise on Lake Michigan. We stayed in Saugatuck. There were about 250 people on this boat, and we went offshore far enough to not be able to see land, and the engines went out. I'm still coming out of my trauma at this time. I'm like, great, I'm going to die in the middle of Lake Michigan. This is probably a terrorist.
It was really quite irrational. Then the captain came over the loudspeaker and he said, ladies and gentlemen, turn to the other side of the boat, and the clouds parted and there was a beautiful sunset. It didn't always happen there because of the clouds. It was this flaming, orange ball that was one of the most intense, glorious sunsets, and it was high up in the sky.
As it lowered, people came closer together and huddled, these strangers in mass, and as it got right to the horizon, it became absolutely quiet. No one told us to be that way. It was an absolute hush. Then it went lower and lower. I have chills as I tell the story. As it disappeared behind the horizon, there were about two seconds of absolute silence. It's gone. Then spontaneously, the 250 people burst into applause and cheering.
Alison Cook: That's amazing.
Michael: It was as if they were saying, God, well done. I don't know if all the people were religious or if they were all atheists, but it doesn't really matter because it was so overwhelming and so sensory and compelling. About 250 of us were standing together, where it may not have been the same response if it was one person on a cliff or a beach, but it was absolutely glorious.
It was like there was a standing ovation for God. In the same way that if you see a symphony or a U2 show or something like that, you have to stand up and lift up your arms. That moment in the midst of this very tense, anxiety-producing, somewhat triggering several days with my family became like this kiss and hug from God saying, Michael, I've got you. I've got you. I show up, even here, miles away from the shoreline in one of the Great Lakes.
Alison Cook: That is so powerful. It’s hard, and that experience doesn't necessarily zap you right out of it, but it's God breaking through. There's that moment where something bigger is happening that gives you enough to keep going. It's beautiful. Before we wind down, Michael, I want to bring in this idea of the imagination.
When I got to that chapter in the book, I started weeping. When I stumbled upon Internal Family Systems, IFS, at the end of my doctoral work, I was on this quest for understanding of the soul. I didn't find it in my mind. I didn't find it in all the academic knowledge. I didn't find it in all the psychology theories.
Here was this model, IFS, that allowed me to connect with parts of myself using what CS Lewis calls, the baptized imagination. There's this holy ability to imagine something that takes me out of my head, that takes me out of my limited finite abilities. It was life-changing to me to this day.
Speaking of CS Lewis, his baptized imagination, Tolkien's baptized imagination, I will still sometimes go back and read the last battle, the last story in the Narnia series. He imagined this world that is rife with great theology, but it's the story in it that actually gives me hope, that helps me reconnect to God.
There's something about the world of the imagination that is holy and is so important for us in this work of healing trauma. We have to find a way to both incorporate it and imagine something bigger. Talk to me a little bit about that.
I found that chapter so personally moving because I can forget that. I can get back into my head. I can get back into good, spiritual formation habits and all that's important, but there's something transcendent that happens when we access that baptized imagination. Tell me a little bit about that and why that was important for you to include.
Michael: In 1996, I had the privilege of sitting down with Eugene and Jan Peterson for three hours in their home in Vancouver when he was at Regent College. So I was with Eugene and I asked him a silly question.
I was a contributing editor for the Mars Hill Review, no relation to the Mars Hill Church, which looked at the intersection of the visual arts, music, literature, poetry, theater, et cetera, with Christian faith. Back then, very few people were doing that. It was a cutting edge thing. Now, that's much, much more common.
Eugene, who had been speaking on the arts and the imagination for a long time, called what Lewis called the baptized imagination, the sanctified imagination. I said, why are the arts important? He looked at me like, that's a dumb question, but he's too kind, he didn't say that.
He said, Michael, we're dealing with the invisible. Everything about our faith is dealing with the invisible, and something clicked in me. I went, so I need to actually fan the flames that it's good that it's invisible, and I'm gonna have to use my imagination. I had read enough of Eugene's books, and The Message was about halfway out.
Part of the gift he gave us with The Message is the poetry there that allowed us to think beyond the normal words, because he believed that for disaffected outsiders and for bored insiders in the Church, that we needed new language to fire up the story so that we could actually understand the story.
Back to C. S. Lewis, I love what you said about his fiction, because throughout the world people know Narnia. All of the movies that are there are about the story of God. It is the story of creation and redemption, of birth and death and resurrection and ascension.
It's there. The names have been changed to draw in the innocent, if you will, and to make the guilty know that they're welcome at the table. But I want to read a quote from Lewis because he wrote this in the 1950s, I believe, long before we had the neuroscience that we now have today.
He said in regard to imagination, the two hemispheres of my mind were in sharp contrast. On the one side, a many-islanded sea of poetry and myths. On the other, a glib and shallow rationalism. Nearly all that I loved, I believed to be imaginary. Nearly all I believed to be real, I thought grim and meaningless.
What Lewis did with his work, and to a large degree even in his nonfiction work, is that he brought together the real and the imaginary. He helped us to see that we can actually see reality more with our imagination than with our rational mind.
I could ask you, what's five times five? 25. What's seven plus seven? 14. You could give me the answers, but if I said, why is five times five 25? We would have to use our imagination about that and we would not be able to use our left brain. I'll often ask people to tell me what their favorite food is.
Alison, what's your favorite food?
Alison Cook: I'm gonna say pizza.
Michael: Okay, what kind of pizza?
Alison Cook: Pepperoni.
Michael: All right, and do you like cheese on it?
Alison Cook: Yes.
Michael: Okay, so I'm gonna ask you right now to close your eyes, and I would like your listeners, unless they're driving a car or operating heavy machinery, to close their eyes, and to imagine a pizza. Imagine your favorite pizza from your favorite pizza shop or from the store, and imagine what that pizza looks like on top with the pepperoni, and how the juice has come out over the cheese, and imagine the crust.
Imagine what it would be like to pick it up in your hand and to take a bite of the gooey cheese and the tomato sauce and the pepperoni and to taste the juice. Then imagine what it would be like to swallow it, and imagine that fullness in your stomach and the satisfaction between your taste buds and chemicals being released in your stomach saying, okay, satiety or fullness is starting to happen.
Then take a breath. What are you feeling right now as you imagine that pepperoni pizza?
Alison Cook: Hungry.
Michael: There you go.
Alison Cook: I have warm feelings. It put me back in a fun family gathering at my favorite pizza place. There's a lot to it.
Michael: If you were to go eat after this podcast, you'd probably be less likely to eat cornflakes and more likely to eat something akin to pepperoni pizza. Wouldn't it be strange if I said to you, Alison, that wasn't real. That's strange to ask if it's real. In GK Chesterton's biography of St. Francis, Chesterton wrote in the introduction that children tend to engage in make believe and adults look down upon that.
But children see far more of reality through make believe than the adults who live in rationalism. We have this capacity to imagine because God has made us in his image, and God is the first one full of imagination. The Trinity dreamt us up. In Jeremiah 1, it says, before I formed you, I knew you.
I'm not sure of the Hebrew word there, but one could paraphrase that as, before I actually imagined you, I knew something of you, and then I set you apart. That set-apartness was not put off on a shelf, but set apart for a time and a moment for his imagination to be fulfilled. I don't know that God ever imagined my life to take the detours that it did.
Some would argue that God knew all of those things. I would actually dispute that without denying his sovereignty. But I would argue that part of his imagination is to meet us at every single point of our brokenness, and by entering into, incarnating, and inhabiting that brokenness, his imagination expands and then creates these opportunities for transformation that is a collaborative process between us consenting and saying yes to God, and God's always generative, creative process to bring forth life.
That when God touches up and bumps up against brokenness, when we consent and say yes. There's no other alternative but for something that is life, and life-giving, and good, and true, and beautiful, to be generated out of that. So imagination is absolutely essential, and we all sing the song based on Ephesians 1:18, Open the eyes of my heart, Lord, open the eyes of my heart, I want to see you.
I regularly pray, God, open the eyes of my heart that I would know the hope to which I'm called, which is to say, open the eyes of my heart so that I can become what you have imagined for me and what I can become, what the imagination and the hope and the vision and the longing that you put in my own heart.
Alison Cook: We want that ability to imagine, when you're coming out of something like you've described, Michael, the atrocities. We want that capacity to imagine something beautiful, something good, something like that sunset that you saw.
