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Have you ever wondered if someone you know might be on the autism spectrum—or even questioned it about yourself?

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Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is often misunderstood, misdiagnosed, or even missed entirely, especially in those who don’t fit common stereotypes. In this episode, neuropsychologist Dr. Donna Henderson joins us to unpack the complexities of autism, neurodiversity, and how we can better understand and support those around us.

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What You’ll Learn:

* The 7 key criteria for identifying autism

* When to pursue a neuropsychological evaluation

* Why talk therapy often falls short for neurodivergent individuals

* How someone can exhibit an "autistic nervous system" without having ASD

* Practical ways to support loved ones

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This conversation will deepen your understanding of neurodiversity and help you see the world—and those you love—in a new light.

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Resources:

• The Best of You Podcast question form
• Episode 129: Understanding Anxiety—A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Calm, Advocating For Yourself, and Cultivating Inner Resilience
• psychologytoday.com
• Episode 71: All About Therapy—Do I Need a Therapist, How Do I Find One, and What Type of Therapy Works Best?‍
• Is This Autism? A Guide for Clinicians and Everyone Else by Dr. Donna Henderson and Sarah Wayland‍
• isthisautism.com

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If you liked this, you’ll love:

• Episode 85: The Goal of a Healthy Family & 6 Roles We Take On In Dysfunction

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‍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!
• Fatty15 is on a mission to replenish your C15 levels and restore your long-term health. You can get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription Starter Kit by going to fatty15.com/BESTOFYOU and using code BESTOFYOU at checkout.
• 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.‍

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Transcript:

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Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am so glad you're here with me this week and every week, but especially this week, as we are diving into a topic that I know so many of you are eager to learn about, and that's neurodiversity, especially focusing on the autism spectrum.

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I recently ran a poll. I have a doc. It's called The Best of You Podcast question form doc. It's not fancy at all. It's a Google doc. We'll link to it in the show notes. But in that doc, I asked you what specific diagnostic categories you wanted to learn about. 

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This was a couple of months ago, and neurodiversity was your top choice by far  for a specific diagnostic category that you wanted me to cover. I am thrilled to bring this conversation to you, especially with today's guest neuropsychologist, Dr. Donna Henderson, who brings an incredible wealth of knowledge and expertise in this area.

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What I love about Donna is she is clear. I learned so much through this conversation. She breaks things down so simply and so clearly. I'm so excited for you to hear from her today. If you listened to last week's episode, Episode 129, we talked all about anxiety and the different things that drive anxiety and how to better understand it and manage it.

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One of the things I mentioned is that sometimes a root cause of anxiety comes from another condition, meaning that anxiety isn't the primary condition that we need to treat. It's actually secondary. There's something else going on underneath the anxiety. Neurodivergent individuals, especially those on the autism spectrum, tend to experience anxiety more frequently. 

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I am thrilled again, to take this deeper dive into that specific area with Donna today. I want to start briefly to touch on some of the key terms in case they're not familiar to you. Neuropsychological testing is Donna's area of expertise. This is a comprehensive evaluation that helps uncover the strengths and challenges specifically in your brain function. 

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It's often used to identify conditions like autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, and other neurodevelopmental disorders. And this type of testing really plays a crucial role in understanding how your brain functions and its unique ways of processing information and engaging with the world. 

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So it can be so helpful in getting to the root of some of the problems or the challenges that we're facing. If you are listening to today's episode and you're interested in finding a professional who does neuropsychological testing, there's a filter for these specialists on the website, psychologytoday.com. 

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You can go back to Episode 71, where I walk you through step by step how to locate specific types of therapists in your zip code, in your region. And one of the things I walk you through is how to use psychologytoday.com in the first place. There are filters on it to find these types of specialists, and one of those filters is testing and evaluation. 

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So you can go filter for people who specialize in testing and evaluation, like our guest Donna does, if you're interested in learning more about neuropsychological testing. Feel free to go back to Episode 71 to learn more about how to find a specialist like this in your area.

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Without further ado, I want to introduce you to today's guest, Dr. Donna Henderson. Donna is a licensed clinical neuropsychologist who has dedicated her career to understanding and supporting neurodivergent individuals, particularly those on the autism spectrum.

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She's been working with clients for over 30 years, and she is the author of the book, Is This Autism? A Guide for Clinicians and Everyone Else. This is an incredible resource for everyone. As the title would indicate, it's not just for clinicians, it's for anyone who identifies as autistic or who loves someone who is autistic. I am so excited to share with you today's conversation with Dr. Donna Henderson.

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Donna, I am so thrilled that you agreed to join me today and join the podcast to share with us your expertise. I have a million questions to ask you. But the first thing I want to touch on here on the front end is this work that you do in neuropsychological evaluations.

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From my own experience as a clinician, one of the things I've noticed is the more precise we can get diagnostically, the better we can help people. Often, people get categorized or pigeonholed with a diagnostic label that doesn't fit well. I talk about well-fitting names. If we name something and it's not the right name, it really has big implications and repercussions, whether we're working with children or loved ones or spouses or family members or ourselves.

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I would love to hear a little bit about your perspective on what is a neuropsychological evaluation? What does it mean? What are you looking for when people come to you for an evaluation?

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Donna: Sure. First of all, thank you for having me. I am really excited to be here and talk about this. The way I often explain a neuropsych eval is that I describe myself as a detective and the mystery is that some person, whether it's a child, an adolescent or an adult, is struggling with some aspect of their life.

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Maybe they have anxiety or depression or big emotions, or they're struggling in school, or they're not able to meet their social needs, whatever arena they're struggling in. And I have to figure out what's going on there and how can I help them? I look for clues by interacting with people mostly.

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Interviewing the parents, interviewing the individual, having them do different tasks with me so I can see what makes them tick. A neuropsych eval includes interviews, it usually includes rating scales where people answer questions, pen and paper sort of thing. And it usually includes some testing, which may be IQ testing, memory, language, executive functioning, attention, different aspects of functioning and social cognition as well.

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To me, the idea is not to get a diagnosis, although it often does end in a diagnosis or maybe even more than one diagnosis. To me, the real idea is to figure out, what the heck is going on here? What makes this person tick? How do they move through the world? What works for them? What doesn't work for them? What are their strengths? 

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And when it comes to all of that and the diagnoses, I think it should resonate with the child or the individual, with the parents. We should all be on the same page. To me, it feels like it should be a very collaborative process where it makes sense at the end of the day, where we all feel like we solve the mystery and we have a roadmap to move forward.

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Alison Cook: I love that once we get a healthier understanding of what's happening, we can find a better path toward helping the individual thrive. What are some of the primary things you're looking for, especially when we're thinking about things that get missed. I think about kids that either that I've worked with or long ago, when I was brand new, and a parent would be exasperated by a child's behavior. 

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“They can't pay attention in school. They're acting out”. They're getting labeled as a problem child. And this was decades before it was more common to think about the brain, to think about functioning, to think about neurodiversity. To use your detective metaphor, I would think to myself, there's something else going on here. 

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This is a good kid. This kid isn't trying to cause trouble. What's going on there? I remember one time, I had a young teenage client, and a family member ended up giving her an IQ test and her IQ was off the charts. There was some explanation there for some of her boredom in class, for some of her anxiety. 

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It does require that detective mindset. What are some of the things you're looking for? And what are some of the primary diagnostic categories that you see getting missed or falling through the cracks with individuals?

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Donna: So when you were asking that question, one thing that ran through my mind, and I wish I could remember who said this, but it might have even been my co-author and friend, Sarah Wayland. Kids aren't giving you a hard time. They're having a hard time. Often, when parents bring kids in, it's because there may be behavioral problems or the kids aren't meeting expectations or aren't being compliant in different ways.

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The parents have this experience of God, he or she is giving me a hard time. But really, the child is having a hard time. And when I think about it, I do think about it mostly from a brain point of view. Back in the day, we didn't think about that as much. We used to think more about was there trauma in the child? 

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I actually worked with a family this morning with a six year old who is flipping over desks in school and eloping from school. He has very supportive schools, super supportive parents, no trauma history. And everyone keeps saying he's anxious. He's anxious. He's anxious. 

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Sure. But to me, the real question is why is he anxious? There is no good reason that we can see for him to be anxious. He hasn't experienced trauma or a negative household situation or anything like that. There's something in his nervous system that is driving that anxiety. So I'm trying to get underneath to see what's going on. 

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A lot of the time that means understanding their sensory functioning. What's going on with their sensory needs or their sensory overwhelm? What's going on with their social functioning? Are they misperceiving cues? Are they confused by basic interactions? I'm looking at some of that stuff.

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Alison Cook: That's so interesting. That's helpful because we're trying to be trauma-informed. We're always trying to look to the past. We're always trying to look at the system. And you said something really powerful there. When we've turned over all the rocks and there's nothing really there, and this child is still really having a hard time, you're coming in and really looking at those internal mechanisms, the nervous system, the brain to try to figure out some of these patterns. 

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I'm assuming you're looking a lot for patterns. Is that part of it?

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Donna: Yeah, absolutely. Patterns. I'm looking at the big picture. When I train other clinicians, I always say, when you're gathering information, it's all about the details. So ask for another story, ask for another example, really get down into the nitty gritty of it all. But once you've collected all your information, then it's not about the details.

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Then it's about the big picture, stepping back and looking at this child as a whole. This relates to the other question you asked about what diagnoses tend to get missed, and autism is a big one. The reason is that so often, no clinician is looking at the big picture of that child.

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You might have an occupational therapist diagnosing the sensory processing disorder. And then maybe a year or two later, you'll have a speech therapist diagnosing social pragmatic communication disorder. And then at some point you might get a psychologist or psychiatrist saying, oh, there's some ADHD here.

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And then a few years later, you might have another therapist saying, oh, you have anxiety. Everybody's seeing one little part and these all may or may not be accurate. Quite often they are, but nobody's stepping back and putting all those pieces together and looking at the individual as a whole. And that's what a neuropsych does.

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Alison Cook: That's a really helpful way to put it because any one of those little pieces could have truth in it, but we're trying to get to the root. What is actually, for the most part, as best we can tell, driving all of these different things? Because if we're treating the anxiety and there's actually an autism spectrum diagnosis up here, we're going to be missing a part of that path toward health.

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Donna: 100%.

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Alison Cook: As far as getting a neuropsych eval, when would you encourage somebody to take that route? At what point in the journey would you encourage someone?

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Donna: Oooh, I don't know if I could give you a good answer for that because it's so individualized. It really depends so much on what the problems are and what they've already tried to do, what is working, what isn't working, how much distress there is for the child and for the parents, how available a neuropsych is for them.

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I will say, I think in most areas of the country, you have to get on a waiting list to get a good neuropsych eval. If you're thinking about it, it's probably worth making some calls before you think you're fully ready, because you may have to wait anywhere from three months to well over a year in some places.

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So people should be aware of that, because very frequently at my practice, for instance, I get phone calls where people are at a breaking point, at a crisis point, or feeling really ready now. And then they're very disappointed when they find out they have to wait. That's a common experience.

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Alison Cook: Yeah, that's a really great tip. I guess from my vantage point, when I see people who are struggling with something complicated, the downside is the cost and the wait time if it's not covered by insurance. But other than that, it's hard for me to find a downside because  you're getting into the details and that whole holistic approach, which can save you time and money in the long run, from going down rabbit trails that don't get you to where you want to go. So I've found it to be incredibly helpful to see those results.

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Donna: It's my experience as well. And I will say, I think most of the people we work with at the end of the evaluation say, we wish we had done this sooner. I hear that very frequently.

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Alison Cook: Let's dive into the autism spectrum. Tell me a little bit about how you speak about autism spectrum diagnoses.

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Donna: There are probably 140 million autistic people on this planet, if I look at the population of the world at the current prevalence rate of 2.77%, That's a really huge number of people. And that's a really wide spectrum of people from, people who require 24 hour, seven day a week, very close support for every little thing and very close supervision, all the way to people who are fully happy and functional in their lives and are getting their social needs met and are contributing to the world in a million different ways and have interesting careers and whatever their life goals are.

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It's really hard to talk about 140 million people in one way. And that's where I think we're having a lot of difficulty now, finding wording that makes everybody feel comfortable. I would say a few things. In the DSM, the technical diagnosis is autism spectrum disorder. When we're talking about medical documentation, applying for disability, those sorts of official things, that's the language that we use.

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A lot of the people I work with tend to be autistic people with average to above average intelligence, many of them having later diagnoses in adolescence or well into adulthood. Many of them prefer autistic person over person with autism, because person with autism is a medical model. It's putting the person ahead of the problem.

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So you might say it's a person with diabetes, not a diabetic person. But for this group of people particularly, they feel like this is not a medical problem. This is part of my identity. It's part of who I am. So I prefer autistic person. And so that's the language that I tend to use–autistic person.

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It's also true that somebody can be autistic, meaning having this kind of nervous system, but not have autism spectrum disorder, if they are living their life and they're fine, they're meeting their own social needs, they're doing, meeting their goals, doing whatever it is they need and want to do in this world. There's tons of people out there like that. They happen to be autistic, but they don't have autism spectrum disorder.

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Alison Cook: Okay. So let's dive in there a little bit, because there's so much to what you said. You said, having the features of an autistic nervous system without necessarily having what would meet the criteria for a quote unquote disorder. Tell me a little bit about what you mean by that.

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Donna: So there are seven core criteria for being diagnosed with autism, plus one. When I say someone's autistic, but doesn't have autism spectrum disorder, they meet enough of the seven. You don't have to meet all of them, but they meet enough of those core seven so I know that, okay, you have that kind of brain, you have that kind of nervous system. But the plus one is, there's some kind of functional impairment related to it.

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Alison Cook: Okay.

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Donna: The people I'm saying are autistic, but don't need a diagnosis are the ones who move through the world this way. They have this type of nervous system, but they don't have any functional impairment. They're not super anxious or having trouble meeting their social needs or whatever it is. So that's the difference, that functional impairment

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Alison Cook: That makes a lot of sense. Can you give us a sort of bird's eye view of those seven characteristics? 

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Donna: The first category are differences in someone's social or communication skills. There are three criteria in this category, and somebody has to meet all three. At any point in their life, it could be current, it could be by history. It doesn't have to be both.

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The first of the three is all about the back and forth flow of interactions. Intuitively knowing how to greet people, how to share personal information, showing interpersonal curiosity, being reciprocal in conversation. Meaning, if you say, oh, something weird happened to me this weekend. I say something related to that.

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There's not one right answer. I could say, what happened? Or I could say, my God, something weird is always happening to you. Or I could say, oh, I had a weird weekend too, but it has to be related. And as part of this first criterion, there's also the ability to take somebody else's perspective to intuitively understand somebody else's intentions, for example, what's going through somebody else's mind to some extent.

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So it's not whether or not somebody has these skills, but how effortful it is. So some of these people with less obvious autism can pull off socially typical looking interactions, but they are unbelievably exhausted by them. They can do it for a short period of time. These are kids who may camouflage at school, come home completely melted down or go to sleep for many hours. That's the first criterion. 

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The second one in this category of social and communication differences is nonverbal communication. That's everything about communicating except for the words. So facial expressions, tone of voice, gesturing, body language, personal space, volume, all of that stuff, paying attention to and understanding other people's. So if a teacher speaks in a stern tone of voice, knowing the teacher is not yelling, that's a stern tone of voice.

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Being able to discern all these little differences and also giving off your own non-verbals that are typical and easy for most people to read. Eye contact is in this one too. Much of this is about understanding the subjective experience of the individual, because a lot of these kids learn at a pretty early age how to make typical eye contact, but if you ask them their experience of it, they may tell you, oh, I hate it. 

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I hate looking at eyes. They creep me out or I can't concentrate, but I forced myself to do it because I know everybody expects me to. It's not intuitive or comfortable for them as much, a lot of autistic people will tell you that.

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Alison Cook: And this is where in these two, and maybe in the next one, I thought it was interesting what you said, even when the person has figured out how to do it, they're exhausted by it. We're not talking about introversion, but exhaustion. We're not talking about, I'm peopled out.

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It's a level of sensory overload. And I think you even use the word meltdown where there's something pretty significant. It's not a typical response to a day with other people or to a social event.

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Donna: It is absolute exhaustion. I had one college autistic college professor once say to me, Hey, I can go to the department party and be there for 45 minutes and look perfectly typical and completely blend in. And what people don't know is then I'm in bed for a day and a half recovering from that 45 minutes a day.

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We all can get a little tired after socializing, especially post COVID. We all got out of the habit for a while, but this is next level. There's also often a confusion or effort piece to it. They're not intuitively moving through social interactions, but they're thinking, oh, I should smile now. I should put on a smile. 

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Oh, I haven't spoken in 60 seconds. It might be my turn to speak. Is it my turn to speak? I probably should speak now. There's a very conscious thought process, which is probably in part why they're so exhausted.

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Alison Cook: I want to finish getting through the list, but I want to ask you later about specifically therapy for individuals who are autistic, because there is that component of putting on a mask. We talk a lot in traditional therapy about being authentic, figuring out how to show up authentically.

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There's a way in which that could create some dissonance for someone who is autistic–for me to function in a social setting in order to fit in or in order not to be negatively perceived as anything from socially shy to rude especially in an extroverted world, I have to go through these motions. I have to learn these skills. 

