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Choose a category to narrow your search
Today, Cindy and I are tackling your questions about therapy, shedding light on research, common challenges, and insights to help you on your own healing journey! Here's what we cover:
Here’s what we cover:
1. Which modality should I use (DBT / CBT / IFS / EMDR)?
2. What is the most important factor in getting results?
3. What is trauma-informed therapy?
4. How do therapists deal with getting triggered by a client?
5. What if I feel like I'm “too much” for my therapist?
6. Do we take the role of sin too lightly?
Resources:
- Episode 67: The Link Between Faith & Emotional Healing—Gen Z, College Life, & A Hidden Search for Meaning with Cindy Gao
- Find Dr. Alison on Facebook and Instagram
- Sign up for my weekly email at dralisoncook.com
- Episode 70: Mastering the Art of Emotional Intelligence—How to Harness the Power of Your Emotions to Improve Your Relationships
- Episode 23: Am I wounded or am I sinful?
If you liked this, you’ll love:
- Episode 113: A New Vision of Human Flourishing—A Christian Approach to Mental Health with Duke University Psychiatrist & Theologian Warren Kinghorn
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 thrivemarket.com/bestofyou for 30% off your first order, plus a FREE $60 gift!
- Whether you're exploring distant lands or enjoying a staycation at home, Cozy Earth has your back. Visit cozyearth.com and unlock an exclusive 35% off with code BESTOFYOU.
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 today. We're closing out this current series, “Therapists on Therapy” with something special, a Q&A session featuring your questions about this very series. Joining me today is someone you might recognize–my incredible media coordinator, Cindy Gao Higgs.
We absolutely love hearing from you. And today, Cindy and I will dive into some of the questions you've sent our way. Now, for those of you who might be new or who have missed Cindy's appearances before, let me reintroduce Cindy. She's not only a vital part of my team, but she's also a Masters student in counseling at Denver Seminary, where she is in training to become a counselor.
She also has a powerful story of coming to faith in Jesus during the pandemic while she was a student studying remotely at Harvard University. It's an incredible story. And if you haven't heard it yet, I highly recommend you go back and check out my interview with Cindy on Episode 67, where we discuss Gen Z and a hidden search for meaning. It's one of my favorite episodes, and it really highlights the intersection of faith and emotional wellbeing.
Be sure to stick around until the end of today's episode where Cindy and I get pretty fiery talking about the relationship between sin, compassion and boundary setting. I always enjoy these conversations. Before we jump in, a quick note. Several of you have been asking about specific diagnoses or diagnostic categories like neurodivergence, autism, addictions, and other topics.
I'm excited to share that we're planning a future series with specialists to dive deep into some of these areas. So please keep an eye out for that. And to make sure we're covering what matters most to you, I will be running some polls in both my weekly email and on social media.
So if you're not already connected with me, please make sure to follow me on social media. You can find me on Facebook and Instagram. It's @DrAlisonCook. And you can sign up for my weekly email at dralisoncook.com. It's free. It goes out every Friday and I send out additional resources in that email–books that I'm reading, conferences I'm aware of that you might be interested in.
I'm always trying to include that in my weekly email, bonus resources that I think might be helpful for you. And that's where I'll also sometimes do some polls and surveys to find out what you want me to cover on the podcast. All right. So without further ado, please enjoy today's episode where Cindy and I are answering your questions all about therapy.
***
Cindy: So the first question we have from Bernadette is, how do I know which therapy modality will best suit me? There seem to be so many different approaches like CBT, DBT, IFS, EMDR. How do you choose one?
Alison Cook: Oh, that's a great question. All the acronyms can make your head spin , it's a great question. I would love to hear a little bit from you, Cindy, from the perspective of how you're being trained in some of the modalities and how they're talking to you guys about it as up and coming therapists.
I would say, first and foremost, that each modality has some real strengths, and some fit with different people more than others. So I don't tend to be someone who prescribes only one modality. I think there are real strengths in each one, and I think we can all benefit from different emphases and each approach to therapy.
So number one is to do a little trial and error, maybe do a little bit of reading on some of these different approaches. And then see what kind of speaks to you. So for example, if we're talking about IFS, internal family systems, that's the one I talk about the most is the one I'm trained in the most.
It's more experiential. It's more where you're really connecting to a part of yourself from inside of yourself. You're experiencing what it feels like to be present to a wounded or hurting part of your soul and what it is like to differentiate from that part. And for some people, that is really powerful and it brings healing in a way that others don't, but some people don't really like it.
They want something a little more pragmatic. Something maybe a little bit more like CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is more, here's what I'm thinking. Here are the thoughts, and a therapist helps you disentangle facts from fiction, things you're telling yourself that aren't very helpful, helping you replace those thoughts with reality, more constructive thinking, which leads to different behaviors and different habits.
It's a little bit more pragmatic. Some people really benefit from that. So a lot of it really depends on your own personality, your own disposition, a little bit of trial and error, and understanding what each one emphasizes.
Now in this day and age where you can get a lot online, you can even sometimes find videos where folks are showing what each modality looks like and notice what kind of draws you in.
Cindy: Yeah. I think it's a really good question, and I'm wondering if listeners would be interested in a potential series where we can go more in depth a little bit into all the different approaches. So if you're a listener and you're interested, you can email info@dralisoncook.com and let us know if that's something that you'd want to know more about.
Alison Cook: That's a really good idea. We'll do a little survey and see how much interest there is in going through more systematically, what each of those modalities is about.
Cindy: I would say, before I started my master's program, training to become a therapist, I was so confused about all these different acronyms. It felt overwhelming to be like, oh my gosh, how do I pick the right or the best modality for me? And through my training now, as I've been learning about all the theories and the different techniques, I totally agree with you that different modalities can work better for different types of people.
But at the end of the day, it really struck me that in all these modalities, there are common elements that therapists use that kind of make up the therapeutic “magic sauce”. You can use different techniques, but who you are as a therapist, what your relationship is between therapist and client, that really is arguably more important.
It’s the concept of the person of the therapist. You can have all this knowledge and use all these techniques, but if you don't really care about your client, that's not really going to help. So I hope that's encouraging to people who maybe feel anxious about figuring out the best approach. I think regardless of the approach, you can find healing in a therapeutic relationship.
Alison Cook: It's actually interesting that you say that, Cindy, because that's what the research shows. The research shows that it's the therapeutic alliance, the relationship that you build with the therapist, that brings about the most effective results. And it's interesting, you think about that even biblically.
We are created to heal in the context of relationships. What I'll find oftentimes is folks will come to me because we have a great relationship. They want to keep seeing me, but maybe we reach a point in our relationship where they really should try EMDR and I'm not trained in EMDR.
At times in the past, for example, I'll be working with a client and they'll go seek EMDR from a therapist for a specific period of time, and then maybe they'll come back and see me after that. We incorporate that into our relationship.
So there are a lot of ways to do this, but I agree with your point that you find someone that you really respect. Again, they're not perfect, but it's a relationship that feels restorative to you. And that's really the most important ingredient.
Cindy: Yeah. So the second part of this question from Bernadette is, how is a trauma-informed therapist different from any therapist?
Alison Cook: Yeah that's a really great distinction because I was thinking that some therapeutic interventions/approaches are more suited for trauma work than others.
So a trauma-informed therapist is somebody who's going to understand the unique impacts of trauma. And what that means is that they understand that, first of all, there's a really important emphasis on pacing, that when you come in to therapy, often your baseline concern is, oh, I'm experiencing anxiety in this relationship, or I'm experiencing friction in this relationship, and it might seem like it's about the here and now, but there's really a long tail to the past, and there's a lot underneath that that's really painful and that's going to be hard to unpack.
And if a therapist moves too quickly into, let's dig in to all that deep stuff, it can almost re-traumatize someone because they're not ready. Their system is not ready. They've learned to cope through some of these survival strategies.
You've learned to cope through pleasing other people. So all of a sudden, if your therapist is really attacking that and trying to use behavioral interventions to get you to stop certain things, you don't know how to cope because that's the only way you've learned to cope.
So a trauma informed therapist understands the connection between our current behaviors and our past wounds and understands that pacing is a big part of that. So for example, in IFS, we always talk about getting permission from the protectors, which means we don't go for the big, deep, overwhelming, exiled emotions, all the pain before those protector parts of us understand that the system can tolerate it.
And what that means in practical terms, for example, I'll even use myself as an example. There were years where I had deep anxieties rooted in the past that to open up the lid on that all at once would have flooded me. I would have become more anxious. I wasn't ready. I didn't have the coping in place for that.
I had to chip away a little bit at a time over different years and different junctures until finally, I can go into those deeper areas of my life without feeling so anxious. We have to be really sensitive, and that's what primarily a trauma informed therapist does.
EMDR does a lot of work around containment, building safety, building trust, before you go into those deeper areas of wounding, those really painful memories. It's really important if man, in my history, I've got some really tough stuff that I've never really looked at.
When we say they're trauma informed, they understand that they're going to work with you to build up your reserves, build up your tolerance, build up safety, build up trust, so that when you do dig into some of that, you're ready. You're ready, and you're not going to have a worse reaction than you would before.
I think about it sometimes in the medical model. Maybe you need surgery, but your overall body isn't yet healthy enough to tolerate what it will take to go through that surgery. You first have to build up the overall health of the system before you can have that procedure.
Cindy: That's super helpful. Yeah. There's been a lot of research that has come out on how trauma affects the body, the brain, the way we relate to others. And I would say that for all therapists, it's a necessary part of our professional role to understand that research because that will inform the way that we see our clients and help us be more effective.
I think it's really a way of understanding the human condition and understanding why we think, feel, and act the way we do. And it's not its own modality, it's something that you bring with you regardless of what acronym you practice with.
Alison Cook: Yeah. A behavioral therapist, and when you talk about behavioral, this is someone who's going to really focus on modifying behaviors or modifying thoughts. They're not going to dig into past memories, and can still be trauma-informed in the sense of, maybe in the initial inquiry, making sure, okay, let's look at some of these thoughts. It's like a trauma informed CBT therapist. Someone who specializes in CBT might say, man, I think it might behoove you to go do some trauma work.
To go look at the past, because we're not making any progress making behavioral changes. So to be trauma informed might not mean you go out and get certified or you get an expertise in trauma work, but it means you understand there are different reasons why folks might not be able to make the changes in their life they want to make.
Cindy: So we'll move on to the next question. This is from Julie. What do you do as a therapist if you yourself get triggered during a session?
Alison Cook: Oh, that's a good question. Therapists are humans like everybody else. So that's the first thing that I would say. Like anybody else, when you're in a conversation with another human, we notice reactivity within ourselves. So that first step of noticing, oh I'm triggered by what this person is saying.
There's some reactivity inside of me. That self-awareness is the baseline. We all have to have that, whether you're a therapist or in two-way relationships, you're learning how to, first of all, recognize, I'm feeling a little frustrated. Oh, that's making me want to check out. I'm wanting to detach.
That can happen in any relationship and emotional intelligence–we did a whole episode on emotional intelligence–is learning how to even be aware of that. So that's number one. Therapists really have to have that good self awareness.
I'm sure you're doing a lot in your training, Cindy, about growing that self-awareness. Noticing is number one. Oh, I'm anxious about this. Isn't that interesting? Okay. So then part two for the therapist is, how do I regulate that while staying present to my client?
Because it's not the nature of this relationship for me to bring that in. And one of the things I really like about IFS, I don't mean to always go back to that, but I think one of the things IFS gives us as clinicians is that framework of thinking about it as a part of me.
Isn't that interesting. I can be curious inside of myself. A part of me feels a little anxious about that. Or part of me feels a little annoyed right now. Can I honor that while staying present to the client? And it can really reduce stress inside. Because it's okay. Two things can be true.
I can feel really compassionate toward you and want to be present with you while simultaneously being aware that gosh, later on, after this appointment, I'm going to need to take a look at that. I'm noticing I feel a little scared.
I've noticed, years ago, I would notice if clients had angry parts and they'd come in with anger, a part of me would get really triggered because I was really uncomfortable with anger. I noticed that, okay, isn't that interesting? And then I do my work outside of that session. And that's why as therapists, we grow through the work of providing care, because then I have to go, isn't that interesting? What is that bringing up in me from the past where that kind of reminds me of someone in my life who used to get mad at me and now I'm afraid?
And how do I work through that with my supervisor and in consultation with other therapists in my own therapy so that I'm not bringing it into this relationship? We get to do our own work as a part of showing up for others, which is really powerful.
Cindy: Yeah, for sure. In my program, so much of the training is this continuous facing of our own stuff and processing it through essays, in our class discussions, with supervisors, in group supervision, individual supervision. There's so much of it because that's part of what will enable us to be good therapists.
We have to be self-aware, because our own stuff cannot get in the way of helping our clients. So that's something I think therapists should take pretty seriously in their development. And I also think about the concept of the wounded healer from Henry Nouwen, which I think is so beautiful. Because, as you said, all of us are human.
All therapists are human. We all have our own wounds. But it's not something that has to get in the way. And it can even empower us, as we've faced our own stuff and really been aware of the ways that we struggle and our own pain points, we can harness those experiences and it can help us be more effective.
We can empathize more. We can connect better with our clients. We can see the world differently and really honor the sacred space that we have with our clients because we've done that work to really see how raw and vulnerable and truthful and special the work is.
Alison Cook: To your point, Cindy, the other thing I love about the work of therapy is sometimes you repair with a client. Sometimes a client has to repair. There's rupture and repair within a therapeutic relationship. I've had that happen where I'll say something or we'll have a session and the client will come back and be like, hey, that didn't land very well with me. I didn't like that.
And we talk through it, which can become a restorative experience because that's a part of a normal human relationship. We don't always get it right. I would encourage the listener, if you have a therapist where there's been a disappointment, sometimes it's not a good fit, but sometimes it might be worth trying to raise that and say, hey, this isn't landing right with me or this isn't helpful to me.
Or when you said, this was hard for me, see what you get back. Because therapists are also human. Sometimes they'll defend themselves. Sometimes they won't make it better. And if that happens, then that might be a cue to switch therapists. But in a lot of cases, you bring that up and you actually have a really helpful understanding of what it looks like to work through a repair with a therapist.
We are very much wounded healers and I think all of us, every single one of us is a wounded healer as well. These skills that we're learning within the context of a therapeutic relationship are the same life skills, essentially, that we're learning to go out and enact with other people too.
We're trying to discern, is this something I need to try to repair with this person? And where is this person not a good fit for me?
Cindy: Yeah. Something else I'm also hearing in this question is a potential fear of, what if what I'm experiencing or feeling is too much for a therapist even? Because it feels so overwhelming for me internally. What if my therapist can't handle it?
Alison Cook: Wow. Yeah.
Cindy: What would you say to address that fear?
Alison Cook: It's a great question. I think what I would say is to test it out, because we don't know. So this is where I love the “name, frame, brave” work. You've done a great job of naming it. I notice I'm a little bit nervous. I think my emotions might be too much for this person. We've named it, but we don't know how to frame it yet.
The framing might be, I'm afraid of my big emotions. My therapist actually is dying for me to get a little more raw. But the frame sometimes might be, actually they're not tracking with me for whatever reason, they're not able to keep up with me. And I have had both experiences in my own personal therapy where I notice I'm holding back cause I don't think they're gonna get it. And sometimes I've been right. I've been holding back out of holy discernment.
And sometimes I've been holding back and parts of me were afraid. What I would say is, test it a little bit, maybe name that very experience with the therapist. Hey, I'm noticing this. What do you think? You are always trying to, especially at the beginning of a therapeutic relationship, you're trying to discern if this person is trustworthy and safe for you. You do not want to assume that because they're an expert, they are safe for you.
Cindy: Yes, that is such a good point. Just because they're a therapist and they have all these letters after their name doesn't mean that they're gonna be a good fit for you and that you're gonna feel comfortable with them.
Alison Cook: That's right. So test the system a little bit, test it out and notice and see how they respond and see how they respond. If you feel like, ooooh, they really got it. Or see if they bypass or sideline or make you feel worse. And notice those cues like any relationship. We talk about the red flags and the green flags and the yellow flags.
The same applies as you're discerning about whether or not to work with a therapist and whether or not to reveal certain things to a therapist.
Cindy: Great. So we're gonna move on to our final question for this episode. This one's from Carrie. In this series, Therapists on Therapy, as we've talked about the wounds that might bring people into therapy, Carrie is wondering, are we taking the role of sin too lightly in our understanding of woundedness? And what are your thoughts on balancing self-compassion versus taking responsibility for our actions without making excuses?
Alison Cook: Great question. We have a podcast episode, I think from about a year back called, Am I wounded or am I sinning?
Cindy: Yes. That's Episode 23. We can link it in the show notes.
Alison Cook: There is a definite theme with most of what we talk about on the podcast, that we change in the context of compassion, baseline. We change in the context of compassion. We get compassionate about whatever emotions we're feeling. We get compassionate about whatever the reason is behind a behavior, that we're going to change in the context of compassion versus the context of beating ourselves up or shaming ourselves.
When we're shaming ourselves, when we're criticizing ourselves, when we're berating ourselves, we're actually ratcheting up the nervous system. We're actually moving ourselves out of that calm, clear homeostasis, that place inside that makes us more equipped to make wise and constructive decisions.
So when we shame and beat ourselves up, it rarely helps us toward the end of healthier, more constructive choices. I think that is definitely a theme. Does that mean, I guess the question is, does that mean we're being easy on sin?
Cindy: Yeah, I totally agree with the importance of that compassion. In my own life, I don't think it's a “compassion” versus “taking responsibility for sin” dichotomy. I think in my life it was very much, I had to become a Christian, and that meant receiving compassion and love from God, and that's what empowered me to actually look at the behaviors I'd done, and some things that I realized I wasn't proud of, but I was too ashamed to ever face, so I pushed it aside.
I never admitted it and could never apologize because I would become so overwhelmed with shame that I would deny it. I probably have gaslit people in that period of time because it was too much for me to handle. And it was actually learning, okay, there's a God who actually loves me, who accepts me even though I've done all these things I'm not proud of.
And once I was able to receive that compassion and extend that compassion towards myself, that empowered me to start taking responsibility and owning the decisions I'd made in my life.
So I think they actually feed really well together. I can see the perspective of, we don't want to stop at, oh, I'm compassionate towards myself and everything that I've done is okay and I can keep acting in this way that might be hurting others.
But it starts with self-compassion, and I think taking responsibility for the way that we act and our actions and how we treat others is really important. But that flows out of an acceptance and a compassion that we have for ourselves.
Alison Cook: Yeah, I love that, Cindy. Thank you for being so honest about that because I think there's a lot of truth in what you're saying. I could say the same thing. There's times when I've acted out and I was doubling down on it and I didn't want to be called out for it. And you do the things, the gaslighting and the justifying and the rationalizing and the defending that is hurtful.
It's an interesting question and I think that question tends to come from two different places. The first place is in ourselves, am I justifying sin in my own life? But the second place I noticed that question can come from is folks who've been really hurt by abusive people, by narcissistic people.
By people who are really doing harmful, cruel activities, which also happens. That question can come from, hey, are we being easy on that? Are we being easy on some of those folks that are really being cruel out there? And there's some justification for that. I get that. And then there's also the angle of, am I being too soft or too easy on myself from that first angle?
I couldn't agree with you more in my life. The more there's that sense of my own belovedness, the more there's that sense of that healthy, and I don't even want to call it shame, but that healthy oh, that's so hard to admit, I hate that I do that, but I do, and I need to take a look at it.
The more I lean into my belovedness, the more that that little tinge of shame becomes constructive and moves me toward change versus destructive doubling down on more toxic strategies. So I 100% agree with that.
To those of you listening where you've been really harmed by somebody, and there's this, why are we being so compassionate towards folks who are doing terrible things, which can also be at the root of that question. In my years, some of my work was with addicts who had, through the course of their addiction or to support their addiction, really done some pretty harmful things to family members, to other people, to their kids, even, to spouses.
And what I've noticed is that number one, for those folks to even ponder that when they're in sobriety, when they're trying to change, that there is a God who actually is compassionate for them, it's so radical that to actually maybe even taste that would lead them on the path of, how would I not change for this guy who would love me even after I've done these horrible things?
So it doesn't lead to oh, let's be soft on this. It actually leads to this paradoxical, dramatic, how could I? This almost paradoxical, I have to completely change. And I noticed that the enemy doubles down on the shame, the “you are rotten”, which doubles down on the toxic behaviors. It's fascinating. So I've seen it from that side.
That being said, if you are someone who's been hurt by somebody who's really toxic or really abusive, I have no problem saying to clients, that is toxic. That is abusive. That is evil. I'm not necessarily saying that about the person, but I am naming that pattern of behaviors for what it is.
And we will set a boundary with that. We will not let those behaviors harm you. We will not let those behaviors near you. We're going to do what we have to do to set boundaries around that so those behaviors are not hurting you. They're not coming anywhere near you. You may have to take extreme measures to shut those behaviors down.
But that doesn't necessarily mean, even with those strong boundaries, even that strong naming of this is toxic, this is wrong, you do that so that you get to safety, at the end of the day, you are still releasing judgment of that individual to God.
Your goal is to do that to free yourself from the ongoing damage of harboring anger and resentment against that person. Even when we set really strong boundaries with sin, whether in somebody else or in ourselves, sometimes in ourselves, if we've got patterns of sin and we have to be like, listen, this is wrong. I cannot step across this line.
That's very different from hating ourselves, from beating ourselves up, from shaming ourselves. That's saying, this is a clear line I cannot cross. That's a boundary and boundaries are not inherently condemning. They're based on practical realities and facts. This behavior cannot stand.
I like to distinguish between really strong boundaries, either with the behaviors of someone else or with ourselves, and this sort of self-condemning or other-condemning emotional posture that doesn't really bring health to anyone. In ourselves or in other people, we can be compassionate.
Compassion says, man, I've had a really hard day. I am so tempted to go do something really stupid right now because I'm mad at my loved one and I've had a really bad day. Compassion says, I've had a really bad day. It doesn't say, I can go do that thing. It saysm I've had a really bad day. How can I care for myself in a healthy way through it?
How can I get more support for myself? It doesn't say I've had a really bad day. It's okay. I can justify, I can rationalize doing this thing I know I'm not supposed to do. It can feel like a fine line, but it's an important one.
Cindy: Compassion does not justify harmful behaviors. And to your point at the beginning of your answer, compassion is what helps us calm that nervous system. If we've had a bad day and we're way overwhelmed, compassion can bring us down, to actually have the resources to make better decisions. Whereas if you feel completely overwhelmed, you will be more vulnerable to making an impulsive decision that might hurt yourself or others.
Alison Cook: Exactly. Yeah. So well stated. Compassion is really powerful. It's not soft in that sense. It can really transform that moment, that pause between an impulse and a choice.
Have you ever felt like you’ve grown and healed, but the people around you haven’t?
In today’s episode, I’m joined by my friend and therapist, Dr. Monique Gadson, for a powerful conversation about how to ignite change not only within ourselves but also within the systems we're deeply connected to—whether that's our families, churches, or work environments. Here’s what we cover:
Here’s what we cover:
1. Dr. Monique’s insights from her work as a therapist within a church setting
2. How to be "in" but not "of" a system
3. The difference between toxic cultures and imperfect human gatherings
4. How kindness can sometimes hinder growth
5. The effects of culture-wide PTSD
6. Practical ways to find and nurture hope
Resources:
- And The Church Said podcast with Dr. Monique Gadson
- Episode 33 and Episode 60 with Dr. Monique Gadson
- Instagram: @drmoniquesmithgadson
- drmoniquesmithgadson.com
If you liked this, you’ll love:
- Episode 33: People Pleasing & Developing Your Own Inner Compass—Thoughts on Depression, Mental Health & the Church, and Finding Hope in Dark Places w/ Dr. Monique Gadson
- Episode 60: How to Make New Friends, Identify Red & Green Flags, & Extract Yourself From an Unhealthy Situation w/ Aundi Kolber & Dr. Monique Gadson
- Episode 73: True Belonging vs. Groupthink, Cliques, & Trying to Fit In—How to Belong to Others While Staying True To Yourself
Thanks to our sponsors:
- Register for the Broken to Beloved Conference here
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- Get 40% off your first order of Sundays. Go to SundaysForDogs.com/BESTOFYOU or use code BESTOFYOU at checkout.
- Go to thrivemarket.com/bestofyou for 30% off your first order, plus a FREE $60 gift!
- Whether you're exploring distant lands or enjoying a staycation at home, Cozy Earth has your back. Visit cozyearth.com and unlock an exclusive 35% off with code BESTOFYOU.
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: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I'm so glad you're here this week. This is our very last episode in this series, “Therapists on Therapy”. I've really enjoyed the conversations in this series, getting to know different therapists, different resources, different areas of expertise. We'll have many more series like this because I love having other therapists on the podcast.
But for today's episode, I wanted to introduce you to a dear friend of mine who has a really unique background working as a therapist in church-based settings. So when we think about therapy, we often think about it as an individual endeavor. You're struggling. Something's not working in your life. You don't like the way you feel, or you're struggling in a relationship, so you decide to seek the support of a therapist.
Now, a typical therapy session, as most of us know, you go to an office or you log on virtually, and you meet one on one with your therapist. You have a dedicated space each week devoted to focusing on how to heal a wound or how to effectively cope with a tough situation or how to communicate better, how to treat anxiety or depression.
You do all of this in the privacy of that individual relationship. But here's the thing–as a therapist, we're working with somebody individually. We're equipping them. We're helping them get healthier. We're helping them think differently. We're helping them discover new strategies, new ways to protect themselves, new ways to set boundaries, new ways to understand a situation.
But then you go back into the systems around you. You go back into a family system. You go back into a church system. You go back into a work system. You go back into systems of other people and you're expected to apply these new skills, but other people don't always respond to the changes within you in ways that are helpful.
Sometimes they do, a lot of times they don't. I often think, how do we also change the system? How do we also tackle the problems that exist in systems around us? My guest today, Dr. Monique Gadson, has worked for decades within systems. She started her work within a church community and now works within an academic institution, where she works to bring healing, not only to individuals, but to entire systems.
As a consulting therapist, Dr. Monique has worked for decades with churches and organizations in leadership development, risk management, and establishing emotionally and mentally healthy environments. She holds a PhD in marriage and family therapy and two master's degrees in Christian psychological studies and clinician mental health counseling.
She hosts the podcast called And the Church Said, where she discusses church and culture from a Christian counseling perspective, and she is an assistant professor of counseling psychology at the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology.
Monique has been on the podcast two times before, back in Episode 33, where she talked about overcoming people pleasing and some of her thoughts on depression, and with Aundi Kolber in Episode 60 on how to make new friends and identify red and green flags. She has such a wealth of wisdom. I loved this conversation. We talk so candidly about what it means to heal systems, because the truth is, God designed us to exist in communities with other people.
It's so important to think about not only how we heal ourselves, but how we also bring healing to the communities that we're a part of. Please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Monique Smith Gadson.
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Monique, I am so thrilled to get to have this conversation with you. I get to have lots of conversations with you, so it's really fun for me to record this conversation so that other people can hear it as well. Thank you so much for being here with me today.
Monique: You know I love being with you. You're wonderful. Your podcast is one of my favorites anyway, so it's really fun to be able to record for one of my favorite podcasts and one of my favorite people, so thank you.
Alison: One of the things that is so interesting about your background, Monique, is you are a therapist, but your work, almost from the get go, was within a church context. Can you tell us a little bit more about what that looked like? You are really pioneering on the front end; you set up shop as a therapist within a church. How did that happen?
Monique: Yeah. Not only did I set up shop in a church, but let's be very specific–in the black church when it was not necessarily the trending thing that it somewhat is now. Truly a God thing. I always felt called to the black church specifically.
Growing up as a PK, the black church has been central in my life, from then until now, and I had come to understand it felt like there was this void in the church, in terms of us talking about mental and emotional struggles that people were experiencing. So I went to graduate school, trained as a professional clinician, and was talking with my pastor one day about what I had done in graduate school.
And, before I know it, they are asking me to come and be a part of the staff at the church. Yeah, I had the opportunity to really cultivate what a counseling ministry/having a professional clinician on staff looks like in this particular context.
Alison: Your experience and your expertise is so interesting–having the “both and” of the individual training, the clinical training, the background, but being within a church context. What do you see as the pros and cons of being situated as a counselor within a church community?
Monique: My social location from the years gone by, was having to help people understand that these two do marry well together, counseling and faith. Historically, when I started out, there was a lot of skepticism, a lot of suspicion. It felt as though there was this attempt to brainwash.
Being housed within a church gave people the opportunity, especially over the context of the numbers of years that I found myself situated there, it would give people the opportunity to understand that it does not have to be in direct opposition, one to the other. It is very much biblical for us to attune to our mental and our emotional needs.
Not to cast shade, if you will, on however pastors choose to present their sermons, but sometimes when the context is just, here is the biblical passage and I'm preaching it and perhaps not hone in on the emotional state of this individual, or not look at how this person's mental health suffered. It may be the tendency to not see that, if it's not focused on more specifically.
So that was a pro of being able to be in that context. One of the cons would be having to understand that when we're thinking more systemically, you can have an individual that is situated within a community where sometimes the work that the individual is attempting to do for their own betterment of their emotional and mental health might not be supported in the overall community.
Let's see. That was a con at times in spaces, not overall, but there are things that we would try to promote in terms of emotional and mental health that some people would question from a spiritual perspective. You talk about spiritual bypassing. You know how some things are misinterpreted. “If you had faith, then this would not be”.
So there are some places where those were problematic. Then you'll get the person to come back that would repeat the cliche that they've heard–if I'm too blessed to be stressed, then why am I feeling this way? I’m having to think about the environment that we are going to send people back into.
Alison: Okay. So let's talk about this for a second, because this is a dichotomy that really happens on every level. We have therapy, you go in, you're getting healing resources for your individual healing, but then you have these systems and a system could be a church, it could be a family, it could be an institution, it could be a place of work, it could be any group of people. We need to be parts of systems; we don't exist in isolation.
So inevitably, you go back into a system and especially when we think about the context of the church where there's so much overlap, if the messages within the system are not supporting or reinforcing what you're learning in therapy, it creates dissonance for the person and also for the therapist at times.
So let's talk about it on two levels. Number one, for the individual, you're experiencing this dissonance. I'm hearing one thing over here from my therapist, but then I'm at church and they're saying something else. I see what you're saying. That could be really magnified if your counselor is literally within your church setting and they're not totally aligned. I guess I'm curious, as a therapist, it seems to me that when you're within that context, you're both thinking of your individual clients, but you're also thinking about how to help this system be a safer place for folks who are hurting. Did you have the power to affect some of those changes?
Monique: That's my hope and my prayer. A lot of the work included, how do I impact the system? And it would look simple. For example, in our grief support group, people are coming and they find themselves on this grief journey. I would talk to the participants quite often about how we often find ourselves in the middle of a grief journey, not only as a participant, but also as an educator.
We're having to say to people sometimes, that's not helpful when you say whatever it is that you say. So especially in the case of a person who experienced miscarriage, I noticed (more so even personally, as well as professionally) people would say, “something might have been wrong with the baby. That was God's way of protecting”.
And you're thinking, what in the world does this even mean? So you would hear those types of comments, and we would actually talk about that sometimes in the support groups, where we are saying, these things land in ways that are so not helpful.