Sometimes Aslan from the Narnia Tales gives me that, when I feel like I can't find God, but I can almost imagine Aslan, and I've learned there's something in that. There's something there. Because there's an essence there that is good. It is what keeps us going and gives us hope.
I love that you bring us toward that at the end of the book. I actually think it is a missing piece in this journey that is so powerful and so important.
Michael: Great summary of the importance of imagination, Alison, and I tried to unpack that in the book. I would add that even our human longing for the Scriptures are filled with this invitation to long for. Jesus said, blessed are the hungry and thirsty for righteousness.
He invited people to him in John 7, all you who are thirsty, come and streams of living water will flow. In Isaiah 55, you who are thirsty. Longing is a desire for something that is not yet. Every time we long for something, there's this imagination for something more, as it's related to our particular situation.
For more in my marriage. For more experience of God. For more self control. For me to say no to things that I don't want to be eating. For me to have self-control to go and exercise when I want to, instead of sleeping in. For more experience of life. For more time in the Rocky Mountains.
We cannot long for without imagination. Hopefully this gives people language for that.
Alison Cook: That's so good. It's not fantasy. It's a conscious and intentional posture of the heart. I love that opening of the heart to what might be possible. It's so good. Michael, this book, I cannot say more strongly to those listening to this. It's so readable.
You share a lot of your story but you bring in some incredibly rich resources from, as we've heard today, from our spiritual practices, from good psychology. It's such a good resource. Tell me a little bit about how people can find Sacred Attachment and what your hope is for folks who pick up a copy.
Michael: My hope is that people can experience a trauma-informed invitation to a whole new spiritual life. My hope is that people can reimagine a new kind of spiritual life with God, that's really based in rest and peace, and overflow, and that our service and our contribution and the way that we show up in the world that is life-giving.
That it comes out of a solid foundation inside of us, and that ultimately that every reader will understand that I can be securely attached to God, and that's a work that I do in relationship with others and in relationship with God, and most of all, that attachment has nothing to do with me.
Once again, I love this phrase borrowed from Martin Laird in his book, Into the Silent Land. He's a contemplative author and he says that most of us are like people fishing for minnows while standing on the back of a whale. This union or attachment with God that we're seeking and desiring is something that we never have to acquire or lose or attain or work up.
It's something that we fall back into. I would hope that people have healing of their brokenness, and my hope would be that people have healing of their experience and their image of God, especially toxic and unhealthy beliefs about God. My hope would be that it would bring joy and lightness of being to people.
Alison Cook: You did that. It certainly did that for me. I'm so grateful that you wrote it and that you took the time to walk us through some of your own story today. How can people find you and find your resources?
Michael: Yeah, my website is restoringthesoul.com. Restoring the Soul is a ministry in Denver, Colorado, where we do two-week intensive counseling with folks who are looking to get unstuck from trauma and significant relational issues. We work with couples and individuals, and you can find my personal website as well, michaeljohncusick.com.
The book is available on Amazon starting on January 7th, 2025, but it can be pre-ordered before then everywhere fine books are sold.
Alison Cook: I love it. I love it. I can't recommend it more to folks and so grateful for you and all the work that you've done to bring healing to others out of your own pain.
Michael: Thank you so much, Alison. Great being with you.
Feeling exhaustion or post-holiday blues? How can we step into the New Year feeling refreshed and empowered?
In this honest and vulnerable conversation, spiritual director and author Anjuli Paschall and I unpack our own journeys through holiday people-pleasing and how to reset for the New Year. As we close out the year, many of us grapple with a mix of relief and disappointment, compounded by the pressure of New Year's resolutions and the desire to start fresh. Anjuli offers her expert guidance on understanding these dynamics and introduces practical steps and spiritual practices to help us move forward with hope and clarity.
Here’s what we cover:
* How to break free from holiday people-pleasing
* The #1 way to stop trying to control other people’s feelings
* Why post-holiday let down happens & what to do
* How to develop and cultivate aspirational feelings in your body
* Why the hope of a new year sometimes hurts & how to navigate those feelings
* Prayers to move through complicated emotions
Resources:
- Episode 131: Navigating Holiday Emotions—An Honest, Heartfelt Conversation About Guilt, Nostalgia, and Exhaustion with Author & Spiritual Director Anjuli Paschall
- Feel: A Collection of Liturgies Offering Hope for Every Complicated Emotion
- Lovealways.anjuli on Instagram
- anjulipaschall.com
If you liked this, you’ll love:
- Episode 30: Protecting What’s Good Without Denying What’s Hard at the Holidays
Thanks to our sponsors:
- Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
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Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
Transcript:
Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I'm so thrilled to bring you today's episode with a repeat guest. If you've been following along, you might remember a beautiful conversation I had a few weeks ago around Thanksgiving with Anjuli Paschall.
Anjuli is a spiritual director and she's the author of the new book, Feel: A Collection of Liturgies Offering Hope for Every Complicated Emotion. I loved this conversation with Anjuli so much that I wanted her to come back to talk with us about some of these post-holiday emotions that we tend to feel.
In Episode 131, we talked about the emotions that tend to come up before the holidays. We talked about some of the guilt that you might feel, the pressure, the exhaustion, and the stress that many of us carry into the season. The words and the prayers that she offered to us in that episode were so powerful and were so helpful to me personally, that I knew I wanted to invite her back.
Today, Anjuli is here to help us explore what happens after the holidays. The decorations are coming down, the gatherings are over, and often we're left with some complicated post-holiday feelings. Together, we're going to dive into some of the post-holiday blues that can follow the hustle and bustle of the holidays.
We're going to talk about what it might look like to feel content after the holiday season, as opposed to exhausted and let down. We talk about some of the gloom that can linger when we're in between different seasons, when something good has ended, but something new hasn't yet quite become. We talk about the nuanced interplay of creativity and hope as we step into a new year.
In addition to being an author and spiritual director, Anjuli is the mom of five kids, and her voice is so vulnerable, insightful, and grounded in deep faith. I know you'll find her as encouraging and life-giving as I do. I'm thrilled to bring you my conversation with Anjuli Paschall.
***
Alison Cook: I so loved our conversation about pre-holiday emotions, about all of the guilt and the exhaustion. It was so helpful to me personally. It was so helpful to many listeners, to process some of these specific emotions that get tangled up inside of us. In Feel, you've created this anthology of 75 emotions. I was thinking about post-holiday emotions, because I always feel a lot of emotions, especially that week after Christmas and before new year's.
I always feel emotions that I have complicated feelings about. I'm curious, what do you think are some of the emotions that come up after the holiday dust has settled–when you wake up after Christmas day or even into the week after?
Anjuli: Yeah, that is a great question. I think none of us go into the holidays thinking, oh, on the other side, I want to come out exhausted, overwhelmed, stressed, and depleted. We have great hopes that we will come out well, that we'll do it differently this year.
Alison Cook: Yeah, exactly.
Anjuli: I don't think we can do the holidays differently unless we understand what we're doing. I don't always think it's, I'll buy less, do less, participate in less. That can help, but I don't know if that's always the cure. Because you can do very little and still feel depleted, exhausted, stressed, and tired.
You have to explore, what's happening in my internal world, that year after year, I come out on the other side not the way I hoped I would be? I don't actually have this particular feeling in my book, there's one very closely connected to it, but one feeling I experience and I hear a lot of people experiencing is the feeling of relief.
You put all the Christmas stuff away and it feels clean. Your house is back to normal. You're in a regular routine again. All the house guests have gone. There's a new year. There's a sense of refresh and restart. The feeling I would connect to that is free. But it's an interesting feeling because it makes you wonder, what are you relieved of? What were you doing that makes you like, oh, thank God I made it through that?
Alison Cook: About putting away Christmas decorations–I want to talk about that. We'll come to that one later. I feel a real letdown because there's something about the festivities and the lights and the decorations. I feel so sad when we have to take them down. That might link to nostalgia, which we talked about last time. I'm not sure, but there can be that feeling of letdown.
It is so interesting when we talk about freedom or relief. What are we feeling it from? Several years ago, going into the holidays, I noticed a pattern that every year I would wipe myself out trying to get the perfect gifts, the perfect everything. By the time the day came, I was exhausted.
Even my family was like, why are you doing this? So I made a conscious choice. I began to notice that tipping point of, I can stop. My work is done. This is good enough. I began to notice that, and consciously over the next few years, I would make myself stop at a certain point. Stop buying more gifts, doing more things, and it worked.