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It makes a therapeutic intervention a little bit different. And I've learned that a little bit as well. So I want to come back to that, but I want to bookmark that. 

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Donna: Yes. It's really hard for me not to jump into that right now, but I agree. We should get through the criteria. Okay, so we're doing the first of the two categories, social and communication differences. There are three. The first one, interactions. The second one, non verbals. The third one is relationship management.

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Making friends, deepening friendships, keeping friendships, maintaining them over time, understanding relationships. If a kindergartner tells you everyone in their class is their friend, that's socially typical, but if a 5th grader thinks everyone in their class is their friend, that shows they're not having a typical understanding of social relationships. 

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Or if they think teachers are their friends, that sort of thing. Conflict management comes into this category of social motivation. People can be autistic and very socially motivated, really want friends, romantic relationships, all that. Or people can be autistic and have very low social motivation. And I've had more than one autistic kid say, no, seriously, I would like to live in a cabin in the woods in Alaska and not see anyone, but my parents can come visit for one day a year kind of thing. And they mean it. 

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So if somebody is very socially motivated, that does not preclude autism. That's the first category of interactions, relationships, and nonverbals, and you have to meet all three currently or by history. For example, if you have a 15 year old who makes typical eye contact, but they didn't make typical eye contact until they figured it out, say in fourth or fifth grade, then that still counts towards diagnosis.

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Alison Cook: Which is probably also how it can get missed because, yeah, they figured it out.

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Donna: Exactly. And the other main way it gets missed is the timeline is different from what a lot of people think. Many people have this wrong idea that it has to be fully evident by age three. And that's not true. For a lot of really smart autistic people, particularly girls, it becomes evident around fifth grade.

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That's when we really start to see it. And if you look back, you can see the signs, but it wasn't ever big enough for people to take note until somewhere between fourth and sixth grade typically.

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So that's the first category. The second category of the criteria are repetitive and restricted behaviors, RRBs. There are four in this category. You only have to meet two of the four. So that confuses people. They think if they don't meet one of them, they're not autistic, but nope, two out of four. The first one is what we informally call stimming. So that is behavior that is repetitive or atypical. It can be any kind of movement.

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So in the more stereotypical presentation of autism, you might have kids flapping their arms or flicking their hands. A lot of these kids, repetitive picking, repetitive hair pulling or twirling, pacing back and forth repeatedly, countless different kinds of movements. It can be repetitive speech or unusual speech, like formal language. 

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My own daughter with whom I have a very warm relationship calls me mother, that formal language. It can be repetitive use of objects. Watching the same TV show over and over and over again, not two or three times. I've had kids who say, yeah, I watched Despicable Me 84 times so far in a row or reading the same book over and over again, drawing the same thing over and over again. 

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So that's number one, repetitive behavior. Number two is inflexibility. And it doesn't necessarily mean that they're being behaviorally difficult all day, every day. There's pockets of inflexibility. They might have difficulty with change or transitions. They might get stuck in their thinking, stuck in loops or stuck in their perceptions.

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They might have very rigid black and white thinking. If they don't like someone, that person's evil. Black and white thinking about other people. They might be perfectionistic. A lot of these girls are highly perfectionistic. So that's the second one, flexibility challenges. 

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The third one is interests. In the stereotypical presentation of autism, they tend to have atypical interests. Airport codes or orange traffic cones, that sort of thing. But in this less obvious presentation of autism, you tend to have typical interests that get really intense. So it can be animals, either animals in general, or a particular animal.

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It can be reading, a K-pop band, any pop star, makeup, typical stuff, but they do a much deeper dive than most kids do. And then the last of the four is sensory differences, not the sensitivities that everyone is aware of or the sensory seeking, but less known sensory differences, and a big one is called interoception, which is knowing what your body is telling you, knowing if you have to use the bathroom, knowing if you're hungry, knowing if you're anxious, knowing if you're cold or hot, being able to read those signals from your body as one of the sensory differences.

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So the second category has four. Number one, repetitive behavior. Number two, inflexibility or need for sameness. Number three, interests that are intense or atypical. Number four, sensory differences. 

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Alison Cook: And those are all of the categories. In that second one, you need to have two of the four. 

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Donna: Correct.

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Alison Cook: Okay. So you might have someone listening and they're going, oh my goodness, I see this in myself. I see this in my spouse. I see this in my child. That would indicate an autistic pattern of thinking, an autistic brain for lack of a better way to put it.

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Donna: Maybe so. When I do live trainings, people always come up to me afterwards to chat and ask questions. And inevitably there are one or two people that say, I think I might be autistic, or I think my child might be. They have that instant whoa, a lot of what you said resonated with me.

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I can divide those people into two categories. For some of them, it's a passing thought, because one or two things I said resonated with them. So I'll put myself in that category–once or twice a year. I have a moment of, wait, maybe I'm autistic and I've never identified as autistic. And I'm not autistic.

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But once or twice a year it crosses my mind because I have some sensory sensitivities and my husband tells me I can be rigid at times. Little things, nothing major. It passes very quickly. The more I think about it, the more I realize, nope, I have one or two things in common with autistic people.

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But for that other group, the more they read about it, the more they learn, the more they think about it, the more deeply it resonates either for themselves or their child or both. These things are genetically driven. And for that group, then I think they should take it seriously.

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Alison Cook: Yeah. I love how you're saying that again, back to this big picture piece. Because me too. I heard a couple of things in what you said, and I was like, oh, the interoception, I have a really hard time with that. But we have to put that against the larger picture of the whole constellation, the overall pattern.

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We're going to have some things in common, but that doesn't mean we actually have this whole style going into the world. And then you add that seventh criteria, there's impaired functioning in some domain of my life. 

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Donna: If anyone comes into my office for a neuropsych eval or a consultation, by definition, there's some functional impairment. Something made them call me and make an appointment. And that's true for you, for any mental health clinician. People don't come in for the heck of it.

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They come in because they're anxious or they're depressed or they're lonely or they're not doing well in school or at work or whatever it is. So that part is automatic to me, pretty more or less once they're in my office for the most part. And to be clear, that's number eight.

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We have seven. So there's the three social criteria and the four repetitive restrictive criteria. So there's seven core ones. This would be number eight, not number seven. Yeah.

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Alison Cook: Okay. This is so helpful, to get the lay of the land where there's a large pattern and it's more than one thing. There's a spectrum. If I had a dime for every time somebody who either themselves or a loved one has been diagnosed with autism said to me, I thought it looked like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. And it doesn't. 

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Donna: A white male who is overtly odd and has massive difficulty managing day to day life. There are college professors who are autistic people. There are comedians. There are professional athletes, happily married people, certainly activists out in the community. There are pastors and ministers and rabbis and teachers and there is an entire lost generation of autistic adults who don't know they're autistic.

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Alison Cook: I love that you're naming that and this is where I want to move as we wind down. I want to honor your time. How do we approach therapy, and in addition to that, how do we approach it when we know somebody has this? I heard a comedian, to your point about comedians, Hannah Gadsby, talk, and it was so stunning. 

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I thought this was a great metaphor. She said, it's like if someone is colorblind, she said, that's how it feels for me going into a social setting. And she said, you don't tell somebody who's colorblind, see color. Here's all you need to do. They can't go in and see the social nuances. 

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We live, especially in American culture, in such a socially oriented world. There is such a high premium on that kind of traditional interpersonal skill. I have a real soft spot in my heart for folks who are feeling sidelined and marginalized because to use her metaphor, they feel colorblind and they're being told there's something wrong with you or figure it out. 

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With that backdrop, what would you say? What kind of therapy might be most helpful if you're someone who you or your loved one is in this category and how can we come alongside those who have this style, this way of being in the world and to help be a kinder, gentler, more community oriented world?

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Donna: Yeah, I love that. Historically, once somebody was identified as autistic, the goal of all the adults around them was, let's help make them look less autistic. Let's teach them how to make “better” eye contact. There's no such thing as better or worse eye contact or good or bad eye contact.

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There's typical and less typical. And all that was doing, and I'm not saying there isn't a place for something like that–we all have to learn how to be somewhat functional in the world. But the core of therapy should absolutely not be about that. To me, it's about helping, especially if we're talking about children here and adolescents, helping them understand who they are through the lens of neurodiversity. 

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Not, you have a disorder called autism spectrum disorder, but you have a different kind of brain than most people have. You're in a minority group. And anytime you're in a minority group, that makes life a little bit more challenging. That's not a problem within you, but it is a problem for you. And we're going to work together to help you understand this, to help me understand your experience, to help them understand it.

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Ideally, they also will have a group experience with other bright autistic kids their age too. We all want to connect with other people who understand our experience. Truly. I think that can be really helpful as well. These kids are so misunderstood for so much of their lives and there often is a trauma piece.

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I don't necessarily mean trauma with a capital T, although autistic kids are more likely to have trauma with a capital T, negative life experiences, parents getting divorced, that sort of thing. But they're also more likely to experience typical life events as traumatic. Walking into the school building can be traumatic for them. Having that trauma lens, that autism trauma lens in therapy can be very helpful as well.

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Alison Cook: That's interesting. Even when you said how it can be hard to detect the nuances of tone for a child or even an adult, I think about a work setting where someone maybe is having a bad day and has a stern tone of voice, they experience that as being yelled at, and they might go to that black and white thinking.

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That would weigh more heavily on that person than someone who understands, oh, they had a bad day. They used a sarcastic tone of voice with me. It makes it a little bit harder to move through the day and move through the world.

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Donna: A lot harder. We could sit here and talk for many hours about the many different ways that it is harder to move through the world as an autistic person. I'll give you one super quick example. It's such a minor one, but it's one of a thousand. Around my dinner table, on my side of the table, is me–I'm a non autistic ADHD person–and my youngest daughter who has the same neurotype. 

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And then across the dinner table are my two older kids who are both autistic. They live off at college and my husband sits at the head of the table. One day, my youngest was telling a story and my older two weren't making any eye contact. As a non autistic person, I experienced that as rude and it bothered me. 

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At one point I said, hey, you guys, how about some eye contact over here for the non-autistic people? Because that's how we talked to each other in my family and they laughed and then they put me in my place, rightfully, and said, why should we have to make eye contact because it feels more natural to you?

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We know we have to do it out there in the world. We get that and we accept it, but we shouldn't have to come home and do it here in our own home when it's uncomfortable to us. And that doesn't mean it was wrong for me to want eye contact either. Nobody's right. Nobody's wrong. It's a matter of talking openly and leading with curiosity about our differences and having communication about it.

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And I think that is probably the most helpful thing of all.

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Alison Cook: I love that. You said right before we started recording something about a family of different neurotypes. Every family is a family of different neurotypes. And in your family, you each know your type, and there's a way in which then you're negotiating. One of you is saying, I'm done with eye contact for the day. Another is saying I need some eye contact. 

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This is a family. And I love that because this whole podcast is all about how we come together for the good of the whole. We bring our individual selves, we bring our individual neurotypes, whether we're neurotypical or atypical, whatever the diagnosis, whatever the framework is, but we're coming together, trying to create harmony, which doesn't mean normalizing one over the other. It means each person learning how to honor the other. 

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That's true in relationships. That's true in a family. I love that. The knowledge really helps. You can each name it, and that really helps with the understanding and with the communication.

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Donna: Oh, it makes all the difference in the world. I'm actually working on a training right now with a brilliant autistic psychologist named Megan Anna Neff and she's autistic, I'm not, and we're working on a training that is all about cross-neurotype communication. Because once you understand everybody's neurotypes and how they communicate differently, verbally and non verbally, because both are super important, then so much of conflict and hurt feelings and anger falls away when you understand.

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Alison Cook: It's so good. We make so many assumptions about people based on the subtext, the cues, the eye contact, the questions that someone asks or doesn't ask, instead of really seeking that deep understanding and that deep knowledge that we have the power to gain now through people like you who are doing this work. 

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I could keep diving into this but I want to honor your time. Tell everyone where they can find you. You've got some amazing resources to really help people with this. Where can people find you, Donna, and the work that you're doing?

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Donna: Sure. I've co-authored two books and the first one is called, Is This Autism? A Guide for Clinicians and Everyone Else. We realized that a lot of clinicians didn't understand the less obvious presentation of autism and decided to write a book about it. And I gradually realized, oh, nobody understands this. It's not just for clinicians. That's why it's called a guide for clinicians and everyone else. 

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That's with my co-authors Sarah Wayland and Jamell White. And then there's a companion guide for clinicians that I do recommend for clinicians, but for parents or people who are wondering if they or their child is autistic, it's the first book. It's the guide for clinicians and everyone else. 

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Our website is isthisautism.com and we also do have some videos there, so if people are more into listening than reading, they can access the same information more or less that's in the book in those videos,

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Alison Cook: I highly recommend it if you've been listening and some things have stood out to you. If you're aware of man, we've tried everything but nothing's working, and some of the things you listed really rang true about your loved one or about yourself, or trying to understand some behaviors that don't make sense to you, start getting curious. Is it possible there's something in the brain going on here? 

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Or the clinicians listening, is there possibly something here that might fall in this category of neurodiversity or autism? Because it can be so helpful to understanding, to clarity, and to finding, as you said, that path through, so thank you so much for what you're doing and really appreciate your time today.

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Donna: Thank you so much for having me.

Do you ever feel stuck in anxious thoughts?

Are you longing for more moments of calm throughout your day?

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Every single one of us has a relationship with anxiety. The goal isn't to eradicate anxiety; it’s to work with anxiety to create more peace and balance in our lives. In this episode, I guide you through a clear, step-by-step understanding of your relationship with anxiety. Whether you’re navigating your own anxious moments or supporting loved ones, you'll learn how to identify root causes and key insights needed to find calm and clarity.

‍

Here’s what we’ll cover:

* How to understand your unique experience with anxiety

* Key root causes of anxiety, including genetics, personality, and environment

* The impact of High Sensitivity (HSP) and neurodivergence on anxiety

* 3 practical techniques to calm anxiety and cultivate strong internal leadership

‍

Resources:

• Episode 71: All About Therapy—Do I Need a Therapist, How Do I Find One, and What Type of Therapy Works Best?
• Episode 54: Can I Pray My Anxiety Away? A Surprising Approach to the Anxiety Pandemic & How to Walk Yourself & Your Kids Through It with Curtis Chang
• Episode 109: Healing Burdens From the Past—How to Overcome Childhood Wounds and Heal Your Younger Self with Tammy Sollenberger
• Episode 97: I Shouldn't Feel This Anxious—Insights on Trauma & Healing with Monique Koven
• Episode 49: Personality, the Big Five Traits, and Why Are We So Obsessed With Personality Types?
• I Shouldn’t Feel This Way by Dr. Alison Cook
• ‍2 Corinthians 10:5
• ‍Psalm 46:10
• ‍1 Peter 5:7

‍

‍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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• Turn back time on the appearance of your skin with Purity Woods’s Age-Defying Dream Cream. Purity Woods is currently offering 17% off sitewide but we have an additional 10% discount for our listeners for a total savings of 27%! Go to puritywoods.com/BESTOFYOU or enter code BESTOFYOU at checkout for an additional 10% off your first order.
• 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.‍

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Transcript:

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Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I'm so thrilled to be here with you to dive into this healing work we do together every single week. I like to think of this work as soul mending. I see us as soul menders.

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What I mean by that is I see us as people who are rooting ourselves primarily in this work of healing our hearts, our minds, our souls, our nervous systems, and I'm using this word healing as it relates to the Greek word sozo that's used in the Bible. It’s a word that is often translated as salvation–working out your salvation with fear and trembling, but can also be translated as healing. 

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We're here to work out our healing. We want to be people who are healing and we want to be people who are bringing more healing into our families, into our neighborhoods, into our country and into this entire world that God has created. I've never believed more deeply in this work of sozo, this work of healing, more than at this present moment.

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I believe that this work of healing every part of who we are in partnership with God's spirit is the work. It's the most important work that every single one of us is called to do, not only to transform our own inner lives, but also to bring healing to this world.

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This is the work that Jesus calls us to embrace as we follow him, this work of deeper healing, so that we can bring more healing to everyone around us. Truly, every single one of us who is trying to follow Jesus is called in our own way to this work of becoming healers. And we start this work of healing with the parts of our own selves first. 

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Toward that end, today, I want to dive into this topic of anxiety. It's a really timely topic. It's a really relevant topic, whether you are dealing with anxiety yourself, whether you're parenting kids who are feeling anxious, or whether your spouse or friends or loved ones are feeling anxious.

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Most of us in this day and age are well acquainted with that feeling of anxiety, that inner tension of tightness in our bodies. We can't calm ourselves down. We can't find that clear, calm space inside. Maybe your thoughts are racing or convoluted or maybe they're even keeping you awake at night. 

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Maybe you sense that constant sort of nagging worry, tugging at the corners of your mind. And you're finding that sense of calm, that sense of clarity, a little bit harder to access in your life. There's so many different ways that anxiety shows up. Today, I want to give you a little bit of insight into how I approach anxiety. 