We need to think about how it is impacting us, and to empower ourselves to say to other people why that is not helpful. Perhaps even what would be a better thing to say or not to say in those moments. So that's one example of ways that we are thinking, if you can impact the system, and we know from thinking about systems in nature, that if one person enters, one person exits, the system changes.
So if we can get a person to enter that system who is better educated, better informed, then we are looking to impact change even in that way.
Alison: It’s so interesting to think about a support group within a larger church context. The overall system, the church system, isn't going to be perfect. People are going to say things. It's like a giant family. People are going to say things that rub you the wrong way. The pastor's going to say things that you don't even agree with, or that hurt.
We don't expect a family to be perfect. We don't expect a church family to be perfect. There's toxicity, there's toxic cultures, and that's one thing. But then there's imperfect human gatherings of people, which is every single church on this planet. We're talking about that category in this group. But what's interesting about what you're saying is when you have a support group or a counselor within that context, there's a way in which I could see where it'd be harder, but there's also a way in which suddenly, you've gone through something really hard. You've lost a family member.
People are saying things that aren't helpful to you within the church family, but you've got this other subgroup within the family where you can process that, where you can get support, where people do get you, where you might even feel buoyed up to go back out into their larger family and say, hey, that's not helpful, because you're not alone.
There's a way in which that subsystem creates more health within the larger system. It's like a large extended family where there's different pockets within the family of varying degrees of safety.
Monique: That's a beautiful way that you describe it, and the hope is, even as you were talking, I was thinking about allergy shots. Yes. Probably because I soon have to take them. But anyway, when you think about even the concept of the allergy shot, you are being injected with these things that you are allergic to that are supposed to build your system up over time to calm it. It's oh, okay, I don't have to blow up every time this particular foreign substance, if you will, enters into my system.
Like you're saying, it is not necessarily the toxic system. But if it's okay, helping people to understand how to better support a person, to really understand that everything does not necessarily have a spiritual response to it or needs even a spiritual response to it, it doesn't have to be spiritualized away, when we can get a few individuals who understand that and who can demonstrate that with another individual, that is a way that we can begin that process of trying to create the environment, the larger system, to become, more healthy.
Alison: Monique, it feels to me like the trajectory of your body of work, even what you're doing now at a graduate school setting, from the inside of an organization, you're trying to introduce or expose some of these micro-toxins, these micro things that hurt little by little. Through that, you’re creating a healthier system. That's hard work.
When you're embedded within that system as a therapist, where you're really trying to go in and help that individual, you're simultaneously aware of how the system is creating harm, even at the best of circumstances. That's a lot. It's a lot. It's a two-front battle. How do you sustain your own spiritual and emotional health through that?
Monique: You know, I talk to people like you, haha. You're grateful for people who get it, who understand that. I have that opportunity to go and say that this is hard. I don't know that people necessarily get it. It is exhausting and it is hard when you enter into a system, and you understand the need to differentiate who you are, even within that system.
Many years ago, of course, then I was a whole lot younger as a clinician. So over the years, I've thankfully gathered more experience, more wisdom, but you do understand that you have to have a sense of who you are as it relates to this particular system. As much as you can, how is it that you think about impacting the change without being lured into that homeostasis that the system is going to want to maintain?
So back when I said a minute ago, anytime someone new enters or exits, the system changes.
Remembering that it's okay that things are a little bonkers right now. All pieces of the system usually are going to operate in such a way to bring that balance and that calm, if you will, back. Whatever that norm is for that particular system. That is what they're wanting to bring back into existence.
When you enter into a system and when you are trying to bring about change and when you are having to name things, when you are having to call out and identify the factors that create anxiety within the system, of course that is going to cause the system to become anxious.
When that happens, then the system says, hey, you are the foreign particle. How is it that we can deal with you so that our anxiety can ease? Because that's going to be the nature of the system. The person, such as myself, who has to embed in the system while also trying to bring about a level of change within that system, we have to be so very mindful that things that come to us are about us and also are not about us.
We have to understand that it's survival anxiety that is being stirred within a system, meaning this system treats that particular entity as something or someone that needs to be annihilated, if you will, to be able to bring the system back to a level of calm. So I have to be mindful. This is why we have to enter into the system knowing what the assignment is.
I've said this several times over the years in the various systems that I have found myself: a lot of prayer, a lot of journaling. Journaling is my thing. I prescribe it anytime and everywhere I can. But for me, those are the tools that I definitely have to rely on. Praying and journaling and being in community with people who understand how I am being adversely impacted working within those systems.
To be able to be reminded, this is my assignment, go in, do your assignment, step out when you need to, take a break, take a rest, dust off your equipment, put it back on and get back at it. That for me is how I usually have to approach it. I think about David in Scripture and I remember reading this not too long ago and actually journaled quite a bit about it.
When he was going to battle Goliath, Saul tried to put on David his armor.David was like, this isn't working for me. And so he took it off. He goes and he chooses his slingshot and the stones. So he's like, this is me. This is what I need to be able to do this assignment that I feel like the Lord has sent me to do. We have to be very mindful, again, of who we are, especially in the Lord, and what is it that He has called us to do, to be able to get in there and do our work.
You're not going to go in and not be unscathed whatsoever. No way, but we do have to have an understanding of our assignment so that we are able to stay focused on the task at hand.
Alison: This is why I wanted to have you on the podcast. This is what I love about you, this work that you're doing so faithfully to disrupt, distress, and introduce anxiety into a system in order to change the system, so the system will be healthier for the individuals that it tries to serve, which is the goal!
We're not even talking about completely toxic systems. We're really talking about, for the most part, healthy, but broken human systems.This is what is so nuanced about change. To the listener who's at a church where they're like, I love this church, it’s not toxic. And by toxic, when you're someone like you who's going in and you're disrupting and you're naming things and you're calling out things and you're saying, hey, I don't think this is quite right.
You're getting pushback. It's hard. It's not fun, but you're also not getting gaslit, you're not getting shut down, you're not getting exiled. That would be toxic. That would be abusive and it would be untenable. Sometimes it's a fine line. But for the most part, it's like the system has invited my voice and they want to hear from me. They're listening. There is enough of a relational trust.
This is why I wanted to try to have this conversation. It's a hard conversation to have because we're talking about that messy middle, where it's not this, you gotta get out because this is toxic.
It's also not, I love everything about this community. It's meeting all of my needs. It's that murky middle where there's some good, but there's some things that are hard, which is so much of our experience.
This is really what you do. You go into that kind of place and try to introduce change, one brave step at a time, like David with his slingshot. It's so profound, Monique, what you do, and for the listener, whether you're a therapist or not, when you show up in a system and you name things and you call out things, it's not always instantly gratifying, but it is that good, hard work of bringing change.
There is a cost to it.
Monique: There is a high cost for sure. Even back to what you were saying, it's not always necessarily toxic/abusive, but it can be, like you say, such a fine line, that I am saying, oooh, do you even understand how close you are tethering to it potentially being toxic and abusive?
Because of this messy middle, I think one of the hardest concepts for me to get people to understand is about being kind. Okay, being kind, yes, versus what could be the other side of that coin, maybe rude. Of course, I would prefer you to be kind. And also, I am saying when it comes to sometimes having to enact change or a change, kindness doesn't cut it.
Kindness can be a scapegoat, if you will, preventing transformation from taking place. Transformation is going to call upon us to be uncomfortable. It's going to call for us to have to look at self in the mirror in ways that more than likely, will uptick the anxiety. But if we don't have the threshold to deal with that, then we might resort back to, let's be kind and be nice to people, and we'll be hospitable.
We'll open up a space for you to come in, which, hear me say, I'm not minimizing that. But if we're talking about what might be needed, which will include a transformation to take place, which is going to require, as you're saying that messy middle, we don't get to do that without being touched in some ways and touched in ways that again, probably will increase our anxiety.
Alison: Yeah, it's not always comfortable, and kindness, to your point, can mask this false peace. As opposed to, ooh, I don't like that. I don't really like what she's saying. Which again, the more honest and sincere might be, I don't know if there's anything I can do about it. I don't like it. It's hard to sit with. It's uncomfortable.
Just sitting with that, which as clinicians, we're trained to sit with, but a lot of folks aren't, and that's how change occurs in any kind of system, in a family, in a church is sitting with, ooh, I don't like what you're saying. I like you. I don't like what you're saying. This might not have even been what I really wanted when I asked for your input. You're actually giving me real input. Let me sit with that discomfort.
Monique: Whether it's a family, if it's the parent having to say the hard thing to the kid, or yes, in this day and time, yes, young adults are reflecting back and maybe parents were not perfect. Again, not necessarily saying toxic, abusive, that's a totally different context and yes, it requires, a different kind of approach, but yeah, there are some times as parents, we need to hear from children like, okay, oh wow, I didn't realize the way I said it or the way I was, was that problematic.
Whatever the case, it causes discomfort. The mirror has been held into your face and you're like, whoo, okay, don't like what I see there. But it is apparent that something needs to change. So in that family system, yes, that can happen in the church setting having to even be mindful when we think in Revelation, the letter to the churches.
I'm thinking about the church of Laodicea. And, the word says that, if you're not hot, if you're not cold, if you're lukewarm, I'm going to spew you out.
So there is something about saying either you're for the word of God or you're not. That's really the way it is. But to hear things being proclaimed in a church setting, whether we personally might agree or not, but it's lining up with what the Word of God says, it may make us uncomfortable.
Alison: Yeah.
Monique: But that's how this transformation is going to take place. If we're saying we're trying to be a thing or we're wanting to be more welcoming or more diverse or more whatever the case may be, okay, the reality of how that might have to happen versus the ideal. You're going to have to spend some time in that messy middle. We're in this time in our culture where we are so conditioned to quick fixes.
So much so that we don't have, again, this threshold to say, you're right, and it might require more than some bandaging to make it appear to be what it needs to be. So whatever that system is, it can play out in different ways.
Alison: Yeah. We want the quick fix. We did it. Look, we checked all the boxes. We're now a healthy culture, we're healthy, or folks are tearing the whole thing down. I'm out. Sometimes that's needed, but so much of change, this is a little bit of a tangent, but I actually heard Trevor Noah say this on a podcast recently. I thought it was really interesting.
He was talking to Adam Grant and they were talking about groupthink. In religious cultures. Trevor Noah was saying when he grew up, his mom, a faithful believer, very religious, they went to church all the time, what Trevor Noah was saying was that the paradox of his mom was that she was very loyal, very devout, deeply held beliefs, and she constantly disagreed with the sermon and said, I didn't agree with him on that.
I didn't agree with him on that. I don't think that's right. As a kid, he learned what we call cognitive complexity. You can hold a couple of different things, which to me, I was listening to it thinking, that's a tiny little thing where someone from within is still retaining some individuality, some differentiation. I'm a differentiated person within this setting. That's again, very nuanced. So many of us think, if I'm part of this institution, I have to be sold to everything that they say, or I have to be out.
You and I've had this conversation. What does it mean to be within? It's funny, Monique, we talk about this biblically. You said this to me recently: be in the world, but not of the world. We think about that primarily in the context of secular cultures. Be in it, but not of it. But the truth is, it also can apply to our faith communities.
Be in it, but not completely subsumed by it. Keep your own presence of mind. Keep your own discernment. Keep your own cognitive complexity. Disagree. Agree to disagree on some topics. That's what you're trying to do in this very subversive, subtle way within contexts, is encourage that kind of mentality of, we're all in with Jesus.
We're all in with Jesus. We're not all in with a gathering of imperfect humans, necessarily. We don't leave our individuality at the door.
Monique: We don't. When you talked about the tearing down, I do believe that there is a season. Scripture even speaks of there being a time to tear down and there is also a time to build up. What we failed to move to or toward, let's tear it down. But what is it supposed to build back up into?
Now, if we're trying to build it back into where, as you're saying, I can be of it and in it and it's all like me and I am all like it, then that's problematic, because the diversity in how we're created. God did not intend for us to be the same.
The hard work that we are facing today is yes, how do we learn to differentiate? How do I look at you and say, you're going to have a different opinion than I have? It does not mean that your difference of opinion is going to equate to my annihilation. Because that's where we jump to kind of automatically.
And then hear me say this. A lot of stuff has happened in the last, I don't even want to know what number to put on the years, but in the last couple of years, it's a lot. We are in very polarized times. I would say that we are all, as a collective, dealing with a post-traumatic something.
I would say it's beyond the pandemic. The pandemic is scapegoated into it. It was large enough of an event in our lives. So I'm definitely not minimizing it, but I would also probably make an argument that there was a lot that existed prior to this pandemic that would now factor into some of this post traumatic whatever it is that we are experiencing.
So when we are hearing rhetoric that will give us the idea that if not for this group of people or this thing, then this would be the outcome, we're going to be pitted against one another. Things have been flattened to the point that it's an either-or in our minds.
No messy middle! It's an either- or. That in and of itself is going to, I would argue, create a survival anxiety because nothing can really be watered down to that. But we're trying to make it fit. And it's not fitting. So then we are beset with this survival anxiety.
I observe it in families. I observe it in classrooms. I observe it in church. I observe it in institutions. When we think about what we do from a clinical perspective, we understand that the bodies are activated and triggered, and now in survival mode. When we're there, we already know that all of our rationalizing has gone offline. We're in fight, flight, survival, freeze, fawning, all of those collectively.
Alison: How do you find your way, navigating differences, navigating healthy differentiation, within a community context? It requires that groundedness, that calm nervous system, that ability to hold nuance, that individual work that we've been doing, but we now have to bring into these community spaces.
Because we need them. I really agree with you. Culturally, we're seeing this on so many levels. You would think it's easy–I'll go to therapy and not go to church cause I'll get my needs met. I'll experience love and attunement but I don't have to deal with all the stuff you and I are talking about, and yet we need to figure out how to find our place within a group of people.
We do, that's part of our design. You're right, we are in need of a new way of thinking about how to be together. What we're really getting at here is this: how do we be a collective of individuals, which includes differing beliefs and different cultural experiences.
You and I talk about this. We've had very different experiences. You've had different experiences in a black church and yet sometimes when you and I talk, there's more overlap than differences in doctrinal issues. And, there are differences where we come down in how we view scripture, how we view this, how we view that, there's differences in personalities and styles, and all of those things matter.
But the reality is, it's messy to figure out how to come together in a group, honoring these differences on different levels, honoring our individuality, our individual personhood, our individual beliefs, while simultaneously creating a group, creating a whole where we come together.
I'm not sure we've scratched the surface of how to do that. And so with that sort of backdrop, I'm curious, what brings you hope?
Monique: What brings me hope. So even as you were talking, maybe I can connect those two because as you talk about us as individuals living in this diversified world where, more than likely, there are going to be more people that do not look like us, think like us, vote like us, talk like us, or dress like us, or whatever the case may be, eat like us, fill in the blank.
But when we understand that we can create a microcosm, that can eventually impact the macrocosm. That is what gives me hope. We have these conversations. We have conversations, the two of us, and we have conversations with other people. And to be able to experience that, as a microcosm, gives me hope that when we are done talking and these individuals go and live their lives according to how we did in that group, that gives me hope.
I say this to students–if we don't see or if we ourselves are not injecting into society what we need to see, not what we want to see, because sometimes we can be skewed by our own wants. But what we need to see, even when we think more scripturally, in terms of loving neighbor, in terms of understanding that every individual that has breath is an image bearer of God himself, if we're not injecting that into society, then I would truly be hopeless.
But to be able to experience it and to know that there are individuals who are going out into other systems, I'm praying and believing that they are impacting those systems in ways that the system may not like, you're shaking things up and we don't want to be shaken up. We want to be as we are. Then I have hope. That gives me hope.
Alison: I love that. That could be the whole theme of this episode for the listener. Go out and be that image bearer and bring goodness and honesty and authenticity into whatever space you're going into. That is how you will begin to change that system. Tell me, Monique, as we wind down here, these are two questions I like to ask all my guests.
What would you say to that 20 something year old you that was starting a counseling practice in the midst of a church? What would you say to her now?
Monique: I would say to her now, you were on assignment. You were on task. When you don't have a blueprint, if you will, to follow, when you really are having to follow what you pray is the leading of the Holy Spirit, when you have very few who are in agreement or who are pushing against or pushing back, you can doubt what you're doing.
But when you have many years behind you and are able to reflect back, you know that you were on assignment and you were on task. That's what I would tell her.
Alison: That's beautiful. What's bringing out the best of you right now?
Monique: Whew. What is bringing out the best in me right now? I think, to be honest, the hard stuff, the things that it would be easier again to just bypass. In this stage of life, stage of spiritual growth. The complexity of the diversity of the world is bringing out the best in me including having to go deeper into that messy middle.
Alison: That messy middle. I love that. You are an absolute gem. I honor the decades of work you have put into changing cultures, changing systems, whether in the black church, whether now in a more predominantly white institution.
You go in, you take the assignment, and you live it. I could not be more grateful for who you are and for how you have honored that assignment that God has given you. You are beloved. You are welcome here. Anytime we want to learn from your wisdom, where can my listeners find your work who want to connect with you and learn more?
Monique: Yeah, so I play around on Instagram at times. Dr. Monique Smith Gadson, so that's the Instagram handle there. The website would be the same, drmoniquesmithgadson.com.
Alison: All right, you've got a podcast, called “And the Church Says”, and there's some great episodes on it for folks who want to listen to you. You've got some great conversations in there. Go back and hear that. Thank you so much for giving us your time and your wisdom today. I'm so grateful for you.
Monique: Thanks for having me, Alison.
Did you grow up in a blended family? Are you navigating the complexities of creating one?
Blended families face unique challenges, and it can be overwhelming to sift through the stigmas and bad advice that often surround step-parenting. In today’s very personal episode, I’m joined by blended family expert Ron Deal. Together, we explore how step-families can become a powerful part of God’s redemptive story, offering healing and hope in the midst of grief, loss, and complicated circumstances.
Today’s episode is filled with powerful tips for ANY family about how to become healthier.
Here’s what we cover:
1. The two key ingredients to building and sustaining a healthy family
2. Common sources of dysfunction in families and how to address them
3. What the church often misunderstands about blended families and how we can shift the narrative
4. The redemptive power of step-families in transforming pain into purpose
5. Empowering children to navigate change and loss with resilience6. Practical ways to honor grief within families and create a supportive environment
Additional Resources:
- Ron Deal’s books
- Pre-order The Mindful Marriage by Ron Deal and Nan Deal
- Phillipians 2:3-4
- Restoration Therapy by Dr. Terry Hargrave
- familylife.com/blended
- rondeal.org
Related Episodes:
- Episode 85: The Goal of a Healthy Family & 6 Roles We Take On In Dysfunction
- Episode 12: Overcoming the Pain of Divorce with Eryn Eddy
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Transcript:
Alison: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am so glad you're here today for this very special episode.
My guest today has decades of experience working with families. Ron Deal is a bestselling author, licensed marriage and family therapist, podcaster, and popular conference speaker. He specializes in both marriage enrichment and stepfamily education.
Ron is the author and consulting editor of the Smart Stepfamily series. So just listen to some of the titles of his books: Building Love Together in Blended Families. The Five Love Languages. The Smart Stepfamily: Seven Steps to a Healthy Family. The Smart Stepdad, Dating and the Single Parent, The Smart Stepmom: Practical Steps to Help You Thrive. The Smart Stepfamily Marriage. He's just got so many resources for anyone who's trying to develop a sense of family. He also has a brand new book coming out in January called The Mindful Marriage. There is so much wisdom for everyone in this episode about the ingredients that make for a healthy family, no matter what your family looks like. Please enjoy my conversation with Ron Deal.
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Alison: Ron, I am so thrilled to have you with us today. Your work has meant so much to me personally, which we'll get into later on in the episode. But even coming into this conversation today, I'm aware of how formative and powerful family dynamics in general are.
We're going through some things as my parents age, family transitions and family dynamics can resurface. Even in my own life as an adult child, as an adult member of a family, let alone my own family...families are such rich soil for healing, is how I like to look at it. But they can also be the places where we get hurt and get wounded. I'm curious, in your years of expertise, in families in general, what do you see as some of the key ingredients of health and wholeness and what we might call successful families, whatever that means?
Ron: First of all, thank you for having me on the program. It's an honor to be talking with you, and I appreciate the work that you do for people and families. I'm in total 100 percent agreement with you. I've often said to pastors, list for me the spiritual disciplines. And they'll say, oh, the classic definitions are silence and solitude and fasting and Bible meditation and prayer and memorization.
I'm like, yeah. Where's “relationships” on the list? If there's one thing that shapes us more into the image of Christ, moves us toward our God and understanding who He is and how great His love for us, and there's also one thing that moves us away from all of that, it's relationships.
Relationships are discipleship. Walking out love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in an everyday intimate relationship is no easy task. We're all imperfect, and we have imperfect families, and so we need God to help us to move in that direction.
But at the same time, He's inviting us to grow up into Christ, even as we're living out our relationships. To your question, what are those things? There was a point in my career, I've been in marriage and family ministry for roughly 35 years. Earlier, I would probably come up with a list of things. I would say you've got to know how to communicate really well, and it helps if your family structure is the way God intended it to be.
I probably would have given a list of things that are external to who we are. But Jesus made it clear that things come from the inside. That's what makes us clean or otherwise. I rattled off the fruit of the Spirit. What I'm always reminding myself of lately is that every one of those things are attitudes or qualities about our character that come from the inside.
Those are the things that make us who we are, make us more like Christ. To become more patient, to become more Spirit filled, to have more self control. Those are things that anybody can do. Whether you've had a traumatic childhood, whether you've grown up in a complex family, whether you grew up in the foster care system, no matter what the backstory is, none of those things on the outside, those external factors, are going to dictate who you become and who you are on the inside.
I think there is so much hope in that. That's what I want to move toward. That's who I want to become. Of course, in the process, I'm becoming more like my Lord.
Alison: Yeah, I love that emphasis on the inside out. In your work, you're focusing on external families. My work focuses on this internal family systems, IFS idea, which is exactly to your point. I think Richard Schwartz originally was a family systems therapist, the founder of the model. And what he found is that we actually have an inner family that we have to parent.
I love what you're saying, because that's what I often talk about–as you learn to be patient with yourself, as you learn to express kindness toward yourself, that's what spills over. That internal work is what spills over into our families. When I think about families, Ron, and we think about healthier versus maybe dysfunctional families, I know it's a spectrum. There is no such thing as the perfect family.
I think that's so important for people to hear, but there are families that are more functional than others. If we think about the fruit of the spirit as the benchmark where there's patience, where there's kindness, where there's self control, where there's joy, where there's delight in each other, as the sort of the benchmark for health, what do you see as the ingredients that get at that dysfunctional side of the spectrum where a family is starting to fall apart and not really be what God wanted it to be?
Ron: There are two foundational pillars to healthy relationships: love, which by the way, the Beatles said, all you need is love. They were half right. They're half wrong because the other pillar is trustworthiness. You can't be healthy in any given relationship, or even as an individual, if you don't have within yourself a sense of, am I loved?
Can I give love? It's not just, do I love you? But it's, am I lovable? It's that sense of worthiness that comes from being loved. We get this in our most foundational relationships from the moment we're born. We're either taught, you're lovable and you're somebody worthy of being loved, or unfortunately, I don't have time for you.
That adds up to a story about myself that I'm not very lovable. Trustworthiness has got to be right there as well. Trustworthiness is that sense of, can I rely on you? Am I reliable for you? Are we responsible to one another? Is there this emotional safety? That's what you get out of trustworthiness.
I can trust my climate, my relationship, you can trust me. We're both emotionally safe in this relationship. With love and a climate of emotional safety, then you feel really good about who you are as a person. By the way, this is how God loves us. In the most important love relationship in our entire world, we know that He loves us with a never-ending love.
That's the trustworthiness part. We can rely on Him for His promises. In the process, He is making us worthy because of how he loves us. So this gives me God-esteem. I like to call it that. Not because Ron's such a wonderful dude, but because my Savior is an amazing person. What he's done for me makes me a person of worth and value.
Now, when I turn around and know that and then offer that to another human being, now I'm getting at being able to love them in a way that is reliable and trustworthy. They receive the benefit of that when you have a human relationship, family, parent, child, husband, wife that are trying to live out love and trustworthiness day in and day out.
We all fail, but we're trying to move in those directions. You're going to have healthier relationships. The absence of one or both of love and trustworthiness is where you get the unhealthy and the dysfunctional dynamics. Again, notice this isn't necessarily tied to family structure. Structure brings advantages. I always want to point that out.
A man and a woman who meet, fall in love, and then begin to have children after they're married with one another provides a family structure that brings advantages to children. You can't replace that any other way. But they can still live in faithfulness to one another. They can still love deeply. Those are the things that, at the end of the day, really build us from the inside out.
Alison: I love what you're saying. A couple of things. One, the love and the trustworthiness. It's not just love. Because that's where we get into trouble. A parent can love their kids and not be emotionally safe and do a lot of toxic behaviors, and it can really mess up a family dynamic. You can be really trustworthy, but kind of cold or distant, or maybe you show up all the time, but you don't create that emotional connection.
I see that a lot with clients. Where they had all their physical needs met, their parents showed up for dinner every night, but there wasn't that loving warmth and kindness. If we think about marriage, we talked about on last week's episode, those four horsemen in marriage that Gottman identifies: contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling.
It's almost like you could put that into a family. If there's not that loving environment, that warmth, if there's contempt and criticism and defensiveness, that's going to lead to unhealth as well. There's something else you're saying that I really appreciate, Ron. I like how you said it, that there are advantages to certain family structures, but that doesn't mean that the single mom who has love and trustworthiness can't provide a nurturing family environment.
That also doesn't mean that the traditional family structure can. That was something that was really interesting to me, to realize that the superficial structure does not guarantee that you have those key ingredients.
Ron: It does not. It does not at all. There are a whole lot of still-married Christian couples sitting in church every Sunday, judging the single parent who has gone through a divorce, and those still married Christian couples are miserable. Because they don't love well at all. They're not living to love, honor, and cherish.
They're in it to manipulate, lie, and deceive, and yet they're still married and somehow they think that structure is better than a different structure. Like they've somehow got more up on somebody else. In God's economy, that's not the way it works. It is when we are living out those inner qualities that we've been talking about, that's what really matters.
By the way, I got to add this little addendum–I love your comment about John Gottman and the four horsemen of the apocalypse. A lot of people don't realize that 15 years after he wrote that book about predicting divorce, he came back and wrote another book and said, in the four horsemen, we missed something.
A lot of people are not aware of this. The book is on the science of trust. To the point I was making earlier, he came back and he said, we figured out that when something is missing, then the four horsemen show up. What's the something that's missing? It's trustworthiness.
When you're in a climate where I cannot trust you to be looking after the best interests of me, and when I don't feel in my heart that I want to be trustworthy to you, then the four horsemen start showing up in great excess. Isn’t that fascinating? By the way, his language was, how do you define trust? He has this whole chapter, and he's a secular scientist, he doesn't have any theological positioning about all this, but I got to tell you in the book, he does a whole chapter on defining trust so we could measure what trust looks like.
Long story short, he ends up saying, it's when you consider the other person's interests as much as your own. Now that's Philippians. It's the exact wording that Paul uses of what humility does. Humility doesn't look after itself. It looks after the interests of others. So it's taking their best interests at heart and acting accordingly.
That is being trustworthy. This is what our God does for us. That's why we can rely on His promises. When we emulate that, no matter the family structure, it moves the relationships in healthy directions.
Alison: So for the listener, it's fascinating, whether it's marriage or family, that trustworthiness-- it's not perfection, it's not finding the right formula to never have family conflict, it's that combination of I love you and I'm trustworthy, which means I'm thinking of your needs as much as I'm thinking about my own.
When we have those two ingredients, we're setting our families up for success. We're setting our families up for health that comes from that inside work that we do to cultivate those fruit of the spirit. That's beautiful.
Ron: If we've been missing that, as all of us have, my wife and I, we're doing lots of family of origin work these days. I'm 57, almost 58, and I think I'm doing more family of origin work at this point in my life than I ever have. I'm looking at that and I'm seeing the connections to who I am today.
I'm thinking, yeah, that has an influence on me. But I get to move toward love and trustworthiness. I get to be somebody my wife can rely on. I get to be somebody who's dependable in how I carry myself and how I act and build my character. I'm going to mess up again today. And then I'm going to turn around and go, Lord, help me put on those qualities and the fruit of the spirit, and that's where growth and change and hopefulness comes from.
Alison: That's right. It's never too late to develop those qualities in ourselves. Yeah, that's where we start. That's beautiful. you've specialized for many years in your practice and your writings and your books with blended families. Tell me a little bit about how you got interested specifically with writing to blended families.
Ron: You know, it's a funny story. A lot of people end up doing their professional careers, taking them in a direction that's very personal for them. That's not my story. This is professional for me and always has been. It started because of my first job; I was a youth minister. Here I was, working with teenagers that I didn't understand, trying to figure out how to help them and encourage them and deepen their walk with Jesus.
I realized, boy, I don't understand enough about the family. I actually had an undergraduate degree, one in Bible and one in family studies, but I knew I didn't know enough. I went back to graduate school, specifically for the purpose of studying marriage and family therapy and so I could go back into ministry and help people.
I wanted to prevent problems as much as try to fix them. When I was in graduate school, I got introduced, this is in 1992, it's been a minute, okay, since that class. I was introduced to single parent therapy and stepfamily therapy. Little did I know how rare that course was, especially at that time. It is still a rare thing today, and it opened my eyes to those kids that I had been working with, and now I understood them better and deeper.
I was eager to start working in that direction when I came out of graduate school, and I went back into local ministry. I started trying to do marriage and enrichment and parent training and single parent ministry and stepfamily ministry. What I didn't know, Alison, is at the time, I looked around and said, who else is doing this in the Christian community?
I found one guy, and he was about to retire, and he tagged me on the shoulder and said, you're it. You need to take over. I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing. Are you kidding me? So I stumbled and fumbled my way into trying to do something in a way that was meaningful to couples.
I found myself tiptoeing into some things that worked and we did them again. I started talking about it and teaching about it. I wrote my first book back in 2002. My first book came out, The Smart Stepfamily. Now we have nine books and eight video curricula. We're the largest blended family ministry in the world that we know of, and a regular podcast and live streams and all kinds of things that people can tap into.
It's because I felt like the Lord called me into helping kids. I still think I'm doing youth ministry because if I can help the parents, I am helping the next generation.
Alison: That's right. That is so good and true. I want to tell you personally, I don't think you know this story, Ron, but your work has literally changed my life. I don't say that often. I really don't. It surprised me. When I met my husband, my listeners know, my husband was a widower with two young children. His wife had passed away tragically, and I met them after their mom had died. They were young, and we clicked instantly. My husband and I clicked, the kids and I clicked, and so that was all great at the beginning. Also, it's really hard to blend a family. I was unequipped and I didn't understand it.
I thought being a loving person, I thought being a kind person, this will all magically happen. I also got some advice, especially from Christians, that wasn't helpful. They were applying Christian principles to a blended family. It was something like, “The marriage is always the primary relationship. The marriage has to come first”.
Folks were watching my husband and I, my then at the time, significant other, fumble our way through. We took it really slow. We didn't rush things. We constantly worked to bring the kids in, but we actually got a little bit of criticism for that. I don't blame the folks. They were well intended. But the idea being, this should be about the two of you.