I'm wondering if that gets at that “free from”. I noticed there was a part of me early on, when the kids are young and you want everything to be perfect, there was a part of me that was pushing me to do things that other parts of me could become aware of. We're not moving the needle on anybody's Christmas joy with these extra gifts. Nobody needed these.
I made myself consciously look at that and assess that and make a mental note that the next year, I was going to really notice the impulse to do more, take a pause, and take a deep breath. It really worked. I wonder if that's a little bit of what you're talking about–that pressure we put on ourselves. Where does that come from?
Anjuli: I think you nailed it. The sister to that is taking responsibility for things that are not your responsibility. It's even the joy of other people. “I'm responsible to give my children the greatest, magical, most beautiful experience of Christmas.” We take that responsibility.
I do this too. I think this is the tipping point for me year after year. I'm relieved because it's like, oh, I don't have to deal with my in-laws or my sister or brother, whoever it is. I don't have to carry the responsibility of their experience.
It was a relief for me. Oh, it's done. Okay, I don't have to do that anymore. And realizing I never actually had to do that in the first place. I took that responsibility upon myself.
Alison Cook: That part of you that feels so responsible for everyone's happiness or everyone's experience, what is it afraid would happen if you didn't work so hard?
Anjuli: I think it really links to some childhood stuff. There's chaos, but if I can be the one who brings joy or brings help or brings my personality or humor, it'll take the air out of the pressure.
And there's that deep belief of, I can help. I can be the one who minimizes the chaos.
Alison Cook: There's that conditioning of, I can be the one to make Christmas magical for everybody, which is beautiful—and—exhausting. Yeah.
Anjuli: For me, even heading into the holidays and coming out of it is like, okay. What am I responsible for? And giving people back their own feelings. Oh, actually, my mom is responsible for her joy and her sorrow and her disappointment. My brother-in-law is responsible for his anger. It's such a helpful thing to give back responsibility to the person who it's due.
Alison Cook: Yeah. Their joy is their responsibility. It's not actually yours.
Anjuli: Yeah. Let me ask you this question, because I bring this conversation up a lot with people, especially with feelings. Do you think that you can control how other people feel?
Alison Cook: So the more scientific, logical, rational part of me that knows the right answer says no, we can't control how other people feel. And also, I don't think it's a complete binary. It's tricky. I think it's nuanced. This is where codependency comes in.
It's so tricky because we do have the power to impact how someone feels. If I know that there's something that's really going to bring you joy and I do that thing out of the goodness of my heart and it brings that joy to you, I've played a part in your experience of joy. That's the healthy part of it. That's what I don't want to lose. This is why I think this is tricky, but I have to be so clear inside myself, what my motivation is.
Anjuli: Yeah.
Alison Cook: When I do this thing to bring you joy, do I have the bandwidth for it? And is it a free gift? When it's a free gift that I want to give with no strings attached, that's a beautiful thing, but it's a slippery slope. Because it could be, I'm going to use this word, manipulation. I want to orchestrate everybody around me because then I feel good about myself.
Or I want to feel good about myself because I've been the good daughter or I've been the good parent or I've been the good sibling. So I think it's really nuanced. I'm curious what you think.
Anjuli: I want to push back on people when I have this conversation. Because we can't control how people feel. I think there are nuances, but I think where I really want to press on people is that you actually could do everything in your power to do the thing you think that person needs or wants that will bring them joy.
But in the end, you could do handstands and you could give and give of yourself and you could break your back and you could do all the things and they could still not feel joy.
Alison Cook: 100 percent.
Anjuli: I think that's really hard for people to really embrace. Because we have so habituated ourselves, through what I even shared from my childhood, if I do these things, then this will be the result. What's so tricky is it probably worked in a lot of people's lives. If I'm the good daughter, sister, wife, then they won't be mad at me, or then there'll be peace.
It works to a degree until it doesn't work. Until you break down or that relationship breaks down, because it's fixated on the transactional relationship.
If we bring it back to the holidays, I do this and I know so many women do. There is a good desire in there to bless and love people. But I also think it's really hard to do some things without hooks in there. If I do this, it will bring a good Christmas, or then my kids will get along, or then they'll love me back or want to come visit again.
I think there is a real work of the soul and work of the heart to relinquish any power we think we have to really transform someone's experience of Christmas.
Alison Cook: I love this conversation because again, bringing up that word codependency–when you are recovering from being a people pleaser, being someone who takes your identity out of trying to control the emotions of others, it's really helpful to remind yourself, I cannot control anybody else's experience.
It forces you to that accountability. If I do this thing, am I doing it because I want to do it out of the overflow of my own heart, regardless of how it is received? But that's a recovery journey. I know in my own life, that has absolutely been a recovery journey, even to this day, of really getting quiet enough in my own soul, and asking what is motivating me here? Am I trying to earn love? Or is this something I wish to do for this human without any expectation of any outcome from them?
Anjuli: Sure. It's like the prayer that's so close to my heart. I am in recovery too, that God would give me a pure heart. In the Sermon on the Mount: blessed are the pure in heart. It's such a desire of mine to love from a pure heart, because what a gift we can give other people when we can do that.
Alison Cook: So bringing this back to those emotions we were talking about at the beginning of this, Anjuli, relief and freedom. There's this relief. I'm curious what you think from your inventory of emotions, what is the emotion that we feel when there is that purity of heart out of our giving? I think that's a really nuanced idea–what does that feel like when I do this?
It's the opposite of resentment. It's the opposite of martyrdom. I did this out of the joy in my own heart. Take it as you see fit. I am good. I am satisfied. What is that emotion that we feel on that pure side of giving?
Anjuli: I would say the closest ones that come to mind are contentment and gratitude. It's a piece that is not determined by circumstance. When things don't go the way we hoped they would go, or the way we intended they would go, it doesn't shake your security.
Alison Cook: So let's imagine for a minute if we could feel and tap into a sense of contentment post-holiday. What would that feel like for us? I'd love to hear some of your thoughts because that feels like an emotion that we strive for. Walk us through a little bit about what contentment feels like. How do we experience that?
Anjuli: Well, the first indicator is how you feel in your body. Your heart rate is at ease, your chest is relaxed, your throat isn't closed up, your mind isn't cluttered. Your palms are relaxed. It's the posture of open palms. I think when we pay attention to our body, it's definitely an indicator of what's going on in our heart.
It's really at peace. It's a place of surrender. It's a place of, your will be done, God. I think our contentment holds hands very closely with trust in God. When we trust God with surface level things all the way down to our very beings, the soul of our being, we can relax more.
Alison Cook: I love that. Even if we feel some of the let down, some of the disappointment, or even some of the exhaustion. For the listener who hasn't felt, after the holidays, this deep sense of a contentment (if we do, that's wonderful), I'm trying to imagine, what does that feel like? Sometimes as we imagine and tap into that in our bodies, it helps us have a target in a way.
Anjuli: That's a great thing that you brought up. I love the way this conversation is going, because that's not a feeling I would typically describe that we feel after the holidays, but what I think comes up for me is, gosh, isn't that the hope? That we're here in January and we can look backwards and be like, it was hard. It was messy. I can't believe that person did that. It didn't go the way I thought I did, but here I am today, moving into a new year.
Lord, I entrust what it was into your hands and know that you will use it. Even the pain, even the hardship, even the exhaustion, as seeds that you will water and grow in my life and hopefully in the lives of other people. You will use my not-enough, where I didn't live up to who I wanted to be, and you will grow contentment in my heart, but also in their hearts.
Alison Cook: love that. So our first emotion for post-holidays is aspirational. But if we have this idea of what if I could experience more contentment, it would require a little bit more of that releasing of the grip of both my own desires and also the people I love. I can't control them.
Anjuli: Letting what was to rest. Letting what did happen, happen, and coming to peace with it.
Alison Cook: I love that. I do feel like there's something to this idea of the post-holiday blues. I'm curious what your thoughts are on some of those types of emotions. Anjuli, I know you said in our last conversation that there's a component of sadness that you actually really don't mind. Is that right?
Anjuli: The feeling that actually comes up for me when I hear you talk is the feeling of gloomy.
Alison Cook: Oh, that's a great word.
Anjuli: You're not depressed. You're sad, but you're not crying in your bed at night.