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As someone who has sat with so many people over time, where I begin to try to understand that anxious part of them and the different root causes for it, I can share some thoughts on what's going to work best to help restore that reservoir of peace, of calm, of clarity inside of us that we know is the place from which we actually bring more of God's goodness, more of God's healing, more of God's beauty into this world around us.

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Today we're going to look at how anxiety shows up differently, the gifts that it brings us, as well as the burdens. We're going to explore the roots of anxiety, which are often misunderstood and often mismanaged, and we're also going to explore some really practical steps you can take both from the field of psychology and from our spiritual resources, the resources that we have in Christ, to help us heal and lead these anxious parts of us wisely, 

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Remember, these anxious parts that we all have are not bad. They're parts of us that need our attention and our compassion, especially when they start to operate in overdrive.

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Before we get started, a couple of more resources for you from prior episodes. If you're listening and you think, man, I could really use a therapist to help me through this, Episode 71 is called All About Therapy, and I cover in that episode: how do you know if you need a therapist, how do you find a therapist and what type of therapy might work best for your needs. 

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It's super practical. So you can check out that episode. I also had a fascinating conversation with Curtis Chang all about anxiety. It's Episode 54 called, can I pray my anxiety away? And then lastly, in Episode 109, I had a conversation with IFS therapist, Tammy Sollenberger, and we talked all about the new Inside Out 2 movie where anxiety is the central character. There's a lot to learn from that movie and we dive into it in that episode. It's a great resource for you.

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So what is anxiety? Well, in its simplest terms, anxiety is a natural reaction to stress. Sometimes we need our anxiety. When those parts of us that carry anxiety are in balance within our soul, feeling anxious can be constructive. It's part of how God designed us to protect us from danger. 

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So for example, feeling anxious before a job interview or a big deadline can give you energy to focus. It can help you stay alert. That kind of anxiety is actually constructive and it can help you prepare and respond to normal stressors in life.

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Another example: you might feel anxious when you're with someone who's actually unsafe. Maybe they say something cruel or they use a toxic strategy to try to guilt trip you or manipulate you or diminish you, and a part of you starts to feel anxious. You feel uncomfortable. Maybe that fight, flight, flight response kicks in and you want to get away from them or you actually want to fight back and defend yourself. 

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In this case, anxiety is functioning as it should. It's cuing you to danger in front of you that actually needs your attention. Another example where anxiety can be constructive is before or during a major life change or event. You might feel anxious about a move or about getting married or about having a child or about parenting a child or about starting a new job.

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It's normal to feel anxious when there are stressors around you. Again, we don't want to eradicate anxiety altogether. We also don't want that anxiety to become extreme. We don't want to let it take us over. Anxiety is a cue, not to go into overdrive, but instead to downshift a little bit so that you can pay closer attention to what your body, what your heart, what your soul needs from you to get through a stressful time.

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A healthy amount of anxiety can kick in to help us focus, to help us pay attention, to remind us that we need to slow things down and proceed with caution, to be careful, to take good care of ourselves because something hard is happening that's going to require more from us. Maybe we need to take a few other things off our plate, or it might be a cue that something is actually dangerous or unsafe, and we need to figure out how to extract ourselves from that situation or that relationship.

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It might be a cue that we need more support from people who love us and will walk with us through a challenging season. Sometimes anxiety is a cue that you've overextended your capacity, that maybe your own sensitivities or your own limitations or simply your own tank of fuel is running on empty.

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You've exceeded your God given capacity. And in this case, anxiety provides a cue that it's time to step back, to downshift, to reduce some of those external pressures as best you can. 

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So most importantly, when you think about anxiety, what I want you to understand is that number one, we all have a relationship with anxiety. Every single one of us has anxious parts of us at its best. Anxiety is trying to help. It's a cue to pay attention. When you name anxiety for what it is, you can get some healthy distance from it, and then you can lead your anxiety instead of letting anxiety take you over.

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You can learn to let anxiety work for your good instead of against you. But here's the thing: the process of learning to establish that healthy relationship with those parts of you that get anxious takes some time. And when anxiety goes unchecked inside your system, it gets extreme. You start to see the world through the lens of that anxiety.

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Here are some ways that shows up. Number one, you might start to feel tense and agitated and restless in your body all the time. Anxiety often manifests physically. You might notice yourself ruminating. You can't control your anxious thoughts. You might not be able to sleep well. 

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You might not be able to enjoy other people or social contexts because you notice a hyper vigilance. Maybe you're always on guard with other people. You're always seeing the danger all around you, even when it's actually safer than those anxious parts of you feel.

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Sometimes we get stuck in that nervous system fight-flight state, where it's really hard to access that feeling of calm during your day. It's usually not the entire day, but you have those moments where you feel calm, where you feel clear, where you have perspective, where you can release the tension in your body, where you can make good decisions, where you feel connected to other people.

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When anxiety takes over, it robs you of that feeling of calm clarity inside, more days than not. You're in that anxious state where you cannot tap into that calm or that clarity, even when you do those things where typically you can find that spaciousness inside.

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When it's in its proper balance, you might notice anxious feelings, anxious thoughts, but you're able to find your way back to that calm, clear place inside. But when those anxious parts of us take over and they get extreme, and they're starting to take the steering wheel. We can start to feel overwhelmed and even paralyzed. It can be really hard to get through your day when that anxiety runs big in your life.

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No matter what you're experiencing when it comes to anxiety right now, whether it's fairly small in your life and you've got it in a good place, or whether you're someone who's really in anxiety's grip, I want you to hear me say, anxiety is one part of who you are. It is not all of who you are, no matter how much it feels like it is. 

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It's not inherent to your being. And you can find ways to get a healthy distance from anxiety so that your calm, clear, grounded, wise self can start to lead. In order to establish that healthier, relationship with anxiety. We've got to get to the root. We've got to get to the root of the different types of anxiety that you might be experiencing

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Anxiety can stem from a variety of sources. When you don't pinpoint the underlying cause of it, the healing treatment for that anxiety might actually miss the mark. This happens all the time. I want to explore several common roots of anxiety. Each one has its own unique needs when it comes to softening that anxious part of you.

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Number one, trauma-related anxiety. For some people, anxiety is rooted in past trauma. In these cases, anxiety acts as a survival response. It's activated by triggers from outside of you that remind you of past experiences. And a great example of this was a story shared by my guest Monique Koven back in Episode 97. 

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She told her story of experiencing intense anxiety and fight or flight response in her kitchen that was actually rooted in her childhood trauma. And what happened for Monique is when she went to seek help for that anxiety, the treatment that she got didn't help.

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They didn't recognize that this response was rooted in trauma, in her childhood wounds. The treatment they gave her actually exacerbated her anxiety. If that's been your experience, go back and listen to Episode 97. It's super helpful to see how sometimes what people tell us we should do for our anxiety is not in fact helpful.

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I really want you to understand this throughout this episode–you are your best expert about your own anxiety. Take in information from other people and from other experts, but really notice, is this working for me or is this not?

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Because if it's not, I'll give it a little time, but this may not be the best way for me to work through my anxiety. Listen to your own system and notice what works, what doesn't work. Anxiety will show you–if the anxiety goes up, notice that. If the anxiety goes down, notice that.

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I talk about a season in my life in my thirties where I struggled with a lot of anxiety. It was rooted situationally, and it definitely met the criteria for an anxiety disorder. I could not get it under control by myself. And I did use medication to intervene during that season for about six months, but I also tried a number of other interventions that friends and therapists and other people tried to offer me.

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I'll tell you what, that was a crucible of learning about my own relationship to anxiety because some of the things that were offered to me made that anxiety worse. Very quickly, I would turn away from that approach. Other things really helped my anxiety and I started to move toward those. 

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Through that experience with anxiety, as painful as it was, I learned what works for me and what doesn't. And I have taken that information and incorporated it into my self-understanding to this day, so that when I notice my anxiety move from small to medium, I far more quickly know what it is exactly that I need to keep that anxiety from becoming big. 

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You want to become an expert and a student of your own anxiety so that you begin to understand what works for you and what doesn't. If you're seeking therapy for anxiety and you suspect that it's rooted in trauma from your past, you will want to look for trauma-informed therapeutic approaches.

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Some of the best are EMDR or IFS or somatic approaches. These are approaches that understand the complex nature of anxiety and how it shows up in different people. When you identify and understand that trauma might be at the root of your anxiety, it allows for a more compassionate and holistic approach to healing that focuses on restoring that sense of internalized safety so that you begin to experience what a calm nervous system feels like.

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Number two, anxiety is sometimes rooted in a biological predisposition. Some people are biologically predisposed to experience higher levels of anxiety. It doesn't mean you'll struggle with anxiety your whole life. It means you might struggle with it more than someone else.

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This kind of sensitivity often shows up early in life. Maybe you have a child where you notice they're very easily startled or highly responsive to environmental changes. And this can happen when there is trauma or when there isn't trauma. There's this inherent responsiveness to the environment.

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A key concept here that you may have heard is the highly sensitive person. Sometimes it's shortened to HSP. This is a term for individuals who have a heightened sensory processing sensitivity. An HSP, which I am one, tends to be more attuned to subtle changes in their surroundings. They tend to pick up on other's emotions more readily. They tend to feel overwhelmed by busy or chaotic environments.

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A school day can be harder for a highly sensitive child. A work day can be harder for a highly sensitive person. I notice when I go into parties, I pick up on so much data. Even though I'm not an introvert, I still can leave feeling very exhausted and overwhelmed because I'm processing so much sensory data.

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This sensitivity is a gift in many ways. I wouldn't trade it for the world, but it can also make you more prone to anxiety in response to everyday stressors. So it's incredibly invaluable information to understand about yourself. If it's true, this is how I am. There's no shame in that. But when I know how I am, I can adjust my lifestyle. I can adjust my patterns. I can adjust my capacity accordingly.

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Another example of what they think to be biological predispositions are found in personality traits. We talked about these back in Episode 49, the big five personality traits that have been researched significantly that tend to be inherent. Those who score high in the trait of neuroticism, which is a trait associated with emotional sensitivity, emotional complexity and worry, these folks are going to be more likely to experience anxiety. 

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Again, there's a gift in that. There's a soft underbelly to being a more sensitive, finely tuned person. Introversion is another personality trait that can be linked to heightened social and situational anxiety. 

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Now, it doesn't mean this is true for every introvert, but it does mean that introverted individuals might feel more anxious in social settings or in high stimulation environments where they may experience sensory overload or feel drained more quickly.

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So again, we're trying to get at the root here. If you're someone who notices, man, I feel really anxious in social settings. Do I have trauma in my history? Well, maybe it's possible, but maybe not. Maybe you fall in this category of someone who's an HSP or somebody who's high on one of these personality traits, 

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That's actually been part of your wiring since you were very young. And to name that without shame helps you accept that about yourself, honor the gift in that, and take the steps that you need to pay attention to so that you don't overload your capacity.

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For people with a biological predisposition to anxiety, whether it's due to high sensitivity, personality traits, or a general heightened response to stimuli, managing anxiety often involves lifestyle adjustments.

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You might need to be more careful about your commitments. You might practice stress reduction activities like mindfulness and prayer. You might rely on medication from time to time, because you have to be in an overstimulating environment for a period of time. By acknowledging the reality of your God given design, you are empowered to take steps to support as much as possible that calm place inside.

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Sometimes anxiety arises as a secondary symptom of another medical or psychological condition. In psychology, we call these co-occurring conditions or rule out conditions, where anxiety is there, but it's actually not the primary issue. There's something else going on. And this is so important if you're a clinician listening.

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It is so important to get to the root of what's actually causing the anxiety. And if you're not a clinician listening, this is something to talk about with a therapist, with a doctor, with your friends. What's really at the root of this anxiety? Is it trauma? Is it some sort of predisposition? Is it situational or is there something else going on here?

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And some examples of that are this whole category of neurodivergence diagnoses. So for example, autism spectrum disorder. Many people on the autism spectrum experience anxiety often due to their sensory sensitivities, and their challenges with social interactions. We're going to have an episode on that, coming up next week, that I cannot wait for you to hear.

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It's so important if there is anxiety to look under the engine and see what else might be going on there. Another one is ADHD. There's often heightened anxiety with ADHD where there's a challenge of managing focus and managing impulsivity. There are incredible organizational demands that are on our kids and on us, and there can be anxiety because of something happening in the brain that doesn't let me do those things very easily. 

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There are also other sensory processing disorders that can lead to anxiety. So again, that's what we mean by these co-occurring conditions, where you want to be sure what's really at the root of the anxiety. It's not always trauma. It's not always thought patterns that are out of whack. It's not always a predisposition. Sometimes there's something else going on that really needs to be understood.

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Lastly, many of us deal with situation-specific anxiety. Maybe anxiety has not been a constant presence in your life, but it emerges in response to a specific situation or stressor. And that was my case. When I went through that bout of anxiety, it lasted a good year and it was very debilitating. It was very real, but it was also very situational. 

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I learned a lot through that, that I can now apply, and I haven't had symptoms that extreme since then. Situation specific anxiety often appears in specific contexts, whether it's things like public speaking or performance, or it's significant life events, whether good or bad. Sometimes moving can kick up a lot of anxiety. 

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Sometimes getting married can kick it up. Having children can kick it up. Sometimes really hard things kick it up. Going through a divorce, going through a relationship betrayal. These are situations that understandably will kick up anxiety. And sometimes that anxiety response exceeds your ability to cope with it. 

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In these cases, you may want to consider increasing your support. You might consider medication, you might consider developing better self-care practices to help support you through this challenging season.

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That's a very broad overview of some of the roots of anxiety so that if you experience anxiety, you can begin to wonder, what's going on here? I wonder what this is about. And as you begin to get curious about your anxiety, you're going to be in a better position to help yourself move through it more effectively.

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To close today's episode, I want to walk you through three practical approaches for working with anxious parts of you. The first relates to our thoughts. It's the cognitive approach. Cognitive approaches to anxiety are what we call top-down approaches. We're going to start with our thoughts. We're going to assume that at the root of our anxiety is our anxious thoughts.

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Now, again, sometimes that's true. Sometimes it's not. If it is true, cognitive approaches will really help you. If that's not the root of your anxiety, they're not going to help you that much. You are the best student expert of your own soul. 

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Here's what we're trying to do with these cognitive approaches. The assumption here is that anxiety amplifies negative thoughts. We're prompted to imagine worst case scenarios through anxiety. One way to calm this anxious part of us that's spinning out all the worst case scenarios and the negative thoughts and the worries incessantly is to begin to notice those thoughts and gently question their accuracy.

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So for example, if you catch yourself ruminating about all the things that might go wrong with this new job or with this relationship, and you can't stop those anxious thoughts, a cognitive approach would encourage you to capture that thought, name it, notice it. What is the thought? And then try to reframe it.

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I go through a bunch of these in chapter five of I Shouldn’t Feel This Way. I call them thinking traps. Let's say you are trapped in an all or nothing thought pattern. For example, if I'm not the very best at this, I'm going to fail.

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That's an anxious thought. If I'm not the very best parent in the world, my kids are going to turn out horrible. If I'm not the very best at this new job, I'm going to be a complete failure. That's an all or nothing thinking trap. As you begin to notice that thought pattern, you can then reframe it.

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What if I'm not the best, but I'm also not the worst? What if I'm doing my best at this moment, and that's enough? What if it's not going to be the best case scenario, but it's also not going to be the worst case scenario? What if things turn out better than ?

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You're not trying to gaslight yourself when you reframe an anxious thought. You're trying to name the anxious thought, and you're trying to say, listen, this is what's happening. This is what I feel, but what's true is maybe this isn't going as well as I would have liked, but I'm also hanging in there. I'm doing okay. And every single day I'm getting it a little bit better. 

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You start to talk yourself down to what's actually true. When you make that mental shift, it eases your anxious thoughts and can bring in a more grounded, hopeful, realistic perspective. This can be super helpful and it's especially helpful to do in partnership with someone else.

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You can even talk through to someone else, hey, I'm catastrophizing. I'm going to the worst case scenario. Can you talk me down and talk me through to what is actually realistic? It's a holistic, grounded thing that's going on here. When you do that, it's really empowering because you can then take brave steps to address the reality of your situation, instead of that catastrophizing or that worst case scenario.

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So basic questions to ask yourself, if you're noticing some of these anxious thoughts: is this thought true? Is it accurate or am I preparing for the worst? And if it's the latter, what is the worst thing that actually could happen? And is that even likely? And ask a third party objective, a trusted advisor to help you with that. What's actually true here? What's actually going on? 

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Facing the truth, even of things that are hard, empowers you to take brave steps through. The best scripture that supports this work of really noticing the content of your thoughts is 2 Corinthians 10:5, to take captive every thought, and examine it under the light of Christ's truth.

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You can use that verse as a reminder to stop and do what I call “mind your mind”. Notice what it is that I'm thinking about. What is it that I'm worried about? I'm not doing that to shame myself. I'm doing that with a posture of curiosity. I'm trying to discern what is actually true here.

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Number two are somatic approaches. Somatic approaches are bottom up approaches. We start at the body level. This can be super effective with anxiety. Anxiety tends to be in our minds. It tends to live in our heads. Sometimes, fighting fire with fire doesn't work. If you're fighting anxious thoughts with thoughts, sometimes that's too much. It doesn't work. 