Intuitively, I'm a therapist, I knew that's not quite right. Finally, somebody told me, you've got to read Ron Deal's work. I read it and you put language and research and scripture onto what I was experiencing, which was essentially that this attachment between the biological parent and the children is primary.
Ron: Huge.
Alison: It was so helpful to go no, we're doing something right here. It looks a little bit different than the way people think it should. The other thing you talk about in the book was that sometimes the honeymoon comes later on if you put in the work on the front end and you use the crockpot metaphor.
I am here to tell you, 15 years in, we have the best family. I'm like, we've got a honeymoon family. We put in the work on the front end. Those attachments are so strong. We let that crockpot simmer and I couldn't love my family more. I wouldn't trade my family for any family. And I want to thank you.
The language that you put on some of those early dynamics in a blended family, I think they probably relate a little bit to folks who've adopted children in addition to stepfamilies. So with that long introduction, tell me a little bit about how you began to realize this, that this crock pot method works a little bit differently when you're bringing in different elements to the family.
Ron: First of all, let me say, yay, and I'm glad the work has been helpful to you and your family. That warms my heart. The crockpot metaphor was born out of trying to understand the unrealistic expectations that a lot of people bring into their journey. It's really typical for even the church, like the advice you got is based on traditional family structure, instead of taking into consideration what's unique and different about a blended family structure.
You got “first family” answers to “second family” questions. Those almost always backfire. You add that to an unrealistic expectation– “Hey, honey, because you and I love each other, the kids are going to love the fact that we love each other. They're going to love you as a step-parent”.
All of that immediacy is not realistic; there's a journey here, liken it to the Israelites leaving Egypt to get to the promised land. How long did it take them? A lot longer than they thought. Not a few days, but 40 years. The same thing happens with blended families. On average, you need somewhere between five and seven years. This is what the best research says, for a family to create their sense of “familiness”, identity, their togetherness, their cohesiveness, that they've bonded and figured out how they're going to navigate life with one another.
That's not five to seven months. That's not five to seven weeks. That's not five to seven days. You honeymoon, you're back, and familiness is here. No, that's a journey that you have to be patient with. So I kept trying to figure out how to communicate that well to people, and the crockpot metaphor developed.
It is one of our cornerstone teachings, that when you embrace that and you get that, some ingredients cook faster than others. You understand that some ingredients came into your crock pot touching one another. They were family. They were connected. They had a bond and a last name and DNA and a history together. That didn't ever stop because now there's new people in the household.
How does the bonding happen and how long does it take ingredients to warm up, soften, and then share of themselves, which is what happens in a crock pot? Each ingredient has its own timing and has its own process, and when you embrace that and see it for what it is, and then add low heat, (there's the key, low heat, not high heat, which is what a blender has).
High heat is friction, and we're going to use a blade, and we're going to throw everybody together and make a smoothie. It's good in concept, but it doesn't actually work that way. Everybody's getting damaged by the blades. That doesn't work. We can throw this thing in the microwave and nuke it and be done in 30 seconds. It's a good idea, but it doesn't work that way. As a matter of fact, it tends to backfire.
The more you press people for a relationship, the less likely they are to give it to you. So when you rest into the process, which is what the low heat attitude says, and you trust that time is going to take over, you're going to be very intentional, low heat. You're going to do what you can do, but you're going to trust God with everything else that you can't control, and that adds up, on the whole, more than likely, to a genuine, authentic connection that develops over time. it sounds like your journey is exemplary of what we try to recommend for families.
Alison: Oh, intuitively I understood, my now husband understood, but we needed that language that you gave us and the biblical and scientific backing. Because sometimes it does mean short-term sacrifices. I remember, my husband had done such a good job of being that primary attachment figure for them through the loss of their mom, so you're not only dealing with children who are loyal to their parents, and that's a beautiful thing. They're not only loyal to their mom who passed away, making sure she's not being replaced, but they're also loyal to that parent. They don't want to lose that primary attachment to dad.
Even things like vacations, initially, here I am. I'd never been married, we were in love. Then it was like, we're going to take a vacation. I needed to not go initially. I needed to wait a little, until there was enough nurturing of all the different relationships, versus throwing everybody in a car.
I hear from people now all the time, when I talk about this, my peers who got thrown in that blender as kids, where it was suddenly like, here's your new mom. Here's your new dad. We're all hopping in the car for a family vacation. They're like, I don't want this.
Ron: Right. This is weird, at a minimum. It's weird. And, at a maximum, it feels violating to be thrown into close proximity with somebody that you're expected to love and totally embrace, in the case of your stepchildren, as if mom never existed. No, that goes against everything inside a child and I don't care if that child is 5 or 15 or 35.
They have to process this on an emotional level and it is a real challenge for them. When the adults understand, can I give you a compliment to say, I was willing not to go on vacation. Which means you have to set aside that eagerness in you, that loving heart that's bubbling over for a relationship, but you're saying, I got to consider what they need.
I call that meeting/pacing with the child, and I need to give them some space to have that attachment reassurance with their father and spend some time together. But here's the thing that I want you to see. We were talking earlier about love and trustworthiness. That move on your part showed you to be emotionally safe.
That means you're trustworthy. That means they can actually like you and it doesn't come with the cost of you invading every inch of their life, pushing into their relationship with their dad, acting like you're their mom, where you're replacing their mom, when you're certainly not able to do that.
That shows you to be a safe person and that makes you more lovable. You see how those things work in concert with one another. Because the stepparent took a posture that said, I'm respecting your connections, your time, your grief. Good for you. That's exactly the kind of thing that we want to see happen in the early phases, especially because it gives the family a chance to like each other and then eventually to love each other.
Alison: To trust each other, to your point. Yeah. Thank you. That means a lot, because I will say, it takes internal work. I understand why you want to take it personally. Why wouldn't you want me to come? Stepping into that role taught me more about love and trustworthiness.
I wouldn't exchange it for what I learned about myself and what I learned about love. Paradoxically, through making those decisions, that was how I became a true parent figure. That's mother love.
Ron: That's right.
Alison: It's putting their needs above my own.
Ron: That is exactly right. Again, notice how the relationship for you was a discipling factor for you. It deepened your trust in God. Lord, I gotta trust you in these moments when I feel like I'm eager, but they're not. I've got to relax and trust that if we crockpot, we cook a little at a time, we'll actually get farther than if I try to force the blend in my time and demand it in my way.
Alison: It is so helpful. I want to recommend to everybody listening, who's either in a position of trying to blend a family or when I tell my story, what's so fascinating to me, Ron, when I tell my story to other people who were raised in situations where they got just shoved in, there's trauma there.
They immediately lock on to, you mean I wasn't bad because I didn't want that or I wasn't ready for that? I found it to actually be really healing for a lot of different kinds of people. This is a really delicate process of creating a family. Any family is a delicate process, but when you're bringing in, and I would imagine, I'm curious, that there's some similarities with bringing in an adopted child as well.
Ron: There are. There are some distinctions between fostering, adopting a child, and becoming a stepparent and having a stepfamily. But the bonding process, the recognition that grief continues, that there has been some sort of significant loss in the child's life, especially in a blended family, everybody has gone through some sort of loss, or they wouldn't find themselves in that moment.
Loss doesn't end because you form new partnerships, new love, loving relationships, and try to form a new family. The past comes with that. Again, we want to educate everybody to say, how do we acknowledge the past, recognize the past, and not be afraid of those previous attachments that still continue on in a child's heart?
In the case of a child who has been adopted, for example, we've all heard of somebody who's been adopted at the age of two weeks and didn't ever know their parents into a loving Christian family. At the age of 25, they go on this kind of wild journey to find their biological parents. What is that? That is the attachment.
That is something that is so hard to even describe, it has something to do with DNA, something to do with that God-given relationship between mother and child, and things that we cannot even fully comprehend in this life, I don't think. All of a sudden, I need to know who I am, I need to know where I'm from, I need to know my people.
That carries into the adoptive family. Of course it does. To ignore that is to emotionally say to the child, hey, we don't want to have anything to do with that past, and we don't want you to have anything to do with your past. That's to show yourself unsafe as it relates to what matters deeply to this child.
See, we can't do that and then expect them to trust us at the deepest levels. It is very much related to how much they love and trust us.
Alison: Yeah.
Ron: Even in the best of scenarios, we're going to have some moments where the child needs to know what happened. What was my past? What was that about? They need to fill in the story and figure out their identity, their story in life. It's all tied together. Same thing is happening with children in blended families.
If it's been post-divorce, unlike your situation where it's another home, we're back and forth and I love my mom and I love my dad and hey, stepmom's here. She's pretty cool. Stepdad's over there. He's pretty cool too. But I'm still trying to figure out where I put all of you in my heart. How do I make room for you? That's a lot for children to navigate.
Alison: It's so much. Again, the inner work that you're describing, I think about it now, even as my kids are older, trying to make sure you’re not imposing your own thoughts on your kids and letting them find their own way. But when you are coming in as a stepparent or as an adoptive parent, all the more an opportunity to really honor your child's need to find their way through that kind of sometimes murky crockpot, that murky maze.
I love the work that you're doing to name those things for people in so many different settings. We will link to all of your resources. I haven't found anybody else doing it as well as you're doing it in that space. Just helping people navigate and really honor the needs of the kids that are really legitimate and really valid. Even as we're trying to honor the goal of having that family-ness. I like that, how you say that. It's a different way to get there.
Ron: This reminds me of something that we say a lot around here. Blended families done poorly, unfortunately, it adds chaos and pain and difficulty to the children's lives, but even more to the adults as well. It's difficult. But blended families done well, they're redemptive.
Alison: Yeah.
Ron: Because think of a person who's gone through a miserable relationship, you were faithful to your vows, but your spouse wasn't, and that was the end of the marriage. You've been beat up. Life taught you, marriage is not forever. Here you are now, risking again and investing yourself in a new love relationship. You go into it with this little fear and trepidation in the back of your mind going, I don't know, the last one didn't work out so well.
How much of myself do I give? That level of trust that's being called into question because of the past. We call that the ghost of marriage past, by the way. You begin to love well and that's reciprocated in this blended family marriage, and you discover you can trust people to show up for you and you can show up for them and make sacrifices.
All of a sudden, your heart is redeemed. Or think about a child who's gone through great difficulty, in and out of homes, various people moving in and out, dad's life, mom's life, whatever the case may be. I'm not even sure what's consistent in my world. All of a sudden, somebody shows up, a stepparent, and in the beginning you reject them.
I did an interview for our podcast, Family Life Blended Podcast, not long ago, where a woman said that very thing. She said, I told this guy, I don't want you, I don't like you, don't be with my mom. You're out. That was her attitude at the age of 12, when her stepdad, third stepdad, shows up in her life.
But then he won't go away. He's got the love and stubbornness of Jesus. He's basically gonna keep showing up, doing what he can. It took a long time. She finally was won over by that. Isn't this the way the Father pursues us?
Alison: That's incredible.
Ron: Parents get to emulate the passion of God for people who don't yet know Him. You get to win. He won her over. By the way, she's one of the biggest Christian music worship leaders in the country. She says, my step-dad showed me Jesus, taught me who he was. This is why I'm doing what I'm doing today. That is God's redemptive work through this stepfamily home.
It's amazing. We love to watch that. We love to see those stories. That's what we're trying to do with our work.
Alison: It's amazing. It is redemptive. It is a glimpse of how God comes into even some of the hardest places and brings his love and it makes me filled with gratitude for the fact that you're helping so many people do that. I want to ask you one other question. You brought this up and I wanted to circle back to it about the role of grief, making space for grief.
In all families, but in particular blended families, talk to me a little bit about how you encourage families to do that.
Ron: I wrote a book called Preparing to Blend, which is a do-it-yourself guide for couples that are engaged, planning to get married that, by the way, that doubles for ministry leaders as a premarital counseling tool. We've got to radically update premarital counseling in the local church for people who are bringing children into that scenario to make it what it needs to be for them.
One of the chapters that we have is on the grief of the past and we've got another chapter on the grief of the future. In other words, how things are going to change as a result of this family coming together. But let's talk about the past for a second.
So one of the things I'll coach a stepparent on is, imagine a stepparent who is learning how to gently step into the grief space, saying to a child, (this is real counterintuitive, so it's important), hey, look, all the kids in this house, including you are my kids. There's no his kids or my kids. There's our kids.
Okay. First of all, let me compliment the heart of that stepparent. In that scenario, they’re saying, I want you to know that I care about you and that you're mine and I see you as mine and I don't want you to think that I don't. Got it. Love it. Love that part of you.
However, there's a child on the receiving end of that who's going, oh, so you're my mom now? I think you tried to push mom out of my heart. No, thank you. I don't want any of this or any of you. You made it harder for them to love you. Not easier. You had good intentions. But the strategy worked against you, okay?
To step into that space is to say, what term for me are you comfortable with? What do you want me to call you? When I'm introducing you to my friends, and we're out at church, and, hey, this is my husband and my what? How do you want me to say that? You ask the child to find something that is in alignment with their grief journey, that they're comfortable with.
That's one tiny example. Another one is to imagine a stepdad who's driving his stepkids to school one day and he goes, oh man, I figured out your dad's birthday is Friday and you're still on our time. You're going to be at my house instead of your dad's house on his birthday.
Imagine a stepdad saying, “Oh, that stinks for you. I am so sorry. Is there anything I can do? Do you need to run to the store? I'll take you to the store, get him a card, a gift. Can I help arrange a FaceTime so you can talk to him on his birthday? When do you want to do that?”
Listen to the eagerness of the stepdad to say to the child, your relationship with your biological father is not a problem for me. I'm not in competition with that relationship. In fact, I want to encourage your relationship with your dad. What that says to the child is you, stepdad, are safe.
You care about what matters to me, and you'll step into the hard, grieving, sorrowful places of my life, and you won't cry. You won't compete with it. You'll actually help me grieve and do what I need to do. That is a blessing and a gift to the child and a double blessing for the step parent because you become more respectable, more lovable.
Alison: You paradoxically become more of a parent figure. It's right. You actually are showing that kind of fatherly love that you crave. You want to show it, but you show it in such a counter-intuitive way. It's to me, right out of the playbook of Jesus. It's just, it's so beautiful. I love how you describe that.
Any other tidbits or wisdom that you've found to be really helpful for folks who are either healing their own wounds or who are in the midst of trying to do this?
Ron: I think probably the most general comment I'll make, like I said, we have a dozen books in our series, we have many on children and stepparenting, being a stepmom, and all kinds of different things. The more you learn about your blended family, how it works, how the dynamics work on the inside and an understanding of what's going on with you on the inside, I love your work to that end, then the easier your decision making becomes.
You take your family forward at a pace that actually works for the rest of the family, the people involved in it. It's when you try to force the blend that you tend to get less of one. It's when you relax into the crockpot that you find more authenticity and connection being developed. So there's lots of little paradoxical moments. You gotta know. We call it getting stepfamily smart.
The smarter you get, the better decisions you make, the easier the family goes in general. There are still things you don't get to control. The family will never be like with a biological first family. There's never everything the way you want it to be. Life gets in the way, but that's okay. More often than not, it goes in the direction of where you would like to see it go.
It often gets there much more slowly to what you, and I'll close with this that you said earlier, there is a honeymoon for remarried couples. It comes at the end of the journey and not at the beginning.
Alison: It's so true. We're aware, to your point at the very beginning of the episode, those qualities of love and joy and peace and patience independent of the family structure, we have those. I'd put them up against a traditional family any day.
Before we wind down, you have a new book coming out. This one is about marriage.
Ron: It is. I also want to say, I think it's probably the most important book I've written for blended families. Because the qualities and attributes that you will learn are not limited to marriage, because really, like your work, this book is about how we gain self control. That is the biblical term.
The modern psychological term is self-regulation. How we self-regulate in the midst of dysregulation in such a way that we bring our best self to relationships. The book is primarily looking at the marital relationship. But later in the book, we actually have a whole chapter on how this applies to parenting, how it applies to stepparenting, how it applies to dealing with grief and loss and sadness and sexuality.
The principles are everlasting. I'm going to brag about this until the day I die, and it's not because Nan and I had anything to do with it. Let me tell you what this book is. Dr. Terry Hargrave created Restoration Therapy that is now being used all over the world, thousands of people.
It's the best integration that I know of modern therapy, neurology, and understanding of interpersonal neurobiology, as well as relationship systems and how they work, self-regulation, and New Testament theology, of changing and renewing our minds. It is a beautiful integration of that.
He helped to transform Nan and I's relationship years ago, and we have partnered with him and his wife, Sharon, to write this book. Basically, Nan and I are the case study. We're the ones that you're going to read about–how we screwed a lot of things up and how these principles really helped pull us out of a lot of difficulty in our relationship.
So we're telling the story of us and teaching the principles of restoration therapy in the process. We're very excited about it because we know how useful and impactful it really is.
Alison: I cannot wait to have you back on to talk about this book. It comes out in January.
Ron: It does. January 7th,
Alison: You live in this integration of the best of what we're learning in modern psychology with biblical wisdom. It's powerful. I see you doing that with this next book, and I'm really excited.
I do have a couple of questions, Ron, as we wrap up, that I like to ask all of my guests . I'll start with, what would you say to that younger you back in the day who is making these decisions about your career and your own life? What would you say to that younger version of you now?
Ron: Oh, you're going to read it in The Mindful Marriage because it's in there. I think in a nutshell, I would say Ron, look in the mirror. I was so busy looking up and beyond in ambition, and in pridefulness, not so much arrogance as in I'm a great person, but as in I was more of an insecure, prideful person.
But I felt like I could work my way into all the right things, whether it be my marriage, my family, my career. Because of that, my pride blinded me. So I needed to look in the mirror and see what was really there. As soon as I started doing that, I recognized there's a lot of things that I needed to deal with and change, and that those were the very things that were driving my wife crazy. Yeah, I would say humble down, look in the mirror, and trust God more than you do.
Alison: I love that. What's bringing out the best of you right now?
Ron: Learning how to put on self-regulation, learning how to recognize that I have agency by the power of the Spirit to act in ways that are different from what my flesh wants to do. I am not a slave to my flesh. That's the old self. The new self is becoming, and it's pretty cool.
Alison: I love it. That's awesome. Tell our listeners where they can find all the things that we've talked about. What's the best place to get in touch with your work?
Ron: Two websites, familylife.com/blended. So familylife.com/blended will get you right to our section. My personal webpage is a collection of where everything can be found, new and old, blended and mindful marriage, that's rondeal.org.
Alison: Thanks, Ron.
Do you want to learn how to strengthen your relationship over time?
Do you want to have better communication and deeper intimacy with your partner?
In this very honest episode, you'll learn strategies from top marriage & relationship experts combined with Biblical wisdom to work through pain paints, set realistic expectations, and practice constructive conversations with your partner.
Here’s what we cover:
1. The most important way to improve your relationship
2. How to identify bad advice vs. a helpful confidant
3. Naming paint points in a healthy way
4. 3 ways to frame a relational pain point
5. The 4 most destructive qualities to a relationship
6. The 4 most important skills to a vital long-term relationship
Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here.
Do you have questions for Dr. Alison? Leave them here.
Additional Resources:
- Boundaries For Your Soul, The Best of You, and I Shouldn’t Feel This Way by Dr. Alison Cook
- “It takes two people to create a pattern, but only one to change it” –Esther Perel
- Matthew 7:5
- Episode 1: What Is Narcissism Really?
- Episode 2: What Should I Know About Gaslighting?
- dralisoncook.com/podcast
- The Four Horseman The Gottman Institute
- Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples by Harville Hendrix, PhD
Related Episodes:
- Episode 105: 4 Lies We Tell, the Mental Health Benefits of Honesty, & How to Stop Lying In Your Relationships
- Episode 89: When A Relationship Has to Change—How to Tolerate Discomfort, Face an Attachment Void, & Resource Yourself
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© 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: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am glad you're here this week. I'm glad you've been joining me for this series, “Therapists on Therapy”. I've enjoyed getting to know some other therapists and their work and bringing some of those resources to you.
I'm glad you're choosing to spend these next few minutes with me. I really cherish these times when I get to come on and speak directly to you. It feels like there's a genuine connection between us. I don't know how exactly that works, except I believe it's somehow by the power of God's Spirit that there's a way in which he enables us to connect through these airwaves and really join together.
I'm grateful to know that many of you out there are really leaning into this healing work of bringing more goodness, more wholeness, more healing, more beauty, more joy into this world. It buoys me up. It gives me much hope and encourages me. So thank you for being here with me. I'm prayerful as I prepare for these episodes, especially these solo episodes.
I really try to think about what I've been noticing are some pain points in the world around me and the folks that I'm talking with in myself, in my spirit. I pray through what I think God wants me to add into the conversation. I always get much out of preparing for these episodes and it truly feels like we're coming together to learn and grow and become more whole and more fruitful and bring more healing into the world together.
So thank you again for being here. Thank you for your questions, for your notes, for your emails. I always appreciate hearing from you. You can find the link to The Best of You Podcast question form in the show notes for this episode. Cindy, my media coordinator, and I will take some time to answer your questions in an upcoming episode.
We really want to hear from you. We're grateful that you're engaged in this work. So for today's episode, we're going to be talking about relationship pain points, primarily within the context of marriage or intimate or dating relationships, any committed relationship where you're trying to stay in it with someone over the long haul. But this episode is also for you if you're not in a committed relationship.
Maybe you're single, maybe you're recently out of a relationship–I promise you that these strategies and tips that we're going to talk about today also apply to you because they really apply to everyone in any long term relationship where you want to have a healthy, vibrant relationship over time.
Every single one of the books that I've written, Boundaries For Your Soul, The Best of You, and I Shouldn’t Feel This Way, all of these books include chapters with strategies for relationships. In Boundaries for Your Soul, We talk about dealing with the challenging part of a significant other or loved one.
In The Best of You, I talk about how you can begin to use your voice in relationships with very specific scripts and strategies for learning how to use your voice and speak up in a relationship. In today's episode, we're going to use the framework that I teach you in I Shouldn’t Feel This Way, the “name, frame, brave” framework, and apply it to the context of pain points within an intimate relationship.
Those books are such helpful resources if you want to go deeper, if you want to go further in your relationships. All of what I'm going to teach you today is embedded in those resources. If you've been listening for a while, my area of specialty is to combine the best of science and psychology with the best of faith-based wisdom.
I've really scoured the marketplace for some of the top marriage and relationship experts. Experts out there many of whom are not necessarily Christian by background, but they bring such incredible insight into the realities of relationships. In today's episode, I'm going to introduce you to some of those people whose work has influenced me and how I've integrated their work from a faith perspective.
To start out, I'm going to start with a quote by a woman who I think is brilliant at helping us understand that our deepest desire is for intimacy. This quote by Esther Perel, esteemed psychotherapist and bestselling author, really anchors this entire episode. She says this, “it takes two people to create a pattern, but only one to change it”.
I want you to hear that from me today. Whatever you're struggling with, whatever pain point you're dealing with in your relationship, it took two people to create that. A hundred percent that is true. Also, it only takes one to change it. What that means is, you have some power to change your relationship. It's not only up to you, but there's a good part of it that is up to you.
Today we're going to focus on what you can do to show up with your loved one more effectively. What is in your control? Because there's a lot that isn't in your control, but there are some things that are in your control. That's what we're going to focus on in today's episode. Change in your relationships starts inside of you, and I'm gonna unpack what I mean by that because I don't mean that it's only up to you.
I mean that if you really want to change your relationship, you've got to start by looking at yourself first. Jesus says it this way: Matthew 7:5, take the plank out of your own eye first. Is there anything inside of you, any method or strategy or process that you could change inside of you that might shift a dynamic inside of your relationship?
In the context of what Esther Perel is saying and what Jesus is saying, what we're trying to do today is take a look at what's on our side of the street. What do we have control over? What dynamics are we participating in, in an unhealthy way? Where are we not articulating what we actually need and want out of the relationship? Where are we avoiding a hard conversation? Where are we participating in an angry, defensive, critical, or toxic dynamic?
What can we take control of? What is in our power to change? Look at yourself, look at your own dynamics, look at your own needs, look at your own patterns. If you do that work, first, I promise you, you will have more successful outcomes when it is time to communicate and enter into the hard conversations with your loved one.
Here's the thing. Even if you end up realizing, I'm in a toxic relationship, this is untenable. This is unsustainable. If you've done your own work and you arrive at that conclusion, you will have much more clarity about the decisions that you end up making. This is the work. This is how you change your relationships. Any step toward change and transformation will start inside of you.
Now, listen, if you're with someone who is demonstrating toxic patterns of behaviors, please go back and listen to episode one on narcissism and episode two on gaslighting. Go to my website, dralisoncook.com/podcast and do a search. There's a search bar for toxic behaviors.
If you are in a relationship with someone who is consistently demonstrating abusive or toxic patterns of behavior over time, you are going to brave a different path than someone who's in a mostly healthy relationship that has hit a rough patch or a pain point.
Okay. So those episodes are there for those of you who are wondering about that, but regardless of the nature of the pain point in your relationship, the change is going to start when you look deep inside yourself first. You can name, frame, and brave your way into a healthier relationship.
Number one, I want you to name what's hard. This is work you do inside of you you can get really honest with yourself, with God, maybe with a trusted advisor. What is the pain point within your marriage, within your intimate relationship?
This is not the time to be empathetic or try to get into their perspective. This is your opportunity to get really honest with yourself. This is what hurts me. This is what's hard. He doesn't understand this about me. I feel criticized in this specific situation. I feel alone in this area of our relationship. I feel hurt and I can't stop feeling this way.
This is your opportunity to really get specific about what's hard. For this specific pain point that you're feeling, name what's hard. Start with yourself. What do you feel? What emotions are stirred up and what is the specific set of circumstances that stirs up that pain point? Is it when you talk about a specific season in your marriage?
Is it when you talk about your kids? Is it when you talk about work or vocation? Is it when you talk about a dream that you have? Is it that you're not talking enough or at all about things that matter to you? What is that pain point that's making you feel hurt?
Name that honestly. At this point, we don't have to analyze it. We don't have to try to understand their perspective on it. You don't have to try to justify it, or even feel guilty for feeling the way that you feel. This is a pain point that you're feeling. You're naming what's hard. You're naming what's true for you in this moment without claiming that you understand the whole truth of what's going on in this situation.
When you name what's hard, honestly, with yourself and with God, there's humility in it. You might even say, I don't want to feel this way, but I do feel this way. You're getting really honest with yourself when you name what's hard about a person that you love, about a person you're committed to, about a person you're doing life with every single day.
It can be scary to name what's hard. In that situation, you don't want to feel that way. I want to give you permission, in the privacy of your own journal, in the privacy of your own prayer time, to talk to God about it, to talk to a trusted advisor about it. Someone who will honor your relationship, not someone who's going to rip apart that other person. That's not what we're after when we're naming what's hard.
Please hear me say that. Be careful who you confide in when you're naming what's hard about someone you love. Can that person validate what you're feeling without tearing down the relationship or that other person that you love? That's a special kind of confidant. You want that person to honor what's hard while still honoring your devotion, your commitment to that other person.
Someone who won't come to you with an agenda about what they think you should do in the relationship, but someone who can be objective. Someone who can be empathetic, someone who can honor you and say, I don't know how to help you, but I get that what you're feeling is real.
We know we have that person in God. We know we have that person in Jesus. He comes into the hardest pain points of our relationships, where the person we love the most, the person who is supposed to get us, the person who was supposed to love everything about us, has let us down, has hurt us or disappointed us. Jesus comes into those moments and says, I get it.
I get that you're disappointed. I see it. The beauty of Jesus is that he also completely understands that other person. So he stands in the gap there and says, I can hold it. I can hold the honesty of what you feel at this moment. I can step in here and show up for you in a way that this other person can't right now.
It's powerful when you can name what's hard to Jesus with the power of the Holy Spirit. It's also an exercise in what psychologists call differentiation. You're differentiating from that other person. You're saying, I love this person. Also, in this moment, I'm separate from them. I'm different from them. I'm seeing this thing differently from how they're seeing it.
It's breaking my heart, God, because I want this person to get me, but they're not getting me here. I can hold two things in this moment. I can hold the validity of what I'm feeling, even as I can hold the heartbreak that this person I love isn't getting it in the way that I wish that they would.
God steps into those moments with us and something powerful happens when we name what's hard with God or with someone who can hold up the mirror of God for us. In those moments, do not be afraid to name what's hard in the privacy of your own soul with a God who loves you, who is for you, who doesn't gaslight, bypass, or deny the reality that sometimes other people, even the person you love the most, doesn't get you.
It's hard, and God doesn't deny that reality. That's number one in this process of transforming your relationships. It's learning to differentiate enough from that other person to be able to name what's hard, honestly, while simultaneously honoring that you care about the relationship. You wouldn't be hurt by this other person if you didn’t care.
So you can honor both of those things with God buffering you, holding you, helping you understand yourself well, before you even get to the point of trying to do something or to instigate a change in your relationship. We don't even know the circumstances yet.
That leads us to number two. I want you to frame your reality. Again, you're not yet going to the other person. You're still doing this in the quiet of your own soul with God, with that trusted advisor. You're trying to get to the root of the problem. When you frame it, you're trying to understand key questions. I go through the “frame” acronym in detail in chapter three of I Shouldn’t Feel This Way.
You can get the first three chapters of I Shouldn’t Feel This Way for free on my website, but I'm going to quickly go through it now. F: What are the facts? What actually happened? Not what I feel about what's happened, but what are the facts about what has happened? Are the facts that there's something that my spouse or my loved one does that is really objectively hurtful? They're hurting me. Maybe they're even hurting other people. That's the fact. So what are the facts?
R: You might look at the roots. When did it start? How long has it been going on? You might ask yourself, what have you tried in the past? Have you tried talking about it? Have you tried bringing it up? What happened? What worked? What didn't work? What have you tried that time and time again doesn't work to bring change?
Then we get to M. What are the messages that you're telling yourself about this? It is important to look at the messages inside your own mind. Are you telling yourself it'll never change? Are you telling yourself that it's your fault? That if you'd done things differently, this never would have happened? Are you shaming yourself? Are you really judgmental of your loved one?
Do you hear a critical voice in your head about the other person? It's all their fault. If they weren't selfish, if they ever thought about someone other than themselves…Now, listen, even if there's some truth to that, harboring an attitude of judgment and criticism never leads to change. If you're looking at facts and going, the facts are I'm dealing with a very selfish person. That's a fact.
You can honor that fact from a healthy distance without feeling deep-seated contempt, criticism, or judgment for that other person. John Gottman talks about the four horsemen that kill relationships. One of them is criticism, and the biggest one is contempt. You cannot heal a relationship when you're feeling contempt for that other person.
So if you notice in your mind, either self-shaming, self-blaming, or self-contempt, that's not going to help you brave a new path. Or if you're noticing deeply critical, contemptuous, judgmental feelings toward your loved one, that's also not going to help you brave a new path.
Honestly, where we're shaming and condemning ourselves is very close to where we're also going to be shaming and condemning our loved one. In the words of Jesus, we tend to do unto others as we do unto ourselves. Where there is self-hatred, self-blame, and self-contempt, there tends to also be hatred, blame, and contempt of our loved ones.
Can we face that honestly inside of ourselves? Say, man, I've got to start learning how to be a little kinder to myself through this pain point in my relationship. You know what? Maybe that little bit of self-compassion that you start to offer yourself might open up a tiny window of compassion toward this other person that you love.