Alison Cook: It's different. It's not quite grief. Gloomy is a good word.
Anjuli: It's funny, Alison. Gloomy was the very last feeling I added. I remember I emailed my publisher like, we have to add this feeling, because it's not as deep as sadness. But it's something we experience in seasons of transition, when there has been good. I finished a season with my son's volleyball team.
I don't know if anyone listening has had kids who played a sport, but for that season, there’s that little community, the people we saw four or five times a week. You see them more than your best friends, and you have this common bond of cheering for your children and wearing the same color and analyzing all the plays and talking trash about the referees.
You form this connection, and then when that season's done, it evaporates. It's gone, and you don't really see these people that come to be your friends anymore. The feeling of gloomy comes when a season changes and there's a loss.
Alison Cook: Oh, I love that. That is it. That's what I feel. I'm curious if the listener will relate, because it doesn't feel as deep nor as sad, but it feels gloomy. What a bummer. Yeah. So talk us through a little bit, how do you think through and pray through where there's a little gloominess?
Anjuli: The most important thing is that we name it, but then to acknowledge it, because it's a higher level feeling. It's a very easy one to neglect or minimize or dismiss. When you're furious, you can't really dismiss that. It's so obvious. Even disappointment, that's a mid-level feeling. It's hard to avoid disappointment. It sticks to you.
But gloominess, you could easily drink it away, Netflix it away, shop it away. I think it's important for us to name what it is and acknowledge, yeah, that was a really good thing. I am sad that it's ending and that it may never be the same again.
Alison Cook: I love that, because what that does is give credit to the good that you're now missing. Even in your example, with the end of a sports season, which I totally get–there's excitement around it, there's energy around it, there's vitality around it–when it's over, it's this weird feeling of, oh that's a bummer.
If you don't acknowledge that, you might miss what was good. The fact that you're aware of that feeling afterward helps you understand what was really good about what came before. Yeah. I love that.
Anjuli: Would it be helpful to read a little bit from that section?
Alison Cook: I would love that. It's one of my favorite parts. I love listening to you.
Anjuli: A liturgy for when I feel gloomy. I open my heart to you, God. I feel this gloominess in my body. I'm not sure what to do with my sadness today. Give me wisdom to know what in my heart needs to be processed and prayed. My gloominess comes and goes like fog.
I feel the ache move through me. I feel loss snagging my soul. I feel hesitant to camp here for too long. But here I am now. I trust that you care about my life. As insignificant as my sorrow may be, I believe that you do care. Life is changing. Seasons come and go. I can't hold anything still. I can't control the passage of time.
I refrain from thinking about my feelings. Instead, I feel them, hold them, and acknowledge them. I unfold my heart to you. I don't need to edit my words or feelings with you. God, in this place, you are my constant. Your spirit sorts through my spirit. Your spirit comforts my spirit. Your spirit consoles and welcomes me to come undone.
Sadness exists even when words do not. I trust that you will bring me understanding. Though I can't shake this feeling, I trust that you are unshaken by it. Though I can't make sense of all my circumstances, I trust that you will make my path straight in due time. As seasons change, so do my feelings.
I wait on you. I wait on the premise that this is not the end. I wait on the promises of your love to see me through. I know this feeling isn't final, but a passage place. It is a place I must move through in prayer, and it becomes a holy ground for hope to transpire. You are with me in this liminal space.
I trust that even here, you are forming my heart in love. Help me see what I need to let go of, help me see what to hold on to. Once again, I entrust my life and the lives of those I love into your care. As life changes, I believe with all of my being that you desire my good and you are forming me in your kindness.
The growing pains I feel now are growing me to be one who loves as I have been loved. As I feel my mood swing and sway, I lean on you. I allow my sadness to be the space where your love welcomes me to come undone. Lord, hear my prayer.
Alison Cook: I love that. As I was listening, I got these images of what you want to do on a gloomy day, or even in the gloom of post holiday. Take care of yourself, wrap up in a blanket, maybe watch a cozy movie, maybe have that cup of hot chocolate. When you do those things for yourself, after having honored what you feel, it means more. It’s about really being present and taking care of myself through it.
Anjuli: Yeah. There is a piece of it where it's with transition. With the gloominess that comes, I think there is such a power in asking God, what from that last season can I hold on to? The season is gone, December 25th is gone, but I want something to live on inside of me and I want to take that with me into the next season.
Maybe there are things I actually need to let go of. Okay, my kid will never be a baby again. This is my last year with a baby. Okay. I want to honor that and know that next year they'll be running around and saying words, and so I'm gonna let that season go, things like that. What can I hold on to and what can I let go of?
Alison Cook: I love that. I love thinking through these nuanced emotions. I love gloomy. That's a great word. The other thing I was thinking of, Anjuli, as you were describing that, are children's books and imagination. It gives you a category for that. I was thinking about the gloomy characters that have a place in our imaginations, and that takes the edge off of it.
Anjuli: So true. We need that.
Alison Cook: What's another emotion that you think of, whether for the post-holiday or the anticipation of the new year?
Anjuli: We could go either with exhausted or creative. The new year's resolutions, the thing I'm going to do, or we could even circle back to longing.
Alison Cook: Let’s do creative, because I think there's something about the liminality between seasons, after Christmas yet before the new year, that in-between place. I think there is a seedbed there for the creativity of the new year. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Anjuli: Yeah. What a clean slate. So in line with New Year's resolutions, I have a word of the year. Some people are like, this is the year. It's such a fresh motivation in that liminal space of change. It's the ambition, the power, and then for some people, it can also be a discouragement if we look at our lives and want to get things back on track.
If it's our weight, if it's our mental health, if it's our finances, that can be a very defeating feeling if you have failed again and again at becoming the person or being where you want to be in life. It can be a smack across the face of, why even try? But there is something about the new year that's rejuvenating.
I do feel pretty creative at the beginning of the year, even though I'm not a New Year's resolution person. I don’t really even want to have a word this year. Every time I see people do it, I think I’m totally going to do that this year. I'm going to have a word and a verse and this is the year.
But it sparks my imagination. How do I want to imagine this year going? What are some dreams I want to revisit? What are some longings that are there? There is a fresh energy when January rolls around.
Alison Cook: You're right about that, that there can be a double edged sword to the pressure on the new year. It can invite those parts of us that get really excited and set all the goals and then other parts. It reminds me a little bit of right before Christmas, where parts of us get overzealous in ways that aren't really integrated with the rest of us.
I love that word creativity, because even in that feeling, it's not a binary. It's not, I'm going to go for it with all my goals, nor is it, I'm always going to wind up back where I was, so why bother? Creativity is about imagination and what could be. How could I imagine something new this year?
Maybe it's a little bit different from what I've tried in the past. I like that. There's something to that rhythm, with the new year, in a healthy way that isn't about the pressure of new year's goals.
Anjuli: Yes. I love that so much. Do you make a new year's resolution?
Alison Cook: I kind of make resolutions. I found that the week after Christmas, because it is that gloomy time, I like the interplay of that with creativity. So what I do is I don't call it resolutions, but I do some planning. I map out what I think, and I try to be very realistic. There are the pie in the sky goals, but when I really look at it, I go, wait a minute.
I use that time to really dig deep. If I could do a couple of things, what would they be? That's something I feel like I've gotten better at. I've gotten better at being more grounded in my body. There's obviously the 10 pie in the sky things I'd love, but I think about what's really in front of me and what would be meaningful to me if I could actually move the needle a little bit.
I use that week for that kind of planning, which sounds less romantic. I can see by your face that you relate to me, but it actually feels good. It feels satisfying. Yeah. Because I actually usually do it.
Anjuli: It's such a great place to evaluate what's working and what's not working. How can we reinvent that to serve the purpose that we're hoping?
Alison Cook: Yeah. How do you look at that for yourself?
Anjuli: I am such a feeler that when I don't feel creativity, it's so hard to be creative. It’s this weird backwards thing for me that it actually requires some discipline. You want to run that marathon, you actually have to put some shoes on. I love the dreamy part of it.
And then when it gets hard, sometimes I'm like, I didn't really want to run that marathon. Even writing this liturgy was such a work of my heart, because there are nuances to creativity. There are some really beautiful, pure things about it. And then there's some things that can bleed into our creativity that can be harmful for us.