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These bottom up approaches, starting with your body and moving up, can really be helpful. Anxiety tends to make our bodies tense up. It tends to make our breath short. It tends to make our pulse race. Anything that we can do physically to reverse those states helps reduce our anxious thoughts. 

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You might try grounding techniques, which means you connect with things you can see. What do I see? What do I taste? What do I smell? What do I feel underneath my feet? What do I hear? Really start to attune to those bodily senses. Another thing that helps so much to return to calm is taking deep breaths. This really works. I do this all the time. You take that deep breath, breathe in deeply, breathe out.

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Right there is a physiological intervention that begins to slow down the firing of those anxious thoughts. Simply taking a walk, being outside, and movement can help to change the physiology of your body. Sometimes people will grab ice or cold water to  interrupt the anxious firing, and it can really help bring you out of your anxious mind and into your body. 

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You might ask yourself, what physical sensations am I noticing? Do I notice myself taking short breaths? Do I notice tension in my shoulders? Do I notice that my heart is racing? And you begin to intervene physiologically.

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When I think about these somatic interventions, these bottom up interventions, I think about Psalm 46:10, not as a shaming mandate, but as a reminder to take that deep breath and be still and know that I am God. That takes us into our bodies. Be still, be still. How do we become still? 

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We have to sink into our bodies. We have to take that deep breath. We have to release the tension in our bodies. That stillness is something we do physiologically to drop down out of our minds and into our bodies. And when we train ourselves to do that, we teach ourselves how to move out of that anxious state.

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And then lastly, emotional interventions. We need to sometimes understand that anxiety is often masking deeper, more vulnerable emotions. And this is what IFS really teaches us. Anxiety is a manager part, trying to protect us from those more vulnerable emotions like sadness, like loneliness, like fear. 

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You can begin to notice anxiety and ask yourself, what do I fear would happen if I was a little less anxious? You will notice those more vulnerable emotions bubble up to the surface. You might start crying, you might notice grief, you might notice an incredible sorrow, you might notice feelings of pain. 

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You might notice some of those deeper emotions that actually need to find their way out, and anxiety has been keeping you from honoring the validity of those emotions. When you're using an emotional intervention, you might need to give yourself some space to acknowledge the more tender parts of you underneath, realizing that they're real, they're valid. 

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Honoring the fact that man, I'm scared. This is hard. I am really lonely. And I don't want to admit that, but it's true. Or I'm really sad about this. When you begin to honor those more vulnerable emotions underneath, paradoxically, anxiety loosens its grip. 

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Now, it's so important to honor those more vulnerable emotions in a safe environment, especially if you're new to this work, to talk to a friend, to talk to a therapist. Often underneath the urgency of anxiety is a tender emotion in need of your care and God's kindness. And for this one, I think about 1 Peter 5:7, to cast our anxiety, and in this case, that anxious part of us, on God, because he cares for those heavy burdens that you carry. 

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Whether through honoring your body, whether through capturing anxious thoughts, or whether through learning to honor those deeper places of vulnerability that exist inside all of us, the process involves continually inviting God's loving presence to be near every single part of who you are.

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To be near that anxious part of you, to be near those more tender parts of you underneath that are scared, sad, or hurting, and to be very near that power that you have at the core of who you are, to regulate your breath, to regulate your movements, to ground yourself. It's incredibly empowering to do this work in partnership with God's spirit.

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As you get to the root of your anxiety, you honor it, you name it without shame, and you gently invite God's presence to meet you in that place. You will begin to see the next brave steps you need to take. And with each brave step, you'll be strengthened, encouraged in a sense of your own agency, and in trust in God.

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You'll begin to lead those anxious parts of you instead of the other way around. You're stepping into this place of integration where anxiety has a seat at the table, but it is no longer leading the control board of your life. Instead, you're leading with strength, and with wisdom, and you're bringing more of that strength, that wisdom, and that goodness to the other people in your life. 

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Are you carrying burdens that aren't entirely your own? Could understanding your family's past be the key to unlocking a healthier future?

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In this powerful episode, we dive into the concept of generational trauma with my guest, Gina Birkemeier, therapist and author of the book & workbook, “Generations Deep”. Gina shares her personal and professional insights on how deep-seated family issues can affect us and how both faith and therapy play pivotal roles in healing and breaking these cycles.

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You'll learn. . .

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* What generational trauma is and how it subtly influences our lives

* Why Gina realized that she needed therapy and Jesus

* What epigenetics is and how our genes remember & sometimes inherit the trauma of previous generations

* How to understand cycle breaking & to end the cycle of dysfunction

* About the legacy burdens we carry from our family's past.

Resources:

• The Best of You Podcast question form
• ‍DrAlisonCook.com/podcast
• ‍Generations Deep: Unmasking Inherited Dysfunction and Trauma to Rewrite Our Stories Through Faith and Therapy by Gina Birkemeier
• ‍Deuteronomy 5:9
• ‍Boundaries For Your Soul by Dr. Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller
• ‍GinaBirkemeier.com

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If you liked this, you’ll love:

• Episode 101: I Shouldn’t Feel Angry—Exploring the Violence that Shapes Our Family Stories & How to Heal with Lisa Jo Baker
• Episode 127: Healing Childhood Wounds—The Enmeshed Family & 5 Toxic Patterns that Affect Your Ability to Thrive in Adult Relationships

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‍Thanks to our sponsors:

• Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
• Get 40% off your first order of Sundays. Go to SundaysForDogs.com/BESTOFYOU or use code BESTOFYOU at checkout.
• Right now get up to 60% off your Babbel subscription - but only for our listeners - at Babbel.com/BESTOFYOU.
• ‍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.
• Fatty15 is on a mission to replenish your C15 levels and restore your long-term health. You can get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription Starter Kit by going to fatty15.com/BESTOFYOU and using code BESTOFYOU at checkout.

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.‍

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Transcript:

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Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am so delighted that you're here today for this week's episode. We are going to be diving even deeper into the theme of healing childhood wounds. We're going to focus today on an especially powerful area, and that's the area of generational trauma. 

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Please don't forget to leave me your questions or ideas for any future episodes on The Best of You Podcast question form. You can find that link in today's episode show notes or on my website, podcast, DrAlisonCook.com/podcast. So In last week's episode, we explored themes of enmeshment and individuation, and we went through five toxic patterns of behavior that can thwart the process of secure attachment and make it challenging for us to develop healthy relationships in adulthood.

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Today, I wanted to explore how these wounds sometimes run deeper than our individual experiences. They're formed as part of a larger story passed down through generations. That's why I'm thrilled to have Gina Birkemeier with us. Gina is a licensed professional counselor with a master's degree in both psychology and theology, along with advanced training in trauma and therapeutic techniques.

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She's the author of Generations Deep: Unmasking Inherited Dysfunction and Trauma to Rewrite Our Stories Through Faith and Therapy, and she brings invaluable insights into what it means to be a cycle breaker, someone who identifies, confronts, and heals generational trauma within their family.

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Gina also facilitates Generations Deep Story Groups to support people in their healing journeys. Today's episode is a fascinating deep dive. We discuss a couple of really new topics to the podcast. One is the topic of epigenetics, which is this idea that external factors in life experiences can influence how our DNA is expressed. It's a really incredible field of study. 

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We also discuss the related concept of legacy burdens. For those of you familiar with internal family systems, the IFS model of therapy, these are those beliefs or fears or emotional patterns that are passed down through our family, sometimes through numerous generations without us even realizing it or even having direct experience of the painful events. These are really important concepts to understand because they can affect us. 

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They can feel like these invisible weights that we carry that keep us stuck in the past. But when you begin to identify and address these generational patterns, we can begin to break cycles of pain and create a healthier legacy, not only for ourselves, but for future generations. Please enjoy my conversation with Gina Birkemeier.

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***

I'm so glad you're here today, Gina, I've known about your work for a little while and I'm so thrilled to have this conversation with you today about generational trauma and what you call “inherited dysfunction”. I think that's such an interesting way to look at it. Welcome.

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Gina: Thank you. It's great to be with you today.

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Alison Cook: I know your work comes from a very personal place. I'd love for you to share with us, what do you mean? By inherited dysfunction, by generational trauma. And if you're willing, I'd love to hear a little bit about that in the context of your own personal story. 

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Gina: I can't ever think of a time when, for some reason or another, those dots weren’t connected for me that there was something happening generationally. When I talk about that, I'm talking about the trauma and the dysfunction. A lot of times we think of trauma as these really big things, and that is true, but then also there are these identity wounds, these core wounds, that hit us in such a way that it really forms and informs what we believe about ourselves, other people, the world, and even God. 

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The story that I tell in the book is my personal journey and my professional journey combined . I start back with my great grandparents who immigrated over from Italy. Some of the relational trauma and dysfunction that had happened all the way back then with my great grandmother and her first marriage, how that ended, and how she ended up with my great grandfather. 

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And then what that perpetuated in terms of a cycle of abandonment issues with regard to the children that she had before she met my great-grandfather. And then moving into my grandparents. The story of my grandparents and how that sort of molded some things. My grandmother had some identity issues that then led her to get involved with my grandfather at a very young age, 14, and having my mom at 15.

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And then the great grandparents tried to interject and how terribly wrong that went. As my mom grew up, things that she began to believe about herself that were impacted by the generation before her. And then how my mother then perpetuated that cycle once again and got pregnant with me at a very young age and was not able to roll into that parenting, nurturing role.

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She ended up giving me up for adoption twice. She gave me up for adoption, took me back, then gave me up again. All before the age of two. It stayed in the family. So that complicated a lot of things as I grew up. There were a lot of secrets around me and the energy that created around me, the tones of voice that I felt directed at me, and then my adopted parents separating…there was a lot of dysfunction there. 

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Throughout this, there was fatherlessness, neglect, emotional neglect, emotional immaturity. There were some borderline tendencies that we can see woven through a couple of the generations, some deep heart wounds particularly in the women in my family.

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That came over into my life and with me not knowing who my biological father was, my adopted father being somewhat distant, and my adopted mother having a lot of issues with prescription drugs and alcohol. There had also been a history of that in the family as well. 

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In my life, as I got older, I started to perpetuate some of the same exact cycles. I had an issue of sexual abuse in two occurrences, one with some kids my age and a couple instances when I was older as well in the family. One outside the family, one in the family, and how all of these things, this dysfunction, affects our sense of self, sense of others, how we connect, how we nurture, how we protect.

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All of those things passed down from one generation to the next, culminating in my life and coming to a point where–I can't take any credit, I have to give God all the credit for it–it became, it has to end here.

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I have this line in the book that says, it's like telling the raging trauma of the past, “You cannot come beyond this point”. It's like building a dam against those rapids, saying, you cannot rage beyond here. It ends here. And then going into that journey of what does that even look like? To first uncover what they are.

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I think it was a lot of cutting the heads off of dandelions for a while, but not really pulling them up by the root, because I didn't understand what the root was. It took a lot of therapy and a lot of Jesus to get me there. Yeah.

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Alison Cook: We hear this word “cycle-breaker”. What does it mean to you? You're saying in your story that this ends here. I hear that cycle-breaking. And that word is really powerful. It also can put a lot of pressure on a person. What do you mean by I'm a cycle breaker? And what does that look like in your life?

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Gina: Yes, so I would say it can look like pressure, if it's coming externally. It can really feel like pressure. But what I teach in my Generations Deep Groups is that it isn't about putting pressure on yourself. It's actually about releasing a pressure valve, because there's a lot of pressure when we're carrying all the things that have been passed down to us.

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We're holding on to them, and we're absorbing them. But if we can release them and let them go, there is a freedom in that. And it's a very empowering position to be in, to say, I'm breaking the cycle. Now, remember, ideally, we want to break it for the generations that come after us.

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But as they grow, that's their responsibility. We can only take so much responsibility for the generations that come after us. And there's room to talk about what we need to own, and how maybe we have perpetuated some cycles with them, and how we want to do better. We may need to own some things, apologize for some things, leave room for them to tell us how things we've done have impacted them.

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But really, cycle breaking is about saying, I recognize what I missed. I recognize the harm that was done to me. Thank you. I recognize the harm that maybe I did to myself, and I'm moving into a place now where I'm healing from those things. And I'm moving forward in a space of wisdom and discernment with Holy Spirit led relationships and actions. 

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And it feels like this big heavy term, but often it's really in the little details. It's in the little things that you do differently. I point this out in my groups a lot. I'll have participants in the group say, this is what I'm doing. And I'll say, let's slow that down. That's a cycle breaking that's going on right there.

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That's a cycle breaking. Yes. And then to literally watch their posture and countenance change–oh, I can do this. I'm already doing it. I didn't even realize. I tell people often, you picked up the book, you're working through it, and looking at what the next step is. That alone makes you a cycle breaker.

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Alison Cook: You're naming things. Just that very step of naming what happened. Yeah, that's really good, Gina. I want to back up a little bit, back into your story. You get into your twenties, you're becoming a young adult. Is there a moment when it occurred to you that whatever it was that you were doing, maybe it's when you become a parent yourself, where you realize, oh my gosh, this is something I've got to deal with. 

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Was there a moment or a couple of moments that really began to be a cycle breaking moment for you, before you even knew all of the language?

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Gina: Yeah. Oh for sure before I knew the language. Absolutely. I appreciate this question. There were a couple of them. I had my daughter very young. Like I said, I started to perpetuate the same cycles that had happened before me, and it was with her. I was in so much pain and so much dysfunction. 

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I was actually also in a couple of abusive relationships at the time, and things were not going well in my life. I could not be the mom that she needed. I could not be present for her. And then not too long after that, I started to get my feet underneath me and then ended up pregnant with my son. 

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Alison Cook: How old were you at this time?

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Gina: When I was pregnant with my son, I was 23 and able to say, okay, I can't do this anymore. I was in an abusive relationship and I remember this moment where I was on my knees on the bed after a night of drinking to try to numb everything in my world. I shook my fist at God and said, either you kill me, or you take over my life, because I cannot do this anymore. 

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Thank God that he decided in his mercy to take over instead of the alternative. That's not a formula that I'm giving. It's what happened in my life. And I will, in all transparency, admit that the next morning I woke up and said, I didn't mean it. Let me take that back. I want to take that prayer back. It was too late. He knew that I really did mean it. That in that moment of desperation, that was the most real, raw, true me. And that is who he began to minister to.

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Alison Cook: There was a turning point there, when you started to reach out for help, because maybe you became aware, okay, something's got to change. Did you go to a therapist? At this point, did you go to a church community? And what kind of help did you receive at that time that was both helpful and maybe not so helpful?

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Gina: Yes. I appreciate the both-and of that. So I first went to a church. It was in me to say, that's where I need to go. I went and found this church, and I will say there were a lot of really sweet, kind things about the church, but the church was very much an, okay, you had all those things in your past. You need to hurry up and clean them up and come be a part of this. 

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The struggle is over. You're here now. And it was a name it and claim it, no room for the process church. I came from this super chaotic, dysfunctional life, and I'm still carrying all these wounds. I use this term often–triage discharge. Now you're here and you're good to go. 

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I was not good to go. 

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Alison Cook: Zap of the wand theology. 

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Gina: Zap of the wand. Yeah. A lot of spiritual bypassing, a lot of hyper-spiritualization. Well-intentioned, don't get me wrong. But it was another place where I felt like I didn't fit in. I can't do this. Quite frankly, it was just, I suck at this. What is wrong with me? Why can't I do this the right way?

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Alison Cook: It becomes shaming that you can't get it together enough, because you should be good now. Yeah. So you turned on yourself. 

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Gina: The tendency particularly for women is, they turn it on themselves. I definitely turned it on myself and slowly backed out of that church. I wouldn't say I dove back into my old ways, but I did a little bit because it was too much.

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It was too much pain and I was looking for a way to numb it. And I thought, no, you can't go back to where you were. What about counseling? What does that look like? And something within me knew even then. I didn't really know what it was, I didn't know how you did it, I didn't know what it looked like, but I started looking in the phone book.

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By the way, phone books used to be books with phone numbers.

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Alison Cook: I remember them well.

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Gina: So I started this therapy journey and I learned a lot. And it was really good. I started changing my lens and rewriting my story. I found the stones, as we say in narrative therapy, or the parts of me that I was trying to lock away, those vulnerable parts from IFS, those exiles. I was like, nope, you go away, you're too vulnerable, you're going to get us hurt. Stay over there, stay away. 

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I really started that journey. I was like, okay, but this isn't enough either. This all-in church thing, ignore everything that happened, that didn't do it. And then this all-in therapy thing, buy all the self-help books, do all of the things, that's not really doing it either.

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I still feel like something's not right. Something's missing. It was really the intersection of the two, and finding another church, finding someone who actually became a mentor and is now a lifelong friend who was faith-informed and trauma-informed. To be able to bring the two journeys together, that was really where I was like okay, this is how you do it.

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Alison Cook: That integration piece of bringing God's power and God's presence into the therapeutic process…wow. Wow. So really a journey there. One more question about your story, because what I'm hearing is, there were lots of phases, lots of trial and error, lots of reaching out for. Two steps forward, one step back, maybe another step forward, three more steps back.