Maybe they're also not able to do any better than what they're doing right now. Doesn't mean you have to move right into empathy. It means that right now, I might need to frame where I am in this relationship as, oh my goodness, a part of this tangled up knot is that I don't like myself very much in this.
The bravest thing I could do in this relationship is first work on healing that shame inside of me, so that I can strengthen my resilience. I can strengthen my reserves. I can start to show up more genuinely, more authentically, with more inner core strength in my relationship.
Okay. So you need to notice, what are those mental messages that you're telling yourself. As you frame what's going on in the specific pain point of your relationship, you look at the facts, you look at the roots, you audit what you've done and tried, and what has worked and what hasn't worked. You really examine those internal messages that you tell yourself.
You really look at what you're believing about yourself and about your loved one. Then I want you to create what I call “a holy reframe”, that accounts for the whole truth of the situation. It gets at the larger frame, and that larger frame is what's gonna help you figure out the brave steps you need to take.
Here are some examples of three different frameworks you might arrive at as you frame your situation. Number one. Is it a toxic dynamic? In other words, is it a co-created dynamic where there's a specific pattern of relating that you both contribute to? Maybe it's around household chores. Let's use that as an example.
Maybe you feel really resentful. You believe that you're doing everything around the house, that your spouse isn't doing anything to help. Whenever you bring that up, they feel criticized and underappreciated. They get defensive and you get really critical.
Maybe a part of you pipes in, a kind of a lawyerly part of you, that pipes up and presents all the data that proves that you are in fact the one doing way more of the household chores. By golly, you are right. You've won the argument. They're completely mad. They're now stonewalling you because they feel completely rejected, completely criticized, completely shut down, completely undervalued.
Both of you together in that moment have created a worse situation instead of approaching a legitimate pain point–household chores. It’s a very legitimate pain point in many relationships and many marriages with a toxic dynamic. If you're framing it that way, you've got to wrestle with the fact that okay, there's a toxic pattern here. The brave step is going to be, what's my part in that? How do I change how I show up in that pattern in that situation?
Number two, you might frame your particular pain point as something that hurts, but can't be changed. What I mean by that is maybe the other person has a trait or a habit or a set of beliefs that is really hard for you. But it's probably not going to change.
Maybe you married someone who is really adventurous and creative and takes you on all these adventures, but they're not very responsible around the house or they tend to show up late for things. Or maybe you married an exceptional problem solver or somebody who's really steady and really disciplined, but they're not great at showing empathy.
They don't know how to validate your emotional experiences. Part of your relationship can at times feel lonely. Maybe it's a habit that they have. Maybe they work a lot and you wish they would relax more. Maybe they relax too much and you wish they would work harder. You begin to realize, the pain point in my relationship is related to something about this person that's probably not going to change. That framing will lead you to brave a different path.
Then lastly, as you frame your pain point, you may begin to notice that a lot of it is your own communication style. Maybe you don't even know what the other person thinks or what their beliefs are, how they would respond or how they would change, because you haven't actually figured out how to speak up for what you actually need, what you actually want, what you actually dream of for your relationship.
Or what you're worried about, or what you're concerned about, or what you fear or where you're feeling left out or where you're feeling lonely, but you haven't actually figured out how to talk about. Your brave path is going to be a little bit different in terms of how you frame it. The bottom line is this: when you do the work of naming the pain point, getting really clear about what it is and framing it and understanding the bigger picture, the deeper context of what's happening, when you're really honest with yourself and with God, when you've done the work, I promise you, you will set yourself up much better for when it's time to take action.
This leads us to braving. You've done the work, so much of the work inside yourself. You've named what's hard. You've framed your reality. You understand the bigger picture. Now it's time to brave a new path. I cover this acronym BRAVE in chapter five. There are dozens of strategies and tools and tips in that book, but I'm going to lay out four key strategies specifically related to pain points in your relationship.
As we close out this episode today, here's the thing: no matter how you've framed your pain point, no matter what's going on in your specific relationship, I want you to bear in mind those four horsemen that John Gottman identifies those four destructive forces that never lead to good in a relationship.
That's criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and what he calls stonewalling, which is sort of this extreme avoidance where you almost physiologically shut down. You don't want to deal with anything. Any of those four horsemen won't help you brave a healthier path forward.
Instead, when you think about braving, I want you to think about braving any and all of these four antidotes, the four constructive forces, the four healing forces, the four helpful ways to build more health, more vibrancy, more vitality into your relationship. The first one Gottman calls self-soothing. Learn how to soothe yourself through some of those rough patches, especially in your communication.
This requires the skill of differentiation, learning to differentiate out from some of those painful dynamics, where let's say you tend to get defensive or maybe you tend to get critical, whatever it is that you've identified, you're setting aside, first and foremost, your need to win, your need to change the other person. Instead, you're going to brave the path of shifting your part in that dynamic.
You're going to practice not doing anything in this first step to change your loved one, not doing anything to change your partner. You're going to practice this differentiation and this internal self-soothing. What is it like inside my own body to notice that impulse, to get defensive, to spiral, to criticize, to get reactive? What if I take a deep breath and ground myself inside my own body?
I differentiate. I notice, man, what they're saying right now really activates me. I really want to defend myself. I really want to argue. I really want to criticize and show them where they're wrong, but instead I'm going to brave the path of self-soothing. I'm not going to gaslight myself. I'm not going to be a martyr. Instead I'm braving the path of self-soothing.
I'm taking a deep breath. I'm not going to engage in what they're saying. I'm going to breathe. I'm going to notice what I feel inside. This is hard. This hurts. This makes me feel criticized. I wanted to defend myself, but I'm going to breathe. I'm going to witness what that feels like. God sees it with me in this moment. You're not gaslighting yourself. You're soothing yourself.
You're staying with yourself. You're maybe not saying anything to that other person. You're breathing. You're shifting how you show up in this specific pain point. Remember that quote from the episode's beginning: it takes two people to create a pattern and one person to change it.
You might practice saying different scripts in that moment. Maybe you say nothing. Maybe you let your partner know what you're doing. Listen, I'm trying to show up in a different way. So I'm slowing myself down. I want to be healthier. This topic is hard for me. I might need a minute. I might not respond right away. Maybe I'll get back to you later. Maybe I'll get back to you tomorrow.
Regardless of whether you say something or you really soothe yourself through it, you're relinquishing a need to be right, a need to criticize, a need to defend, and you're changing the dynamic in your relationship. I'm telling you right now, if you shift how you show up in that dynamic, if you learn to differentiate and be with yourself and relinquish those and relinquish that critical defensive posture, it will change things in your relationship.
They'll have to reckon with it. You're creating a growth opportunity by simply shifting how you show up. They're going to have to figure out how to show up differently. It's extremely powerful. It might buy you a little more peace of mind. You know what? I can't change them fundamentally. I can't stop them from doing this, but I can be different.
I can care for myself through this and release my need to be right in this particular set of circumstances. It's a really powerful move and it leads into number two, what Gottman calls personal responsibility. As you shift how you're showing up with them, you're taking responsibility for your own self. It's really empowering and feels great inside when you see, man, I can engage this differently.
I don't have to participate in this old pattern. I can do something differently. That feels really good inside of you. There's some intrinsic reward in noticing that you can change how you show up, regardless of what they're doing, that you can shift out of a critical mindset, that you can shift out of defensiveness, out of argumentation, out of criticism.
You can shift from trying to point out what they need to do, to thinking, this is what I can do in this situation. I can remove myself. I can soothe myself. I can change something about how I show up. I can shift out of avoidance, which is shutting myself down, and instead find constructive ways to take care of myself.
You stop focusing on the work that they need to do and stay very present to your own growth and your own healing. And you see what happens. Some of this has to do with shifting your expectations for the relationship. Harville Hendrix has this quote that I think is really helpful in his book, Getting the Love You Want.
He talks about how sometimes we have to relinquish our need to be right in our relationships. Even when we're right about the growth that our partner or significant other needs to take in their lives, he says, do you want to be right? Or do you want to be in a relationship? Because you can't always have both.
When you're learning to differentiate, to self-soothe, to take responsibility for your own growth first, you're honoring that reality that you're not always going to get your partner to see what you want them to see in key moments. You're letting go of that and you're surrendering that to God and you're saying, God, you know that better than I do.
In this moment and in this particular season, and in this particular pain point of our relationship, I'm gonna focus on what I can do, on the invitation to grow in my own life because I actually wanna be in relationship. And how I stay in relationship in this moment is to work on myself and work on breathing through this particular dynamic and learning to shift how I show up.
I'm not being a doormat. I am exercising power when I do that. You're exercising power in a constructive way. This leads to number three, what Gottman calls the gentle startup. Some of you may need to raise a hard conversation. Your growth curve might be, I need to start speaking up for what I need or for what I long for out of my relationship. That may be your brave step as you're differentiating.
You’re self-soothing as you're taking responsibility for what's yours to take responsibility for. You may need to also practice a general startup where you do raise a concern. You do raise something in the relationship, but there's a skill. There's a way to do it. Both Gottman and Hendricks emphasize the importance of being positive when we raise something in a relationship.
Again, eradicating that critical posture. Criticism is never helpful in an intimate relationship. That's why it's important to do this work inside of yourself first. So if you do decide you need to practice a general startup and you decide you might want to have what I call a negotiation conversation where you want to negotiate for something a little bit different in your relationship, it is important to begin with the positive.
In The Best of You, I lay out detailed scripts and exercises for identifying inside yourself first, what is the positive thing that you're wanting? I call it the deepest longing. You're not going to that person with, I want you to change this, or I want you to do this. Instead, you're going to frame it positively and pragmatically.
You're not going to go to them with the problem. You're going to go to them with your deeper longing. Man, here's what I love about us. Here's what I long for. You're going to cast a vision, that's presumably something they would want too. I long for us to share more activities together. I long for us to create more time to connect in deeper conversation. I long for us to talk more about parenting together.
You're going to frame it in the positive. This is the gentle startup. Here's what I love and here's what I long for even more of. You're also going to give them practical ways that you think that could happen, where you've spent some time considering realistic steps you could take to achieve this vision that you have for both of you.
Here's the difference. It's the difference between going to your spouse and saying, I am frustrated that you never help out with the kids, which is immediately putting them on the defense, and instead going to them from the positive place of saying, man, you know, I would love for us to be on the same page with parenting and life is busy for both of us. What would you think about meeting once a week to talk through some parenting challenges?
Or what would you think about engaging a professional once a month as a place where we could talk through some of these challenges together? It would mean so much to me if we could do that together. You're framing it in the positive versus from a critical place.
Or instead of going to your partner and saying, you never listened to me or you never help around the house, or we never go on dates anymore, instead, you're going to them and saying, man, I miss you. I love spending time with you. Could we do something this week? I'd love to play tennis or go out on a couple's date. What do you think?
Or I'd love to explore the Enneagram together. What would you think about listening to some podcasts together? You're coming from a place inside of yourself where you've soothed your own disappointments and you're not laying those at the feet of your spouse.
You've soothed yourself. You've differentiated. You've done your own work, you've taken responsibility for what you really love. Then, you're creating a moment for a gentle startup with your spouse. What if we try something new together? You're meeting them at a place that's practical for the two of you.
You're not asking for too much, but you're not also asking for too little. You're proposing something realistic that sets you on a path for a new adventure together. You're stating your longing and a pragmatic path toward getting that need met in a way that works for both of you.
The bottom line is that you're not leading from a place of emotional reactivity. You're leading from a calm, clear place inside, that allows you to lead with creativity and playfulness and even confidence, where you're like, why wouldn't you want to do this with me? This will be really cool for us. This will be really fun for us. You're giving your relationship a fighting chance to rise to a better place.
Finally, this gets to Gottman's fourth antidote: you're building a culture of appreciation and a culture of friendship, which entails recognizing the legitimate limits of any relationship. You're not asking that person to change on a dime. You're not asking them to be someone they're not. You're considering your needs. You're considering who they are, and then you're braving a path toward more friendship, toward more connection.
One brave step at a time. Where are the overlapping points of connection? Where do we overlap? You're not asking them to meet all your needs. You're asking them to join you In creating a culture of friendship and a culture of appreciation. It's powerful, your understanding that there are two key ingredients in any relationship.
There's your togetherness and your autonomy, and you're releasing your need to have all your needs met. That's your autonomy. There are some needs you can get met from God and from other friendships, but you're really focusing on that area of overlap, that area of togetherness as being one character primarily by friendship and by appreciation. That's so powerful.
When you really focus on fanning the flames of friendship, what are the areas we do agree on? What are the activities we do enjoy? What do I genuinely and legitimately appreciate about this person? Why am I deeply grateful that this person is in my life? What keeps me going in this relationship?
And really doubling down on that. Here's where we shine. Let's go all in with that. Then I can continue over time to do this work of releasing the areas where I'm not going to get my needs met, where there is some hurt, where I can soothe myself through that, and it takes you into a deeper relationship with God, into deeper relationships with others.
It becomes this dance of growing deeper with your loved one, and also simultaneously going deeper into your own work with God and going deeper into relationships with other people, and you begin to tap into this virtuous cycle of love and of healing. It's the place where growth happens. You're changing. You're becoming a better, healthier person.
You're creating more opportunities for more health and for more wholeness in your relationship, and you will start to notice change. You'll start to feel what hope feels like, because we know as we go back to that pain point, suffering is a part of every relationship.
But suffering, when suffered wisely, produces perseverance, which is that differentiation, that self-soothing, and that perseverance produces character, which is the dexterity and the agility to understand when you need to sit on your wisdom, when you need to soothe yourself versus be right, which is that courageous conversation rooted in love and a vision for who you are at your best in your relationship.
Character produces hope–glimpses of the goodness and the beauty and the joy of a healthy and always healing relationship. This is the virtuous cycle of love that God wants to pour out on each and every one of us as we engage this of healing ourselves and showing up in a healed and whole way within the context of our most intimate relationships.
Do you struggle to let go of pain from your past?
If so, you don't want to miss today's episode! Kobe Campbell is a trauma therapist and the author of Why am I Like This? She joins me today to discuss her own journey through healing trauma and insight from her work as a trauma therapist.
Here’s what we cover:
1. Kobe’s personal experience with trauma
2. The burden she picked up as a twin
3. How she found a therapist
4. Can you heal from trauma?
5. Kobe’s favorite tools for healing trauma
6. How to advocate for yourself with a therapist
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Additional Resources:
- You can find me on Facebook or Instagram @DrAlisonCook and leave a comment for me under any post.
- The Best of You Podcast question form
- Email us at info@dralisoncook.com!
- Why Am I Like This?: How to Break Cycles, Heal from Trauma, and Restore Your Faith by Kobe Campbell
- The Dwell app
- kobecampbell.com
Related Episodes:
- Episode 97: I Shouldn't Feel This Anxious—Insights on Trauma & Healing with Monique Koven
- Episode 4: What Do I Need To Know About Trauma?
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: Hey everyone. Welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am thrilled that you're here for this series where I'm getting to talk to some amazing therapists and mental health experts and thought leaders at the intersection of faith and mental health.
This is so fun for me. I love this intersection. You all know that I talk about it every single week and it's really a treat for me this summer to bring to you the benefit of so many others out there who are providing some great resources in this integrated space.
Before we dive in, remember–if you have questions about a specific area of therapy, a specific issue, a specific diagnosis, or a specific approach to therapy, please leave us your questions. If you have any questions based on these conversations we're having with different experts throughout this series, please leave us your questions. You can find me on Facebook or Instagram @DrAlisonCook and leave a comment for me under any post.
We'll also link to The Best of You Podcast question form in the show notes. So you can leave your questions there, or you can email us at info@dralisoncook.com. We are always looking for feedback from you about what you want us to address, what questions you have, and how we can help you on this healing journey.
Today's guest is Kobe Campbell. She's an award winning licensed trauma therapist, a bestselling author, and she's also got a really helpful and insightful Instagram account where she shares wisdom from her years of work as a therapist. Kobe's first book is called, Why Am I Like This?: How to Break Cycles, Heal from Trauma, and Restore Your Faith.
As you'll hear today, she brings such genuineness, kindness, and wisdom to everything she does. She's got some really helpful insights into trauma and into how she helps her clients heal from trauma. She's so real about her own journey, her own experiences, and how they inform her work as a therapist. I'm thrilled to bring you my conversation with Kobe Campbell.
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Alison: Kobe, I am so thrilled to have you here with us today. I got my hands on a copy of Why Am I Like This? It's a great book. Thank you for coming on to talk with us today. We're in a series talking to different therapists on therapy, and I was so intrigued by how you opened the book with your own story. You talk about your own pain and your own trauma, and I want to get into that a little bit for the listener.
It almost got the best of you in a pretty dark moment in your life. I was highlighting and highlighting this part, because I was so grateful for the way that you phrased some of these things. You said, “my head knew the truth of God's love for me, but my heart had forgotten its touch”.
Kobe: Yeah.
Alison: That was so beautifully stated. Then you talked about how it's not that you hadn't been trying. You say, “I would change for a few months or weeks at a time, but I'd find my way back to the old patterns that made the truth of God's love feel like a dream I was chasing rather than a reality I was living in”.
So put the listener back in that pretty dark moment where things came to a head, where you had a faith background, and yet the pain of your life and your experiences and the stories and the trauma had caught right up to you. Talk to us a little bit about that.
Kobe: Yeah. I wrestled with whether I wanted to start the book that way because I felt like it was too vulnerable, too intense. I hadn't read many therapy books that started that way. for me, I realized I clicked with the clients and really felt a deep connection to and a really a deep sense of service to clients whose stories mirrored mine.
One thing I found in common is we all felt like we're asking the same questions internally, but we're not allowed to say them out loud. I wanted to start my book by saying the things out loud that a lot of people didn't feel like they had permission to say out loud that I love God and I'm still depressed.
I love God. I still feel anxiety. I'm going to Bible study. I'm reading my Bible. I'm praying. I'm seeking the Lord. I know God's love is real and present. But I am struggling to experience it right now, and that there's some people who find themselves wondering, does God really care about me? Does my life really matter?
I know I had reached that point because it felt like all the answers people were giving me were answers that made me feel like I wasn't feeling right. If you worked harder, if you did more, if you were more diligent... I started off by sharing my own story because I wanted the readers to know, I'm in this with you.
Sometimes when you're talking to a therapist, people, especially when people have no concept of what therapy is, you can feel so nervous. If this is an expert who's never gone through anything, how do I convey my pain in a way that is honest, but doesn't make me feel “crazy”?
I've had clients say that before. I was like, this book, I pray reaches the people who want to go to therapy, but are really skeptical. If they're skeptical, they need to know that I'm a person too. That I was first in the same seat as them before I was in the seat of a therapist.
Alison: That's exactly right. We're fellow pilgrims on this journey. As therapists, we have our own pain that we bring to the table. I loved it. I thought it was really a powerful story. I can imagine it was very vulnerable to share. As therapists, we're trained in a way, not to bring forth our own stories. So that adds another layer of dissonance sometimes, about sharing from behind the scenes. I really appreciated that you did that. It's really powerful.
One of the things you talked about was what it was like growing up as a twin. I thought this was so interesting, Kobe, and I wanted to touch on it because we often think of trauma in the context of our families of origin.
I thought it was so interesting that sometimes these sibling relationships, even siblings we love, can evoke feelings of shame and trauma inside of us. You talk about being the “bad twin" and how it was almost sanctioned by that narrative about you. There is a moment you describe where some family members, it was your aunts, even verbally are like, yeah, you're the bad twin.
You know what I thought? Oh my gosh. It's just, it's one of those things that's so relatable. I know so many of my listeners are like, yeah, I was the scapegoat. I was the bad one. And that creates this narrative in our mind. Talk to me a little bit about how that affected you and how that damaged some of your own internal self concept.
Kobe: Yeah, absolutely. I talk to my clients about the ways that we find ourselves aligning with things that people say; my clients may say something like, oh, I'm not allowed to do that. I can't do that. I'll say, whose voice is that? They'll be like, what do you mean? I'm like, if you weren't saying that to yourself, who's the first person that comes to mind who would say that to you? We forget that we absorb the voices.
Alison: Yeah.
Kobe: I found out at 25 that I know all the words to Shania Twain's song. I'm like, oh, I guess I have heard this so many times that my brain just learned it. I didn't even know. I wasn't sitting down to learn the words.
I absorbed it because my brain was hearing it and my brain kept it. And that's how it was for me being labeled the bad twin. I had absorbed that. Also, when you have two people who have similarities in every way, people love dichotomy. People love a hero and a villain.
People love yin and yang, good and bad. They love that differentiation. I was the loud, excited, athlete, theater kid. My sister was a little more quiet and reserved and artistic. I started to live, and I say this in the book, that we live in the stories we tell ourselves, but the stories we tell ourselves are often stories that were told to us first.
I was told the story that I was a bad kid. Then I started regurgitating to myself that I was a bad kid. Then I started living out what I thought a bad kid would be. Yeah.
Alison: It's so true. Even listening to you, I have an older sister and we weren't twins, but there was a narrative around, she was the writer. I still remember to this day, I've now published several books and it's still, “I'm not a writer. This isn't who I am”. Because the narrative in our family is that she was more literary. I love what you're saying. Whose voice is that? Whose voice is that? Because sometimes we don't even know we've subconsciously absorbed and believed the story and it feels so true.
Kobe: Absolutely. One of the examples I give to my clients is, if I say twinkle, twinkle, little, and I stop there, I said what happens? They're like, my brain says star. I'm like, yeah, your brain filled in the blank before you had time to even think about the fact that there was a blank. If I asked you, when's the first time someone taught you that song, you probably couldn't remember.
Alison: Yeah. Powerful. Thank you.
Kobe: That's how those narratives work.
Alison: Yeah, it's just, I'm the bad twin. It's almost subconsciously, you could fill in that blank and it's hard to take that out and examine it for the truth of it without first becoming conscious that you even have that belief hidden in there.
Kobe: Yep.
Alison: So you become a therapist. What was that leg of the journey? Like, how did you decide I want to not only heal, but I want to study this so that I can help others.
Kobe: Do you want the honest answer? I feel like I found out I wanted to help people after I got into grad school. I knew that I wanted to help people, but I was in a space where I was like, maybe I'll be a campus minister. I want to help people. I didn't know exactly how. So I was like, God, I'm going to apply to grad school. I only applied to one school, Gordon Commonwealth. I was like, if I get in, it's a sign.
So I got in and I was like, oh, okay. I loved my program in many ways, but I really struggled finding a therapist who understood my African context, who understood my black context, who understood my Christian context.
So it felt like I had to choose. I had to choose either a Christian therapist or a black therapist. I couldn't find any African therapists, and I felt like I couldn't find someone who I didn't have to spend time educating. I thought, you know what? I will be one, I'll be one more person in this space that people can come to and know that there is someone who understands the nuances and the complexities of what it means to be all these things, including a twin. What it means to be all these things.
When I got into the field, I knew that I wanted to learn diligently, but I also knew that I didn't want to lose who I was as a person. The book really demonstrates that. I was like, I loved therapy and sometimes I felt like I had to pull the personality out of my therapist. Are you a human? Are you connecting to me? Do you see my pain? Does this hurt you too?
I knew I wanted to be that therapist. I wanted to be a therapist who obviously honored all the ethical guidelines and all the legalities and stuff, but I wanted to be a human being. I knew that was something, even when I look at my African background, I look at my Christian background, stories are core to trust building and core to community healing.
I knew that in the way that I did my work, I would put part of my story as a tool and maybe not in the clinical settings all the time. I sometimes reflect off clients' experiences. But this book was a really great way for me to be able to do that in a way that honored my boundaries as a therapist, but also helped serve in a way that aligns with my personal values.
Alison: I love what you're saying. I'm a human as a therapist, right? My whole self is in this. The book reflects that. There's so many different ways you reflect in the book, those different elements of your story as a Christian, as a Black woman. You talk in the book about how specifically for your client case studies, as we know, when we write up client case studies, composites are composites.
We are always very careful. But one of the things you said is, I'm going to intentionally use African names for my clients as a way to honor that part of my heritage. I loved that. There were so many ways. It's all those threads. We bring all of that. I love that you're doing that. I love that you're creating that space for other people. That's so beautiful.
One of the things you're saying is so important for the listener to hear. Sometimes we have to work for that. Sometimes we have to wrestle for that person who really gets us. It's not sometimes so easy to find a therapist; sometimes we have to work for it. Internally we might be like, oh, this isn't really a fit or they're not really getting me.
There's a little bit of wrestling, and sometimes it can take a minute to find that person where we're really like, oh, this person gets me. Along your journey, whether in graduate school or after, have you found some folks who have stood out in that landscape and what was that like for you?
Kobe: You know what's really interesting? I found those people, but I found those people only after I accepted that maybe the most important thing is that my needs get met. They didn't always fit the bill. I was like, I want a therapist like me. I was sent therapists that were completely opposite of me in thought, in, in religious belief in race, in all of it.
Those were the people that were so powerful for me. It was like, I had to get desperate enough to say, is this person qualified to help me process trauma? Yes. After going, I realized it was rewriting the internal narrative–maybe I don't need all the things that I keep telling myself I need.
Maybe all these rules I've set on myself to make healing possible and accessible are really barriers to me getting well. When I started accepting that someone does not have to meet all of my specific criteria, I started finding the right people at the right time in my journey. I found the right therapist for when I really needed to process some trauma.
I found the right therapist for when I really wanted to navigate the nuances of marriage. I found the right therapist when I really wanted to process what it meant to become a mom, the right therapist as I built my business, and It was really cool. Sometimes even in those different stages, those therapists evolved with me, which is really cool.
Therapists get training and they try different modalities and it was cool to be on the receiving end of that, even as a therapist. But I love the fact that my therapists were not always the people that I thought I needed. And yet they shifted the trajectory of my life in ways that I can't express because I was willing to be open.
If anyone's listening, I would say put the first thing first. Put the first thing first. If you're really struggling with anxiety, find someone who specializes in anxiety and let yourself be surprised. If you're surprised in a way that you don't like, it's okay to change your mind.
Alison: I love that. It is first and foremost, a relationship, and then first and foremost, it is about the specific thing that you're struggling with. There is an expert, there's someone there who's trained. People always ask me if you should only see a Christian therapist.
All I can say is, in my experience, it really depends on the topic, but one of the therapists who's been the most helpful to me does not share my faith background at all. What's been so helpful is she can actually see the ways in which I can defer that subtle spiritual bypassing, using, “oh, wait, now, wait a minute, let's examine that a little bit”.
It's still very respectful of my beliefs. It's always been really interesting to me, to your point, sometimes help comes in the places we least expect it.
Kobe: Yeah, I tell my clients who ask similarly oh, I'm only looking for a Christian therapist and I'm like, I'm sure it'd be great to have a Christian therapist, but also let's say you're looking for a therapist and they're not Christian. How do you know if they're a good fit for you? I said the best, the most powerful marker of someone who could truly help you is their humility and their curiosity. Are they willing to believe you? That you're the expert of your experience?
Because I'll say, sometimes, that can be hard for Christian therapists. Sometimes we're like, oh, I know the spiritual answer to this in Mark chapter eight. We have to remind people that, like I mentioned in the book, my greatest breakthrough in my walk with Jesus at that time was with a therapist who did not believe in Jesus at all.
She was like, Oh, Jesus is so kind. Why is he always mad at you? If he's so full of grace, how come every time you talk about him, like he doesn't sound very graceful? We're doing EMDR and she was like, do you want to invite Jesus into the room? I was like, yeah. It was a moment that literally shifted my entire life and my entire way of doing therapy.
And she was not a believer.
Alison: What a powerful story. I love that. She held up the mirror to you about your own beliefs and challenged some underlying assumption there that wasn't really about Jesus, but it was about, again, to your point, these messages that you had picked up.
Talk to us a little bit. About your understanding of trauma, how you talk about it with clients, how you understand it, how you look for it as a clinician.
Kobe: Yeah. We love to talk about trauma nowadays, especially on social media, but I come from a more subtle point of view. There's a lot of people who experienced trauma who do not recognize it as trauma because it's not a car crash, it's not an assault, it's not a tornado. I tell my clients, trauma is any past event that affects how you show up in the present and how you perceive the future.
I differentiate between something that hurts and something that's traumatic. Something that hurts does not shape the way you live your life from that moment forward.
Alison: That's good.
Kobe: It does not create a sense of anxiety, worry, fear, or self-loathing from that moment forward. When we experience trauma, it really is us experiencing a level of distress that far surpasses the skills we have to manage that distress. So your body is reliving, not remembering, it's reliving those experiences from the past in the present, which is why you have distress in the present.
I try to help people understand that trauma are these wounds. In Greek, the word trauma translates to the word wound; they are wounds that need to be healed and tended to, and some wounds heal up perfectly and you can be good as new and run as fast as you did before. There are some wounds that will leave scars and some wounds will leave a little bit of a limp, but there's always healing that can happen.
That's something that is really important to say. It sounds so simple, but as much as we have educated people about trauma online and in our work, we have not educated them that you can heal from trauma. There is a world in which you can not meet any of the criteria for PTSD.
I remember one of my clients' faces. We've been working together for three years and I was like, hey, let's go through your treatment plan. I said, how do you feel? She's like, I feel like a new person. I'm going through all the things. I'm like, you no longer meet the criteria for PTSD. She was like, what do you mean? I was like, you no longer meet the criteria for PTSD.
This diagnosis is no longer current. She was like, I thought when you're diagnosed with something, you have it forever. I said, there are some things that are on the more chronic side, but no, there is a resolution to trauma. There can be a resolution to trauma. Anytime I talk about trauma, I promise myself that is something I will say out loud. Trauma can be resolved the same way it can be inflicted. It is the same way that it can be resolved.
Alison: Yeah, that's really good. I really appreciate what you're saying. We had a psychiatrist on the podcast last week and we were going back and forth on the value of diagnoses. One of the things he said was, it should help us mark the path toward healing, as opposed to putting a label on, this is my identity.
To your point, sometimes we have a diagnosis that will be with us for a long time, but it should help us. I love what you're saying there, especially about PTSD. We want to name it. It's so important to name it for what it is, so that we can get on the right healing path therapeutically, but not so that we have to just live in it for the rest of our lives. It's so hopeful.
Kobe: Yeah. It helps us see exactly what is being healed.
Alison: Yeah.
Kobe: I no longer have flashbacks and I had flashbacks. I no longer have nightmares and I had nightmares. That has been healing for my clients. They're like, wow, because when you're along the journey, sometimes you miss the ways you're being healed. As soon as one thing is restored, your mind is like, now we need to focus on this.
Sometimes it's so good for you to look back and be like, wow, these are all the things in the last three years of therapy that I once carried that I no longer carry as a daily experience.
Alison: I love that. I love the intentionality with which to pause and look at that. Because if we don't do that, life is challenging, and new challenges will come up. We'll have new relational challenges. Our kids will go through stuff. We're always going to have stuff, but to pause and go, in this particular part of our healing, look at how far we've come.
That's really beautiful. In both your personal experience and in your work as a clinician, what are some of your favorite practices or modalities or your favorite ways to get into the deep tissue work of trauma work?
Kobe: Yes, this is one of my favorite questions. I love psychodrama and sociometry.
Alison: I love it. Yeah.