Even writing was such a journey for my own heart of, oh, I really can see the beauty and see the harm that can be done. So this is a liturgy for when I feel creative.
I feel creative and I feel it in my body. My creativity has a story. In some ways, it has been received, hidden, set aside, or caused me hurt. For a moment, I opened my heart to you, God. God, I feel a spark flickering inside of me. A small desire is growing.
I feel it. I can't stop imagining what could come. When I close my eyes, I see all the pieces falling into place and my soul accelerates. I feel something waking up inside of me. It's risky and right and everything I've been wanting. I can come alive. The anticipation of what could come is all consuming. I want to create something beautiful.
God, I believe my hands, heart, and pent up hope all have a purpose. I want to pour all of my time, energy, and affection into this new possibility. The spark wasn't a fire kindled by mere magic. It came to me. It was ignited by you. It started someplace else. In the beginning. God, you created. I want to use creativity to get beyond the beginning.
I believe creativity will take me forward someplace else, some place that is better. I try to build a structure that will transport me from my reality to a better one in the future. God, I resist using these ideas to bring me self-glorification or selfish gain. I resist using my creativity as a way of escaping reality. I resist ignoring the creative gifts you have given me because I am afraid of not succeeding.
Parts of my heart want to manipulate the gifts you've given me in a way that I think will fix or save me, creating me a clean heart. Lord, I willingly, cautiously, and courageously step into this call to create. I don't have to make something happen. Rather, I get to move into what you have asked me to do.
I don't have to figure everything out. I don't have to do anything but be faithful to the task before me. God, I relax into the wondrous creation of the world, those around me, and my own mysterious soul. I rest in your power, God.
You inspire me. I don't use my power to build beyond you, God. I use my power to be with you. God, above all, form in me a creative heart of love. Let all that my hands do become a doorway to participate and invite others into your indwelling presence. Lord, hear my prayer.
Alison Cook: That's beautiful. As I listened to your prayer, that when we have felt thwarted creatively or we felt blocked, it's so closely tied to hope. It can hurt when we feel that flickering spark of hope, longing, that creative spark. We can feel mixed up about it.
Anjuli: Yes. It can remind us of our past failures. We're paralyzed. Oh, I already tried something. It didn't work. So I'm never going to try again to put myself out there or write the book, sing the song, paint the painting, start the business. We can stifle our creativity or we can use our creativity as a way to escape reality.
Alison Cook: The word that came to mind, it's so closely interwoven with imagination, but it’s the word fantasy. I used to create elaborate fantasies in my mind, as a kid, and I had a big imagination.
There's a lot of creativity, but the fantasy was often an escape hatch, and it had no connection to reality. In my adult life right now, sometimes I can go too far. I'll be really grounded, and within that, what I have found is that the goal is to let that fire burn even brighter inside, because it's so connected to what's real. It's different from that escape hatch. It's tricky to bring the real and the imagined together.
Anjuli: I think that's the intersection of entering into it with God, who is the great Creator. We create because God created. We don't create to get out of reality. We create to be with God in his reality.
Alison Cook: Yes. We are joining God in shaping reality for good and beauty, and that really fills your heart. But you're right, it's delicate. It's like a flame. I love how you use that metaphor of a spark. It's beautiful and vital and it's also delicate.
Anjuli: And it can burn you. Yeah. There's a witness with God in that. In whatever resolution you have, whatever the new dream is, if you allow yourself to reinvent something or change something in your life, it's not to get out of your life. It's actually to enter more deeply into the life you've been given.
Alison Cook: You've written such a beautiful book. It's called Feel, and you cover 75 different emotions. Each one has a liturgy and some thoughts, like what we've shared today. It's a beautiful resource. When you were saying you’re a feeler, I thought, you are using those gifts for good in partnership with God by bringing this beautiful book into the world and by joining us. Thank you so much.
Anjuli: Thank you for having me back. It's so great to be here with your audience and your people. You lead and you share and you guide so gently and so well. So thanks for having me back. What a gift.
Are you curious about how science and spirituality intersect in understanding and treating mental health conditions like OCD?
This week, therapist and spiritual director Ryan Kuja shares his incredible journey through the complex world of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). From a young age, Ryan battled intrusive thoughts and repetitive behaviors. Feeling isolated and overwhelmed, at 17, he cried out to God—a pivotal moment that launched him into an unexpected exploration of mysticism, neurobiology, and the intricacies of diagnosis. This episode is designed for everyone, whether you or someone you love is dealing with OCD, or you're simply interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the diverse human experience.
Here’s what we cover:
* Ryan recounts the pivotal moment at 17 when his struggle with OCD drove him to seek divine intervention
* The difference between OCD and common intrusive thoughts—what sets them apart?
* An overview of the latest and most effective treatments for OCD, from clinical approaches to innovative therapies
* Ryan shares the spiritual practices that have not only helped manage his OCD but also enriched his spiritual journey
Resources:
- Episode 129
- Brain Lock by Jeffrey Schwartz
- ryankuja.com
- Instagram @ryankuja
If you liked this episode, check out:
- Episode 129: Understanding Your Anxiety—A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Calm, Advocating For Yourself, and Cultivating Inner Resilience
- Episode 51: The 12 Common Thinking Traps, Mind Reading, Mental Filters, and How To Stop Taking Things Personally
Thanks to our sponsors:
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- This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/BESTOFYOU and get on your way to being your best self.
Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
Transcript:
Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am so glad you're here with me this week. We have a beautiful and insightful and compassionate episode lined up for today. We're diving into a topic that touches so many lives, whether directly or indirectly, and that's OCD, or obsessive compulsive disorder.
Now, if you listened to Episode 129, which was all about understanding your anxiety and different types of anxiety, you know that anxiety is really complex and nuanced. It has a lot of different manifestations, and OCD actually falls under the umbrella of an “anxiety disorder”. I don't always love the language of disorders, but that's the language that our current society uses.
I wanted to touch on OCD in that episode, but there are so many misconceptions about it and it's so misunderstood that I decided to dedicate a whole conversation to it, and that's exactly what we're going to do today. This episode is for all of us.
If you've been diagnosed with OCD, or if you've ever wondered if what you're experiencing might be OCD, maybe you have a loved one who struggles with it, or maybe you're simply curious about it and want to have a greater understanding of this shared experience of what it means to be human. There's something for everyone in this episode.
As you'll hear from our guest today, it can be incredibly freeing to realize there is a name for what I'm experiencing, and OCD is the right name. It can be equally as powerful as you listen today to realize, oh, this isn't what I'm experiencing. I may be dealing with something else.
Maybe I have some perfectionistic streaks. Maybe I have some generalized anxiety. Maybe I have some high sensitivity, as we'll touch on in today's episode. But what I'm dealing with actually isn't OCD. Either way, when we understand how to name something accurately, it can be really life giving and freeing and set us on a path toward healing.
Toward the end of the episode, we're also going to get into what effective treatments can look like, some of the most common misconceptions about OCD, and we're also going to talk about how spiritual practices can both help and sometimes hinder someone with OCD.
I'm so honored to have Ryan Kuja with me today. Ryan is a therapist, a writer, and a spiritual director who speaks openly about his own journey with OCD. His insights are so compassionate and so grounded in both his personal experience and professional expertise. You can learn more about Ryan at ryankuja.com or on Instagram @ryankuja.
Tune in for yourself, a loved one, or if you want to learn more about the complexity of the human experience and how God meets each and every one of us exactly where we need to be met. I know this conversation will leave you with a greater understanding and empathy. I am so thrilled to bring you my conversation with therapist Ryan Kuja.
***
Alison Cook: Ryan, thanks so much for joining us today. I am so thrilled for this chance to get to know a little bit more about your story, both personally and in your work as a therapist and how you approach things. I've come to have so much respect for you based on some of your writings online and through some mutual friends. I'm so glad you're here.
Ryan: Thanks for having me. It's an honor to be here.
Alison Cook: I cannot wait to dig in, because you have such a beautiful way of describing what it means to be a healer. I love how you frame this work that we do that way. Before we get there, I would love to learn a little bit more about your journey
You talk about how you’ve been down this path and do this work out of healing what you've been through. You even write on your website, “by the time I was 24, I had been diagnosed with OCD, PTSD, depression, anxiety, and panic. I intimately know the affliction of mental health struggles”.
Can you take us back to your younger self, that pre-24, pre-diagnosed younger self? What were some of the cues and signals that you were experiencing that set you out on this journey?