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That is the nature of healing. I want the listener to hear that, especially when there's a lot going on there. That's really normal. And that's what is sometimes so devastating, is when you take those steps forward and then you find yourself taking this step back, it could be tempting to give up altogether.

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What I hear there is a real persistence to keep going. Okay, I got to get back up and try. As you kept doing that and as you got to that therapist that really was able to help you integrate, what was a breakthrough moment where maybe you really saw some truths? Or there was a naming that, again, it doesn't come in a moment, we'll say it was a miracle. 

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Yes, it was a miracle. Also, it came as a result of all of that persistence through the two steps forward, one step back. Did you have a moment like that when you got to that integrated piece?

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Gina: Yeah, so I will say I think it was a lot of little moments that came together. And I also want to say something else about that whole idea of the forward and the back and the forward and the back. It took me a little while to realize that what felt like backwards wasn't really backwards.

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It actually was, I have all these things that are really painful, and it feels like I'm back there again, but I have a new level of awareness. I have a new level of accountability, a new level of recognition, a new level of ability to grieve. It isn't always backward.

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Sometimes it's because you've stepped forward and now, something else has been revealed to you and that can sometimes feel like backward, but that doesn't mean it is. 

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Alison Cook: That’s good. That's really powerful. That's a huge breakthrough right there.

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Gina: Yeah. And that was a huge piece for me. And even realizing some of those things in the moment and being like, okay, but no, you're not actually doing what you used to do. You're not having that old response, or at least not at that level. You're not actually where you were and you have new tools.

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One of the things that kept empowering the journey forward was how I did begin to see how things we’re talking about in therapy go really well with what scripture says. Oh, my emotions are actually not the enemy. We’re created in the image of an emotional God. We see it in scripture, the whole gamut of emotion, and that's part of our image-bearing.

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Then to be able to say, now I recognize the top-down and the bottom-up of it all. And how we can even see that in scripture. The integration was the fuel, and grace. I don't want to leave that out of the conversation. Yes, embracing God's grace, believing in his grace for me, but also learning how to have some grace for myself. 

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One of the most effective ways that came was in learning how to have grace for the generations before me. And I don't mean letting them off the hook, or minimizing what happened, or how it impacted me. But about having that grace.

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Alison Cook: Yeah, that's what I was curious about. In that journey, I'm sure boundaries became a part of it. And forgiveness, which is always a really challenging word when we are recognizing and naming really hard things that happen to us, especially with our families. 

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That both-and of naming really honestly, because we have to see the truth in order to be set free, and also figuring out the boundaries. I imagine that was also a huge part of this journey.

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Gina: As far as boundaries are concerned, I talk about this one a lot because this can be really hard. I want to say a couple of really important things about boundaries from my perspective. What I walk through with clients and what we talk about in Generations Deep groups is that boundaries are important, but the way you make the boundaries might even be more important.

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We don't make them out of anger. We don't make them out of fear. Because when we're no longer afraid and we're no longer angry, we have a tendency to then not hold the boundary. And then we teach people that we don't mean what we say. We open ourselves up to these boundary violations all the time.

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I think that's something to be careful of. The other thing is that you get pressure from family. Blood is thicker than water. Blood is thicker than water. You are supposed to keep this tie, no matter what. And I'm laughing a little bit because every time in group, I will say, that was told to me too. Blood is thicker than water, blood is thicker than water. 

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And then typically I will say, do you know what that whole phrase is? Do you know where blood is thicker than water comes from? It's, “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”.

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Alison Cook: Whoa.

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Gina: It's actually the reverse. It actually means something completely different. So as people are telling you, blood is thicker than water, blood is thicker than water. It's actually that the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.

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It is saying in those covenantal relationships, whether they're genetic or not, that is the strong bond. That is where the strength is. It isn't about the DNA imprints.

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Alison Cook: It's the new family you've created.

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Gina: That God has given us. Absolutely.

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Alison Cook: Yeah, that's powerful. That's really powerful. So tell us a little bit, you've clearly at some point decided to become a therapist and to go into the work of helping others heal. How did you make that decision? And now you're doing all this amazing work to help others.

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How did you make that decision? And what was that like for you to become a guide for others through their healing journeys? 

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Gina: It started in pastoral care. I started there, and then pretty quickly realized I wanted to do more. I wanted to walk further along with people than what pastoral care afforded me the opportunity to do. I did a lot of crisis things with women in domestic violence situations, women coming out of prison, single moms, homeless moms. 

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I did a lot of that work initially, a lot of outreach, and then my mentor who had been a part of my life that I met through church said, I think you need to move forward and go formally get educated and go do this. I was like, okay, sure. It was not really going to happen.

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I'll do it because this person I respect is asking me to do it. I thought, I'll figure it out. But the more I learned about it, I was like, no, I actually could do more. I actually could do more. And God opened the door for me to do that pretty quickly. I started to have the idea for the book while I was in my Master's program.

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Because like I had said, for some reason, my brain always connected those dots of transgenerational dysfunction and trauma. I knew I wanted to write a book about it. So in getting my education as a therapist and also getting educated on epigenetic influences and what that has to do with trauma, and then bringing those things together eventually led me to do the book.

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I was doing the generational trauma work long before the book came out. But then the book came out and God has been so kind and ridiculously generous with how he has allowed me to help other people and walk with other people.

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He has allowed, not nationally, but internationally, for the book to be used in Guatemala and Nicaragua and Zimbabwe, and across the US. It has been amazing. Pretty quickly from there, I had people asking, because there's questions in the book, but I would get a lot of feedback.

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Are you going to do a separate workbook where we can put the answers to the questions? That's when the workbook was born along with the Audible version of the book. And then I guess it was maybe not even a whole year after that, that we had Generations Deep groups that were launched.

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We do those, and I train other therapists on how to run the Generations Deep groups as well. It's been really incredible.

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Alison Cook: That's amazing. What do we mean by this term, epigenetics? It's really fascinating. Can you expand on that a little bit?

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Gina: For a long time we believed that our DNA was it. You get what you get and that's it. If you have fill in the blank, whatever you have, if you get diabetes, if you have. Alcoholism, depression, it could be whatever. Those were things that were passed to you genetically and you would have to deal with that genetic soup that we're all given.

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What we now know is that it's far less about genetics and it's more about epigenetics. So epi, think above. Above the DNA, the thing that influences the DNA. We all have these epigenetic influencers in our lives. They can be anything from our nutrition, our environment, what we're consuming holistically, how we are raised, what has formed and informed us.

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There are some interesting twin studies out there where two twins are separated and one's raised one way and one's raised another and they come back together. While they have the same DNA, they have completely different lives. And we've seen this in research they did in Emory, where that cortical response to fear of a negative stimuli can be passed down from the mice in this generation to the next without even introducing them to that negative stimuli.

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They're born afraid of these certain things because of that. But the really cool and fascinating thing is that we also know from epigenetics that it doesn't have to be that way. God, in his infinite wisdom, did not give us a trauma box. There's not this place in our brain where the trauma has to always live there and we carry it around like this boulder on our back.

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We're actually wired for healing. We're not wired for the harm that comes. Epigenetically, we have this power to influence our lives, the lives of our children, the lives of our grandchildren, our great grandchildren, to afford something different for the generations to come.

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Alison Cook: Yeah, that's so good. There's always been biblically this idea of the sins of the generations being passed down. There's a way in which now, science is almost upholding that. Sometimes sin doesn't feel like the right word for it, but the trauma of the generations is passed down. 

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I love that example of that fear response–it can be part of your DNA. And that doesn't mean you're locked into it. That doesn't mean it can't change. We can also have these restorative experiences.

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Gina: That's really how I opened the book. The sins of the father visited to the third and fourth generation. A couple of things about that. I used to hate that verse so much, because I thought, back when I was deep in my own wounding, how does a loving God crack a whip that leaves a mark three and four generations out?

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Why is that a thing? As I started healing and learning about all of this, what I realized is no, that's not what's being said. What's being said is if you don't own it and do something with it, it has the potential to affect three and four generations. And I thought, wow that's so interesting, especially as I learned about epigenetics. 

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What we know is that if there is no intervention, like I talked about with that born trauma response, if there is no intervention, it will take three to four generations for that to naturally be evolved out of the generations.

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It takes three to four generations for that to naturally subside. But with intervention, it can change rapidly. Which brings me to the other scripture that talks about the fathers having eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. That appears I think twice in scripture, and people will quote that as proof of oh, it's passed down, but actually the prophets around them were saying, stop saying that.

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That's not true. That's not true. Stop saying that. even to know that there was that interjection of hope, even then, it's not true. It doesn't have to be true. We can do something else.

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Alison Cook: I love that. I think you're saying something really important. Number one, those scriptural sayings, it's not God's punishment or declaration of, this is how I'm going to punish you. It's almost a warning, of fact. This is what's going to happen. If we don't deal with this, it will be passed down.

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You're not only hurting yourself, you are hurting the next generations. It widens the lens and it can be a really helpful motivation to be a cycle breaker. To your point, it's not just about me. My life has ripple effects. It matters. 

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And that's not pressure in that sense of, you better get it right. It's a truth that can propel us to yearn to do the work because the work is hard and it can be frustrating. It's not easy. In IFS there's a term called legacy burdens. Are you familiar with that?

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Gina: Very much. Yes.

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Alison Cook: For the listener, a legacy burden in IFS terminology is basically that we have these burdens that we pick up from our past, the parts of us that have been wounded. They carry a deep pain that isn't in the present moment. So you might become aware that you have a burden if you completely lash out at a friend or at your sister or at your kids.

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It's way disproportionate to the offense that occurred, and you might be tapping into a wounded part of you that's lashing out from decades of pain versus the pain of the present moment. Part of the work of IFS is going and finding these exiles that carry these burdens and unburdening them.

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One of the things in IFS that Dick Schwartz and others began to notice is that sometimes, legacy burdens don't originate in your own story. They originate in your family history. You might have a legacy burden as it relates to alcoholism, even if you were not an alcoholic yourself. You might have a legacy burden as it relates to your ancestors who were slaves, even if you were not a slave yourself. 

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You might carry some of that pain inside of you, even if that specific thing didn't happen to you. Tell me a little bit about how you view legacy burdens and how that weaves into this conversation about epigenetics and generational trauma.

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Gina: I would say a legacy burden is a really great example of epigenetics. That's something that's been passed down, not even so much in DNA, but what influenced the DNA. I say in the book that shame can be a legacy. Shame can be a legacy. 

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There's a part in the book where I say, some of this you might be wondering, is this connected to something in my past? Or I have this struggle that I can't really name. I know that this is how I feel when these things happen. And I don't really know where it came from and I don't think I had an experience like that. 

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That's probably time to think about how you're carrying something that most likely is from the generations before you. But what's beautiful is when we do the work, it's a past, present, future work. We do the work here and now, but the work is effective for the past, present, and future. What we've carried is what's being addressed, the past. We're doing it in the present of our life, and then we're passing that on to the future.

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Alison Cook: That's so good. That's so good. What's one piece of wisdom, Gina, you would give to someone listening who's maybe in those early stages of healing, of recognizing some of these burdens. They’re maybe feeling discouraged because they're having that experience of getting a little help and then falling right back into old ways.

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What's one piece of wisdom you would offer to that listener? 

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Gina: I would say that I understand that feeling, and just because it feels like you're falling back doesn't necessarily mean that you are. Take inventory of what you know to be true that you have learned, that is different from what you had then. 

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What you're doing now, we know from all of the science, from all of the research, that your brain is wired for that new capacity. You can do this, but have grace for yourself in the process and do not do it alone, because that isolation thing will feed the shame and the shame will feed the cycle of dysfunction.

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You want to find that safe space of community. In terms of the generational piece, when you're trying to figure out, am I passing down something I don't want to pass down, or I think I am, and how do I change it? That's the time to say, even thinking about some of your work, Alison, in Boundaries For Your Soul, that's the time to think about, okay, what did I miss, or what harmed me as a child? 

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Have I been able to heal from that? And have I been able to give myself what I need to accept it from God, from the relationships around me? And if I haven't, then I need to go get some help in doing that. There's no shame in that. When I can say, yes, I've been able to name what I missed and name what harmed me and do this work of healing, you will naturally then pass something different onto your kids because you're different inside.

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Alison Cook: I love that. That's so hopeful. Just that naming is so hopeful. I love that. Tell us a little bit more about your book, the workbook, and these groups and other things that you're doing to help people heal for those who want to learn more.

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Gina: Generations Deep and the workbook are great for people to do with their therapist, one on one. Read the book, it's a great way to dip a toe in the water. I take a pretty gentle approach in the book, and the idea is bringing them through my story first.

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I think that kind of feels like a fellow traveler thing. The feedback that we've received is that it really feels like walking with. The second half talks a little bit more about the therapy side of it. It talks about what it is, being with Jesus and being with a therapist and those two things integrated together. What does that even mean? 

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I think that it's appropriate for a lot of people who might not be ready, but also for people who are on the journey and they're looking for the next step. The groups, you can reach out through my website, GinaBirkemeier.com and find out about the groups. We have them online. We have them in person. 

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Also, I do training for therapists who want to either do the one on one work with my book and workbook, or if they want to actually do groups themselves. I train therapists on how to do that as well. And then there's an Audible version that has some extras, some interviews with people and those interviews have been helpful to a lot of listeners.

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They’re some extra things to think about in terms of this journey of healing. In my practice, we have started something called the Collaborative Care Initiative, which has been a long term dream of mine to bring multiple practitioners under one roof to truly provide that holistic model of care. And to make it available to a broad socioeconomic base.

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So we have all of our therapists, 43 therapists, and then we're bringing on spiritual directors, nurse practitioners, psychiatric nurse practitioners, trauma-informed somatic release and body practices. We have a whole variety of people that we're bringing on and are really excited about the growth.

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We have neurofeedback, and it's been really great to bring all of these people under one roof. These adjunct practitioners, I bring them in to do educational pieces for our therapists. So it's really for the therapists to learn how to be holistically-minded as well.

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It's been a little bit “ready fire aim” rather than “ready aim fire”, but it's been great. And our hope is that we'll be able to build a model that might be replicable for other practices around the country.

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Alison Cook: Is it mostly online?

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Gina: No, it's mostly in person, but there are online options.

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Alison Cook: And where are you located?

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Gina: We're in Missouri.

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Alison Cook: That's incredible. What a vision. Wow. Where could people find you if they want to learn more about your work and about this collective?

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Gina: Find me at GinaBirkemeier.com and I'm on the socials. They can find me @myoutloudvoice on the socials.

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Alison Cook: Gina, what would you say to that younger you, 23, 24, 25, what would you want her to know from where you are now? 

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Gina: That makes me a little teary. I think I would want her to know not to give up. That she was worth more than what she realized. And not to do it alone, to stop trying to do it alone. That God had so much more for her, for us. That there would come a time when she could look back and say, the work was hard, but the work was good.

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Alison Cook: I love that. I love that. And what's bringing out the best of you right now?

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Gina: Oh gosh. Family things, new grandchildren, this collaborative care. I'm also working on my PhD right now. The doctoral program is incredible. It brings out, I would say, the good, the bad and the ugly, but in a great way. 

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I'm having the privilege of working with clinicians in Ukraine right now, and that has really been an incredible humbling experience. God is meeting me in ways that I had not anticipated through all of those things and I'm so grateful and I think it is bringing out the best in me and it is also calling me to refinement in other areas as well, which I hope He will continue to do while I'm here on this earth.

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Alison Cook: That's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us for all that you're doing. I'm so grateful to have this conversation with you today.

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Gina: Thanks, Alison.

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Are patterns from your past influencing how you show up in relationships today?

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In this episode, we explore how early family dynamics—like criticism, control, & emotional immaturity—shape our adult relationships. This process isn’t about placing blame but about building awareness of behaviors that impact self-worth, boundaries, and relational health. By naming these patterns, we open a path to greater confidence, healthier connections, autonomy, and healing.

‍

In this episode, we cover:

* The two essential ingredients for building secure parent-child attachment

* The role of enmeshment and individuation in emotional health

* 5 common parenting patterns that disrupt secure attachment

* 5 questions to assess how these patterns may be impacting you today

* Practical steps to heal and change

Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here.

Have questions or episode ideas? Leave them here.

If you enjoyed this episode, you'll love:

The Best of You: Break Free From Painful Patterns, Mend Your Past, and Discover Your True Self In God

Episode 109: Healing Burdens From the Past—How to Overcome Childhood Wounds and Heal Your Younger Self with Tammy Sollenberger

‍

Resources:

• ‍The Best of You by Dr. Alison Cook
• ‍Episode 16: What are Attachment Styles and Why Does it Matter?
• Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents by Lindsay Gibson

‍

‍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!
• Turn back time on the appearance of your skin with Purity Woods’s Age-Defying Dream Cream. Purity Woods is currently offering 17% off sitewide but we have an additional 10% discount for our listeners for a total savings of 27%! Go to puritywoods.com/BESTOFYOU or enter code BESTOFYOU at checkout for an additional 10% off your first order.
• 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.‍

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Transcript:

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Alison: Hey everyone. And welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I'm so thrilled to be with you today. We are diving into a topic that resonates with every single one of us. It's that parent-child relationship–particularly how our own parents shape us well into adulthood.