Kobe: Because the world is virtual, there's a lot of adaptation and we don't get to go as deep, but I truly believe that imagination sometimes gives us access to a heavenly reality that already exists, but we haven't had the courage to access yet. Pretend you're not yourself. Pretend you're somebody else. Pretend you could go back.
It is such a powerful reminder that the trauma is in the present because the moment I set up the room and we pretend like you're back there, you're actually back there. Your body feels that way. The tears are there, the feeling, the shaking, and we can go back with the resources of the present to the wounds and apply them to the wounds of the past.
We can take the wisdom of the present and apply it to the wound of the past. I love that about sociometry and psychodrama and gently, skillfully replaying some moments that are deeply wounding and giving people a chance to do it again.
I had a psychodrama moment with a client who got to go back and say goodbye to her father who passed away. She missed that moment and she went back and said goodbye. It did something. Movement, action–healing is holistic. It's not something we think ourselves into. It's something we move ourselves into. I can talk about this forever, but my favorite is seeing people access the reality that play and imagination are our core to healing.
Alison: It's one of the things I love about IFS, the internal event where you can go back to that. But I love how in the book you actually talk about your own experience in a group.
Kobe: On site. Yep. At on site.
Alison: Even when you said that right now, I could feel in my body, some things I'm working through with some family of origin stuff, even at my age, with older aging parents. When you said it, I could feel it in my body. Oh, wow. That's what's going on. I'm back in that 10 year old self where it's like, oh, I can't say this. I can't do this. I can almost feel the tears come to my eyes.
Because current situations and different life transitions bring up those old memories, those old emotions, and to have that opportunity, like you're saying, to go back with someone else witnessing you. It's so powerful. It's so powerful.
Kobe: Yes. Even thinking about the reality that community is such a powerful context to heal in. But that doesn't mean we always have to heal in community in the way that we've always been taught. So for that client, they were really struggling with the reality of, I can't break down because this other person in the room needs someone to be strong. All the strings were attached to my reaction.
But when you go back to psychodrama, there are no strings attached to your reaction. You get to become more aware of the strings attached to your reactions, into your emotions, into your expression. But when it's time for you to really release, there are no strings attached.
These are strangers. We'll never see each other again unless you want to keep in touch. This gets to be about you, in the context of your unresolved pain, without you having to carry the burden of how other people will think and react.
Alison: Man, I love what you're saying about community because you're right. Coming out of church backgrounds, it's so different what you're describing. I want people to read that part of your book where you talk about your own experience at Onsite. It's with anger. It is powerful and it's a different layer. It's not talking, head-confessing all these things. You were in it. You were in it.
Kobe: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. It's my favorite thing. I had a retreat this year in February, where we were in the Charlotte area and I did a psychodrama trauma intensive. It was in a beautiful lakefront house and we were screaming and crying and it was great. I loved it. It was amazing. It was so fun. Sometimes people think, but I can't do that. No, you can, but you're right about the fact that it's not safe to do it in that context.
Alison: Yeah. Yeah. You couldn't do it then. Here's a different context in which, what is it like to experience that with people in the room who can hold the bigness of it? Of what you're feeling and of who you are in this moment, all those fears? I love that. So now you are, man, you're, you've written this book, you're speaking, you're seeing clients, you've got two kids.
Kobe: Babies.
Alison: Babies. There's so much going on in your life. What practices are you personally engaged with that help you, because as you and I both know, the process of healing is a journey, it's a practice. So what practices help you stay grounded, stay inwardly attuned yourself, to your own needs in the midst of all that matters to you?
Kobe: I try to make sure that every morning I read my Bible and pray and do some breathing exercises. The Dwell app. This is not an ad. The Dwell app has been incredible for me. They do guided meditations, Lectio Divina, breath prayer, and I facilitate that with lots of clients. But you can't facilitate it for yourself as easily.
Sometimes it's nice to be led. So I try to do that in the mornings, get outside, drink water, and take my vitamins. I also go to therapy. I love my therapist. She is in many ways a lifeline for me. I have my therapist and I lean into my community. There's something really cool about having a community in which no one carries everything.
There is a time, especially as a church girl, you can be like, oh, I have my small group and they are my community and they hold everything for me. Or my husband holds everything for me, or my best friend holds everything for me. But there's been a powerful shift for me, where I've been able to say, nobody has to hold everything for me.
It's been cool to be able to say, I have to hold some stuff for myself. I have an incredible husband who holds things for me. I have incredible friends who show up for me and I love showing up for them. I have a therapist, I have a church community. So I have been really leaning into the season being connected because I think, honestly, I'm still dealing with some of the effects of COVID-19 from 2020. I know it feels long ago, but I was pregnant the entirety of COVID. I found out I was pregnant with my son two days before the lockdown started.
I was so excited. I was like, yes, a two week break. This is going to be so great. Remember when we were excited? Lord, we didn't know. We did not know. I was so excited to have that break turned into a season of anxiety, of fear, of all the things. Reinvesting back into community and giving of myself to community and letting myself receive community has been the biggest ritual for me.
Alison: I love what you're saying about not putting it all in one place, diversifying in a way, making sure there's different pockets. I also think you're making a really good point. I've noticed this as well, to not underestimate the ripple effects of that shutdown. Especially on our rhythms of community.
There have been so many changes, even the virtual space and all the things, so we shouldn’t underestimate how we continue to work through that. I'm curious, we have this category when we think about therapy. I don't know if the listener is aware of this, but we tend to think of, are you in maintenance, which means you're essentially doing well, but you continue to see a therapist to stay tuned up, versus when you're going because you need a very specific targeted intervention. Do you keep up a maintenance approach to therapy for yourself?
Kobe: Yeah, absolutely. I realized that by the time I'm realizing something is wrong, something's been wrong for a while. So the way that my brain naturally works is that you definitely know what it means to have book deadlines and see clients and you're showing up on social media, you're engaging in your personal community, you're trying to engage your online community, you have a family, like you have your own world outside of this digital world.
Probably two years ago, when writing my book, if I am like, whoo, something's not right, I need to talk to someone. It's probably not been right for a little bit.
Alison: I love that self-awareness. This is a proactive thing I can do, to keep having someone check in on me. I agree with you. I've got to have someone asking me, because yeah, you're right. By the time you're asking for help, it's an emergency.
Kobe: Things change so quickly. Truly things change so quickly. We've seen this week, and current events, and I've realized it is much better to go to therapy and have nothing to talk about than to have to reestablish a therapeutic relationship and see if a therapist has an opening.
As a therapist, my books are full. Some of my clients have been discharged and decided not to do maintenance. Sometimes when they want to come back, I would love to, but there's no time on my schedule. So part of it is also protective, like knowing that I always have access to support whether I feel like I need it in a dire way or not.
Alison: Oh, that's wise. There's so much wisdom in that. I would say to the listener, if you find someone, especially someone that you connect with that really can help you, that's a relationship. I understand there's a cost, there's expense. That's hard.
Kobe: I'm cosigning you. Don't let ‘em go.
Alison: And you can talk to them about that. Say, I want to keep this relationship. Could we go to monthly? Could we go, especially if there's a financial burden to that, talk that through with a therapist and ask about that.
Kobe: Don’t be afraid to advocate for yourself. I had a client who was like, can I do 15 minute check-ins? Can we prorate it to 15 minutes? I was like, sure. So now we do 15 minute check ins. When we started realizing that the 15 minutes was getting a little tight, she was like, can we do 30 minutes? I will.
I don't typically advertise 30 minutes, but we've built such a longstanding therapeutic alliance. I've been seeing this person for years and that's also the benefit of working in private practice. I'm able to add things based on people's needs. Then it was, hey, can we go back to a full session? Yeah, we can go back to a full session.
So don't be afraid to ask once you've built a relationship with your therapist. Don't be afraid to ask if they're willing to accommodate the way they provide services to meet your needs. Because sometimes the answer is yes.
Alison: That's right. I love that. Advocate for yourself. I love what you're saying. Because I've had that happen where I'll be like, oh, I need a little tune up. Then suddenly I'm like, oh, we'll be doing some major deep work for months.
Kobe: See you next Tuesday.
Alison: Yeah, exactly. We are all in that boat. All right. So I am so thrilled for you joining us. I have a few questions I like to ask all my guests, but before we go there, I want to ask you, where can people find your work? I know all my listeners are all going to want to come work with you. So where can people find you? At least they can get your book because it's so good.
Kobe: Absolutely, you can go to kobecampbell.com. All my social media handles are kobecampbell_. So YouTube, Instagram. TikTok, all of those spaces. Unfortunately, there are a lot of fake pages and I'm not verified on all platforms. So remember it has an underscore at the end of it.
You can get my book, Why Am I Like This, really anywhere where books are sold. Target, Walmart, Amazon, Books A Million, Barnes and Noble. Yeah, you can grab it in any of those spaces.
Alison: Such a great resource. Strongly encourage everyone to check it out. It's so good that you go really deep into what some of these interventions look like and how you apply them. The ACEs, you talk a lot about the history of trauma, how it's been understood.
It's a really great resource. All right, Kobe, what would you say to that younger 20 ish girl who you opened up the book with, what would you say to her now, if you could spend a little time with her?
Kobe: I would say to her, “you have no clue what that seed of courage created in your life, that life gets so much better, and even though this moment feels so big, there are going to be some days where you forgot it even happened”.
Alison: I love that.
Kobe: And you go girl. Add that in there too.
Alison: I love that. I'm so happy for her that she has you.
Kobe: Thank you. Me too.
Alison: Yeah. What is bringing out the best of you right now?
Kobe: What is bringing out the best in me? Talking to my friends. Friendship is one of the relationships that we forget also needs maintenance. It's been so cool to, as my career has evolved, to let my friends into different nuances of the career. Because I realize that I published the book and none of my friends knew what publishing entailed.
When I was stressed out about deadlines and editing and stuff, they didn't know how to comfort me because they didn't know. It's been cool, saying this is what I do and this is how I do it. This is why it stresses me out sometimes. This is why I love it. That has been great and moving my body. Moving my body and deciding that there does not have to be a limit or a goal.
Kobe: Five minutes dancing, walking, whatever it is, it's about moving my body. Reminding myself that I'm alive, reminding my body and my limbs that they're still needed and not about achieving any goals.
Alison: I love that. I love that. I love what you're saying about updating your friends and bringing them into your professional life. It can be easy to create a dichotomy there, I know I've discovered, so I love what you're saying. Sometimes our friends don't know something over here has changed.
It can happen with vocation. It can happen when you become a mom. It can happen in different seasons of life where our friends don't necessarily know, to take the time to go, hey, I want to let you into this. I love that. That's beautiful.
Kobe: Yeah.
Alison: Last question, what needs or desires are you working to protect?
Kobe: Oh, that's a good question. I'm protecting my need to rest. I'm rediscovering what rest is. I recently went on an eight day vacation and I brought my laptop and I realized that my idea of rest was being able to work without interruption.
Alison: I relate to that.
Kobe: Every time I tried to open my laptop, I couldn't do it. The entire eight days, it was probably the first eight days of my life since summer break in high school that I did not work a single moment. I was like, whoa, like it was mind blowing.
I was like, oh, this is rest. Then protecting that, like I'm discovering that rest. It's truly delighting in the present without a constant need to try and work for what I need to be reaching for in the future. I'm trying to protect that. I got a lot of self-talk of, it's okay if this doesn't happen. This being book two. If it doesn't happen in this time, it means that you are a better person when it comes out.
Kobe: If you're healthier, if you're more well. I’m trying to present the best.
Alison: That's good. I love that. I love that. I honor that in you. The both-and. The part of you that strives and the part of you that's okay. Good for you. I love that. I love that. That's beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing your time and presence and talents and words of wisdom with all of us.
Kobe: Thank you for having me. It's great talking with you.
Why do I struggle with mental health?
How do I respond to Christians who claim there's no such thing as mental illness?
What does my mental health diagnosis mean?
If you've asked any of these questions, you don't want to miss today's episode! Join me as I discuss these crucial topics with Duke University psychiatrist and theologian, Warren Kinghorn, a leading expert in integrating Christian faith and mental health.
Here’s what we cover:
- Does anxiety come from inside of me or outside of me? (7:22)
- The most important questions we must answer as human beings (11:03)
- What are the 7 benchmarks of mental health? (30:57)
- What is a Christian vision of flourishing? (34:27)
- Warren’s response to John MacArthur’s claims that there is no such thing as mental illness (41:08)
- How to think about diagnoses & what to look for in a clinician (46:23)
Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here.
Do you have questions for Dr. Alison? Leave them here.
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Additional Resources:
- Connect with Dr. Alison on Facebook or Instagram
- Leave your questions here
- Wayfaring: a Christian Approach to Mental Health Care by Warren Kinghorn
- The Best of You by Dr. Alison Cook
- Romans 12
Related Episode:
- Episode 45: Strong like Water—Finding the Freedom, Safety, & Compassion to Move through Hard Things & Experience True Flourishing with Aundi Kolber
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: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I'm so glad you're here this week.
I'm so thrilled to introduce a brand new series called Therapists on Therapy, where I've invited some amazing thinkers and thought leaders at the intersection of faith and mental health to talk to us about current best practices in the field of mental health, as well as some specific areas of specialty that many of you have asked about–things you've struggled with in your own life or loved ones have struggled with.
I wanted to bring in some of the wisdom of the room to go deeper into some of these topics. And my goal is to equip us to understand how to advocate for ourselves, how to get the support and the help that we need. Life is hard. We are all facing a lot of challenges. I know so many of you, whether it's in your own life or whether you're parenting kids or whether you have friends or spouses who are going through hard challenges—You're trying to get to the root of the challenge that you're facing, and figure out the best way to get help through it. And in this series, I want to introduce you to some of the leading voices and the leading topics in the field of mental health so that together we can equip ourselves to become the best version of ourselves in partnership with God's spirit.
If there is a specific topic you'd love for me to cover or a specific therapist you'd love for me to invite on for this series, please let me know. You can find me on Facebook or Instagram @DrAlisonCook and leave a comment for me under any post. I'll look for those there. You can also leave a review for the podcast. In that review, you can tell me a topic that you'd really love for us to cover during this episode.
Finally, you can send an email to info@dralisoncook.com and we'll get that there. And we're also going to link to The Best of You Podcast question form in the show notes. So wherever you're listening to this episode, go to the show notes and you'll see that link where you can leave a question for us. You might have a question for us that you want us to answer during this series, or you might want to let us know about a topic you'd really like for us to cover.
To kick us off in this series, I could not be more thrilled to have one of the world's foremost experts in the topic of Christian mental health,joining us for a conversation about what is mental health? How is it different from mental illness? How can we begin to move toward a picture of wholeness, a picture of health that applies to all of us?
Every single one of us wants to be moving toward mental, emotional, and spiritual health. And what does that even look like, especially for those of us who are Christians who are seeking to follow Christ and incorporate our spiritual lives into our mental and emotional health?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn is a psychiatrist and theological ethicist at Duke University. His work centers on the role of religious communities and caring for persons with mental health issues and how Christians in particular can engage in mental health practices. He is on faculty at Duke Divinity School, as well as on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center. He is the co-director of the Theology, Medicine and Cultural Initiative at Duke Divinity School. And he practices psychiatry in the Durham VA medical center. Warren got his MD at Harvard university and his doctorate in theology at Duke university. He's brilliant. He understands the science of mental health, and he is a deep and faithful Christian.
I loved this conversation with Warren Kinghorn. I'm always thrilled to find folks who are thinking on such deep levels about the intersection of Christianity and mental health. He has a brand new book out called Wayfaring: a Christian Approach to Mental Health Care. It's a fascinating, well-researched deep dive into the history of mental health in this country including some of the problems about how the field of mental health developed. It also includes a deep integration with Christian theology, spirituality, and practice. Please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Warren A. Kinghorn.
***
Warren, I am so thrilled to have this conversation with you today. You are bringing such an important integration to light with this book, Wayfaring: a Christian Approach to Mental Health Care. One of the things I love, you argue that in light of the gospel, we see that mental health care at its best is not about fixing broken machines, but rather about attending and guiding wayfarers who are loved by God, who are on a journey to God, and who are invited by God's grace to freedom, wonder, rest, and loving relationship with God and others.
I just, I loved that. That's the whole thesis of this book. We are not problems to be fixed. We are humans to be invited into a loving experience with God and with each other. And as a psychiatrist, as a Christian, there's a whole lot underneath that. I guess I wanted to start in the book, you spend a lot of time at the beginning talking about this medical model that psychiatry-to-date has really been a part of. What is that? What do we mean by that? And what are some of the issues with that, that you're trying to address in this book?
Warren: First of all, Alison, thank you for having me on, and you so beautifully stated the central themes of the book. I do think that the medical model is tricky when we think as people of faith about flourishing and about mental health. I'm a psychiatrist, which means I'm a physician. I went to medical school, and I'm trained in medicine.
I do believe in the goodness of medicine and of psychiatry, and there's ways in which thinking medically can actually lead us on the wrong track. There's a long history within modern medicine and also within psychiatry of thinking about the human being as a kind of machine, about the body as a complex machine, about the brain as a machine, about the mind even as a machine.
And when things aren't going well, we sometimes think what's wrong is that the machine is somehow broken. There's something wrong in either neural circuits or in the brain or in the endocrine system. And we need to find what's wrong with the machine and find ways to fix the machine and to set it right again.
But humans aren't machines. We're creatures and we're organisms. One of the things that I talk about in the book is the specific way that this machine way of thinking can show up in psychiatry. It's not always specifically related to thinking about the body being broken, but it has to do with how we organize our experience.
So I'm a psychiatrist in the VA system. I see veterans and I'm really proud and honored to do that, but as a psychiatrist, when people come to me, they come with what we might consider unwanted experience or behavior. They're not doing well. They're having emotions they don't want to have. Their relationships are not going well.
In my clinic room, I listen to that and I say, oh, I now understand what's happening with you. These are symptoms. I rename the unwanted experience as symptoms. So the symptom might be lack of sleep or lack of interest in pleasurable activities. And then I aggregate those symptoms into diagnoses.
A certain number of symptoms over a certain period of time in psychiatry becomes a diagnosis, like major depressive disorder or ADHD or bipolar disorder. And then I can reach into my toolbox of evidence-based treatments and pull out treatments for this diagnosis. That could be a medication. It could be a referral for a form of talk therapy. It could be another kind of treatment.
I send the patient on, and then the patient comes back to see me a week or two or three or four weeks later, and I say how are things going? And in the medical model, if the patient comes back and they say my symptoms are improved, and I say great, the treatment's working and we're going to keep going with that–now there's a lot of good about that way of thinking. I want my patients to be in less distress. I want their symptoms to improve.
That way of thinking about mental health as symptoms that need to be improved, is one way of thinking about how we can develop new forms of therapy, but there's a lot that's left out with that as well. One thing that happens when we think about mental illness as this collection of symptoms that has to do with something that's broken in the body as a machine, is that it tends to focus attention on the inside.
We think that mental health problems are things that are inside us. They're internal to us. They're our unique problems. And we may not always focus on the relationships that we're part of, the communities that we live in, the broader culture that we live in. Another problem is that the focus of treatment is often on symptom reduction. So if I can prescribe a medication that is focused on symptoms and a patient says they're doing better, I think great, I'm doing my job as a psychiatrist.
What if that reduction of symptoms actually isn't helping the person to live more fully and wholly in the world and to experience a kind of fullness of life? Am I really doing my job?
People often think that the problem is that their brains are broken or their bodies are broken, and that leads people to think about biological treatments like medications as the first line of treatment. When maybe that shouldn't be the first line treatment–maybe talk therapy or other things should be first.
I think another problem is that that way of thinking often doesn't address the kinds of questions that we most need to answer for ourselves and with each other as human beings, which is, who am I? Do I matter? Am I loved? And what communities do I belong to or not? These are deeper questions that often can get ignored if we focus on this kind of mechanistic view of mental health treatment as managing symptoms.
Alison: It's so profound what you're saying, especially from within the medical community. I know as an early therapist, training in a clinical psychology program, to your point, I remember a client specifically who was telling me all about her anxiety. She couldn't sleep, all the symptoms you're describing, that would classify as some sort of generalized anxiety disorder or specific anxiety disorder.
But as she told me her story, it turned out that her parents had kicked her out of the house at the age of 12, and that she was living by herself. She was 18 and having to support younger siblings. And I thought, of course you're anxious. Of course you're anxious. I write about this in The Best of You. As a human being, versus a therapist, the human being in me is saying, you need support. This is a community issue. The anxiety is not inside of you.
And that's what you're teasing out here. Seeing patients and then trying to figure out, what is actually the most helpful to this person in this situation? Is it a medical diagnosis that we treat with medication, or do we look at the whole context of this story?
Warren: And to be clear, when somebody comes in and they're really struggling with anxiety, they deserve and need care and help, and there's help for them. And that help may well be in medication. So medications can be very helpful as well as other kinds of treatment. But I think that it's important to think, what kind of picture are we looking at?
Anxiety is a great example, but when I teach medical students and residents at Duke and my work as an academic psychiatrist, I often encourage them to think of what's happening with the patients for whom they care in two different ways. In my experience, it's really hard to keep these two things together at the same time.
So this is a little bit simplistic, but I write about this in the book. One of them is what we might consider the “inside out" model of mental health problems, which is this basic idea that if I'm in distress, if I have anxiety, for example, then the problem starts from within me. It either starts from my genes or my neurotransmitters or my serotonin levels or maybe something deep inside my personality.
Then that shows up in my relationships and in my community and in the way that I live my life. But the problem is on the inside. And it starts on the inside, and therefore I need to fix what's on the inside. Maybe things on the outside will get better. I encourage my trainees to think, what if we actually invert the view?
What if we think of the primary problem not as something that starts on the inside of someone; maybe it starts in relationships or starts in the way that a community lives together or a school or a class or a church, or what if it has to do with our culture and being a place that there's so much uncertainty and fear and polarization?
What if the anxiety that we feel is not something that starts from the inside, and shows up from the outside? It's something that's a reaction to very real challenges and stressors and trials that are happening all around us, and then it shows up on the inside of our experience, but also it marks itself in our bodies. We get tense; we start to have fight or flight responses. There's ways in which that affects us.
What if mental health problems are not problems on the inside but rather fundamentally problems of community and culture and relationship that then show up on the inside? How we respond isn't going to be like, how do I fix myself? It's going to be, how do I acknowledge what's happening around me and think about what that means?
Alison: I love that. I want to pause here for a second. I love what you're saying. It resonates with my experience with clients. What does that mean then for how we approach care, if we're going to take into account the whole context? I know one of the things you talk about in the book is shame.
That locating the disorder “inside the person” can really evoke shame. I'm imagining one of the ways this outside-in model is saying, this is a systemic issue. It's not your fault. Let's try to get to the root. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but how does it change how we approach our suffering and our clients who are suffering?
Warren: Yeah, in part it has to do with not thinking that our struggles and our suffering are something that only has to do with us as individuals. We all become who we are in-relationship. We have an ongoing need for relationships, even if we don't necessarily always see that or acknowledge that or feel that in the same way.
We experience it differently, but the way that we are together as human beings is really important. Much of our distress is a response, is a reaction, to very real things that are happening around us–to trauma, to stress, to violence. So the communities can either be accepting and loving or not.
There's all sorts of ways in which we can respond. Social media, the way that we've become both polarized on social media and we're always thinking about, I'm not measuring up to others. My experience is that shame is a deeply important dynamic within a lot of mental health problems that's actually not talked about in that way, maybe as much as it should be.
I think most broadly, and I love the work of Brené Brown on this, I love the work in the Christian world of Curt Thompson on this, but I think of shame as a kind of response that has to do with two ways of thinking. One is that I am not _______ enough, where the blank is whatever I perceive to be absolutely necessary to belong to a community that I really either want or need to belong to.
I teach at a university, so that blank might be I'm not smart enough, I'm not well-read enough, I'm not social enough, I'm not orthodox enough, I'm not progressive enough, I'm not, all sorts of other things. That's the first thing. And the second, that because I am not _____ enough, when other people actually realize that, they will exclude me, and I'll no longer be welcome in this community.
Shame is that fear that we are actually not enough for our communities and we're going to be excluded by them. And the natural response to shame, and we all feel shame at different parts of our lives and over the course of our lives, there's some unhealthy responses.
We can try to block it out, and that doesn't help very much. We can try to numb our emotions through pleasure seeking behavior or substances or sex or lots of other things. We can shift it off by deflecting the responsibility to other people, which may be actually truthful in a way, but it doesn't necessarily help to deal with the dynamic.
My favorite way of coping with shame over the years has been to work harder, to keep going, stay busy, keep achieving, so that I can convince myself and others that I am enough to be here, in whatever place this is. And that doesn't work well either. That's how people in mid-career, like I am, often get burnt out because they have worked harder and you cannot outrun shame forever.
In the Christian world, the response to shame and I think even therapists would say this, is to accept it. To accept its reality, and to allow ourselves to take the risk to be vulnerable with ourselves and in relationships and in those communities. To realize that those shame-thoughts that we think we're going to be excluded may actually not be the case. To take the risk of showing up in vulnerable relationships.
As Christians, I think we have this incredible promise that no matter who we are, no matter what we've done, no matter how we've achieved or not, that God knows us and loves us and holds us and sees us as part of God's good creation. And that's such an incredible gift to us, because we come into this world loved, and nothing can ever take that away.
Alison: I love that. It's beautiful that we have that resource as part of that shame resilience. What you would say to someone who is struggling with shame or is struggling with anxiety and has really felt like, “oh, this is something broken inside of me”. What would you say to that listener?
Warren: To someone who's either struggling with shame, or with anxiety, or with anything else and thinks, oh the problem's me, then I think one is, don't try to fix it yourself. Bring that experience honestly to someone else, and for some people maybe that's not a professional. Maybe it's a trusted friend or a mentor. Maybe it's a pastor. There are lots of people who I think could help, but do consider bringing that into a relationship with a therapist and being open and honest about that.
Frankly, when we're trapped in ways of thinking and feeling that have gone on for a while, and we think the problem is within us, it's almost impossible to talk ourselves out of that easily. Having someone else reflect our experience back to us to say, hey I hear what you're saying. Is this right? Maybe what you're feeling makes sense in a certain context of your relationships.
But also, being willing to talk about our experience with someone else in a way that makes us actually take some risks and feel vulnerable, that someone else is listening. The experience of speaking to someone else and having them reflect our experience back to us in a way that's loving, that's not immediately met with judgment, that allows a space to hold, that is itself freeing.
That itself is a treatment for shame, because it's no longer ours to bear alone. It's to be brought before others, and I think the way in which we can bring our shame, our anxiety, our fears, our experience that we don't want anybody else to know about, that's the path of healing.
Alison: Yeah. To your point, it's such a paradox. So much of our pain, all the things that we struggle with, happen in the context of relationships. They're also healed in the context of relationships.
Warren: That's right. That's right.
Alison: There's this beautiful quote that you have about emotions that I wanted to ask you about. We talk a lot about emotions on the podcast. A lot of my listeners, including myself, have received messages from faith communities about emotions being bad or emotions being wrong. You're not supposed to have certain emotions.
We talk a lot on the podcast about honoring emotions as cues. You have this incredible quote, you look at emotions as “powerful signs of love that can orient the journey of the wayfarer”. Talk to us a little bit about that. What do you mean when you say emotions are signs of love that can orient us on our journey? That's powerful.
Warren: Yes. In a lot of the book, I draw on the thoughts of St. Thomas Aquinas, who was a philosopher and theologian who lived and wrote in the 13th century. A lot of people now would say, how could a 13th century thinker possibly be helpful for thinking about modern mental health care? But I try in the book to unpack how I think Aquinas is helpful.
Aquinas was a Christian philosopher and theologian. He was himself someone who had a deep spiritual worship life and his central image of the human being was of the human being as a wayfarer, as a pilgrim, someone who's on a journey to God. So our lives are those of people on a journey, and we find our fulfillment in God.
That's the vision that Aquinas gives to us. But one of the things that he was really emphasizing is that emotions (he would have said “passions”) are part of the good embodied human nature that God has given to us. It's good that we're feeling, passionate creatures. That's part of who we are and actually, when they're rightly ordered, that all the emotions actually are good for us.
And Aquinas believed that we by nature are lovers. We can't not be lovers, because we're always loving those things that we think will either be good for us, or that are beautiful, or that will in some way lead us further on the journey. We're always drawn in love to people or things that we believe are life-giving and good for us.
So it's not like we have a choice about that. We are lovers. Then all the other positive emotions take their form of helping us on that journey into our loves. Aquinas has this incredibly beautiful vision of us, drawn to someone or something in love.
We have this desire to be close to that person or that thing. It's obviously very different in different contexts, and that when we find ourselves attaining union with, say, someone that we have not seen in a while and we love, and we're finally with that person, we feel a deep sense of delight and joy.
Our lives are in this constant cycle of love and desire and delight and that helps to lead us on the journey. But then the negative emotions, or what we might think of as the unpleasant emotions, are also actually there for us. They're there to help us when we perceive something blocking our loves, or something that gets in the way of what's good for us or in the way of what will lead us into what's good and true. Then, we feel an aversion to that thing.
If we find an obstacle that's coming toward us quickly, then we feel fear because we feel the need to get away. If we find ourselves oppressed and trapped by something that we don't feel like we can escape, Aquinas says our natural response then would be a kind of sadness. And maybe if we feel like we can actually escape, a sense of anger.
What Aquinas does is he encourages us, and I think he's speaking as a Christian here, not to see our emotions as these like unwanted things that happen in our bodies that we want to get rid of in whatever way, but to attend to how the emotions are in some ways signs of whom and what we love.
If I'm feeling anxious about something, rather than seeing oh, I'm anxious, that anxiety needs to go away. What is my anxiety telling me? Maybe what I'm worried about is getting in the way of a pursuit toward what I love? Maybe it's that I'm in an academic program and I really want to finish and I'm anxious about a test and I'm worried that the test is going to get in the way.
In some ways, even though I don't like that anxiety, it's a sign of what I'm being drawn toward. It's a sign of what I love. Thinking about our emotions in that way allows for a kind of freedom and a kind of celebration that even our negative emotions can in some ways be oriented toward the good and become things that we can accept and embrace as beautiful.
Alison: Yeah. I love that as opposed to problems to solve. It’s part of this beautiful complexity that makes us human, makes us bearers of God's image. There's complexity to who we are. When we reduce all that complexity to a symptom to be solved, we miss out. So that leads me to the question then. What then is the goal? I think about this a lot. What is the goal of this healing journey, of this wayfaring journey? As we're talking, I don't think the goal is to eradicate some painful emotions or even emotions we don't like. I don't think the goal can be to eradicate all of the hard things because relationships are hard. In even the healthiest relationships, relational challenges surface. So sometimes I find myself asking, what is the goal of all of this, as we think about what it means to be human, as we think about what it means to flourish, as we think about mental health?
Warren: Yeah. It's a great question because one of the curious paradoxes of mental health care is that we talk a lot about mental illness or mental disorder. We talk about mental health as a broad concept, but most people don't actually, in the clinical world, define what mental health is. We define disorders, but we don't define what we actually mean by mental health.
I think there's a number of reasons for that, in part because when you really begin to try to pin down what mental health is, you start getting into these personal moral questions about what it means to live a good human life. And in the world of mental health, we're always a little bit leery of being too directive about that.