Ryan: Yeah, so it goes way back. I think the seeds of some of the clinical issues that I mentioned, the OCD, the PTSD, depression, anxiety, I think the seeds of a lot of that was there when I was quite young. I remember worrying a lot as a kid and being highly sensitive. But it was really at age 10. My mom was in a car accident.
She was okay. She wasn't extensively injured or anything, but I experienced it as traumatic. Now, I wasn't with her, but following the car accident that she was in, these obsessions about her dying in a car accident developed. The obsessive terror was, mom is going to die in a car accident. There are compulsions that developed around that to try to reduce the anxiety.
I would flip on and off light switches. I would repeat odd phrases over and over in my head. I remember in fifth grade riding the bus to school, and at a certain point in the bus route, I would put on a certain hat at a certain time. I knew as a 10 year old that this didn't make sense. But I couldn't not do it.
I would even try to ride with her when she was in the car. If she was going to the grocery store, I'd always want to come. I remember having an understanding that accidents take place in these split second scenarios. So if you're three or four seconds earlier or later, you might avoid a car accident.
My mind would think, if mom leaves the house a few seconds later, maybe she won't get in a crash. Maybe I should delay her, but what if that actually is when the accident would happen? This would consume me. The OCD symptoms were the first clinical manifestation that I experienced.
Alison Cook: Boy, the way you describe that, I want to pause here for the listener. You're describing so clearly what's going on. Often people misunderstand OCD. You have the intrusive thoughts that something's going to happen to mom, but then it's followed by a compulsion. You have to do these behaviors, even though parts of you know they're not necessarily logical or rational.
Ryan: Exactly.
Alison Cook: I'm sure that was incredibly confusing at the time.
Ryan: Incredibly confusing. I had no category for it, no language for it. I thought I was weird. I thought I was crazy, doing these very strange things, and I hid it from everybody. So I didn't talk about it. I didn't bring it to anybody. I had no understanding that OCD existed.
It was very disorienting and confusing, and I felt this really strong sense of aloneness amidst this fairly overwhelming suffering. And it would wax and wane. There were years between age 10 and 17, and I can talk perhaps later about what happened when I was 17, that shifted things at least for a while.
So I didn't know that OCD existed. I had never heard of OCD. I didn't know other people suffered with this. I didn't know this was a neuropsychiatric condition that was diagnosable and treatable. So I felt the overwhelm of these symptoms plus isolation and loneliness in it.
Alison Cook: Yes. That makes so much sense that you're experiencing it and then you feel so isolated from other people. You didn't tell anybody until 17?
Ryan: I didn't tell anybody and I was a master at keeping it hidden. So for example, the flipping on and off of light switches. I would do that only in rooms that nobody else was in. You think, how does somebody hide this for all these years? It's certainly possible.
A lot of the compulsions I had were what's known as mental compulsions. Again, repeating certain phrases over and over in my head, or things that others and family members couldn’t necessarily pick up on.
Alison Cook: Yeah, you could keep them private, but again, that splitting off internally had to be incredibly painful. Ryan, you talk about a mystical experience that happened at 17. Could you tell us a little bit about what happened there? Because it seems as if that really set you off on a whole different exploration.
Ryan: Exactly. By the time I was 17, I was in the throes of this psychological affliction. I really felt like I was at the end of my rope. Like I said, it would wax and wane. I was a competitive cyclist during my teen years, and looking back, I think when I was training and cycling a lot, the exercise alone mitigated some of the intensity.
But as I got away from that, it became more severe, around age 17. I really hit a low point. I was in my bed one night, and for the first time in my life, I reached out to something, anything, God. I didn't grow up in a religious family, but we were culturally Catholic. We went to church during Christmas and Easter, but there wasn't a focus on God or spirituality or faith.
So this was something very new to me, something I hadn't done before, but it was really organic–like supplication, this reaching out from an afflictive space. Something profound happened. I felt infused by divine love. I felt God's presence enveloping me in this really clear embodied way, and I also heard a voice.
It wasn't audible, it was like a still small voice coming from within me or something. These mystical experiences are often hard to put into language by the nature of them, but the voice said, I'll take care of your mother. It was very clear, very simple, very direct. I'll take care of your mother.
I was infused with this love and this peace and it really catalyzed the healing of the fear. The obsession, of course, was terror that my mom was gonna die in a car accident. I sensed and really felt in my heart and in my body and in my mind this sense that this God who I didn't know existed, who I'm meeting in this very experiential way, is going to take care of my mom. I don't have to.
So it healed the fear. The obsession dropped away and the compulsions dropped away. I literally woke up the next morning and the OCD symptoms had vanished.
Alison Cook: Wow. So it was really a transformational encounter with God. Where do you go from there? Did you understand that it was God in this experience? How did you process that at such a young age?
Ryan: So it's interesting. I didn't tell anybody about it because I felt like it was a bit…there wasn't shame or anything around it, but it felt odd. We're not a religious family. I didn’t have religious friends. There's no mentor figure. What do I do with this?
Again, I was alone in it, but it was aloneness in the new freedom of this, versus the old kind of prison. I knew I wanted to start going to church. I knew I wanted to start reading the Bible. It instigated a fledgling faith and I became a Christian. I became a follower of Jesus through this event, on the heels of this mystical experience.
There was a short period of real freedom. This is April of 2000, when I was 17. So by the time I went off to college in August, a few months later, things had shifted. I still didn't know that the OCD had been healed. I thought that the fear had been healed. So I still didn't have a category or know that OCD was a thing.
I knew something happened that changed me deeply spiritually and psychologically, and I didn't yet have the language and the education around neurobiology and neuroscience and how the brain and nervous system were interplaying with some of these symptoms.
But all that to say, the OCD then returned with a vengeance. A different type of OCD, religious OCD, also known as scrupulosity. I became terrified of, for example, certain passages in the Bible that say to be perfect like your heavenly father is perfect.
It wasn't so much a terror of that passage. It was more of, oh, so this journey of becoming a Christian is about now being perfect. I became obsessed with sin. What is sin? What isn't sin? What is okay to do? What's not okay to do? And I'm going off to college, and is it okay to drink when you're under age? What's okay sexually?
All of this obsession with doing things right and doing things perfectly took root as religious OCD.
Alison Cook: Oh gosh, Ryan, when we put ourselves back, I think about those young versions of ourselves. At this age that you're at, we're processing really heavy stuff and we have no clue what we're processing. You're saying so much here.
First of all, I want to point out, and I had wanted to ask you about this, that all the isolation you experienced both with the OCD and then with the religious experience is in and of itself traumatic. Would you agree?
Ryan: Certainly.
Alison Cook: There's already some trauma to the system there, of all the ways you're having to hide these things. Then you have this beautiful experience. It's real. It changes your life. It removes symptoms, but then the symptoms come back and they come back in the form of religiosity.
I want to pause there because I think of so many people who have had a very transcendent experience with God. I had one in my early twenties, and it's so transformational and it's real and it's life changing.
Also, you still have to go into the healing work. It's not “one and done”. Yeah. That had to be so confusing, when it came back, as you said, with a vengeance.
Ryan: Absolutely. It was very confusing. There was a dichotomy between this divine love that I met in that mystical experience, but then I'm reading the Bible literally. I'm reading it literally because I have no idea that there's a historical cultural context.
Alison Cook: Like when Jesus has to pluck out your eyeball, it's not literal. You're not supposed to do that.
Ryan: Exactly. There is this sort of dichotomy around, what's real? Is that experience I had even trustworthy? Because this is what I'm reading. I'm also encountering authors and preachers who are saying things that are fear inducing. So the whole thing really consolidated around fear and shame versus the experience of God when I was 17 in my bed that night. There is this almost irreconcilable, what is real and what isn't?
Alison Cook: You had this real experience, and then when you start reading the Bible, you go to church, you're hearing people describe a more fear-based approach, and that kind of worked together with this predisposition to OCD.
Ryan: That's exactly right. Exactly.
Alison Cook: The fear-based religiosity works together with this part of you, mentally, that goes right back into the obsessions, and then I'm assuming compulsions. I'm curious, because I know some folks who struggle with religious scrupulosity, religious OCD, the compulsions become more like constant confession. They take on a religious tone.
Ryan: Yep. That was one of mine. Confession.