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Please hear me say, we are not here to lay blame on parents today, because a lot of us are parents, and so we're very well aware of all of our own shortcomings. The minute we start looking back and looking at our own childhoods and looking at some of our own wounds, it can stir up some of that terror inside of us.Oh my goodness, I hope I'm not doing this to my own child.

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This is very unique to all of us. Our generation of parenting, whether you're parenting young kids or teenagers, or maybe your own kids have already left the nest, we're so much more aware of these wounds that we all bring from childhood into adulthood. Again, we're not here to lay blame. As I like to say, we're here to name. We're not labeling other people, we’re naming patterns of behavior.

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In this case, we're naming patterns of behavior that maybe occurred when we were children that have an influence over who we are today. These patterns of behavior are real. They affect us. And we need to be able to name them in order to understand their effect on us today and how we can heal and change things, not only in our own lives, but as we parent our own kids. 

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So remember, we're here to name, not blame, but it is so important to do this work so that we can heal from the past and move forward with confidence and clarity in claiming the life God has for us. 

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Many of you have written to me about various forms of challenges in your relationships with your own parents, whether you're caring for aging parents, or whether you're aware of some of the residual effects of your own childhood on your current life.

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This question comes up in so many different ways. For example, Mary wrote to me that she really appreciated the episodes on emotional immaturity and that she would love to hear me talk about the specific challenges for children who are caring for aging parents who are emotionally immature.

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Bernadette wrote that she's coming to terms as an adult with some insecurity issues that resulted in deficits from her imperfect parents. She wrote in parentheses, we’re all imperfect, which is exactly true. That's exactly right. We are all working to heal from some of these deficits, no matter how good or toxic your parents and primary caregivers were.

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And then Leslie wrote this beautiful message, talking about how it's only been in the last two years that she has begun to realize that she is not a terrible person. The messages she received from a very critical and emotionally abusive mother were actually about her mother’s issues and her unresolved pain, and had absolutely nothing to do with the beautiful soul that she was. 

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Thank you for writing about that, Leslie. I'm so grateful that you are learning that you are worthy of love. You were worthy of care and you are finally learning that you were not the problem in that relationship.

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Those are a few of the many messages I've received from people who are really trying to come to terms with the wounds from the past and then figure out, how do I heal myself now? How do I also ensure that I don't pass these wounds down on to the next generation? What about when I need to care for these people, especially aging parents who have actually been really harmful to me and, and now I have to figure out how to care for them?

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Okay, so that's the lay of the land of this topic. We're not going to get into every single aspect of that today. I've got a couple of episodes coming up designed to address a lot of this. If you continue to have questions, you can always leave those questions for me on The Best of You Podcast question form. There's a link to it in this episode show notes. You can also go to my website, dralisoncook.com/podcast, and find that link on this episode's webpage.

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I love hearing from you. It's really helpful for me to take in this information from you so I can see what you're grappling with. When I start to see themes emerge, it helps me understand, oh, we need to do some episodes on this. So thank you for taking the time to write to me about these topics.

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Now listen, before we get started, some of you may have really healthy relationships with your parents. Maybe they're not perfect, but for the most part, your parents were reliable. They showed up for you, they support you. Even when there were ruptures, you knew that you could repair, you knew that you could find a way back to each other 

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For some of you listening, there's no relationship anymore with your parents. The relationship got so toxic and the trauma was so deep. You can't be in a relationship with those people. And that's so painful, when you have to remove yourself from those relationships.

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For many of you listening, you're somewhere in the middle with your parents. There were some really good and supportive things that you got from your parents, and there were also some hard things, some things you're trying to unlearn no matter where you fall on that spectrum. 

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So there are two crucibles where we typically become aware of these childhood wounds. Number one is our intimate relationships. Our intimate relationships, especially our marriage relationships, are so often the relationships where suddenly we begin to notice our own patterns and we're like, oh my goodness, why can't I engage in a healthy conversation about conflict?

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I tend to go into flight mode or I go into fight mode or I shut down or I withdraw. Oh my goodness, that's what I did in my family of origin. That's what I had to do in my family of origin to survive. That's great knowledge, but now I've got to figure out how to heal so that I can show up in this current relationship in a different way.

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That's one of the gifts of intimate relationships; they bring to the surface some of these areas where we've got wounds from our past that we need to heal so that we can show up differently in the current relationship going forward. 

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The second big place where a lot of these wounds begin to surface is when we have kids of our own. We begin to realize, oh my goodness, I didn't even realize. Now I'm trying to parent this child. I want to do it differently. And suddenly I notice myself behaving in ways I don't like. I notice myself getting angry. I notice myself getting avoidant. I notice myself avoiding these hard conversations.

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Or I notice myself having a really hard time figuring out how to set boundaries, or I notice myself having a really hard time when I need to let my child find their own way apart from me. We begin to notice some of these patterns that likely go all the way back to our own childhoods, when we begin to parent ourselves.

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The stakes can feel really high, because we begin to realize, I've got to heal these patterns because I don't want to repeat them in these relationships I care so much about in this present day with my spouse, with my kids, with my friends. I want to say to you right at the top of this episode, the goal is not perfection.

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This is a process of awareness–yeah, I've got some growing to do. I've got some things from the past I have to undo and it's going to take me a little while, but my ability to name those things and begin to even say some of those things to the people that I love, “Hey, I know I'm not great at conflict. I know sometimes I can actually flee any conflicts before it even surfaces.

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And I want to let you know that I'm aware of that. And I may not be able to change that right away, but I'm going to work on it. And I promise you, I'm going to keep coming back.” Or you might need to say to those loved ones, “I know I've got some anger. I can get really angry and I'm becoming more and more aware of it and I want you to know that I see it and I'm working on it. When I notice it, I can become aware of it more quickly and I can come back to you and say, I'm sorry that didn't come out right. Can we do a take two on that conversation?” 

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There are lots of ways you can let your loved ones know, I'm healing some stuff here. These patterns go way back. I'm not going to change overnight, but I'm aware. I'm honoring that and I'm committed to growing and healing and moving forward in a new and better way.

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When you give yourself that spaciousness, you're calming your nervous system, which allows you to show up more authentically, with more calm, with more courage, with more confidence. If your spouse or your friend came to you and said, hey, I know I still do this thing. It's got a long tail. It goes all the way back. This is deeply rooted. I'm aware. I'm sorry. I know that's hard for you. We don't expect people to change on a dime, but that awareness is a huge step toward health in all of our relationships.

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So remember you're committing to this journey of healing. We often on the podcast use that Greek word, sozo, in the Bible that means salvation that can also be translated as healing. We are on this journey of sanctification. We are on this journey of being made more and more like Christ, which means being made more and more like that person who God wants us to become, the most beautiful version of ourselves.

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This is a process that we will be on throughout our entire lifetime. But every single step you can take to own it, to honor it, to name it without shame, both to yourself and to your loved one, is a huge step and a success in and of itself.

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I want to start off by naming some key anchoring terms, because I'm going to be using these terms a lot. And then I'm going to move into the five toxic patterns of behaviors that may have impacted you as a child and that you're carrying with you into adulthood.

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The first word I want to name is enmeshment. Sometimes, the emotional bond between a parent and child becomes so intertwined that it's hard to distinguish who you are and your own feelings, your own thoughts, your own beliefs from that of your parents. This is what we mean by enmeshment. We can actually become too close, too enmeshed. We become so caught up in another person that we don't know where they end and I begin. 

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When you're a child, you are dependent on the adult who is caring for you to be the adult. It's the adult's responsibility to help honor that balance, that dance. I go deep into this topic in my book, The Best of You. I call it that dance between connection and autonomy, closeness and distance. 

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We need both in healthy relationships, and it's the parent's job to really delineate that dance of being close, but also honoring difference. I love you. You are my child, and, you're different from me. You're a unique individual. It's my job sometimes to step back and see you for who you are as someone different from me. 

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That's a really nuanced dance between parent and child. Enmeshment occurs when a parent begins to blur those lines, and typically the parent is depending too much on the child. They want to see the child as an extension of themselves. This creates a blurred boundary between parent and child. 

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Enmeshment can make the healthy process of what psychologists call individuation, the process of becoming your own person, really, really difficult. Even if you've created physical distance, that emotional hold can remain really strong. Someone who grew up in an enmeshed relationship where your parent kind of lived their life through you, even when you moved away from home, even when you got your own job, maybe even got married, even had kids or yourself, you might find yourself struggling to know what you think, know what you want, know your own feelings as separate from the people who raised you.

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You might even feel guilty about that. That's because it's been really hard for you to individuate. A parent's job is to essentially raise your child to leave you. I think about this in nature. We see in moms that there's a point at which you're raising that child, you're nurturing that child, but eventually you aware that child has to leave the nest and learn to fly without you. 

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When you have that endgame in mind, when you understand that eventually your child needs to leave you, you're going to love that child, but you're also going to equip them to leave you to function on their own apart from you. That's your job. And when you do that well, your child will be delighted to continue to stay connected to you because those roles are clear.

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You've built that trust. You've made yourself a safe place for your child to return to as an adult, because paradoxically, you've honored their need to leave you. You're not trying to keep them close to you in an unhealthy way. You get that your best way of staying close to your child is to honor that they need to leave you. It's a beautiful paradox.

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Now, the other term I want to throw out here is attachment theory. Some of you might be thinking about attachment as I'm talking, and it can be a really helpful framework for understanding how our earliest bonds with our caregivers shape our future relationships. 

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I did a whole episode on attachment styles in episode 16, so you can go back and listen to that episode. We'll link to it in the show notes. But for today's purposes, it's important to understand that a secure attachment happens when your parents offer that consistent love and support, where they're allowing you to feel safe with them.

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But here's the thing. They're allowing you to feel safe with them so that you can explore life independent from them. That's the essence of secure attachment. I'm safe enough with these people who love me that I can go out into the world and explore it on my own. And there are different milestones that I go through in The Best of You of how that happens at different junctures and different ages. 

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Throughout your developing years as a child, that's essentially what's happening–a healthy, secure attachment. There's that safety from those parents at home that allows you to go out and explore the world independently. And when that doesn't happen, we start to notice those anxious attachments, those avoidant attachments, those mixed attachments, where we don't have that safety at home. 

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It inhibits our ability to explore the world outside of us with confidence. So there are a lot of things that can disrupt secure attachment. Abuse disrupts secure attachment, neglect disrupts secure attachment, and enmeshment can disrupt secure attachment where it's not actually safe in the sense of that stable home base where this person loves you, but does not need you.

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When enmeshment occurs, this person loves you to make themselves feel better. There's a sense of closeness that you learn to understand as comfort when you're doing what the caregiver wants and needs you to do for their sake. That feels like comfort, but it's not actually safety.

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So here's what I want you to remember. Healthy parent-child relationships are built on two key building blocks. Connection and separation; both are necessary. A parent's job is to help you develop a strong sense of self while also supporting you as you learn to live your own life.

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This involves encouraging you to learn how to trust your own instincts, how to make your own decisions, how to explore your own ideas and feelings. And that leads to healthy individuation. When enmeshment occurs, you can feel like you're betraying your caregiver. You can feel like you should defer your own needs, your own instincts, your own decision-making, to fulfill the perceived needs of the parent.

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Now, there's a really good book–I've recommended this book before. It's a bestselling book by Lindsay Gibson. It's called Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. And there's a reason this book is everywhere, because this text so clearly lays out what some of these patterns look like in emotionally immature parents.

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I'm going to give a really condensed version of how I have noticed some of these behaviors of an emotionally immature parent showing up. But that's really what's happening here. It's where a parent doesn't have the maturity to do what the child needs to become a healthy autonomous adult.

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Number one is unpredictability. When your parents’ emotional states are unpredictable, maybe they had an undiagnosed mental illness, maybe there was an addiction, maybe they had a lot of emotional outbursts, or any difficulty managing their own emotions, where they couldn't take responsibility for their own emotions. 

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That can leave a child with that anxious attachment. There isn't that sense of safety. It's like one day, mom is great. The next day, mom can't get out of bed. And there's nothing to explain that. I want to be clear. It's not that parents can't struggle while raising kids. We can, but we have to be able to name it for them. We have to be able to talk to our kids about that.

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Listen, your dad struggles with depression. Sometimes you're going to notice that he has a hard time getting up. It has nothing to do with you. He's getting help for that. We're working on that. We love you. Here's what's happening. This isn't your fault. 

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It's in the absence of that communication and that honoring of what's truly happening that kids begin to make up stories. This is my fault. And kids start to connect dots that aren't meant to be connected when there's unpredictability. I come home from school and my mom is really sad today and she's not naming that. She's crying off in the corner and I can see that and that affects me, but she's not talking to me about it. I don't know what's happening. 

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So as a child, in my little brain, what I assume is, this is my fault. I have to come home from school every day, super duper happy, because somehow the way I'm coming home from school is making mom behave differently, even when that's not true.

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So again, unpredictability is when a parent's emotional state is unpredictable and unaccounted for. The parent does not take responsibility for what's happening. Another example, a parent loses their temper and gets really angry. We don't love that. That's not great. That's hard for kids. But what makes it even harder is when it goes unaddressed and unnamed and unrepaired.

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If a parent is struggling with an anger issue and they sometimes come down hard, the ability to come back and say, I got angry, I have a temper. That is not your fault. You did nothing to evoke that kind of reaction in me, that's my fault. That's my job, to work through that anger. That is not your fault.

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We're naming it, which allows the child to release the pain of that and understand that it's not their fault and see an adult be an adult. An adult takes responsibility. An adult takes accountability and hopefully, presumably, the adult begins to make changes as well.

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Unpredictability can also be part of neglect. Sometimes a parent is absent. They're not in the room. They might not be yelling. They might not be crying, but due to their own problems and their own heartaches and their own hardships, they're maybe going through the motions of sitting at the dinner table, of getting you to bed, getting you to school, but they're absent.

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There's no emotional presence and it's erratic. Sometimes they're present. A lot of times they're not. Kids make up narratives in the absence of consistency. They will make up a narrative about that. Those narratives are almost always self-shaming. It's my fault. I'm the problem. 

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Number two, the other one I see so commonly, is what we call parentification. This occurs when the parent relies on the child to meet the parent's emotional needs. So if you were conditioned to take care of your parent's emotions, you became the parent for your parents, you may struggle to understand healthy boundaries in adult relationships.

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You may feel like it's your job to be the adult in the room for everyone around you. You may take on more responsibility for other people's emotions than is your responsibility to take. It's really hard to change this pattern if you were parentified as a child. So for example, even with a well meaning parent, maybe you're a highly empathetic kid.

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You're pretty precocious, and you can read the cues and you can tell that mom is sad, or dad is upset, and you go to them and you say, oh man, are you okay? Slowly, over time, mom or dad or whoever the person is caring for you begins to confide in you. This is really hard. 

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You actually have the ability to be there for them, to help them through those emotions, to cheer them up, to make them feel better. Maybe as you begin to get a little older, you might even have wisdom for them and slowly, you start parenting your parents.

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Now listen, when you're in an adult relationship with your parents, this is going to happen a little more. We move into two-way relationships a little bit more with our parents as we become adults, although it's always really a one-way relationship, because a parent always has more power than the child, even in adult parent-child relationships.

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But man, when you're a kid, if the primary means by which you're relating to a parent is that you're caring for them, it's a big problem, because two things are happening there.

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Number one, you're learning how to always prioritize someone else over your own needs. And number two, you're not getting your needs met. Think about that. You're not getting your needs met as a child. Your parent isn't attuning to you and attuning to your emotional states and saying things like, I love your empathy. I love that you care about me, but I want you to know this is not your problem. 

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This is my problem. I'm the adult here. Thank you for noticing that I was sad. I appreciate that. And this is not your problem to solve. This is my problem. I'm an adult. I have other adults who will help me through this. I'm here for you. I want to know what's going on with you. 

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That's what a healthy parent does in those situations. It's not that we don't want to honor the empathy of our kids. It's beautiful, but we don't want to take that slippery slope down to letting our kids parent us. And it happens all the time. We have to watch that as parents, because two things are happening there. 

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They're overdeveloping that attunement muscle to other people, but they're also underdeveloping what it feels like to have someone else attune to them. And this sets you up for all kinds of issues in adult relationships. When you go into your adulthood, you don't know what it looks like to be in a relationship with someone who's there for you. You only know how to show up for other people, and that sets you up for a lot of codependency. 

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It sets you up to be taken advantage of by other people. It sets you up for one-way relationships that are unsatisfying, where a lack of intimacy occurs. So this is a big one to understand if you see some of those patterns in your adult life, where you really have a hard time receiving care from others, asking for what you need, even identifying what you need.

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It may well be that you grew up in an environment where you had to be the adult. From a very young age, you were pretty good at assessing the needs around you, but you did not know how to be a child and receive the care of someone else. And that's really important in healthy relationships, the ability to both give out and receive care.

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Thirdly, we're going to talk about criticism. If you grew up in a culture of constant criticism, this damages your core sense of self. It's really hard for a child to understand that all of this criticism around me is not actually about me. Because these are my parents. They know best. That's what kids think. 