I talk about this in one of the chapters of the book–there are some areas of consensus about what mental health is in the broader world of mental health care, boiling down to these seven different things:
One, mental health has to do with the security of our bodies and of our persons. It's hard to be mentally healthy in the midst of an abusive or traumatic relationship. Mental health does entail at least the capacity for a positive regard for ourselves and for our lives. The capacity for a full range of emotions, the capacity to feel sad when there's sad things that are happening, or angry when there's injustice happening.
The capacity to find meaning, the capacity for purposeful and engaging activity, the capacity for intimate and fulfilling interpersonal relationships, and then this general concept of the ability to respond flexibly and creatively to challenges.
So mental health has to do with flexibility, with capacity, with ability to engage in relationships. When we talk about mental health in the broader world of psychiatry and mental health,I think we're aiming at something in that area. Christians can take it a step further and can say yes to all those things. All those things are good. We want to embrace all those things.
Certainly as a psychiatrist, I want to embrace those things for my patients and for myself. But Christians are going to say yes, but if any of those things are pursued as if that is the highest goal of our life, like if you live only for security, or if you live only for particular kinds of relationship, or if you live only for positive emotion, you're going to end up getting sidetracked because you're going to make those things your highest good.
They're going to become a kind of god for you, and you're going to pursue those. Again, I'm drawing from Thomas Aquinas here. He'd say that anything that we pursue as our highest good is going to end up disappointing us. Christians believe that only when we pursue God as our highest good, when we're constantly allowing ourselves to be drawn in love for God and for God's creatures and for the world around us and for ourselves, can we really fully know the kind of fullness of life that God has for us.
I want to embrace all these things that are said in modern mental health care, but also to say for Christians, we can think in a broader range because we believe that we're creatures of a God who loves us and who wants us to be in union with him. And that's really important.
Alison: That is so interesting what you're saying. A couple of thoughts come to mind. There's a way in which science can give us those baseline categories that are important and valid. You can also see in the growth of the self-help and wellness space, how those can become gods. Sometimes I'm like, oh my goodness, I could spend my whole life pursuing those, and it almost feels exhausting to me. And yet they are important. We need to have resilience. We need to have the capacity for emotions–I won't repeat the whole list, but we need to have the capacity for all of those things.
And yet it's almost exponentially magnified when we bring the spiritual/theological dimension into it. What does that vision look like when we magnify those baseline goals of mental health and infuse them with the power of the Holy Spirit? What does that picture look like?
Warren: Yeah, what does a Christian vision of living fully and wholly and look like? And how does that relate to the way that we talk in mental health care? I might start by saying that we are creatures of a God who loves us and who knows us and who wants us to be drawn into God's life and so we start there.
Christians believe that God loves us and therefore we're able to love God. And I would say that it's God's love for us that is first. In God's grace for us, that then allows us to love God, to love ourselves, to love our bodies, to love our experience, to love the natural world around us, to love other human beings, even those who are enemies, to love all things, and we love it in the love of God.
We find ourselves as Christians loved by God, and able, in God's love, to love God, and ourselves, and our experience, and others in return. Our lives become, what does it mean to become deeper lovers of God and of all that God is and all around us? I think Christians believe that we are God's good creatures, that God knows us and loves us.
We believe that we're made in God's image, which I talk about in the book, there's a lot of wrong ways to interpret the image of God, but I interpret it as us having a kind of connection with God. A way of being part of God's life that can never be taken away. Christians believe that in grace, we're invited to participate in the very life of Jesus. We find ourselves in the Christian life loved by God, drawn by God into God's life, and invited to participate in Jesus’ life and in the life of the church.
That means that we become more and more able to love as Jesus loved. We become more and more able to give and to extend mercy as Jesus did. We become able to find, when we suffer, that we're in some ways joined by Jesus. Not alone, but able in some ways to be able to find ourselves in solidarity with Jesus and his suffering and Jesus in ours.
We're able to know that death and suffering and sickness is not the last word, because we are part of a life who's overcome death and who is now raised and ascended and so we don't have to fear. In all these ways, being drawn in love toward God into Jesus' life, again, this is not something that you can talk about in modern psychology, but it is something that Christians can and should, I think, embrace as part of what it means to find fullness of life in Christ.
Alison: I love that. I think about that as someone who straddles both worlds. Sometimes I'll find a client in my mind. I'm like, oh, this is almost pastoral. They need spiritual encouragement here. And then sometimes with clients, as I'm sure with you, you find, oh, we need to learn some skills here about emotional regulation. We need to learn some skills here about calming the nervous system. We need to learn some skills here about buoying up some resilience. We need to do some naming here of relational patterns that are toxic, that are hurting the person. So there's this psycho-educational intervention or psychological intervention.
And then almost as often, even sometimes in one session, there's alongside of it, this deep spiritual grounding of, you are not alone. In all of this, every step of the way matters to God. If you leave here and you continue to have these anxiety attacks, God is with you in that.It's such a different picture: you're not alone in it. Every piece of the process matters. Even as you're learning these new skills, even as you're learning to enter into psychological healing, you're simultaneously being buoyed up by the spirit of God. It's hard to describe if you don't straddle both worlds as I think you and I both do.
Warren: Yes, and you're mentioning the Holy Spirit–the Holy Spirit helps us in the process. The Holy Spirit is around us and preparing our hearts and our lives for these capacities to be drawn more deeply into love of God. So I think that's really important. It's all important. The kind of things that psychologists talk about everywhere, emotion regulation and and resilience and post traumatic growth. And all of these are goods.
To someone who's really struggling to find ways to live in the midst of overwhelming emotion or maybe thoughts of self-harm or other things, then the kind of things in the mental health world can offer to help people find freedom and to find ways to live with that, that's good and that's part of the journey and that's what's needed right then.
We don't need to be always going to these broader theological concepts all the time. Sometimes what people need is to find ways to care for their bodies at a particular point in time or to stay safe at a particular point in time and that's what's needed for the journey.
Alison: Yeah, it's really the both-and.
You mentioned that you had some thoughts on what John MacArthur said recently, I know it created a lot of buzz and a lot of firestorm. I don't want to talk so much about him per se, but I am curious about this, the persistence of. of that type of thinking in some Christian circles. How would you respond to that kind of a broad brushstroke of, "there is no such thing as a mental illness"?
Warren: Yeah, John MacArthur created headlines recently by calling a lot of different psychiatric diagnoses, including ADHD and PTSD and bipolar disorder and depression, he called them noble lies, and he then later wrote a blog post on his church website, I'm forgetting exactly what it is, he called them noble lies and he called psychiatry a formidable obstacle to scripture or something like that.
I think that where MacArthur's coming from, he's been saying this kind of thing a long time, and he's by no means alone in the Christian world. He's worried about ways of thinking about mental health where people go to a clinician and they say, I'm having these experiences and the psychiatrist prescribes medication and they never talk about what's happening in a person's life or anything else. So in a way, I don't like that form of mental health care either.
The problem is, that's not what most mental health care is. I think it was dramatically over-simplistic and wrong for MacArthur to say that. He questioned the existence of these diagnoses, but I think it's very important that we not question the experience that brings people into the clinic that ends up getting named as these diagnoses.
PTSD is real in people's experience and ADHD is real and bipolar disorder is real. Of course, these diagnoses are real. The central problem with MacArthur's perspective is that he's trapped in what I would call the “moral medical divide”, where he basically says our experience is different. When the body's sick, then that's a medical problem.
So if someone's having a seizure or a meningitis, that's a medical problem, and doctors need to get involved in it, but when it's anything that has to do with human choice or action or motivation, it's no longer a medical problem. It's a moral problem. And in his perspective, it's the pastor that has authority over moral problems.
Just as pastors shouldn't try to treat seizures, neither should clinicians try to treat depression, because he sees depression as a moral problem. And I think that's profoundly over-simplistic. Because anyone who either has experienced mental health challenges or who cares for people with mental health challenges knows that our experiences are embodied.
They have to do with how our bodies work. The knowledge and practices of medicine and psychology and mental health care disciplines can be really helpful. But also, how we live with mental health challenges is part and parcel of how we live and how we respond to our experience and how we seek connection or not.
How we act in response to our experience is really important and how we live through mental health challenges. We have to acknowledge that mental health care is a kind of moral guidance, you might say, and that it's a way of encouraging people to think about themselves in certain ways and to live in certain ways and to think about certain kinds of choices rather than others and certain kinds of things rather than others.
It's also medical guidance that draws on the knowledge and practices of medicine and psychology and the mental health care disciplines. It's both. And I think it's important to acknowledge that it's both. I think where MacArthur goes wrong is also this idea that only pastors should be involved in moral guidance.
My opinion is that it's practically not helpful, because there's a lot of people out there who have a long experience with helping people in distress to be in a better place or in the mental health disciplines. But also, I think about Romans 12, where Paul talks about the number of different gifts that are given to members of the body. There are gifts like leadership and preaching and teaching. But there's also the gift of mercy and an interesting gift called paraklesis, which is often translated as encouragement or exhortation.
The Greek word parakaleo means either to encourage, to comfort, to exhort to console and it's used a lot in the New Testament. As a psychiatrist, a Christian psychiatrist, when I'm working with Christians, I'm in some ways bringing in my practice as a psychiatrist, something that can help with this spiritual gift of paraklesis.
It is really important to think about that kind of care, not only as the pastor doing that. All the pastors do have a really important role, but also others of us who have particular forms of training are able to be involved as well. I respect some of what I think MacArthur is trying to aim at, but I think the way his critique is framed is profoundly over-simplistic.
Alison: Yeah. I appreciate you speaking to that. I think for those of us in the community, yes, we see issues. There are some issues. As you're describing in Wayfarer, there are issues within the way that mental health is being addressed. It works itself out in the field of psychiatry, in the field of psychology. We're not blind to that. And also, it's not that simple. There's so much, even, you and I could go round and round about, oh, do I like the DSM 5 or don't I? Do I think there's a place for diagnosis?
Sometimes I find it very helpful to categorize a cluster of symptoms and put a name on it so I know what I'm dealing with. That's not the end game for most of us. I would argue for most of us practicing, it's very hopeful to give you a directional aim in which to begin the work of healing. There's so much more to it.
Warren: Yeah, I've thought a lot about the DSM, and obviously I work with the DSM a lot as a psychiatrist and the DSM is an important document, but I think it's important to think about what it does well, and what it doesn't do well. At its best, the DSM is a guide, a list of diagnoses with particular definitions that psychiatrists mostly and psychologists and other clinicians have. over decades, put together, that helps to facilitate the work that we do.
It's at best what the DSM IV called “a helpful guide to clinical practice” and it's informed by science. But it's also informed by the professional interests of people, psychiatrists, it's informed by a lot of complicated debates about what should be included and shouldn't. And it's not like it's dropped from heaven on tablets of stone.
It's put together by people, but they're typically put together by people that are doing the best they can to try to think about what we see in clinical practice. There's often a concern in the general public that if something shows up in the DSM, that therefore it's being claimed exclusively by psychiatrists as a mental illness.
There's often talk about the overdiagnosis problem. Most recently in the DSM 5 TR, “prolonged grief disorder” was introduced as a mental disorder. And there's been a lot of debate about that, including Christian circles, of, should we be medicalizing grief?
And my position on that is that grief is a sign of love. It's a natural process. It's also the case that sometimes people can get stuck in grief in ways that can be really harmful. They can be having thoughts of suicide. They can be distancing from all forms of relationship. There's things that, especially grief therapists, can offer that might be really helpful in helping people through.
So it's not the fact that something shows up as a diagnosis that's the central problem. It's if people then respond to that diagnosis in ways that are mechanistic and impersonal rather than with the journey of the wayfarer in mind. So it's not diagnosis, it's how we respond to the diagnoses and how we live with diagnoses that really matters.
Alison: It's a naming tool. I look at it as a naming tool. It helps us give a name to something, which we need to practically get at it. But then what we do with it, as you said, then you bring in, I love your vision of the Wayfarer. Okay. This is a spot on your map. In this part of the map, this is the name of the place at which you've arrived.
You've arrived at the field of anxiety. Or you've arrived at the field of PTSD. This is what we're going to call it. It's a tough spot. It's not your destination. It's not who you are, but we can give that name to it, which will then help us figure out how to help you find your way through it and even out of it and into a different place.
And maybe some of that will be using medicine. To help you see clearly again, some of that will be unpacking your story. My sense is that most of us working in the field understand that, but it does become really inflammatory when folks grab sound bites or reductive ways of viewing some of the work that we do. I appreciate you speaking to that. I think it's important.
Warren: Yeah. I tell my trainees at Duke that a good psychiatric diagnosis is one that leads to a helpful pathway forward. And an unhelpful diagnosis is one that doesn't lead to a helpful pathway forward, even if it actually meets the criteria in the DSM. One clinical example, I won't go into any identified detail, but I had a patient a couple years ago, this is one example.
The diagnosis of borderline personality disorder is often assigned reluctantly because they're concerned that it will lead to stigma. And I actually don't personally share that, but I think that's something that often is seen. I had a patient that came in a couple years ago who had a whole list of diagnoses when he came to see me.
One of which is bipolar disorder, another of which was PTSD. There was an anxiety disorder diagnosis, and we talked about his experience. And one of the things that had been frustrating to him was he cycled through medication, after medication. It was mostly focused on treatment of bipolar disorder, and he wasn't actually getting better.
He was feeling maybe less emotionally reactive, but he wasn't really getting to where he wanted to be. We talked through, “I wonder if you've considered this diagnosis of borderline personality disorder”. And we talked through in very general ways, like what kinds of life experiences often accompany that diagnosis, and what kinds of experiences people have when they live with borderline personality disorder.
For him, It was really helpful and he wrote me a week later, and he said, “I've been reading about that diagnosis and it matches my experience so well”. For him then, it was a pathway, not to get him off of all medications, but it was a pivot from thinking about medications as the primary solution to his problems toward thinking about DBT and trauma-focused psychotherapy as the place where he would most want to invest.
It shifted the way that we thought about treatment, and in that way, borderline personality disorder was a helpful way of naming his experience that helped to lead him to a health pathway forward. Diagnosis can be really helpful and important in that.
Alison: Yeah, it's all how you use it. I love that nuance. I want the listener sticking with us through this conversation to hear, this is what you want to look for in someone who is providing care to you, someone who will help you find a well fitting name. I talk about that in my last book. What's a well fitting name? Not to pigeonhole me there, but to your point, to help me open up a path toward greater healing, greater understanding? The truth sets us free in that sense toward greater freedom. I love that. That's beautiful.
Warren: I think you want somebody who's not going to be coming in as an expert saying, oh this is what you need and I'm going to prescribe this. But rather somebody who can come alongside you, who can look the other way at the world along with you and can say, what journey are you on? And what's needed right now?
Alison: That's right. I love that. Thank you so much, Warren, for sharing your expertise, your wisdom. You have so much on your plate. You're doing so many things. Tell us where folks can find your work, especially your new book Wayfaring. It's called Wayfaring: A Christian Approach to Mental Health Care. It's an incredible deep dive into the realm of this integrative space that we talk about all the time on the podcast, Christian mental health. Where can people find the book and where can they find more about you?
Warren: Yeah, thank you. The book can be found in pretty much any online outlet or bookstore. It's published by Erdman's Publishing and it came out in 2024. I'm easily searchable online and a number of my works are found by searching for my name and you can find some things that I've written online.
I'd also invite anyone who's interested to learn more about our Theology, Medicine and Culture Initiative at Duke Divinity School. I have this unique experience at a faculty role at Duke where I teach in the medical school, but I also teach in the divinity school. And we actually invite mental health clinicians and and other clinicians to come and study with us in a seminary, in a program of Christian learning and formation.
Anybody who's interested in that could easily find us online at the Duke Divinity School Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative.
Alison: I will be looking that up personally. That is very exciting. That sounds really cool. Thank you so much for your time and for all the work that you're putting into bringing so much goodness into the world. I know sometimes it's a unique journey as clinicians and as folks working in the field and I appreciate all that you're doing.
Warren: Thank you, Alison. Thank you for having me on podcast and I'm really honored to speak with you. Thank you.
What if anxiety isn't your enemy? What if it's trying to help? We all feel anxious at times. As we close out this series on Inside Out, we're bring you some powerful tips about how to transform anxiety into a powerful ally.
Here’s what we cover:
- The most important strategy when you feel anxious (12:59)
- How to recognize the voice of anxiety (14:03)
- The relationship between anxiety & numbing (18:07)
- Healthy “escape” vs. unhealthy numbing (21:22)
- How to understand passages like “Do not be anxious” in the Bible (22:36)
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. Become the best version of yourself and get 15% off Ned products with code BESTOFYOU.
- Go to helloned.com/BESTOFYOU or enter code BESTOFYOU at checkout.
- Head to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code BESTOFYOU to receive UP TO 39%!
- Go to thrivemarket.com/bestofyou for 30% off your first order, plus a FREE $60 gift!
Additional Resources:
- Inside Out 2
- Boundaries For Your Soul by Dr. Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller
- I Shouldn’t Feel This Way by Dr. Alison Cook
- Philippians 4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
- Matthew 6:27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
Related Episodes:
- Episode 67: The Link Between Faith & Emotional Healing—Gen Z, College Life, & A Hidden Search for Meaning with Cindy Gao
- Episode 39: Boundaries for Your Soul—How to Navigate Your Overwhelming Thoughts & Feelings
- Episode 41: Boundaries With Fear And Anxiety—How to Calm the Chaos Within and the Joy of Internal Boundaries
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: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I'm so glad you're here this week. We wanted to take this week to answer some of your questions. We noticed that there were several questions about the topic of anxiety, which made sense in light of the fact that we've been talking about the new Inside Out movie, Inside Out 2, where anxiety is a main character in the movie.
So we wanted to take the opportunity to respond to some of your questions about anxiety, how it shows up and how it relates to different parts of your internal landscape. To facilitate this conversation, I asked my media coordinator and assistant Cindy Gao to come on and join me to have this conversation about anxiety.
Cindy's story is a fascinating story and does involve confronting some of own experiences with anxiety when she was an undergraduate in college, and how that led her to an experience of faith in Jesus. You can find her story in Episode 67: The Link Between Faith & Emotional Healing—Gen Z, College Life, & A Hidden Search for Meaning with Cindy Gao. It's a powerful episode. She's also studying to become a counselor herself so this is a really rich conversation between Cindy and me as we try to answer some of your questions about anxiety.
We also mention in today's episode a masterclass I did on the topic of anxiety. It was called, “I Shouldn't Feel Anxious”. It was a pre-order bonus item for those of you who ordered my book I Shouldn’t Feel This Way. I Shouldn’t Feel This Way takes you through three steps to name, frame, and brave painful or conflicting emotions.
This masterclass was a bonus item I wanted to give you specifically about the topic of anxiety. So toward that end, if you listen to today's episode, as we're talking about it, and you want to get a recording of that masterclass, for a limited time here, I'm going to reopen access to that class. If you're interested in getting the recording of that masterclass, email your receipt for your purchase of I Shouldn’t Feel This Way to infodralisoncook@gmail.com. It could be the audio book, ebook, or the paperback copy.
That's infodralisoncook@gmail.com and we'll send you a link to that masterclass. It's really designed to work in conjunction with the book. So we'd love to get that over to you. I know there is so much happening in our world right now that evokes feelings of anxiety. It's a normal emotion–all people experience anxiety from time to time, which is why I'm so glad that one of the questions that we address at the end of today's episode is specifically about those passages in scripture that caution us not to worry and not to feel anxious.
We get into what I really believe Jesus wants us to know as we experience worry and anxiety, soi please stick around to hear that portion of this episode. I think it's so needed by so many of us right now, including myself. I'm so grateful that you're here. And I'm so thrilled to bring you this conversation between myself and Cindy Gao Higgs, all about anxiety.
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Alison: All right, Cindy, you've gone through some questions and you have some questions for us from listeners about anxiety. What are you finding? What are people asking?
Cindy: Yeah, so the first question is inspired by Dwayne. Can you talk about the internal dialogue that our anxious parts might engage with when they're activated?
Alison: Interesting. So he's asking how we become aware of the internal dialogue. Yeah. The voice of anxiety, it sounds like?
Cindy: Yeah, or what might those anxious parts be saying to us, and what might the consequences be?
Alison: Got it. Yeah. So this is very relevant to the movie that we've been talking about a little bit in this series, Inside Out 2. You've seen it, right Cindy? There's one scene in the movie where the anxiety part of Riley, the main character, there's a great big office cubicle with all the workers and every single one of the workers is busy trying to come up with worst case scenarios. Do you remember that part?
Cindy: Yep. That was a great visual.
Alison: And it's really a great creative depiction because it's not like we necessarily hear in our minds or in our spirits all of those worst case scenarios, “you're going to fail, people are going to hate you, you're going to look like a fool”. We don't necessarily perceive anxiety like that. It feels so chaotic inside of us.
But when you can slow the tape down, often it's those kinds of really self-defeating messages. Sometimes I like to think of anxiety like an antenna part of us that is serving the future. It's very future-oriented, looking for all the things that could possibly go wrong. Every single thing that could go wrong.
It's very subtle, though, especially when we use language from the internal family systems model, the IFS model, we're blended with it. We're not aware that it's the voice of anxiety–we think it's ourselves. It can be very subtle, but it's very futuristic. It's very oriented toward preparing for the worst.
Cindy: And I appreciate the language you've taught me from IFS of how it really is trying to protect us. It's not trying to ruin our lives, and you can see that in the movie as well. The character of Anxiety really wants the best for Riley. But, I don't know if there's too many spoilers in this–
Alison: We'll give a blanket spoiler alert. If you haven't seen the movie, we're probably going to spoil it a little bit. It's still really worth seeing. These are not key plot points.
Cindy: Right. So I'm thinking about when anxiety creates this hurricane, and what was also really beautifully depicted in the movie was Riley being able to ground herself with her five senses. Also, an embrace of anxiety is what ultimately led to her reaching a more calm space, not shaming anxiety because that would make the situation worse.
Alison: Exactly. Exactly. Now they showed that so beautifully. I would say that in general, if we're really thinking about this internal dialogue that anxiety is feeding us, in Riley's case, it was all rooted in this fear of not being liked, not being loved, not being accepted, not being valued by her peers, a sort of social anxiety in a way.
An interpersonal anxiety, almost terror that she had, that she wasn't going to have any friends. She had found out that her two best friends were not going to be joining her in that next season. She was feeling really alone and rejected. This is a really common route of anxiety. I'm reverse engineering here–let me rewind that to your point, Cindy. When you're working with anxiety, the paradox of it is that you're often trying to get to the root of the fear because the fear is usually really valid.
And by valid, I don't mean it's going to come true, but that it's a really normal human fear. What if I do fail? What if people don't like me? What if I do completely bomb at work or at school? And we see that in Riley's case, there was a deep fear that was really legitimate and really understandable about not being liked by her peers, by being left out, by being rejected, by not being accepted, but because she wasn't really dealing with that fear head on, the anxiety, like you said, like a hurricane was swirling around or trying to scenario plan to avoid something she hadn't really even come to terms with in a realistic, grounded way.
I see that in my life. I'm curious about you, Cindy but in those moments where I notice that anxious dialogue, it's usually what about this? What about this? What about that? It's this very erratic, chaotic, it's not manageable. It's trying to help. It's trying to show you all the things that could go wrong. And it shows up as a lot of chaos and turmoil and kind of that amped up energy.
It's definitely more in the fight/flight side of the nervous system response. It's energizing in that way. We can get a lot done when we're really anxious. I can feel it in my body, all revved up. I get all the things done, because it amps us up. In that sense, it is protective. When we are able to slow ourselves down, we do want to get really curious about: what is at the root of all of those fears, all those constant fears?
What's the real deeper root? So in my case, often it comes down to, what if I make a miserable fool of myself? What if I fail? What if this is a catastrophic failure? What if I get exposed in some way that feels really vulnerable? And when I can get to the root of that failure, I can actually then address that in a more meaningful way.
How about you, Cindy? Are there ways that you notice anxiety showing up in your mind? How do you become aware that it's there?
Cindy: Yeah, for me, Inside Out 2 really resonated, because I think the core belief that Riley started building for herself was the idea of “I'm not good enough”. And that's something that I notice in myself that kind of turns into a hurricane. If something happens, then that thought will come into my head and then I will feel the fight/flight like you described. And I usually notice myself shutting down afterwards.
I feel overwhelmed. But being able to notice that process is incredibly helpful and I can know that I'm really overwhelmed right now. I'm not going to be able to make good decisions when I'm feeling this way. And I usually give myself some time to try and reach a place of calm.
And then I can actually, it almost feels like reality testing, of what are these things that I'm believing? What are the conclusions that I'm drawing about myself because of what happened? I can't do that when I'm super anxious; the reality testing aspect doesn't work when I'm in that mentality of high stress, high anxiety. I have to wait.
Alison: You're exactly right. We talked about this in the masterclass on anxiety. To Dwayne's question, when those parts of us start their chatter, it's usually more than one part. There's usually a little bit of anxious energy with all the different parts of us when they're getting ramped up.
It's also often heady. It's often in our minds. We're not gonna fight the logic of an anxious part with more logic. It's too much. We really have to drop into our bodies, which as you said, they show in the movie Riley finally drops into our body and begins to notice the puck and the ice and everything around her.
She drops into her body, which slows down all that firing. And it's when we get a little bit of that calm and we drop into our body and get a little bit more grounded that we can begin to realize, oh I'm scared. There's that root fear underneath all of that. And that's when we can begin to confront it.
As you're saying, it's very hard to do when we're in that activated anxious state. So I think as far as the question goes, really learning yourself, learning what it feels like in your body, in your mind, learning the behaviors. Sometimes the behaviors can be your cue about the voice of anxiety in your life. I know for me, when I start compulsively need-meeting and people-pleasing.
That is a cue that I'm anxious. And sometimes I don't experience it as anxiety. I experience it as being a helpful, nice person. But when I start to compulsively, I've got to do this, it’s like being in a batting cage where there are baseballs flying at me and I have to hit every single one and I'm exhausted, but it doesn't matter.
That's how I become about meeting needs, responding to emails, responding to texts, getting things for my kids. And my husband will notice it. He'll be like, take a breath. There's an anxiousness in those responses, even though I'm doing things that conceivably could be good things. Again, we see that in the movie with Riley; initially, the anxiety helps her make a lot of goals. She's getting that puck, but it was the intensity with which she was doing it and the fear-based feelings behind it.
Cindy: Yeah, that's really helpful, to notice behaviors that can point you to your inner experience. Because sometimes it can be hard to be super clear about all these inner thoughts you're having. But you can definitely notice your own behaviors. And that's a really helpful pointer to what you're feeling inside.
Alison: Yeah, we can have high-functioning behaviors, overachieving behaviors, over-helping behaviors, that actually point to anxiety.
Cindy: Great. We can move on to the next question that's inspired by Hailey and Sierra. The question is, is there a relationship between anxiety and the emotional numbness or lack of pleasure I feel?
Alison: Wow. That's a great question. So to answer that question, I want to talk a little bit about the three categories of parts, according to the IFS model. You can get a deeper dive in Episode 39, where I go into a map of the parts of your soul. We talk about it a lot on the podcast. It's the topic of my book, Boundaries For Your Soul.
There are two categories of protective parts of us. The manager parts are protecting us by trying to prevent pain from happening, and anxiety is very much a manager part. Usually there are more than one manager parts, and anxiety functions as a manager. It's trying to prevent pain. If I can work harder, if I can please more, if I can do more, if I can be more perfect, I won't have to experience pain.
Numbing parts belong to the second category of protective parts of us called firefighters. They're called firefighters because they're trying to put out the flames of pain after pain has surfaced. So if we have an injury, we get our feelings hurt, someone says something, we don't make a team, we get a bad grade–something happens and it hurts and we don't know what to do with it. So we numb, we shut down the pain.
These are parts of us that reach for the chips, reach for the food, reach for the booze, whatever it is, the shopping, the relationship. This is again, very academic. We don't always experience it this way in our systems. Anxiety amps us up. There's a proactive component to it. And we need a little bit of anxiety because it does help us in planning.
It does help protect us when it's within healthy boundary lines. The opposite thing goes into effect when we're numbing, we're trying to shut it down. And you described that a few minutes ago, Cindy, when you notice the anxiety and the overwhelm, the next thing that you notice is shut down.
That's your system trying to vacillate between the fight/flight of anxiety and then that rest and digest, that parasympathetic nervous system. Instead of being activated, you're trying to shut down the activation, but it's an overcorrection. Neither of those responses really help us look at what's hard, which is usually a vulnerability, that exile.
We have to really be present to it from that calm place inside. So there's definitely a relationship between numbing and anxiety. Often we can turn to numbing to try to help shut down the overwhelm of anxiety.
Cindy: Yeah, that's really helpful. And I can see a relationship of being anxious for so long, and then your body is just burnt out, and then it can very easily lead to numbing, because you can't be super activated and anxious forever. That depletes a lot of your energy, and you have to find a way to rest somehow.
Alison: That's right. And we turn to these strategies. Again, you can look at it by the behaviors. Numbing behaviors might be, I don't know why, but I binged watched Netflix for 12 straight hours. Again, sometimes we do need to check out through watching a show for a few hours, because we had a really hard day.
And I talk about this in I Shouldn’t Feel This Way. The difference between numbing in an unhealthy way where we're trying to avoid what's going on versus healthy comfort, I need a break, is our level of conscious awareness. Am I waking up the next day and going, wow, I shut myself down for a day. What's going on? What's going on inside of me?
Or where we get an unhealthy inner landscape is where we're vacillating from the hyped up anxiousness to the shutdown of numbing. And we're never really engaging in that calm, clear place inside the Holy Spirit-led self, which is a calm nervous system, where we can really be conscious and wise about the decisions that we're making.
Cindy: Right. So moving on to our next question. This one is paraphrased from Rebecca: what do we do with Paul's command from Philippians 4 to have no anxiety about anything? And Jesus’ instructions in Matthew 6, “do not worry, for which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to your life?”
Alison: Oh, I love this question. This is a great question. I am curious, Cindy. What have you bumped up against with these passages in your own life?
Cindy: Initially, as I've read these passages, I have this feeling of, this is not nuanced enough. What do you mean do not be anxious about anything? And these instructions feel, just, I feel uncomfortable. But then I remember other parts of scripture, like in the Psalms, when David sounds pretty anxious about his enemies coming after him, and he's very honest about his anxiety.
And I see that there is a place for anxiety; it's been canonized in scripture. I hold both of these at the same time, and it helps me realize that I don't think God is calling us to never feel anxious, that whenever you feel anxious, it's a sin. I really appreciated your masterclass on anxiety where you talked about how there's different types of anxiety and anxiety could be rooted in something that is more close to reality and other anxieties can be rooted in something that's less real, not really close to reality. And depending on the level of anxiety you feel, the consequences and the behaviors that it leads you to, some can be helpful forms of anxiety, and others can not be helpful.
So I think there's nuance when we take in all of scripture. To understand that, okay, these parts of the New Testament, we're told to have no anxiety, but in other parts of scripture, anxiety is present and it's not condemned. It helps me have a more nuanced view on anxiety when I take everything into account.
Alison: I love that, Cindy. And one of the things I think about as you're talking is, what do we know to be true about Jesus and about his character? Was he condemning? Was he shaming? Was he judgmental? No, we know that this is not Jesus' character by anything we read about Jesus in the gospel or by anything we know about the fruit of God's spirit.