Alison Cook: What did that look like for you? You're trying to balance this dichotomy of wanting to have this loving God in your life, but now it has become this whole other beast.
Ryan: Yes. The beast overshadowed that experience almost completely for a number of years. It wasn’t until I was 18 or 19, after one or two years, until finally I open up a bit to my mother. And she's sensing, he's not doing well. By this time, depression has started to constellate OCD, which is so common.
In my clinical work, I've never met somebody with OCD who doesn't also struggle with depression. There's such a high comorbidity between those two, which makes sense for many different reasons.
Alison Cook: You can feel helpless. You feel trapped. Yeah.
Ryan: Yeah, the shame and the guilt, feeling like I'm not good enough, feeling like I'm this bad person, thinking like all my desires were wrong or broken. So there was a very deep seated sense of toxic shame and brokenness.
I went to see a psychotherapist, or it may have been a psychologist, and got diagnosed with OCD. I remember there being a little bit of weight lifted, a little bit of relief. I had these symptoms and my obsession with sin, and I remember thinking it was an absolute sin to miss church on a Sunday morning. There's no excuse, unless you're definitely sick or have something that is a manifestation of this disorder called OCD that other people have.
I started to read books about it. I remember reading a classic, Brain Lock by Jeffrey Schwartz, and some other books specifically on scrupulosity and religious OCD. I finally got language for my experience and found that there's treatment available. I did start an SSRI medication around that same time, and that helped some.
I remember sensing a little bit of freedom, that everything wasn't so serious. If you didn't go to church, oh, that's okay. You miss a Sunday, that's okay. I was starting to understand that the Bible with these difficult texts weren't necessarily meant to be read so literally. There is this sort of movement, a little bit of freedom there, in terms of theology and spiritual understanding and reading the text. The SSRI medication also helped some of the symptoms.
Alison Cook: So you started to have some relief. At what point did you decide that you wanted to go down this journey of becoming a therapist yourself?
Ryan: After these experiences, I'm thrust even further into interest in mental health. It was a need. It was like survival. I was reading everything I could get my hands on, with regard to not only OCD, but also I was experiencing lots of generalizing anxiety. I had been diagnosed with PTSD when I was 23, and I had encountered some pretty good EMDR therapy with a therapist in Denver.
I remember thinking around that time, I could see myself doing this. I could see myself in her chair. There's something about this one-to-one engaging with depth, and she may have been the first good therapist that I saw. Somebody who was very empathic, who I felt seen by, and also had a good map for the psyche and the brain and using EMDR.
We could also talk about theology and spirituality. There was more expansion and imagination in that realm and in the work with her. I was also going to spiritual direction around the same time. This is maybe 2008 in Denver. I also remember thinking about sitting in spiritual direction. I could see myself in the other chair. I could see myself doing this, but I didn't pursue it.
My first career was in international relief mission and development, and I still have this really strong drive and passion to live among and serve the economically marginalized, especially on the African continent that continued to feel like a calling for a long time. I think it was a calling. It eventually pivoted and it was time to step away from that.
It was a number of years of noticing subtle and not so subtle draws to do therapeutic work, which eventually led me back to seminary. I completed a theology degree because that interest was very strong, and then a spiritual direction certificate program. I then went back again to pursue clinical mental health counseling. So it was a winding, circuitous journey.
Alison Cook: Wow. As you're pursuing your own healing, you begin to notice the cues that you might actually take this and become someone who helps others.
Ryan: Exactly. Yes.
Alison Cook: So Ryan, put on your professional hat here for those listening. When you think about OCD now, how do you understand it and what feels important for you that other people understand about it?
Ryan: What first comes to mind is how many misconceptions there are out there. I hear and see all the time, whether it's on social media or somebody in passing, saying things like, I'm so OCD about how I have to organize my clothes. Or yeah, I'm a little bit OCD about X, Y, and Z.
There's no malice there, but it's so insensitive, and in a way, ignorant to the reality of suffering that occurs with people who do have OCD. I think OCD is still quite stigmatized. There are lots of stereotypes about it. There's lots of misrepresentation in popular culture, lots of caricatures of OCD.
It's looked at as somebody who's quirky, and it trivializes the pain of people who are actually facing OCD. Like we mentioned earlier, the hallmark of it are these recurring intrusive obsessions, which are associated with anxiety and distress. The compulsions act to reduce the anxiety generated, and it often interferes with people's daily functioning, their social and occupational functioning, and their relationships.
Often people spend hours every day as a result of OCD focused on obsessions and compulsions. There are many different types, from religious OCD to contamination OCD to harm OCD, where someone's really afraid they're going to commit harm to somebody. There can be sexually intrusive thoughts, P-OCD, which is pedophilia OCD, the fear of becoming a pedophile or acting in such a way, and relationship OCD, which is the need to have certainty around if you're in the right relationship or not.
A lot of OCD hinges around this need for complete certainty. Contamination OCD involves the need for complete certainty that there are no germs on my hands or whatever it may be. The obsessions are generally unwanted, they're intrusive, and the psychology term is ego dystonic–they don't align with a person's values or desires.
So for the person who has POCD, pedophilia OCD, that pedophilia for them is the most disgusting, grotesque, awful thing, basically, that they can imagine. Of course, that's the thing that has a charge and is sticky. That's the thing, because it is so ego dystonic. It sticks because it causes distress.
Things that don't carry a charge, these intrusive obsessions don't manifest around that. I've had a number of clients who have these intrusive violent thoughts about hurting their pet, their dog, and they love their pet.
Alison Cook: They would never hurt their pet.
Ryan: They're the type of person who would never hurt the dog, so that the hallmark of it is, it's unwanted, it's intrusive, it's ego dystonic.
Alison Cook: Even in your case with the religious obsessions, all you wanted was to be with this God who had showed up for you in such a loving way. The charge was, if I commit this sin, I'll go to hell. I'll go to hell. That had a charge for you. In fact, all you were trying to do was follow God.
Ryan: Exactly. Yeah, so the obsession with the anxiety and the distress of the performance of the compulsion, whether that's a ritual kind of outward behavior or an inner mental compulsion then brings temporary relief. The compulsion brings this temporary relief.
It lowers the anxiety, which is the whole function of the compulsion, but it's this loop that repeats again and again. It tends to strengthen over time, and it can really consume someone's life. It can really take over. Often people feel shame about it. They hide it.
What's interesting is that there's some research that's been done–I believe the number is like 90 percent of people in the general population have occasional intrusive thoughts. The thing about somebody with OCD is it sticks. There's repetition. There's an issue with stopping, and some of that is neurobiological.
It’s related to the OCD circuitry in the brain, but underlying this is something interesting that I've noticed. I'm not sure what research has been done in this realm, but there seem to be traits of high sensitivity in people with OCD, and I see that as the bedrock or the foundation on which OCD eventually develops.
One of the predispositions is this high sensitivity. Yeah. It could be moral sensitivity, a really strong sense of right and wrong, good and bad, values, that sort of thing, or heightened existential sensitivity, like an awareness of existential givens of life and death.
So there's this kind of temperament that underlies OCD. One way to think of it is like the soil on which the tree of OCD grows.
Alison Cook: Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. Not everybody who is highly sensitive will develop OCD, but it does make sense that if you have OCD, underneath that is this high sensitivity. It's beautiful. The clients who I've worked with who've had it, there's an incredible sensitivity to things that can be so beautiful. And yet it can also create a lot of suffering.
So with all that said, Ryan, how do you begin to break that cycle? I know you've talked about medication. I'd also love to hear about specific interventions. We talk a lot on the podcast about IFS, this idea of parts. Even as I'm listening to you, I wonder if there is a way in which it's helpful?
I would love for you to correct me if I'm wrong. A part of you is having the fear and the anxiety, and then the other part is coming in with the behaviors to try to resolve that. Is it helpful to work with the different parts? What have you found to be helpful for folks?
Ryan: Yeah. Really great question. The so-called gold standard in treatment is something called exposure response prevention, where in a controlled setting, in the office with the therapist as well as at home, the client is exposed to what activates the obsession/anxiety. Then they prevent the response. The response prevention is not allowing the compulsion.
The idea is, when you sit with the anxiety, when you allow the anxiety to be there without reducing it through the compulsion, it'll eventually lower. So ERP is the so-called gold standard. Now, it wasn't super helpful for me. The data shows that it's effective about 50 percent of the time, but there's high dropout rates and it's difficult.