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So all of this criticism that I'm getting, that must be the truth. I must be a bad kid. I must not be okay. They're criticizing me for a reason. This is really unhealthy. We don't grow up with a healthy sense of our goodness, of our God given worth, of the beauty in our soul. 

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We grow up feeling inferior, feeling insecure, feeling unworthy. We don't understand inherently that we are a beloved child of God. You can heal, but it is so important to begin to connect those dots and go, you know what? Part of the reason I can't actually believe in myself and believe that I'm worthy of good love is that I've never experienced it.

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I've been told in one way or another that I was worthless, that I wouldn't amount to anything, that I was a failure, that I could never get anything right since the day I was born. I don't have any other memories. So how would I know what it's like to internalize an entirely different message, which is, “I am beloved. I am worthy of love. I'm not perfect. Of course, who is? And I am a beautiful soul made in the image of God”?

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Number four, control. If you grew up in an environment that was highly controlled, again, sometimes well-intended parents want to keep you overly safe and they want to control everything. Sometimes it's out of a good intention, but they don't let you take enough healthy risks.

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Sometimes it's coming from a selfish motivation, where they're more concerned about how they appear in the world. They control your behavior so they can look good in the world to their friends. They want you to go to the right school or play the right sport or have the right friends. And that's really more about them than it is about you.

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So whether that's coming from a desire to keep you from harm and they control too much, or if it's coming from a more self-serving place, it makes it hard for you when you get into your adult world to understand how to take healthy risks. If you grew up in a highly controlled environment, you might go one of two directions.

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You might take too many risks and overcorrect and kind of blow everything up. Or you might be really, really scared and stay really, really small because you've never learned how to develop that healthy resilience, that healthy tolerance for some of the uncertainty, some of the stressors, even some of even the hardships of life.

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Lastly, I want to talk about rescuing, and I see this in certain types of families where the parents, out of usually a goodness of heart, they're constantly swooping in and rescuing kids out of any discomfort, out of any hardship. They're fighting their kids' battles. Now, sometimes as parents, we need to intervene on behalf of our kids. Something's happening that is wrong. There's an injustice and we need to intervene to protect our kids. That is absolutely true. 

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But in parents who are rescuing, it's those normal everyday incidents. I didn't get invited to this birthday party. No, they're not ganging up and bullying me, but they're not including me in their group, and it's really painful. As a parent, we have to help our kids honor that that's hard and also teach them how to tolerate the pain of that. 

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Two things can be true. You have to learn how to navigate challenges in life. You have to learn how to do that with your parents there as that safe anchor. They're never going to leave you, but they're also not always swooping in to rescue you out of it. Sometimes doing things that are hard or even doing things where we try and we're not successful at them are really important for our character and our growth.

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Rescuing can also create a situation in which you arrive at adulthood without those necessary skills to tolerate the things that come our way in life as adults. There can sometimes be an entitlement, a constant kind of feeling disappointed by other people, when maybe those other people are actually exhibiting normal behaviors.

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They're not taking responsibility for something that isn't theirs to take. It's actually yours to take responsibility for. So all of this comes down to that separation and connection. How do I stay connected to people while also understanding what's mine is mine and what's theirs is theirs?

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So here are five questions that you might ask yourself. Maybe you ask a loved one or a trusted advisor to reflect on these five parenting patterns, if you suspect that they may have an impact on you today. These are some questions to think about and notice and wonder about and get curious about, because it will help you begin to frame your experience so that you can take brave steps toward healing.

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Regarding unpredictability, how do I react when someone I care about is emotionally volatile or inconsistent? Do I find myself constantly trying to manage their feelings or walking on eggshells? If you notice that inside of you, when someone else is emotionally volatile or inconsistent, it triggers a part of you that's like, oh, I need to do something to fix that.

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I need to change something about myself to fix their feelings. That's a cue that there's a wound there that you could begin to heal. The truth is, if someone else is emotionally volatile, that's their responsibility to work through that. It's your responsibility to be aware, to notice what happens inside of you, to take responsibility for yourself in that moment. It's not your responsibility to try to fix their emotions. 

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Number two, as it relates to parentification, do I feel responsible for taking care of others' emotional needs before my own in my adult relationships? Do I struggle to ask for help or set boundaries because I'm so used to always prioritizing others? Notice if that's true. My default is to immediately take care of them, immediately go to their needs, whether it's your friends, whether it's your spouse, whether it's your own parents. 

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I've got to take care of them. I've got to be the bigger person. I've got to do what they need, versus sitting with the sometimes uncomfortable feeling of, I wonder what I need in this situation for myself or from another person. And that may be beginning to notice the effects of that parentification in your own adult life.

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And then number three, when it comes to criticism, how do I respond to feedback or criticism from others? Do I immediately internalize it? Criticize myself or feel like I need to perfect myself to avoid being judged? In other words, if I notice criticism around me or even any healthy feedback, do I immediately assume I'm at fault?

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I must've gotten it wrong. I've got to do better. And if so, that's something to notice. What if instead I could take a deep breath and wonder, is it true? Is that criticism even about me? Or is it more about this other person? It's possible this has nothing to do with me. It's possible I haven't done anything wrong. You can begin to build up that new muscle. 

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Number four, control. Do I find it difficult to make decisions without seeking approval or validation from others? Am I able to pursue my own interests or do I feel pressure to live up to the expectations of others? And notice, if I were to vote a certain way, if I were to attend a certain church, if I were to wear a certain article of clothing as an adult, is there sort of this internal backlash? 

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Notice that. Begin to pay attention. What if I could challenge myself to take some small steps toward autonomy, toward doing some things that I like to do, even though they're different from what I was taught was okay? You might start with some low hanging fruit. It might start with something you wear, a food that you eat that's a little bit different from what you were allowed as a child. 

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And then number five, rescuing. When facing challenges, do I tend to rely on others to bail me out, to fix things for me? Or do I feel empowered to tackle problems on my own? How comfortable am I with allowing others to fail and learn from their mistakes? How often am I wanting to swoop in and rescue others? 

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That might be another way this shows up. Notice that and maybe ask for feedback again from a trusted advisor because you're beginning to identify patterns. There's a reason you're this way. Likely this goes all the way back to childhood. So these questions should help you identify how these early patterns might still be affecting your adult life and your relationships.

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I want you to remember this above all else: healing starts with you. No matter what happened in your past, you have the power to begin to change some of these patterns. You can do this inside of you. 

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It starts with beginning to notice and name some of these patterns and beginning to entertain the thought, what if it could be different? What if there was another way? You will begin to unlock the natural God-given healing inside of your soul. Because no matter what happened to you in the past, your body is designed with a bent toward healing.

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Invite God's spirit into that process and ask God to begin to nudge you when one of those patterns is showing up in your life. And I promise you, you will begin to see numerous opportunities and numerous occasions to make a tiny change, one brave step at a time.

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Did you know that by adulthood, most people have experienced some form of sexual wounding?

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Today’s conversation with Sam Jolman, therapist and author of the new book, "The Sex Talk You Never Got," is one of my absolute all-time favorites. Why? It truly surprised me.

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It’s so rare to find a nuanced conversation about sex—especially in a world where we’re constantly tugged between a reductive view of “purity” and an equally reductive sense of “permissiveness.” This conversation is packed with absolute gems—there’s depth, wisdom, and healing in every moment that’s relevant to all of us, no matter our stories.

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Here’s what we dive into:

- How to establish safety, consent, and trust in intimate relationships

- An eye-opening statistic from Harvard about what kids are really longing for when it comes to parenting and sex

- How to have a truly meaningful “sex talk” with your kids

- What God actually desires from us when it comes to sex (& it's not just "purity")

- Sam's advice for those who’ve experienced sexual wounding or brokenness and want to begin the healing process

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Resources:

• The Sex Talk You Never Got: Reclaiming the Heart of Masculine Sexuality by Sam Jolman, LPC
• samjolman.substack.com
• ‍samjolman.com

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If you liked this, you’ll love:

• Episode 125: Recovering From Purity Culture: Dismantle the Myths, Reject Shame-Based Sexuality, and Move Forward in Your Faith with Dr. Camden Morgante

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‍Thanks to our sponsors:

• Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
• Fatty15 is on a mission to replenish your C15 levels and restore your long-term health. You can get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription Starter Kit by going to fatty15.com/BESTOFYOU and using code BESTOFYOU at checkout.
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• 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.‍

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Transcript:

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Alison Cook: Hey, everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am so glad you're here this week for the second part of our two part series on healthy sexuality. Last week, we took a deep dive into purity culture, and we explored the myths and some of the shame-based messaging so many of us internalized about sex. 

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Today, we're shifting our focus to looking at how we can heal from sexual trauma, change destructive patterns in our relationships, and how we can begin to have healthier, more honest conversations, especially with our kids about sex and sexuality. So for this conversation, I am thrilled to welcome therapist Sam Jolman to the show. 

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Sam is a licensed professional counselor with over 20 years of experience working with individuals and couples on issues related to trauma, relationships, and emotional health. He's the author of a brand new book called The Sex Talk You Never Got: Reclaiming the Heart of Masculine Sexuality. It's a beautiful book that really honors the sacred nature of sex and sexuality while simultaneously demystifying it in a way that is so necessary for this culture that we live in, where we need to be having healthy conversations about sex. 

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Sam has a unique ability to blend clinical insight with deep compassion, and he's creating a space for all people to heal and grow in a way that integrates the mind, the body, and the spirit. He has specialized in working with both men and women on healing from sexual trauma, addressing dysfunctional patterns in relationships, and guiding parents on how to approach these sensitive topics with their children.

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In today's conversation, we'll be talking about how we can move forward out of the ruins of sexual trauma and sexual wounding and move forward on a path of healing. We'll discuss how to create healthier patterns of intimacy in our lives. Sam offers some really important and valuable insight on how to talk with your kids about sex in ways that honor their vulnerability, but that also prepares them for the complexities of life, giving them the tools they need to develop a healthy, realistic, grounded understanding of sex.

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So whether you've personally experienced sexual trauma or wounding, or whether you're working through issues in your relationship or simply want to look for better ways to have healthy conversations with your kids about sex, this episode is for everyone.

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Sam Jolman is a trauma therapist with over 20 years of experience specializing in men's issues and sexual trauma recovery. He received his Master's in Counseling from Reformed Theological Seminary and was further trained in narrative-focused trauma care through the Allender Center at the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology.

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Sam lives in Colorado with his wife and three sons. He's the author of the brand new book, The Sex Talk You Never Got: Reclaiming the Heart of Masculine Sexuality. This is such a rich and beautiful conversation with Sam about this tender topic. While Sam's new book is specifically written for men, this conversation is for everyone. Please enjoy my conversation with therapist Sam Jolman.

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Alison Cook: I'm thrilled to have you on the podcast, Sam. Thank you so much for joining us and really speaking into what is such an important topic for so many of us. Thank you for being here.

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Sam: Alison, thank you for having me on and thank you for being willing and open to this important conversation.

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Alison Cook: Yeah, it is. As I was preparing for this conversation, I bumped up against some of the parts of me that were raised in what we now talk about as purity culture. I didn't understand what that was at the time, and I was having to unpack some of my own internal resistances, even though as a therapist and a clinician and a parent, I've worked through so much of that.

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I appreciate your willingness to walk us through this. You're a therapist who specializes primarily in men's issues and in marriage counseling. Is that right?

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Sam: Yup. Men's issues, marriage counseling, and actually working with sexual trauma as well along with that.

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Alison Cook: How did you find your way into that area of specialty?

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Sam: I started, as probably most of us as therapists start, as a 19 year old going into my own counseling, and feeling what felt to me like magic. I sat with a really kind and skilled therapist who had a way of drawing me into my heart. I was managing depression at the time, and it felt pretty magical. 

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Like wow. What did you do? How did I end up in tears, and why are we talking about this, which feels unrelated to this? Yet here we are. There was the magic of it. Then there was a prayer there, where I thought God, if I could do this, if I could offer this to others, that would be amazing.

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So it started there. My own story, again, of entering into my own story of sexual formation and understanding parts of it that were deeper–a lot of times sexuality, particularly from purity culture, there's a lot of conversation about behaving. Behave well. There's not a lot of conversation in the church about your story, and the impact of your story on your sexuality. 

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The experience you describe, try writing a book on sexuality, and that will certainly let you know where you still hold sexual shame. In writing this book I had to go back and do my own counseling and do some of my own EMDR to really keep doing layers of work here, because sexuality, there are certain things you can talk about in your head, maybe math or rock strata. I don't know.

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But sexuality, you can't not be in your body and in your story. Your felt experience of sexuality when you talk about it is that vulnerable and close to us. It's that sacred.

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Alison Cook: It's such a good point. It's really hard to have an abstract conversation about it. Maybe that's what purity culture was trying to do, is make it very abstract and disembodied. But you used a phrase that I want to tease out–sexual formation. I love that. We think about spiritual formation.

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We think about the whole person, emotional health, forming our emotional lives, forming our spiritual lives. Tell me a little bit about what that means to you, that idea of sexual formation? Because it's a real thread throughout the book. You're really wanting us not to see it as the title of “the sex talk you never had”.

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It's not a one and done. It's not a, “Okay, here's what it is. Here's the basics”. It's a whole process of becoming a whole person. So talk to me a little bit about what you mean by that.

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Sam: Yeah. We do have this misnomer or this false idea that sexuality runs itself. Once you've got it explained, the birds and the bees, the mechanics, it's gonna do its thing. It creates, as I say in the book, an under-nurtured part of us. It's probably the place we've had the least meaningful conversations in our lives.

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I would say even, particularly for men, the banter of locker room talk, as we say, or sex jokes, shows this idea of again, it's meant to work. The stats that I've read say 85 percent of couples will experience, even in the mechanics, even in the physicality of bodies, will experience some sort of sexual dysfunction at some point in their marriage. 

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85 percent saying the mechanics don't work. But along with that, I'm borrowing this line from Esther Perel, another writer on sexuality who says, there's the mechanics of sex, but then there's the poetics of sex. Which is this beautiful line that captures the desire side of things and the story that's around sexuality. 

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So the sex talk should also be the romance talk. One of my sons who is coming of age asked me, dad, how do you ask a girl out?

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Alison Cook: Yes, that's right. Yeah.

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Sam: There's a little moment of formation there, of buddy, here's how you might have a conversation like that.

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Alison Cook: It's analogous to how we think about marriage. All right, you get married, you're done, go on and have a healthy relationship for the next 50 years. Are you kidding me? The marriage ceremony is a party that is the mark of a journey of growth and healing and work and thinking about things and processing things and changing and growing and this whole process that's going to last your whole lifetime.

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It's the same with sexuality. It's a whole process that starts with, “How do I like a girl? What do I do? How do I talk to her?” 

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Sam: Yeah. And, as you're saying so well, you have to learn the dance of desire in a marriage. How do you incorporate this part? As I say in the book, sex, I believe, in its essence, is a form of play. It is a place our love plays. It's not the only place, it is. In fact, you need other places of play in marriage, like taking up dance or even card games.

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My wife and I like reading a book together and talking about it. That can be a form of playful conversation. Or my wife and I did couples yoga for Valentine's Day a couple of years ago, and that was playful. It was a different way of learning how to be with each other and learn something other than task mode that we're so often in. 

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You’re business partners and co-parents and homeowners together, but sex is meant to be this other place that you play. And that takes learning. How do you like to play in here? What is your cadence of desire? What do you like and not? What brings you pleasure and not? That's a lot to learn.

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Alison Cook: It is. It's a whole lifetime. It's a whole lifetime to learn and understand and grow and honor. I love the metaphor of the dance. You start out the book, Sam, with these stories. I think there's three stories where these characters, kids, are essentially giving these bids to their parents in some small way. 

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Gottman talks about how in couples, we give bids to our partner. That was so fascinating to me when I read about Gottman, because we do it all the time. “Oh look, I washed the dishes” is a bid for “Oh, thank you so much for washing the dishes” or “Oh, look at that beautiful bird” is a bid for “You're interested in that bird”. 

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So I looked at these stories as these kids giving subtle bids that they want to talk about this and they don't know how to talk about it. They're terrified to talk about it. In each of the stories, the parent, doing the best they can, either completely ignores it, shuts it down, or reveals their own shame and awkwardness about it.

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In the stories that you're sharing, these kids aren’t getting what they really need, which is someone to come alongside them and say, let's talk about this. What are you really asking here? it was so profound to me because I thought, gosh, for so many of us who didn't get parented through that, we're demonstrating our own awkwardness in those moments.

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We don't know that this is first of all, a bid from my child saying “I need to talk about this”. So I thought that was so powerful to even catch a glimpse through your eyes of this happening. We, as the parents, are responsible to watch for these bids and really engage with our kids.

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Then you coupled that with some research from Harvard that talked about how 70 percent of young adults are saying they want more conversations with their parents about sexuality, about sex and romance. That was such a powerful way to open the book. 

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I'm curious at a broad brush stroke level, what are some ways that we as parents can be watching for? One, what is the work we need to do so that we're ready and prepared for those conversations? Two, what are some of the things we need to be watching out for to really help our young boys and our young girls so that we can be nurturing them into the fullness of this sexual formation?