What are the fruits of God's spirit? What are the signs that God's spirit is present? It’s love, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, joy, self control. We have to take, to your point, the whole context of what we know to be true about Jesus and God from all of scripture. So that's number one–I do not believe there's a tone of condemnation in these scriptures.
I think to myself, so what is Jesus trying to say? And I return again to IFS. We talk about this in Boundaries For Your Soul. I imagine Jesus, when you do IFS work and you engage an anxious part, or you engage the fearful, vulnerable, exile underneath that's terrified, we imagine how would you be with a young child who was scared and fearful?
You wouldn't say with a tone of harshness, don't be anxious. You would say, honey, I'm here. I'm here. It's okay. You don't have to be anxious. You don't have to worry. I'm here. I'm with you. That presence, that attunement, that secure attachment of I'm here. I'm with you. There's nothing to worry about because I'm here. I've got you.
It's a whole different tone. And we know this. When we're with a young child, where we're holding them and they're scared, we're not judging them or shaming them. We're with them in that fear or in that anxiety. That's how we also can learn to be with the young parts of ourselves when they get fearful and anxious, and we're reparenting them and we're showing them that compassionate attunement.
We're not saying don't do this, don't feel this. We're not saying don't feel this because it's bad. In Jesus' words, of course, there's anxiety and fear in the world because he's constantly telling us, don't be afraid. I'm with you. But it's from that place of a loving parent, a kind, gentle, patient, loving parent saying, I'm with you.
One of the things I love the most is about bringing God's presence deeper and deeper into the parts of our souls. It's not cognitive. It's not a “don't be anxious” up here, head to head. It's a deeper layer of us. These parts of us that have been buried so long that have these fears all the way back, usually to childhood where Jesus is getting in there. I think about the healing, getting so deep into the marrow of our bones. I've got you. I'm with you. You don't have to be afraid. I'm with you. It's never shaming or judging. So that's a little bit about how I think about that.
Cindy: That's beautiful. I felt that like in my body as you were talking about the compassion that God has. When he's telling us to not be anxious, he's saying that as someone who cares so deeply about us and not from a place of condemnation. That's a great message.
Alison: And I think for folks, when we haven't experienced that really deep sense of having been soothed in fear as children by a caregiver, by a parent, we have to relearn this process of repairing it. We don't have that feeling in our bodies.
The thing is, when we've experienced that sense of God with us, it doesn't always means that the thing that we're afraid of isn't going to happen. Sometimes we get afraid, like we're afraid of a medical diagnosis or we're afraid of bombing a test or maybe something happening at work. And, sometimes the thing we fear happens. Sometimes it does.
It's not God trying to gaslight us or, but there's that deep sense of no matter what, I am with you, you will be okay. And it is powerful, the more we do this work of opening up to those vulnerabilities deep inside that anxiety is working so hard to protect, but actually keeping us from that deep, grounded sense of our belovedness, of our okayness.
I would encourage folks even now, as we're talking about this, to read those passages, read. Matthew six, not from that heady place of, oh, I'm not supposed to worry, which actually triggers more anxiety. Oh, I'm not supposed to worry. Now I'm doing something bad. That activates more anxiety, but instead, imagine Jesus kneeling down right next to you, speaking to the most tender part of who you are saying, “do you not know that I am with you? Look at the birds of the air, and you know I feed them. Are you not so much more valuable than they are”?
He's speaking directly to those most tender, most vulnerable parts of who we are, speaking words of love and value over those parts of us. When it is the voice of God, it grounds us and it actually equips us to be brave. It equips us to be brave.
Cindy: What you said at the end was really beautiful. For those who never got to experience that sort of soothing in their lives, maybe you've felt like you have to be super strong and push down your fears and your anxiety because you've learned that you might get shamed for admitting that you're fearful.
It's so encouraging to hear that there is a God who loves you, who cares for you, who wants you to receive his gentle love for you, and for you to dare to believe that he will give you what you really need and want deep inside, but have been scared to ask for.
Alison: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. I want every person to really hear what you said. And every listener who's listening right now, I know these are anxious times. There's a lot in the world right now. That does feel scary and chaotic on a lot of levels from the big things, the macro things to the little things in each one of our lives.
As you said, Cindy, there is a God who. man, by the power of the Holy Spirit, comes in and gives that assurance to every single part of us. I'm with you. Do not be afraid. It's not a shaming command. It's an empowering “I'm with you”. I'm with you. So I love that. Thank you so much for having this conversation.
I know we have a few more questions and we'll have to do a round two. These are great questions and a great reminder for how, when we're feeling anxious, we can notice those behaviors, notice the inner thoughts and the inner feelings, but as well as the behaviors that kind of cue us that we might have a little bit of anxiety.
And then to practice those grounding exercises, those calming exercises. I go through a lot of those in the chapter on numbing in I Shouldn’t Feel This Way, ways to ground yourself instead of numbing to calm that nervous system. There's a lot in that chapter on that. And then number three, knowing that God meets you right there in the center of that storm. It's such beautiful deep tissue work with the Holy Spirit.
Cindy: That's great. That was a great conversation.
Do you ever get activated by your kids—even when they’re not really doing anything wrong?It happens to the best of parents! Today’s episode, featuring renowned Enneagram expert, Beth McCord, is such an incredibly helpful and practical conversation about how to transform triggers into opportunities for health and connection.
Here’s what we cover:
1. How the Enneagram helped her stop comparing herself to other moms
2. A step by step process for what to do when you get activated by your kids
3. Why neither shaming yourself or blaming others works
4. How her family’s love for debate triggered childhood wounds & how she worked through it
5. How and when to talk about the Enneagram with your kids
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Additional Resources:
- The Enneagram for Moms: See the True Colors of Yourself and Your Children as God Intends by Beth McCord and Lydia J. Craig
- I Shouldn’t Feel This Way by Dr. Alison Cook
- Boundaries For Your Soul by Dr. Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller
- More Than Your Number: A Christ-Centered Enneagram Approach to Becoming AWARE of Your Internal World by Beth McCord and Jeff McCord
- EnneagramForMoms.com
- YourEnneagramCoach.com
- Take the free enneagram assessment here!
Related Episodes:
- Episode 108: Inside Out—Internal Family Systems, Therapy, and High-Performing Protectors with Jenna Riemersma
- Episode 109: Healing Burdens From the Past—How to Overcome Childhood Wounds and Heal Your Younger Self with Tammy Sollenberger
- Episode 110: How to Be Wise When People Are Difficult—Biblical Strategies For Keeping Your Emotional Health & Mental Sanity
- Episode 111: The Enneagram For Moms—How to Transforms Parenting Triggers & Blind Spots Into Growth & Connection With Beth McCord
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 thrilled you are here today. We have a very special guest joining us who I know you're going to love. She's amazing. She's so wise, so practical, and provides such great illustrations about how to apply the work that she does.
Together, we're going to dive into a topic that I find super helpful and incredibly practical. It's the Enneagram, especially as it applies to the work of being a mom. Now, before we get started with today's episode, if you're not familiar with the Enneagram, please go back and listen to Episode 52, where we provide a complete overview of each of the nine types.
You can also check out Episode 109, where my guest Tammy Sollenberger talks about her Enneagram number as one part of who she is and how she learned to integrate it with her overall story. These background episodes will give you a solid foundation for our conversation today.
Our guest today, Beth McCord, is a renowned Enneagram coach, speaker, and author. She has spent over 20 years studying and teaching the Enneagram and her passion for helping people understand themselves and others through this powerful tool is so incredible. Beth's approach is both compassionate and insightful, and she integrates all of her work with the Enneagram with a gospel centered perspective. Everything Beth does is infused with a Christ centered approach.
The other thing I love about Beth, in addition to being a great friend and an amazing person, is that she integrates the Enneagram with an awareness of the internal parts of our souls. In fact, she and I have conducted a workshop together that combined the Enneagram with parts work, which has been incredibly transformative for so many people.
Her previous book, More Than Your Number, lays out this integrated process of viewing your Enneagram number as one part of who you are, really powerfully.
Today, Beth is here to talk to us about her brand new book dropping this week. It's called Enneagram for Moms. This book is an absolute treat. A game-changer for mothers everywhere. It offers such a unique perspective on how to understand your own Enneagram type and it can help you navigate the challenges and joys and struggles of motherhood wisely.
Whether you're dealing with the daily stressors of parenting, whether you're trying to seek greater understanding of your children, or you're trying to understand your own reactions to your children, Beth's insights are so helpful.
Beth McCord is an accomplished Enneagram speaker, author, coach, and teacher with over two decades of experience. And if you're interested in learning more about your own Enneagram number, please go to Beth's website. It's www.yourenneagramcoach.com. There's a free assessment. It's one of the best assessments I've found. It really helped me identify my own Enneagram number.
You can go to her website and take that Enneagram assessment for free. I am so thrilled to bring you my conversation with Beth McCord.
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Alison Cook: I'm so thrilled to have you here today, Beth. I'm such a big fan of you, your work, of you as a person. It's been so fun to get to know you these past few years, and this is your first time on the podcast. So thanks for being here.
Beth: I know. Oh, my pleasure. Yes. like I told you earlier, I'm in the middle of your book. I'm really enjoying it and can't wait to keep plugging along and seeing how it's going to be so helpful and effective for myself. So thank you for writing the book.
Alison Cook: Oh I love that. I learned so much from this one, this new book. We tend to trade books and read each other's books, and there's so much synergy and so much overlap in what we both do from different angles.
I am so excited to dive into The Enneagram for Moms. This is so fresh. I learned so much from this. I've read a lot about the enneagram, a lot of your work, and this is a really beautiful, unique take on it that's so gentle and so wise. I want to start with your story, because I know so much of your work grows out of your own experience of learning and growing.
As a young mom, you talk about some of the things that were hard for you, that were challenging for you. Put us back there as a young mom–what are some of the things you wrestled with and struggled with early on that you couldn't have even anticipated?
Beth: Yeah, because I was all about wanting to be a mom. Like that's what I want to be. I really thought I was going to be amazing. I don't know if I would have said easy, but amazing. But I didn't know myself really well when I started to have kids. The enneagram didn't come into my life until my daughter was about one years old and she's now 23.
So when I started with the kids, I really didn't know, but I was really struggling with a lot of type nine tendencies, which makes sense, where I was consumed with people-pleasing to various levels. My heart felt like, oh, I'm being, so accommodating and helpful, and I'm wanting my kids to be happy.
In one sense it is a great quality, but it also, when it's all consuming, you can't make children happy most of the time. I took that as I must be being a bad mom. Or why can't I figure this out? Or why is he crying all the time? Then I would go out to the playground because Jeff was in seminary at the time, and I'd go out to the playground and the kids at that point were still really little.
I was observing moms that had a little bit older kids, running around the playground, but they seemed perfectly amazing–all of them. Now they all were totally different, some were super creative, some were really soft with their kids, some were gregarious, some were creative.
There's a wide range, but I would look at all of them and admire them and in my mind, be like, why can't I be a great mom like that? I would come home and I would tell Jeff what I was feeling. Thankfully, he was really in tune with who I was, probably way more than I was with myself.
He said, Beth, you're bringing all of these incredible aspects of each of these moms, which by the way, Beth, they're probably putting on their best performance when they're at the playground. But you're bringing in all of these incredible qualities of each of them and creating one big super mom that you think you should be and live up to.
That was a big turning point for me. It helped me to realize, oh, yeah. I didn't have the language back then, but had I had the enneagram language, I'd have been like, you're right. I am not a type 8. I am not a type 4. I am not a type 5. Those aren't the paths for me. That's okay. God created me to be this mom for these children.
But I didn't have the understanding back then. So I was highly anxious and really in that comparison world, thinking I should be this or should be that. Even in the Christian world, there are a lot of shoulds. We didn't have social media back then, but I'm sure had I been on social media, I would have been swallowed up with, oh, wait, I should be like that and this and that.
I would have been pulled in a thousand different directions. That's probably one of the biggest reasons why I struggled so much. I know a lot of moms do too, not being a type nine though, as type nines definitely want to be a little bit of all things. I think all of us moms struggle to some degree with either comparison or what is the best right way to be a parent.
We have our own framework in our mind that we're trying to live up to. This book is really written out of an overflow of my own heart for myself and what I struggled with. The things I wish I would have been told or brought to my attention back in the day, because if we live in fear and shame, guilt, it is not going to be the best way to parent.
I want moms to first recognize that God created you uniquely to be you, your personality type for your kiddos. You have your own story. You have your own way of seeing the world. We need to do our own work with the framework God gave us, the way we see the world in light of God, of his truth for our kiddos.
I'm a type 9, but if I'm sitting next to three other type 9s, they might have kids that are completely different Enneagram types, and have completely different needs. Their story is unique to them. I wanted this book to be full of non-judgment, grace, receptivity, attunement, validation.
Like I see you for the type you are. Here are your great strengths. This is where you excel. Yes, when you're struggling, yeah, here's what it looks like. But not to bring shame, not to bring condemnation, but as a rumble strip on the highway that alerts you, that you know what? Yeah. When you're doing this, you're probably unaware.
You're starting to get into an autopilot mode and you're veering off course, and we want you to be alert, not to shame, because if we shame ourselves and guilt ourselves, it's like taking the wheel and plowing right into the ditch. I know I do it all the time. Versus, oh, okay. Yep. I'm struggling or, yep, that's a pattern I have.
But God has also given me healthy qualities, and I'm gonna get back into the healthy direction for my personality type, not the type everyone else wants me to be, or the type I think I should be. So that's really the backbone of why I wrote the book–was to really write it to my younger self.
Alison Cook: I love that. I think one of the things I love about the book and about the enneagram and about your work is, it's a naming tool. In I Shouldn’t Feel This Way, there's this sort of meta “name, frame, brave”. When I'm listening to you, I can imagine when you're this young mom and I want to hear when you got introduced to the Enneagram, but it's such a fantastic naming device.
This is a description of a personality type. That's different from this other mom I see on the playground. Even right there, there's a name for something that helps you to frame that. Okay, I may never be the mom who is, whatever the thing is, and I love in the book, you really go through that.
This is one of the things you're really gifted at, is using that naming device again without shame, but then to show that metaphor of the rumble strip. This is where I'm doing really well as a type nine. This is what it looks like when I'm starting to hit those rough patches. Here are the behaviors that start to bubble to the surface. Tell me a little bit about, first of all, when you discovered that, how did that come into your life? That language, that naming tool?
Beth: Yeah. So I would say the naming tool really came in with the enneagram because I didn't even really know what it looks like to go inward. I got married at 20, I had Nate at 23, and Libby at 25. I was super young. I'm living life on autopilot and some days, if not a lot of days, I was careening off course and into the ditch and then throwing up my hands going, what is going on?
Why? Why is it like this? Jeff was too, even though we were best friends and still are and love each other, we had a lot of turbulence and he needed to get to know his own self, but I needed understanding. So in 2001 is when I was introduced to the enneagram, way back before it was a popular thing, and I devoured it. I see patterns, especially with the Enneagram, really easily. it made sense.
I tell people, it's like when you see the movie, The Matrix, and there's that screen with the green digits going down, and people are seeing something, and you're like, what are you seeing? That's how I feel with the Enneagram. I see it. I get it. I found my type right away. It was so relieving. Now, a lot of people can think, “I don't want to be labeled”.
The Enneagram doesn't label you. It helps you to understand the framework through which, or the lens through which you see the world, you interpret the world and why you react to it through your feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.
So if I'm going to operate like an algorithm, I'm going to operate in a very specific way and that way can be either healthy all the way to unhealthy. But that is the lens and the path through which I see. And then I can go, oh, okay. These are like my bumper lanes. This is Beth McCord.
So as a mom, I'm going to have these tendencies, healthy tendencies, less healthy and unhealthy tendencies. Using it with the gospel was so helpful. I remember one time, and I hope this is really encouraging to moms, because what usually happens is we start reading the enneagram and it's oooh, this is amazing. It's like a camera in my soul, like, how do they know it?
But then all of a sudden we start seeing the weaknesses or the liabilities of our personality. And it becomes a neon sign, like it's all we can see. All of a sudden shame and guilt come in. I don't like my personality. Why is this so hard? That's very natural.
But when you bring the gospel in, what you recognize is, Christ has not only forgiven my past, present and future sins, he has put on me his righteousness so that when God looks at me, he sees me whole and complete in Christ. When you have that framework in your mind, then when you look at the levels of health for your enneagram type, and it's hard to look at the average to the unhealthy, you recognize I am always his beloved child, no matter where I'm at in these levels of health. My status and my relationship with Christ never changes.
So that helps me to look at that with a lot more grace and freedom–to know I am going to mess up on this side of heaven. He's not surprised by that. In fact, that's why he came. It's also not freedom to go and have a bad day, two bad kids, deal with it. No, he calls us to renew ourselves, to renew our mind, to become more like Christ, but he's the one that's going to work in and through us when we surrender and depend on him.
By looking at the different levels and I see myself, let's say in the average, in the unhealthy place, that's the time to not shame, not guilt, but to come to Christ and say, I need you again. I need you to renew me. I need you to help me to come back to a healthier place for the personality type that you have created me to be for myself and my kiddos.
That's the first step of him working in and through us. It's that dependency and surrender that he is really looking for. Our mustering up and pulling our bootstraps up. We've all tried that. It is literally surrendering, depending on him. That's the first step. Now, of course, we do our work for sure. But it's that position that we come in and really enjoying the personality that he gave us. Because our personality is a reflection of him when we're at our healthiest. We can champion ourselves because he's the one that designed us.
Alison Cook: I love that you focus so much, you've even developed this framework, this awareness framework that really emphasizes everything you're saying. This self awareness component of the enneagram is almost like this mirror. I love what you're saying that when we pair it with that sense of our belovedness, it allows us to even look at those parts of the reflections in the mirror that aren't so wonderful.
It'd be really hard to do that apart from the love of God. So walk us through that. Walk us through that aware framework as moms, as parents, how does that help us? Even in your own life, as you began to implement your understanding of yourself as a type nine, how did that becoming more aware change your parenting?
Beth: Yeah, so AWARE, the acronym AWARE that we use, if you've been in any of our books, it's there everywhere. So the first letter is A, which is Awaken. The second letter is W for Welcome. then A is for Ask. R is Receive and E is Engage, so I'll walk through those real quickly.
A is awaken to yourself, your thoughts, your feelings, and your body inclinations. They're all going to give us this alert system, what's going on. As moms, we get activated a lot. Now it can go into that trigger mode. Maybe you have trauma in your past and maybe something's even triggering you, but we get activated all the time. I want moms to hear first and foremost, getting activated and triggered is not wrong or a sin.
It's life. It's what we do with it that makes the difference. So we want to become awakened to what activates and triggers us and why. That's what the Enneagram is all about. Why is that triggering you? It helps us to know why we think, feel, and behave. What are those core motivations behind the scene? You guys will learn all of that in the book. What are those core motivations for all nine types?
But we want to become awakened to it. So for me, as a type nine mom, I wanted peace and harmony. How is this so hard? Can't everyone be happy and get along? I have this vision and it would be super easy. I'll make everyone happy. And it's going to be great. That's not how life is. When the kids would whine or fight or struggle, I would get all anxious inside and almost want to force people to be happy or force people to be peaceful.
I had to awaken those tendencies, but then the second step is welcome. I needed to welcome the understanding of who I am and why I'm doing these things with grace and compassion to be receptive and nonjudgmental of myself. That those two are huge steps. then. Once you're in that place of not judging or criticizing yourself, which, hey, it is really hard, that is a very hard place to be.
But when we're there, we can start to ask, that's the second A, ask for what is true, whether that's getting feedback from people, maybe it's reading a book. I'm telling you, your books, all three of them have been revolutionary to my life. Boundaries For Your Soul is when I contacted you. I'm like, I have got to know this person.
We'll ask for what's true. And then we go into the R, which is receive. Receive what's true, which can be really hard. That's where the Enneagram comes in because we're seeing our great strengths and our weaknesses, and we've got to receive that. If we're in that non judgmental state, and we know that Christ has us, it's a lot easier. It's not easy, but it'll be easier.
Then we can move into the last letter, which is E. That's where we can now engage in life and relationships in a new way, because we're seeing things differently. We understand life differently, are more self regulated because we understand first and foremost, we are beloved, we're safe, we're secure in the finished work of Christ.
It's going to be a mess here and there, but he's got us and we can walk out this awareness with our kids. In fact, the more we walk that out with grace and compassion for ourselves, our kids are going to see that and then model that themselves. Really, that is the greatest gift you can give your kids, for them to know themselves and understand that they have strengths and weaknesses.
They're going to have good days and bad days, and it is going to be okay. But, we do move forward and progress, learning about ourselves.
Alison Cook: That's good. That's so good. It's not a linear line up. There's a lot of up and down, but we are moving in the right direction. I love how honest you are as a type nine. I think it's really relatable to so many women, what you were saying about wanting everybody to get along, wanting peace and harmony.
As you awakened, as you began to implement this growing awareness, how did it change how you showed up with your kids when they were fighting or when there was chaos or when there was turbulence? How did that change how you show up in those situations? Because like you said, I'm sure you still felt it. I'm sure you still got activated.
Beth: Yeah, I'll give you a couple stories. Real quick stories. When they were little, Jeff would be wrestling with them on the floor. They were having so much fun, and my eyes are seeing how wonderful this is. But my body was screaming at me, you've got to put a stop to this because it was feeling chaos.
My body didn't understand what was going on. It goes back to my own story. I was teased a lot as a little girl. So any kind of teasing or joking or playing or tickling meant to me, everything's on the verge of someone getting upset. So I had to understand that and watch my kids and literally mentally go, this is okay. Now, there were times I could stay in the moment, feel a little uncomfortable inside, but know that this is okay.
There were other times I had to literally physically remove myself because I wasn't in a place that could handle that. But I also didn't want to disrupt the fun that they were having. And then there's times where I can't remove myself and I'm in a really vulnerable place and I needed to ask Jeff to maybe stop for a while until I was in a better place and then they could go back to it.
That sounds really simple. But it's not–my typical way was shaming myself. They're having fun, why can't you be a good mom? Again, you have to go through that AWARE process. I had to receive and welcome and do all the things to understand that being activated wasn't a bad thing,
Alison Cook: It's a great example because what's so relatable about what you share in the book and what you're sharing right now, is you would tend towards self-shame.
Beth: I do. Yes. I would also blame others. If you would be happy, if you would not whine, I wouldn't feel so activated. Why can't you be a happy go lucky child? So it was both-and for sure.
Alison Cook: Fair enough. Yeah. What I love is your honesty. What I love about the framework, the robustness of it, is it makes sense because this is what's so hard about this work of becoming more self aware. The enneagram and what you're doing in this book is such a helpful tool because it's complicated.
You become aware of, I'm activated. And then, you ask what's really true. Is something outside of me happening that I need to address? Or in the case you offered, is what's happening outside of me really healthy? It's great for them. My kids are happy. They love it. I'm the one that's uncomfortable.
That takes a minute to discern when you're activated. It's hard to do. There really is this whole process, and you can't even do that discernment if you're shaming yourself or blaming someone else. It makes so much sense, that it's really developing that posture. It's going to take me a minute. It's not simple. As you said, it's not simple.
Beth: It's ongoing. So now that my kids are older, if we go out to dinner, my husband's a counterphobic six, which means he can be strong and blunt at times. And my son is a social six, but he's a young guy, so he can actually be a little provocative too, and my daughter's a two, and so she can bring in a lot of that strength of an eight.
They at times have a lot of fun bantering, joking, sarcasm, or even debating their viewpoints, and they're having fun. They're okay, but everything in me, even as they're adults now, says the same thing for when they were wrestling on the floor. Because I can remember we were at the Cheesecake Factory one day and this was happening and I am feeling like we're on the verge of conflict or something bad's going to happen.
I knew that there's times that I'm like, guys, please stop, and I'm not aware and I'm reactive, but in this one instance, I was like, okay, wait, and I remembered when they were kids. I go, guys, I am really physically uncomfortable right now. I am fearful. They were like, mom, because they grew up with the enneagram, mom, we totally get that. That makes total sense, but we're having a great time. We're totally fine.
I'm looking at all of them checking really? You're okay with this? They're like, yeah, this is great. I'm literally blown away. Now, I will say, I was like okay, I'm going to trust, I'm going to receive this, and then I'm going to try to engage in a new way. I tried to sit there for a little bit longer as they kept going, but I couldn't. So I said, hey, I'm trying really hard to let you guys be you, but I'm really struggling. Can we just change the topic or do something different?
They were so kind and accommodating because they knew I was trying and they knew I could see what was true, but my body just, in my mind and my spirit couldn't align with the fun they were having. I feel very fortunate that they were able to move in my direction as well.
Alison Cook: Gosh, this is so helpful. I'm listening to you going, especially with adult kids, because as they become older, it is different. There is a familial negotiation that can occur and it's so delicate. I know you read Boundaries for Your Soul and you really appreciate the parts. When you think about that family system where you're negotiating between parts, it's such a great example in your own family where you've got these adult kids who are like, we're having a blast.
You're like, this isn't fun for me. How do we negotiate it? There might be cases where you say, hey guys, I'm going to excuse myself. You go on. There might be situations where you can actually sit there and go, okay, I'm going to try to enjoy this. And then there might be situations where you're like, could we do something else. All of those three could be great options if everybody's very aware.
Beth: I was doing a podcast with type nine moms and we were all laughing because back in the day, we didn't have these air pods with noise cancellation. So I would literally use those swimmer wax earplugs when I couldn't get away physically. I needed to be present and I would put those in halfway so it knocked the noise down a little bit.
Nowadays when they're bantering, and I want to still be there, I'll sometimes put the AirPods in to bring that volume and the intensity down so that my body can engage more than usual. There's going to be types where people out there that are like, that makes no sense at all.
I get it, especially from a type nine. I can almost picture the other types going, that sounds like so much fun. Like type eights, they call it confrontational intimacy. They love that back and forth, that sparring. They feel intimate or connected with others. That scares me to death, but I'm also growing. Okay. How can I do that in a way that's good for me, but also helpful for others?
Again the whole point of the book is knowing yourself as a mom. How did God create you uniquely with your enneagram type, your story? And understanding that so that you are gracious and kind to yourself when you're at that place. You're able to move in a healthier direction and it's not linear. It's up and down.
I have been doing the enneagram for 20 some years now. I'm still struggling. We were talking about it before the podcast. I'm still in it. But there has been lots of progress and there's lots of progress to keep happening.
Alison Cook: The real fruit isn't, oh, we never struggle. The real fruit is, we love each other. We're together. We're still having a blast together 20 years later. That's amazing fruit.
Beth: Yeah. To know each other. So one last story. My kids were in their late teens and it was summer break. It was like the very first week of summer break and I worked from home typing away and doing a bunch of stuff. I came downstairs and when you come down the stairs in our last house, you come down the stairs and you walk through the hallway and it’s the kitchen island and sink.
Okay. So I looked at it and I'm like, oh my. This is a disaster. I'm like, I did not do this. I'm trying to self-regulate. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna ask them to clean up. It's theirs. I did. They're like, yeah, sure, mom. they're in there playing video games, having a blast. They're kind of loud. I'm like, this is good. This is good. They're having fun. This is exactly what I want.
I said, hey, I'm gonna go upstairs and work, and then I'm gonna come back down and I'd like this done. Sure, mom. So four hours later, I came down. Yes, we all know the dishes are still there. As a type 9, we think that our presence doesn't matter. Our voice doesn't matter. That's what got me activated.
And why I'm sharing the story is when you can name the tendencies your type has, you can then treat it like a rumble strip on the highway. So when I was walking down that hallway towards the kitchen, I knew I was activated and everything in me wanted to be upset, to be hurt.
Nobody cares. Nobody respects me. they're over there in there still having a ball. That is a dream to have teenage kids enjoying one another. So I'm in this very perplexed situation. I want to yell and scream and say, you guys should respect me, and that's a big thing for type nines.
But then I felt the rumble strip. I gathered myself and I knew what was going on internally. I went in there and I said, hey guys, I asked that this be cleaned up four hours ago. Here's what happens when you raise your kids to be self aware and use the enneagram. They instantly got up. This isn't all the time, so please do not think the McCords are like this all the time.
But this was really beautiful. They got up and they came into the kitchen where I was. They said, oh, mom, yes, we just, we're total teenagers. We're so sorry. We didn't mean to. Just kept playing and totally forgot about time.
This is where it got really creepy and awesome. They're like mom, we know as a type 9 you probably feel like your voice doesn't matter and that we don't love you. But that is not true and we'll totally clean it up. You totally matter to us. We got caught up in the fun. And I sat there, like is this really happening?
I really felt seen and validated and cared for by them validating and acknowledging my viewpoint of the world. Not theirs, mine. It really helped me to go, I am loved. They understand what hurts me, they're apologizing, and I forgave them and we moved forward and they cleaned up the kitchen.
That is why we want families to use the AWARE acronym along with the gospel along with the Enneagram, because we can do these hard things together and have a really great relationship, even when it feels turbulent. Good things can come out of it.
Alison Cook: I love that. What age do you recommend kids, because I do think it can be so helpful as a family to have the language, what age do you recommend parents start talking about the enneagram with their kids?
Beth: I think helping your kids understand the concept of the Enneagram, that different people have different colored lenses–there are plastic sunglasses out there and they're all different colors–helps them to understand that we all see the world differently. You can even start there.
We all have different things that make us happy or sad. So you can even start at a young age, with a common framework and understanding. But then to really find their type, we cannot name anyone's type. I know we all try to, and it's not wrong for parents to study their kids, to be curious, to have a couple of types in their mind, but please do not type your kids.
Me and my team who are experts in the enneagram, we've all been like, oh my goodness, I think my kid is this, and then like another season in their life, the developmental stage, they’re like, wait a second, maybe they're this type. And then they change again. You're like, oh, maybe it's that type. That happens all the time.
So hold several numbers loosely. You might clearly see they're not several types, and that's great. Hold a couple numbers loosely. Keep introducing the concept of the enneagram, but do it usually in ways that you're not saying the words of the enneagram because even with my kids I had to be very careful to not annoy them.
With the enneagram, make it an everyday conversation. Then when they're in their teens, that's when they're starting to become aware of themselves. This is usually when parents are freaking out because they're like, you haven't ever been this way in your whole life. It's because they were figuring out who they should be.
They're like, should I be like that teacher? Should I be like that parent? They're not morphing, they're ebb and flowing in life. Then those teenagers, they’re like, I don't think so, I'm gonna be me. And then the parents are, oh my gosh, what's happening?
That's when their personalities are solidifying. It's been there since birth, but it's really coming to fruition. So if they're interested, have them take an Enneagram test, look at the core motivations of all nine types, and see if they can find the one that has their core motivations.
It might take time. It takes 40, 50 year olds time. It's okay. They might mistype themselves. That's okay too. But I would say it's in those teenagers that you can really start to see if they're ready and if they're interested in that. But it really has to be their process, their discovery, because it's about why they think, feel, and behave, not the outward behaviors.
All kids can rebel, but why are they rebelling? That's the difference. All kids can be perfectionistic, but why are they being a perfectionist? So you want to get to the core motivation. So I want to let parents know it's great that you are curious. It is great that you are studying your kids. Do that, but hold them loosely until they can name their type.
Alison Cook: I love that. That's so good. You can create that environment of awareness all throughout and then bring that tool in later on.