It is evidence based and it does work with about half of people. The research says ERP plus SSRI medication is about 70 percent effective. But, it's interesting. The field seems to be shifting some for a while. I honestly experienced it from many clinicians, or hearing stories from clients with OCD who had seen these OCD experts who only did ERP, like it was ERP or nothing.
Like this is the only thing and this is what we have to stick with. This is the only thing that there's an evidence base for. There's no connection between OCD and trauma. Almost this therapeutic dogmatism or fundamentalism and now that's starting to shift. There's research that's starting to come out about the links between trauma and OCD.
There's nothing that says trauma causes OCD, but there certainly can be associations, especially with certain subtypes of OCD. But let's take the parts perspective. Yes, I think the parts perspective can be extremely helpful and we can weave in the parts perspective with things like ERP, with things like mindfulness based cognitive therapy, sometimes even EMDR.
There's some research that shows EMDR can be helpful. So from a parts perspective, for me, it's really quite simple. I think that it's about an extreme protective part. I see OCD as an extreme protective part that's overactive, that's really trying to help prevent whatever bad thing from happening.
I had a client who was terrified, basically, that if her hands weren't perfectly clean, she was going to cause a deadly illness to one of her family members. Obviously the role of the part is to protect the family, to make sure somebody doesn't get sick. So the way I understand it from a parts perspective is that it's this overactive, extreme protective part working really hard to try to help.
This part desires 100 percent certainty, which isn't really possible in our human experience. 100 percent certainty isn't possible, but we can learn to relate to this extreme protective part as one who is trying to help. So less resistance to it, less trying to overcome it, more compassionate engagement with the part.
My main role is as a trauma therapist, and I have a few clients I see who have OCD. I don't see myself as an OCD specialist, but obviously I work with it and it's deeply personal, as it's part of my story. I don't do much cognitive work, generally. I focus more on parts work and nervous system work and polyvagal theory and somatic work.
But with OCD, I think the cognitive work is really important. It's really important to weave that in, given that people are experiencing OCD generally up around their head as intrusive thoughts,
Alison Cook: Yeah. You can hear the beliefs. The all-or-nothing thinking, some of the thinking traps that you do have to attack, so that when you're present to that part, even understanding its good intention, you also have the self-led ability to gently let that part know that reframe of we might have a germ on us, but that doesn't mean someone else is going to get sick, or whatever it is. I could see how that is really vital combined with a lot of these other things.
Ryan, I could talk to you about this all day. You're such a wealth of wisdom and you see all this with such nuance. In your work now, in your own life, where does the role of spirituality come in? Because you talk about that powerful mystical experience that did give you relief.
How do spiritual practices help you to this day? How does your spirituality work together with what you understand about the brain now, and some of these different neurobiological aspects? How does that factor in?
Ryan: I think there's some really beautiful intersection there. I think the intersections between spirituality, neuroscience, and psychology are some of the most fun and the most powerful places to explore. New vistas open up. As I think about my own experience, spiritual experiences and conversations with that really wise priest have helped me immensely.
So things that weren't necessarily therapy brought about those sorts of experiences. Certainly given what we know about the brain, they brought about neurobiological changes. I also think about weaving in a little bit of little tiny touching into the nervous system. Those experiences catalyze safety and connection.
Those experiences allowed a tether back into the ventral vagal state of safety and connection. That state of home, at least what Chuck DeGroat would call home, where there's safety and connection. It's a sense of, I'm okay and the world's okay. It's not one of the self-protective states.
With OCD, there's a sympathetic dominance. There's a hyper-vigilance. Any time there's fear or anxiety, we're talking sympathetic. A lot of the spiritual experiences I've had, or even currently when I'm able to rest in a sense of connection to God, that’s movement back into a state of regulation, back into a state of connection. We've largely historically thought of certain practices that are more therapeutic and there are certain practices that are more spiritual. The reality is, there's so much interplay, and spirituality is going to impact our neurobiology and vice versa.
Alison Cook: I could imagine, from your earlier experiences, the simplicity of the deep breaths, where you're regulating that nervous system, but there's a contemplative approach to that might be more beneficial than perhaps something like scripture memorization.
I'm throwing that out there and it could be different for other people, but there are certain spiritual practices that might be more conducive to you finding that safety with God, that don't trigger the OCD.
Ryan: Absolutely. Yes. Having grown up Catholic, and I remained Catholic for quite a while, not anymore, but one of my practices used to be praying the rosary. Absolutely. I've experimented with returning to that, and it doesn't work.
It doesn't bring about that sense of safety, something about the recitation and the repetition. It just doesn't, but practicing the Examen, for example, doing the Ignatian spirituality contemplative practices really resonate with me. They often do facilitate a subtle shift away from sympathetic dominance more into a subtle place.
I think that authentic spirituality is embodied. I think authentic spirituality can, and in a way, maybe even should, lead us into a deeper connection to our body and our emotions, rather than bypassing. I found that's been really important in my process.
Alison Cook: I love that. As you've traveled this journey, I love how you describe yourself as a wounded healer. You've been through a lot. You are helping a lot of people. You've helped a lot of people by sharing your story today. What words of encouragement would you have for someone listening who has struggled with OCD?
Ryan: Yeah, I think so many things. Often folks struggling with OCD have tried several things and nothing's worked. For those folks, I would say there's hope. There's another approach out there. There are things that maybe could be helpful, a few things that come to mind that are maybe newer modalities that are shown to possibly be helpful.
Things like ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, transcranial magnetic stimulation. There's some research that says that can be helpful. Maybe you haven't tried an SSRI. That could be a good tool, even if for the short term. Things like neurofeedback, EMDR for OCD, IFS, usually there's something that we haven't tried.
I would say there's hope and maybe something else would be a good fit, something that you and your psyche, your soma, your nervous system actually could use and resonate with. I would also say, the words of John O'Donohue come to mind, try to be excessively gentle with yourself.
There can be so much self-judgment, especially when modalities we've tried haven't worked. There's either implicit or explicit messaging, whether it's from the therapist or being generated internally, that we must be doing something wrong. That's not the case. You're not doing something wrong.
As much as you can, try to remember to not fight your symptoms–they're communicating something important. They're not communicating that you're broken. Your mind and body aren't the enemy.
Alison Cook: I love that. Shame never helps. What would you say to that younger 17, 18, 19 year old? What would you say to him now? What would you want him to know?
Ryan: I would say to him, you don't have to hide this. You don't have to hide this. You don't have to be alone and suffer in silence and the pain isn't your fault. Everything you feel, all the symptoms at some level make sense. You're not broken, you're not crazy. What you're experiencing makes sense and you don't have to navigate it on your own.
Alison Cook: Yeah, I love that. Ryan, what is bringing out the best of you right now?
Ryan: Some really basic things like returning to the fundamentals of self care and trying to prioritize that and rest and even exercise. It's easy to get out of exercise rhythms, but understanding that is something that is really helpful for my mind and body. I think that's true of so many, but yeah, some of these really basic things.
Attuning to the needs of my body and trying to honor my limits and honor my capacity and the capacity of my nervous system. I spent many years, as a lot of us have, pushing too hard and going beyond that
Alison Cook: I love that. Is there anything else, Ryan, that you want to add, as we wind down?
Ryan: I want to say thank you for reaching out and setting this up and being able to have this time together to connect and connect with your listeners. Over the years, even before I became a therapist, I thought that maybe there's redemption here. Maybe this gospel idea of the redemption of wounds can be concretized in my life.
It can be real, and doing things, obviously sitting with clients every day in therapy is one thing, but doing things like this really bring that sense too. I can marinate in that sense of oh, that thing I used to wonder, can that happen? Here it is right now, having this conversation with you. Yeah. Thank you.
Alison Cook: Yeah. I love that. We had a conversation with David Kessler, who's a grief expert, and he talks about meaning. What I love about what he says, and it's what you're saying, it's, this is hard, we all have our challenges, but this is something I have to work through. And there's an opportunity for meaning.
It doesn't mean we're saying it's not hard that I had to go through this. What we're saying is, now how can I make meaning out of this part of my journey and out of this part of my story? You've done that today. I can hear all the light bulbs going off. I know it's going to be so helpful to so many people.
Ryan: I'm hopeful. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.
Alison Cook: Thank you, Ryan. Thanks for being here.
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