Beth: One of the reasons why we don't want to type our kids really comes back to IFS. We have a book called More Than Your Number, which is a combination of IFS and the Enneagram. We call it the enneagram maternal profile. We use all nine types at different levels, different degrees.
We have parts within us that show up. In your kids' parts, the different Enneagram types will pop up from time to time and confuse you. That's okay. That's why you gotta wait until they're old enough to really name the core reasons for why they think, feel, and behave.
Alison Cook: Yeah, I love that. That's one thing you and I share in common, is that overlay with the different parts of us. That's so good, Beth. So much wisdom here. It's such a good book. There's so much in it, practical stuff for moms. It really does come out of your own lived experience and you share a lot of that in the book. I've learned a lot listening today. I'm like, oh, especially with adult kids, you have to revisit all of that. Things land in a different way on our systems as they get older.
Where can people find you, find the book, and get more resources about how to apply this?
Give us all the scoop on how people can find you.
Beth: So the book can be found at EnneagramForMoms.com. We have an assessment there for parents to take. So that's a really fun way to find your type. You can pre-order the book there or order the book there if it's already out. If it's a pre-order, you can get pre-order bonuses. There are lots of goodies that we put together that I wish I had when I was younger, so I really hope people will pre-order, get those PDFs to download, to use.
They are really important resources to have. So Enneagramformoms.com. Everywhere else, it's our website, YourEnneagramCoach.com, You can meander your way over to that website, Enneagram for Moms, or Your Enneagram Coach handles on social media, that's where we're at.
Alison Cook: I always refer people to your Enneagram assessment. It's really a good one. It's really robust. It's free. You put in your email address. I'll link to all of that in the show notes. Your resources and your materials are amazing. They're super practical. They're all Christ centered, they're all steeped in biblical wisdom and really practical and helpful.
I love that you're bringing this into parenting. I think it's so helpful. It's super helpful. We need tools in the toolkit and this is one of the most helpful ones, all the way around from the naming to the framing to the bringing that awareness into ourselves and helping our kids grow in that. Thank you so much for all the work that you do, Beth. It's really helped so many people and I'm thrilled about this new resource.
Beth: I've thoroughly enjoyed it, and I will say once again, your books have been instrumental in my own life, so as much as I want them to grab this new book, I really want you guys to grab Alison's books as well. I am not kidding. They are great.
Alison Cook: Thank you, Beth. I so appreciate you. I love the fact that even between the two of us, we're reflecting that wholeness, that fullness as we each create different ways of getting at deeper health and deeper wholeness. So thanks for being here today.
Beth: Thank you.
We all need to tune up our boundaries from time to time, especially when encountering difficult people. Today, I'm sharing an encore episode about the Biblical mandate to "Turn the Other Cheek." Spoiler alert: it has nothing to do with being a doormat in the face of toxicity! Originally titled, Should I Turn the Other Cheek? Why It's the Opposite of Being a Doormat & How to Stand Firm in the Face of Gaslighting, Manipulation, & Toxicity, today's episode shows you how to detect toxic strategies and navigate tricky relational situations with wisdom and clarity.
Here’s what we cover:
- What the Bible has to say about toxic behavior
- Does it work to “love people into change"?
- Biblical examples of being a fool
- Biblical strategies for being wise like Jesus
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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Additional Resources:
- Matthew 5:38-39
- Sermon On the Mount: Matthew 5
- Matthew for Everyone (Part 1) by NT Wright
- National Domestic Abuse Hotline: Call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) for 24/7 free, confidential support.
- Psalm 23:5
- Romans 8:31
- Matthew 10:16
- Proverbs 18:2
- Proverbs 12:15
- Proverbs 10:18
- Proverbs 18:6
- Proverbs 14:16
- Isaiah 32:5-7
- Scriptures about how to be wise: Proverbs 14:7, Proverbs 23:9, Proverbs 26:4-5, Proverbs 18:7, Galatians 6:7, Proverbs 29:11
- Proverbs 13:20
Related Episodes:
- Episode 2: What Should I Know About Gaslighting?
- Episode 24: Boundaries, the Spectrum of Toxicity, and a Note About Evil
- Episode 25: Types of No Part 1—How to Say “No” in Healthy Relationships
- Episode 26: Types of "No" Part 2—How to Say "No" to Toxicity, The Real Meaning of Turn the Other Cheek & How to Form a Boundaries Committee
- Boundaries and the Bible Youtube Series
- What Does the Bible Really Say Youtube Series
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:
Hey everyone. And welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast and happy 4th of July! I'm so glad you've joined me for this holiday weekend. I hope that you are seeking out and finding some much deserved times of rest for yourself over the holiday weekend, even as you celebrate.
In honor of the holiday weekend and the summer, I wanted to share with you a message that I've given in the past. It's an important message that's really close to my heart. It's all about the importance of being wise as you interact with the people around you.
I've had so many conversations already this summer with people who are finding themselves in the thick of family gatherings, weddings, reunions, holiday events, like 4th of July parties, neighborhood events. The summer brings all these opportunities to see people that maybe you haven't seen in a while, and boundaries tend to get a little blurry during the summer.
There's sometimes not as much structure, which can be great, but it can also create a lot of challenges. Relationally, we love structure. Structure is our friend as human beings. And so in the middle of summer and on holiday weekends, when structure gets thrown out the window, it can be hard for a lot of us, especially if you're someone who's high in empathy, who thinks about the needs of others, who defaults to taking care of everybody around you and not necessarily considering your own needs.
So toward that end, I want to re-share with you one of my most popular episodes. It's one of the episodes I've gotten the most feedback from, people saying this episode was so helpful in thinking about how to relate to difficult or challenging family members, friends, loved ones, ex loved ones, anybody who's really hard to interact with, especially when you're someone who wants to be a good person, who wants to be kind, who wants to do right by others.
And yet you consistently find yourself bumping up against somebody else's toxic strategies or toxic behaviors. I've got you covered. This episode breaks down so many skills on how to be wise, both in honoring others, and equally as important, in protecting your own emotional health, your own mental sanity.
As you face summer and you have less structure and you're going into situations where you find yourself trapped in a corner with someone who's putting you in an awkward situation or you find yourself stuck with someone who's trying to get information out of you that you don't want to give them, or you find yourself in a group of people who are gossiping about other people that you care about, or you find yourself being triangulated or manipulated in a way that leaves you feeling anxious inside and you can't figure out why, I want you to go into these gatherings armed with strategies, armed with scripts, armed with skills.
This episode has you covered. I go through different toxic strategies that people will use. And listen, sometimes otherwise good people use toxic strategies. So it's really wise to be able to name things, to be able to honor what's happening and to be wise in the way that Jesus was as he navigated through really tricky situations, much like the situations we have to navigate through weddings and gatherings and funerals and celebrations and family dinners.
He was so wise and nimble and agile in how he engaged with other people. This episode will help you find your stride so that you can navigate tricky situations with confidence, with calm. Instead of letting other people get the best of you, you can show up with agency as the best version of who God has made you to become.
We all need a reminder from time to time about the importance of establishing healthy boundaries, of thinking ahead, of being wise, and of taking action. As we interact with the people in our lives, especially the people who continuously show up using toxic strategies. Again, as I always say, we're not labeling people. We're labeling behaviors.
This episode will show you how, and it will equip you to be the best version of yourself this summer in partnership with God's spirit.
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Alison: Thank you so much for just your notes, your comments, for what you share with me about what this podcast has meant to you. It means so much to me to hear from you, to know that what we're doing here matters to you. It matters a lot to me. This is my passion; my life is bringing together my faith with psychology. Bringing together what I know to be true of God.
What I know to be true about the Bible, into relationship with what I know to be true about the human self, about what it means to be human in this world. That we are not, as we talked about at the end of last week's episode, that we are not just quote-unquote, "Saved" to get to a better place after we die.
That we are, in fact, in the process of being made whole right now. Which means we are in the process of learning how to live out our God-given lives, our God-given talents. Our God given abilities, in our families, in our relationships, in our communities, in our own souls right now. The healing starts now. Where we learn how to become more whole, more true, more emotionally regulated, more clear, more creative, as we are parents, as we are friends, as we are community members, and as we allow others to come alongside us.
As we forge these healthy two-way relationships that can, sometimes, feel so hard, so challenging in this messy world that we live in. But there are tools, there are strategies that we have to equip ourselves to do this work of being a human well, and that's what this podcast is all about. I love creating it each week. I'm so grateful that you're here and I cannot wait to dive in to today's topic – Should I turn the other cheek?
Now, we're going to get into what that means, some strategies for how to actually do that effectively. Which means in a way that does not simply give other people permission to take advantage of you. And then we're going to talk about the specifics of some of the kinds of toxicity that we bump up against, especially this thing of gaslighting.
That's such a buzzword, but it's a very real thing and very common in our world today. Where there's just so much spin, so much manipulation, so much deception. So many half-truths everywhere, and how are we to stand firm in the face of all that. Which is a little bit more of what I think turn the other cheek really means.
So should I turn the other cheek? This is an expression we throw around. It comes directly from the words of Jesus, and here's a passage from Matthew 5:38-39, where Jesus talks about this concept. Here's what Jesus says, "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek turn to them the other cheek also." And then He goes on with a few other similar statements.
So this whole passage is in the context of Jesus's Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, and there's a whole lot of this upside down gospel that Jesus is talking about in the Sermon of the Mount. We touched on this last week, of this way in which Jesus is ushering in this whole new way of thinking about what it means to follow Him. A whole new way of what it means to be an image bearer.
To be a person who reflects the image of God, in the world. And He's trying to upend a little bit the old way of thinking about that, which was this way of following a code of laws.
And I turn here to N.T. Wright, who again, is a prominent New Testament scholar, who writes a lot about this idea of how Jesus isn't, necessarily, trying to replace one law with another law.
He's not simply trying to say, "well, no, now you're not going to do this Ten Commandment thing. In fact, I'm elevating it to a whole new law." Which is, sometimes, how we interpret this passage. It's like, "The whole new way to be a Christian is we're just supposed to turn the other cheek, take mistreatment from others. Just give everything away. Just let everybody walk all over us." That's the new way to follow God. And it's a lot more nuanced than that, according to Wright.
What Wright says, and I think this is really true in the context of the larger mosaic, that is the New Testament, is that Jesus is not giving prescriptions here. He's not giving mandates. He's describing what it looks like when you become a part of God's kingdom. Where you're living as a beloved child of God. There's this radical shift in how you orient to life.
Where you're living less from yourself, from that ego, from that need to be vindicated. From that fight/flight state of eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, and instead from a whole place, a healed place. Which is not a place of being a doormat, it's a place of conviction. Of being so anchored in the truth of who you are as God's beloved child.
That your whole orientation to other people, including to other people who would seek to do you harm, is changed from the inside out. So these are not shallow declaratives, where it's like, suddenly, Jesus is saying, "You just need to give everybody else everything you own and just be foolish." Because we know that Jesus is no fool, and I'll get into that here in a minute.
But I first just want to paint this broad picture here, of Jesus is suggesting that when you live as a child of God and you live in this new kingdom that Jesus is ushering in. You are so anchored, so confident, in who you are and in this life, this new life, that God has given you. That you have tasted the nectar of ultimate reality, and it is so good and so beautiful. And you are so filled with the hope of what it means to be redeemed, to be made whole.
To become that beautiful, light-bearing person, who has purpose, who has dignity, who is being healed of wounds. Who is being brought into the wholeness of responsibility, and of goodness, and of beauty, and of creativity, and becoming someone who walks with God, with purpose, in this life. That suddenly dealing with evil, dealing with people who want to hurt us, dealing with toxicity, has a whole new connotation.
It doesn't mean we don't need to deal with it. It doesn't mean we need to be foolish and pretend like it's not there. It means it takes on a whole new connotation. This is not something that can be achieved with superficial willpower, or with naive platitudes or with simplistic niceties, pleasantries, or half-hearted, sort of, being a nice person.
This is not the powerful picture that Jesus is painting in Matthew 5. It's this picture of I have so much hope in who God is and what God is really about in His work, to bring radical healing. To bring radical transformation to those who have been hurt the most. To those who've been the most traumatized, the most victimized, the most deeply broken, the most deeply wounded.
That the God that we serve is so powerful. That He is reaching every corner of the deepest, darkest places of this busted up world, to bring people out of bondage. Literal bondage, physical bondage, emotional bondage, metaphorical bondage, spiritual bondage, and into the truth of dignity, of purpose, of wholeness.
I believe so much in that God and the radical work He is doing in every corner of this world, and in every corner of my soul. I believe so much in this vision that I begin to see that the last are actually going to be first. That I begin to understand what it means that those who hunger are going to be filled, and that those who are suffering are going to be comforted, and that those who are persecuted are going to find their freedom. And that I'm, in fact, a part of bringing those realities of wholeness, of healing, of redemption into being.
There's a power in that that allows us to orient ourselves to the insults, to the persecutions, to the violations, to the deceptions, to the false accusations in a different way. From a place of deep, grounded conviction.
So against that backdrop, we arrive at this idea of what it means to turn the other cheek. So in many ways, and for many of us, this phrase has been used to suggest that as a Christ follower, as someone who loves God, that you are supposed to simply put up with abuse and mistreatment. You're supposed to be the bigger person. There's a way in which we're taught that what you're supposed to do is love the offending party into seeing the error of their ways. And that your loving response is what will prompt the other person to change, and sometimes that works.
Sometimes we are called, in certain situations, to simply show grace, show mercy. There is a time and a place for that, but that's not always the best strategy in real life. There are circumstances where that is just simply not wise. If you're in a situation where someone is abusing you, coming after you with toxic strategies, you are not going to be able to, quote-unquote, "Love them into change." You are, in fact, going to need to get yourself out of that situation. You are going to need to be strategic.
Now, we talked about this back in the series on boundaries. Where I delineate different kinds of boundaries. There are the everyday boundaries that you need to set even with people you love. Where sometimes you do absolutely just need to show love and show mercy, instead of executing your right to be upset with somebody. We see this all the time in long-standing friendships, or in family relationships, or in marriage.
But in that series, I also delineate when you need to say no to toxicity. Which is a very different type of strategy that's in episodes 24, 25, and 26. Some of those different ways of setting boundaries that are appropriate for different types of different situations.
In these types of scenarios where you're in a toxic situation, where you're being abused by a spouse or a boss, maybe you're being harassed. Maybe you're being systematically undermined or manipulated, maybe you're being bullied. Maybe somebody is lying about you or spreading lies about you, behind your back. This is not a type of situation where you are just supposed to continue to take the pain, just be the bigger person, just to ignore it.
If you think about your child, if they were being bullied, systematically, on the playground, you would talk to them about how to get themselves out of that situation. You wouldn't want to put your child in a position of being harmed by another person. It's just not wise, and it's not wise for us to do as adults. When you're dealing with folks who are really using some of these very toxic strategies to harm you, it's foolish to pretend that you can just love that person into change. In many cases, we can just end up enabling toxic behavior and harming ourselves, in the process.
Instead, I would posit to you that turning the other cheek is actually a very brave counter move. It's not being a doormat. And I turn here, again, to N.T. Wright where he shows this nuanced understanding of this very passage from Matthew 5, and I'm going to read from this passage in his book Matthew for Everyone. This is what N.T. Wright says, "To be struck on the right cheek in that world, almost, certainly, meant being hit with the back of the right hand. That's not just violence, it's an insult. It implies that you're an inferior, perhaps a slave, a child, or in that world, and, sometimes, even today, a woman."
So, again, in my words, this slap on the right cheek is not just abuse, although, it is that. It's also an insult, it's demeaning. It's saying, "You are not worth my time. You're an inferior person to me." That's what it's symbolizing here, both in reality and that time, but it's what it's symbolizing for us today.
And, so, here's what N.T. Wright says, "What's the answer? Hitting back only keeps the evil in circulation. Offering the other cheek implies, 'hit me again if you like, but now as an equal, not as an inferior.'" And you can imagine this scenario where you turn that other cheek in defiance, it's not to say, "Oh, sure, no problem. Yes, just keep hitting me, it's fine, you're fine, I'll just love you into change."
That is not the connotation there. There's a note of defiance in it. It's turning the other cheek to say, "Yes, I see, you can't hit me and, yes, that hurts. Yes, I don't like it, but you cannot take my dignity." There's a note of defiance in it, if you think about that. It's a way of standing your ground, of communicating, "You will not belittle me." It's countering bullying from a position of strength.
So, first of all, I want to pause here and say if you are someone who is actually being physically harmed, physically abused, in any relationship, there are several free crisis support numbers that I will link to in the show notes. They provide 24 hours a day, seven days a week free support. So please take advantage of these numbers. If you're experiencing any domestic abuse, for any reason, please reach out. So there is that literal piece of physical abuse.
But in many instances, we also find ourselves in these situations in maybe less literal ways where we're being emotionally or psychologically manipulated. Or just guilt tripped or harmed by someone who is really trying to demean, or belittle, or manipulate us in ways that are disempowering and in ways that call for very serious responses.
Imagine if someone came up to you at work or berated you publicly, and imagine you had the inner fortitude, the inner strength. The inner conviction to simply stand your ground, let them finish their diatribe, look them in the eye, not flinching and say, "Are you done now?" That's the connotation here.
Now, that's really hard to do, but there's power in that, that's not being a doormat. There's power in standing there and saying, "Mh-hmm, yes, you come at me with all you got and you cannot shake me because I am still standing here, and you might be able to scream at me. You might be able to use all these tactics and guess what? I am still showing up. I am still going to create. I am still going to use my voice. I am still going to live my life vibrantly because you cannot take that from me."
It's that kind of energy, and I see this all the time with people. Where these bullies come in, whether it's online, or whether it's in your community group, or whether it's in your church,
and people are talking behind your back or they're trying to take you down a peg or two. And it's painful, don't get me wrong, it's painful, and you need to get support, and you need to get a herd around you. You don't want to do this alone. You need to get people around you.
But this is the connotation of turn the other cheek. And, listen, it takes a minute to get there, there's no shame. Because we get hooked, we get hooked into the fight. We get hooked into the screaming match. We get hooked into the yelling match. We get hooked into trying to meet them on those petty terms. We get hooked into it, and there's no shame in that. Please hear me say that, there's no shame in that, this is a process.
But I'm trying to paint a picture for you of the goal because, I think, that's what Jesus is getting at here. It's so much deeper than just playing the doormat, it's so much deeper. It's standing there in your full power, in the face of your enemies. I think of David in the Psalms when he says, "You set a table for me before my enemies." And it's that kind of thing.
It's like, "Man, they're there. They're out there. They're gossiping about me. They're saying mean things behind my back. They're trying to take me down. They're criticizing me. They're trying to hurt me, and I'm sitting here, and I am just feasting on what the Lord has put in front of me. This banquet that He's placed in front of me. And, yes, I can see them, they're off in the distance there, those ones, my enemies, the ones who want to hurt me. But I'm here feasting because God is for me, and when God is for me, who can be against me." It's that kind of energy.
It's knowing, so deeply, that who you are is so important, and so valued, and matters so much to God that you can feast on the goodness of God in the face of your enemies, and that is a powerful weapon. That's what I want for you to understand today, as we talk about what it means to turn the other cheek.
I want you to begin to go, "You know what? I'm not fighting this battle on their terms anymore. That's their battle. That's their war. Those are their weapons, I got different weapons. And the weapons I have are the weapons of I am loved. The weapons of I have a God who anchors me, and that allows me to be shrewd.
That allows me to turn the other cheek and say, 'All right, you might win this stupid, petty battle over here, but I've got the victory, in my life, because I'm doing the work over here of healing my soul through therapy. I'm doing the work over here building up alliances with people who want to be good to each other. Who want to be kind to each other, Who love each other, and who are building beautiful spaces.
Where we speak truth, and we speak goodness, and we speak light, and we are creating more and more pockets of goodness, and that is our battleground. That is our battleground, and I'm finding other light-bearers who want to do that work with me. I'm telling my story in communities of people who have compassion, people who are of courage, that's brave work.'"
Next week, we're going to be talking to Curt Thompson about these confessional communities, where people come together in these groups. Where we tell our stories honestly, bravely, in safe places, where we are heard, where we are seen, where we are loved. And as we do that work, there is no match for the power that we unleash in this world.
Turning the other cheek is not just taking the pain. It's saying, "You can harm me, but you cannot take my dignity. And I am going to start taking all of this energy that I've been letting you suck me dry with, and put it over here into the work of healing." It is not enabling someone. It's getting yourself out of a toxic situation with as least damage, to yourself, as possible.
For more practical, tactical ways to do that, go back and listen to those episodes in the Boundaries series. I'll link to them in the show notes. I go through practical scripts and tips in those episodes. But I want you to understand that is what turning the other cheek does not mean that you give somebody the best of who you are. It means that you turn your cheek in the other direction.
You know exactly what is happening and exactly how you feel about it, and that you will give exactly as little as possible, of your own best energy, to that situation anymore. You will be turning your energy into anchoring yourself in the support of health, of wholeness, of goodness. You will no longer let them take the best of who you are.
I want to turn here briefly to how you deal with some of these psychological forms, that we really need to address and not let people use against us. It could be anything from just someone who's constantly criticizing you to someone who's manipulating you. Where they're really trying to twist you or guilt trip you into doing something you don't want to do, and it's really subtle sometimes. "Well, okay, I guess if you don't really want to do that, I'll just suffer. It'll just be really hard for me, and I don't really feel like you're loving me."
You get that martyr complex from somebody when they're guilt tripping you or trying to manipulate you. That we might see in a parent or in a friend, where they're trying to get us to do something that we just don't really want to do in good conscience. All the way to this idea of gaslighting, where somebody is systematically trying to make you feel crazy. They're manipulating the truth and then going on the offense to put you on your heel, to put you on the defense.
For example, let's say if someone borrows your phone, and you catch them. Your phone isn't where you left it, and they've been using it, and they didn't return it to you, and you go to that person and you say, "Hey, you borrowed my phone can I get it back?"
And they're like, "I didn't borrow your phone, what's wrong with you? Why are you so paranoid? Why are you so controlling?" And, so, they've lied, first of all, they did borrow your phone or they did do the thing, and then they've also turned it against you as if to make you feel like you're crazy. Like, "Wait, what's wrong with me? Why am I this kind of person? Why am I a bad person?" It's this really insidious, toxic form of psychological abuse.
These types of behaviors from guilt tripping all the way down to gaslighting, if you think about that spectrum of toxicity, and a spectrum of unhealthy toxic behaviors.
Turning the other cheek can have a different nuance in each of these situations. It might mean simply refusing to respond, "You can try to guilt trip me, but the answer is still no. Good luck."
"Thanks, but no thanks, no."
All the way down to, literally, extracting yourself from the situation. Again, I go through more practical tactical scripts in episode 26, types of no. But today I want to paint this picture of the biblical foundation of what is going on there and I talk about this word a fool, that we see throughout the Bible. There are so many instances of this juxtaposing what a fool is and what a wise person is in the Bible, it's fascinating.
I did a very cursory word search of the NIV Bible because I was curious. Because, I think, there's so much in the Bible about being wise versus being a fool. So I did a cursory word search of the NIV Bible, and here are some numbers to put on that. So if you look for instances of the word wise or wisdom in the NIV Bible, it comes up 408 times. If you look for instances of the word foolish or fool, in the NIV Bible, it comes up 238 times.
By contrast, if you look for instances of the word hell, in the NIV Bible, it comes up 15 times. It's very interesting. There's a lot in the Bible about being wise versus being foolish. It's a really important topic, and what does that mean, to be wise? What does it mean to be wise? I think there's a lot in this whole thing of being a human. Being an image bearer on this earth, not just someone who is saved for heaven. But being an image bearer on this earth, that has to do with being wise.
Jesus says, "Be wise as the serpent and innocent as the dove." And if you think about what it is to be wise as a serpent, the serpent is close to the ground. He's in the weeds, he's on the dirt, he's in the muck, he's in it. And Jesus is saying, "Be wise in that way." You're in the dirt, you're in the muck, you're in the mess, you're in the world, be wise. And if you think about the dove, the dove is above it all. She's flying in the beautiful blue sky, she's pure, she's out of the muck, out of the noise, she's innocent, we need to be both.
We need to be wise in the muck and the mud, and innocent as the dove. Where we can soar above and be uncontaminated and set apart, it's both. This work of becoming a human, becoming an image bearer, becoming wise, in this life we have now, is a lot of both.
It's figuring out how to navigate the mud and the muck, and even as we figure out how to soar like that dove, we need both. Life involves both. We get those moments of soaring and we also have to figure out our way through the weeds and the muck. Wisdom comprises both. We have to learn how to do both.
And, so, when we think about this being wise as a serpent, it's going to involve some of this yuck, some of this toxicity, some of this gaslighting. Some of this psychological warfare, and in some cases, physical warfare against us, and we got to be shrewd through that. We see so much in the Bible about that.
So I want to give you a picture of what the Bible paints, about what it means to be a fool. Because there's a lot in the Bible about what it means to be a fool. Here's some of what the Bible says; "Fools care nothing for thoughtful discourse, all they do is run off at the mouth." That's from Proverbs 18:2.
"Fools are headstrong and do what they like." That's from Proverbs 12:15.
"Liars secretly hoard hatred, fools openly spread slander." Proverbs 10:18.
"The words of a fool starts fights." Proverbs 18:6
"Fools are headstrong and reckless." Proverbs 14:16.
"Fools leave a wake of wrecked lives and lies about God, turning their backs on the homeless, the hungry, and ignoring those dying of thirst in the streets." That's Isaiah 32:5-7.
Here's my summary of those verses, fools don't care about thoughtful discourse. Do we see this in our culture today? Do we see people really trying to engage thoughtful discourse? We used to use this phrase in graduate school, about complicated problems. And this wasn't from a secular graduate school, this is a concept from psychology.
Where we would talk about complicated problems are the kinds of problems about which reasonable people can reasonably disagree. Think about that for a minute. Complicated problems are those about which reasonable people can reasonably disagree. Most of life is complicated problems. It's complicated problems about which we have to learn to be reasonable people, who reasonably disagree.
This is what it means to be married. This is what it means to be a friend. This is what it means to be a church community. This is what it means to be a neighborhood. This is what it means to be a nation. We have to come together as reasonable people, who can reasonably disagree. There's a lot of room for disagreement about a lot of problems.
Now, there are some problems about which we can't reasonably disagree, they're just wrong. But there's a lot about which we can reasonably disagree. There is so little of that that we see in our culture, in our world, in our neighborhoods, today. Fools don't care about thoughtful discourse.
Fools don't care about respecting others. Fools harbor bitterness, and lies, and gossip. Fools are more interested in starting fights than in really engaging dialogue. Fools are reckless, and fools do not care about the people who are hurting the most.
That's how we measure a fool, and that is not who we want to be. We need to not become fools, and we need to watch out for the fools. That's where you need to be shrewd, wise, when you're dealing with a fool. When you consider this idea of what it means to turn the other cheek, it doesn't mean letting a fool take advantage of you. It means being able to call out, "Oh, that's foolishness. That's just downright foolishness, I want no part of that."
"That's not what it means to be a child of God."
"That's not what it means to be a person who is wise, I want no part of that."
That's how you turn the other cheek when you spot a fool. You call it out for what it is, and you take no part in it. You get yourself away from it as fast as you can.
So number one, do everything you can, first and foremost, to not be a fool. Lesson number one is to not be a fool. Instead, you want to become someone who is wise. So what does that look like? What does it look like to become someone who is wise? Well, there's a couple of things I'm going to read for you from Scripture, some of these passages about what it looks like to be wise.
"Escape quickly from the company of fools, they're a waste of your time, a waste of your words." That's Proverbs 14:7.
"Do not speak to fools, for they will scorn your prudent words." Proverbs 23:9.
"Don't respond to the stupidity of a fool, you'll only look foolish yourself. Answer a fool in simple terms, so he doesn't get a swelled head." Proverbs 26:4-5. There's so much wisdom in these passages.
Here is more, "Fools are undone by their big mouths. Their souls are crushed by their words." Proverbs 18:7.
"The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others, ignoring God, harvests a crop of weeds. All he'll have to show for his life is weeds." Galatians 6:7.
"A fool lets it all hang out. A sage quietly mulls it over." Proverbs 29:11.
So there's sort of a picture here we're arriving at. How do we respond to fools? Well, number one, we call out fools when we see them. We start to identify them. We want no part of them.
Number two, we limit our words and our interactions with them. Less is more, when it comes to communicating with someone who is a fool. We don't play the word game with them. We, number one, won't win because that's what they're good at. And, number two, we just don't have the time of day for that. It's not worth our time. We resist attempts to explain ourselves or get them to understand. Our actions speak louder than our words when it comes to the fool.
And then the other thing that we get at is we let the foolish person suffer his or her own consequences, and this can be challenging. But there is a way in which, the Scripture is teaching, fools are going to take themselves out, at a given point. They're going to bury themselves in their own rubble.
And, so, one of the most loving things you can do is just quarantine the fool. Keep yourselves away from them so that they're not harming you. Neutralize them and then let them burn themselves out, and this can be hard if you're somebody who's empathetic, you want to save the person. But if they've consistently shown a pattern of trying to harm you, there's a lesson here for us, of just walking away from foolishness and allowing them to suffer the consequences that they actually need to suffer.
There's a way in which you can stay anchored in your own integrity and then you reach for another strategy of the wise. And I'm going to read you a couple more Scriptures here. "Wise people take wise advice." Proverbs 12:15.
"You become wise by walking with the wise. You hang out with fools and watch your life fall to pieces." Proverbs 13:20 to become someone who knows how to turn the other cheek in wise, strong, powerful ways, you first have to be able to identify the fool, the gaslighter, the manipulator, the gossiper, the bullier. The one who's just trying to create ruckus, and create noise, and create harm, and to create chaos, and to undermine people, and to harm people. That's all they got, and it can hurt.
It can hurt, don't get me wrong, it really can hurt. But the first step is just to go, "Oh, that's what this is. I see you, I see the game you're playing, and I'm not playing that game with you." Number one.
Number two, it's to get yourself away from it, to quarantine it as best you can. To let them suffer their own consequences. You do not have to be the one to take them down. That's what it means to turn the other cheek. You don't engage in the battle on their terms because you won't win on their terms. But you turn that other cheek and go, "Oh, I see what you're doing. Uh-uh, no, I'm not playing that game with you. I'm not fighting fire with fire."
And, number three, instead, "I am going to go surround myself with other people who are interested in becoming wise. Who are interested in building good things. Who are interested in using their power for good." Those people are out there, I promise you, they are.
And stay tuned for our next series, starting next week, because we're going to talk all about how to find them. But those people are there.
And, so, if you want to turn the other cheek, you stop messing around with those fools, and you start anchoring yourself in your own dignity, and you start finding those other people to align yourself with. In standing on the truth of what it means to be wise in this world, God has called us to be innocent and to be wise. In this world God has called us and equipped us to live in with integrity, with conviction, with courage, with confidence, knowing that we have the God of all goodness, of all truth, of all strength on our side.
Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you take a moment to subscribe. You can go to apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts and click the Plus or Follow button. That will ensure you don't miss an episode and it helps get the word out to others. While you're there, I'd love it if you'd leave your five-star review. I look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.
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The Best of You Every Day offers short, daily reflections on Scripture through the lens of emotional health—helping you stay steady, connected, and rooted in love.