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Sam: Great questions. Yes. I love your language of bids, the bids for connection. You're right. Those are moments where they're asking for attachment. Lean in, read my face, read my curiosity, ask me the next question. I don't even know what I don't know, but stay with me. You're right. 

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I hadn't thought about it that way, but that really is the sense of these moments of being under-nurtured because of being missed. I would say at some level, again, you cannot talk about sexuality outside of your body. It is one of those topics that will bring you into your body and into your own felt experience.

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First and foremost, before anything that you say or do with your children in terms of educating them, I think the most important thing you can do is address your own places of shame. Address your own sexual shame. Where does it haunt you? Where does it grip you? Because it will.

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Some of those stories, one of them in particular, is a story of a father who dropped his face. He looked away from his son and broke eye contact. All of them at some level are the removal of the face, which is the universal sign of shame. We drop our face. We break our eye contact when we feel shame. Most likely these are not stories of terrible parents.

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They're stories of parents with their own shame and feeling their own shutdown inside. Oh, it's awkward to talk about sex. It's vulnerable. What if I screw it up? Especially if you have your own sexual shame there, it will cause you to break contact or shut down. So please begin to be curious about your own story. 

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Where has shame held you? What are those stories? Literally get out a pad of paper and make a bullet point list of what are the 10 stories that shaped you? What's your sexual formation? My father in law very vulnerably said to me when I was telling him about this book, I didn't give my son a talk and I didn't get one. In other words, there's this generational neglect. 

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Sitting down and saying, what did shape you? What took the place of healthy conversation? That would be number one, and then how do you begin to approach your children? First of all, the pressure's off. It is not one talk. It is as one writer said, a hundred or a couple hundred one-minute conversations. You don't have to do the hour long, diagrammed lecture where you make sure you cover everything. 

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In fact, your children would not be able to bear that much at one time. It is vulnerable, even for them, even though they're hungry. Try to read them and read their hunger. Where are they asking questions? Answer their questions and go as far as it feels like their curiosity has been satiated. That they're okay. They're good. 

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Alison Cook: What you're saying. It's a series of moments of being very attuned to the moment. Even with your son, “how do I ask a girl out” is a moment to engage. Oh, tell me about that. What's the girl like, how are you feeling about her? What are you thinking? Not jumping ahead of where they are, but really staying with them. 

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I love what you're saying. If we're okay, if we've done our own work and we're okay, it's not that we have to have all the right answers or the right formulas. We're being with them. They'll come to us. They'll come to us and then we'll get to be with them on that journey. 

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You said something I want to ask you about that I thought was really powerful. You said, if no one has talked to you, where did you get that information? My mind went, oh wow, you're right. We're getting shaped from somewhere. Where are we getting shaped if we're not talking about it in our homes with our parents?

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Sam: Yeah. Your sexuality doesn't sit on a shelf, waiting until you bring it out and talk about it or get the formation. It is living your story right with you. It is in your body. It is a part of you. Nowadays, children are going to Google, their peers, pornography. I sat with a couple and they've given me permission to share this–their 14 year old son came to them scared. 

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Because he had discovered internet pornography, but through this really innocent question, he was hearing some friends at school talk about being interested in girls. He thought to himself, I don't know how to kiss a girl. Again, another part of the sex talk. He went to Google and typed in, how do you kiss a girl? 

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Can you hear the innocent lover heart of this young man at 14? Again, sadly, what showed was pornography. Google is not a safe place to get your sex education. Unless you're very careful, obviously. So he fell headlong into this journey, this battle with pornography. Thankfully, he came to his parents and they were very open to him, and did not shame him. 

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They entered into that space with him to get him help and then started unwinding some of what he had learned there. Sadly, there are many of us that have had our sexuality awakened in sexual harm, which is a very tragic thing to recognize, but there are stats saying that women who experience sexual abuse begin menstruation earlier. 

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In other words, there's this sense that something in their body is that impacted by sexual abuse. It awakens something. What a heavy thing to have your sexuality awakened in the context of harm. 

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That is very tender work, but beginning to recognize that there wasn't the story of innocence and romance and love. There was manipulation and harm. So that's a place to go, because the realm of evil would love for you to believe that your abuse is your fault. Even your curiosity that led you to pornography, you think that's his fault. Something's twisted or perverted about him. But oh my goodness, it was your innocence that led you there.

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And so being able to recover that sense of innocence for your own sexuality. Those are the stories that shape us.

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Alison Cook: Yeah. Again, as parents, being really aware and attuned in a culture where there are so many messages. And then in our faith communities, you talk in the book about how both culture and church have shaped our sexuality for bad and for good. Can you speak a little bit about that side of it?

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Sam: Again, there's obviously purity culture. We could talk for hours about that. But generally speaking, that sense of, hey, here's the basic anatomy and then quickly a rush to, but don't feel this. Don't do anything. There's no real exploration. There's this shutdown approach. There's not really a blessing of, this is actually really good. 

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Your body was made for pleasure. Isn't that cool, what that says about God and our design? There's not the questions about the cultural things being brought up, so that's the sense of shut it down that creates this animosity with your own body.

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Alison Cook: Yeah.

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Sam: Because then when you begin to feel arousal, which is not the same as lust, and you experience being awakened in your own sexuality, you have that sense of, this must be wrong. It creates this animosity or even suspicion of your own body. You end up repenting of a body rather than repenting of the flesh.

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Alison Cook: That’s a good word. Yeah, you're repenting for a bodily mechanism that God designed you to have. 

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Sam: Yeah, so obviously that's the church. Outside of the church, a lot could be said as well, but as I say in the book, there's not really a sense of sacredness or awe. I would say it is a false blessing. Wow, I'm blessed to do what I want. That permissiveness is not integrating sexuality with love. Again, this is person to person, but that general sense of permissiveness is not a blessing. It’s not nurturing.

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Alison Cook: Yeah. I hear what you're saying. There's a ditch on both sides of the road. In my own journey, I remember thinking, oh at least in the secular culture, I can get the information that I need and not the shame and not the stigma. Yet also there's a reductive component to it. And then the other side shut it down. It's like a switch you can flip and you flip it at one point in life and then you're good to go. 

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In your book, you're talking to men, but I think it's true for all of us: at the base, at the core, you're a lover. We're lovers. This is a beautiful part of our God-given design. You then go into this idea that God most wants your awe, not your purity. Wow. God most wants your awe, which gets at what you're saying. There's something very deep here, but it's bigger and deeper, far richer and far more beautiful than purity. Talk to us a little bit about that.

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Sam: Yeah, so if purity isn't the goal, as I'm obviously saying, it can be harmful as a message in itself. Obviously, there's a way in which we're called to purity, but not as the goal. What then is it? What is this vision? The best definition I read was, it's in the upper reaches of pleasure on the edge of fear. 

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We don't often associate fear next to pleasure as emotions, but it's something that you're both afraid of, but drawn to. I think of asking my wife out for the first time. That was definitely a moment where I felt fear, but also an incredible amount of draw to my wife. Right there, there was a moment of awe. The word I would use there is, there's a reverence. 

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You think of a beautiful waterfall. It is thundering and powerful, and yet it is moving. What is that capacity to receive people in the same way? There's a researcher, Dacher Keltner, who thought, what moves us most with awe would be nature or even religious experience. He said, we are most moved by other human beings in what he would call moral beauty.

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Living good stories moves us the most. So I'm inviting this fuller sense of beauty to take in the full person. We sometimes have such an emaciated view of human beauty. We think it's this very strict set of standards for what's attractive. I really believe God made every single person full of his glory. We are all beautiful. 

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Alison Cook: Yeah, I agree. The human spirit, the human soul, the human body, is gorgeous in all of its manifestations. And worthy of awe. I love that. I love what you're saying. That idea of awe as this reverence, respect, and wonder–we have lost so much of that. As you're saying that, my mind is popping in every direction. We've lost that wonder at the goodness and beauty, as you're saying of our human creation. 

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Sam: Yeah, and we have this little glimpse in the Olympics. We're in the Olympic season as we're recording, and we don't necessarily use this language, but it is all about human awe. The whole point is to watch people pushing the edges of what is possible in the human body and doing it so gracefully.

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But also the stories of these athletes and what they've overcome. We're so drawn to that. Again, the word I would use there is awe.

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Alison Cook: Yeah that's really powerful. And then to think about that as it relates to desire and honoring sexual desire. That's a powerful reframe. To bring in my name, frame, brave framework, we're naming what it's not, and then reframing it something much bigger.

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When you were defining awe, you said something about, it's something we're drawn to, but also fearful of in that holy, healthy way. I think about God, where there's that reverence, and I also was thinking, as you said that, of when there's been abuse or trauma, it goes awry. Because there's the fear, there's the draw to something that you fear, that gets really contaminated and harmed. 

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Sam: Right. That is so well said. Again, it is such tender ground to even bring fear and sex together. How could you mix those that and that ever be good? Because we think of safety. Again, I'm borrowing a little bit from even things that Andy Colbert wrote on play.

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Play is this mixed state in the body. Play is one of the good ones where you have both parasympathetic soothing, but you also have sympathetic uprising. You're near fight or flight, but you're also in activation. So it's on this edge of fear. Again, I'm saying edge. If you are in terror, and again, even in the research on awe, they would say too much terror shuts you down and you cannot experience pleasure. 

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But think about the vulnerability of disrobing. Again, I've been married 21 years and in the vulnerability of unveiling my body to my wife, there's still a sense of, okay, here I am. It's this openness and intimacy.

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Alison Cook: Again, this is where we have to do our own work. It reminds me of what you're saying, that fine line of play and vulnerability. I had a conversation with Beth McCord, she's an Enneagram coach on the podcast, and she was talking about watching her kids and her husband play wrangle.

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It was very activating to her because she'd been bullied, and it took her a long time to be able to sit with them and even ask them, are you guys okay with this? They'd say, we love it. We're having fun. We're right on that edge, kind of what you're saying. But for her, that felt dangerous and scary because of her background. It's a little bit of a different context, but it reminds me of that line of awe and wonder and vulnerability. 

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Learning how to ride a bike is exhilarating and also terrifying and that is healthy. I'm thinking of the listener, and man, I have tears in my eyes. I want that for you. I want that for you. Also, it could take a minute to really retrain your system to recognize the healthy version of that. And that's okay. 

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Sam: Again, it can only happen in a context where you feel the empowerment to say no. That you can say stop. 

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Alison Cook: Or to say, this might even be healthy, but I'm not comfortable with it. To have the other person honor that and say, that's ok. Because that's what creates safety. 

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Sam: That's such a good example. Little children know this. They know that they need to honor consent. Do you want to play? It's an invitation of consent. It's such a vulnerable risk. I want to play, but do you, and that they know when somebody says, I don't, don't do that, I don't like that. 

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They have more freedom to vocalize when something's too much or I didn't like that. That empowerment is what you need to be able to take some of these steps towards risking that vulnerability.

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Alison Cook: Yeah, that's good. That's really a beautiful picture. I love that picture. There's a lot of nuance to it. That's the hope. We want that. We want that experience our whole lives. All right, let's go for a bike ride, and wherever we are on that journey is the place at which we have to start. 

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And then as we do that work, we're going to help our kids retain that innocence as they get to learn, and sometimes they'll fumble and fall, but we're going to be there for them so that they're not alone. I love that. That's really beautiful.

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Sam: I was remembering a story of when I taught my wife how to mountain bike. We live in Colorado and she wanted me to teach her. There was this moment, and it's still a significant rupture moment for us and our marriage, where I took her on this bike ride and I'm trying to coach her and she's trying to figure it out.

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We had a bit of a fight. I pulled ahead on the trail. And she followed me. I didn't realize she was following me on this technical section and she crashed her bike. I ran up to help her and we got her cared for. But there was this rupture of, I trusted you and you took me too far. It was past what I could handle on this bike ride, and it really became this thing we had to work through in terms of her trust in me taking her into play.

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This might sound strange, but that actually impacted our intimacy, our sex life as well, of, can I trust your play? Can I trust your passion, Sam? It makes sense now. Of course those two are connected. If I couldn't trust you in this play, can I trust you over here in this sexual play? There are those moments, not your past story, but maybe even the stories in your marriage of, you didn't play well with me here. How can I trust you here?

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Alison Cook: Yeah. I love this. Thank you so much for what you're naming. What would you say to the listener? First of all, I would say read the book. There's so much in it that is practical. You've done such a beautiful job painting a beautiful picture, giving us a different vision, and then giving us practical steps and ways to approach ourselves and our kids.

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What would you say to the listener, as we're winding down, who is listening going, oh my gosh, the suitcase is so full of shame. There's so much there. Where do I start? I don't even know where to start with my kid, let alone with myself. What would you say to that listener?

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Sam: I've been amazed, when I sit down with victims of sexual harm, that one of the things that seems to make them most tender in the conversation is, they'll use the language of, I felt like my innocence was taken. Or I felt like my innocence was stolen in some way.

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They might be able to grapple with the pain. They understand that this is painful. I've got to work through it. But there's such hopelessness and devastation around it. I've seen too much. I've suffered too much. How in the world can I be made innocent again?

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You're talking about playfulness and wonder. Good. But yeah that's not gonna happen. What I would want you to hear is that your innocence is not lost. It is not lost to what's happened to you. It's not lost to what you've done. In fact, I would say, God desires to help you recover that innocence.

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That is always the profound joy in walking with victims of traumas, watching that innocence as they brave the pain, come back to them along with the playful parts of them and the parts that can receive pleasure again and risk that and wonder and awe. So I would invite you to think of that young self, that place of innocence. She is not gone. He is not gone. You can get that part of you back.

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Alison Cook: That is so beautiful. This is from someone, for those of you listening, who has worked in the trenches with this for 20 years. So you've seen some things and for you to be able to give us that is a beautiful statement of hope. You're not saying that idly. You've seen it.

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So I want everyone to hear that deeply. It’s a Holy Spirit infused message for you–this is what God wants for each and every one of us. Sometimes the journey is longer than others to healing, and you start where you are. I love what you're saying. It's such a worthwhile endeavor and you're worthy of it.

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Thank you so much. Sam, tell us where people can find you, more about your work, and resources to continue on this journey that you're taking us on.

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Sam: Yeah. Thank you, Alison. I would love for you to read the book wherever you buy your books. I'm also a writer on Substack, so you can find me at samjolman.substack.com or my website, samjolman.com, where you can still get some order bonuses for buying the book and find out more about me there.

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Alison Cook: That's great. It's brave work you're doing. Thank you for doing it. Thanks for being here.

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Sam: Thanks for having the conversation with me.

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Today's episode is a fascinating conversation about the phenomenon of "purity culture." You've heard the phrase, but my guest today, licensed therapist and purity culture expert, Dr. Camden Morgante, is here to explain exactly what it was and how it created a culture of shame, fear, and coercion around sex, especially for women.

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We explore the damaging myths purity culture perpetuated and the ways it continues to affect women and married couples, especially around issues of intimacy and self-worth. Dr. Camden shares essential insights on how to heal from these harmful messages and move forward in faith, while also offering practical advice for anyone struggling with shame-based sexuality.

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Key Takeaways:

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- What purity culture is and its lasting impact on Millennials and Gen X

- The 5 damaging myths, including the "gatekeeper," "damaged goods," & "flipped switch" myths

- The most important strategy for couples dealing with disappointment around sex

- The real meaning of intimacy beyond physical connection

- Dr. Camden’s practical advice for overcoming shame and reclaiming your faith

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Resources:

• Recovering from Purity Culture: Dismantle the Myths, Reject Shame-Based Sexuality, and Move Forward in Your Faith by Dr. Camden Morgante
• ‍The Best of You by Dr. Alison Cook
• ‍drcamden.com

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If you liked this, you’ll love:

• Episode 48: Loving Your Body as a Spiritual Practice, Why the Flesh Isn’t the Body, and 3 Heresies We Kind of Believe

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‍Thanks to our sponsors:

• Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
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Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik

© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.‍

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Transcript:

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Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am so glad you're here this week. I'm so glad to be here with you. Many of you get my weekly email or you follow me on socials, and you know we've had a really rough couple of weeks here in Wyoming with some pretty intense wildfires. 

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So we have really appreciated your prayers for that. And I'm also mindful of all of you, especially in the Southeast, who are still reeling from the effects of both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton. These are really devastating times. I'm so grateful for so many of you out there shining your light so brightly, even when the world can feel so dark, scary, and overwhelming.

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Your courage, your hope, your prayers, your incredible acts of kindness, no matter how tiny, matter. They matter to God, they matter to the other people in your life, and they matter to the parts of your soul who need to see us fighting for the goodness and the beauty and the dignity of every human life and every part of God's creation. My prayers are with you as we continue to hold forth faith and hope and light in this world

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Today we're diving into the first of a two-part series on the topic of sexuality. This is such an important topic. It's a topic I've been wanting to bring to the podcast, but I wanted to find the right experts to talk with us about such a nuanced topic, such a tender topic, a topic that is so deeply vulnerable for so many of us.

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So many of us have been hurt in this area. So many of us are struggling in this area. So many of us are struggling to figure out how to have healthy conversations about sex and sexuality in our world, where there are so many toxic messages coming at us from every single angle, including some messages from within our own faith communities.

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Here's the thing–in order to move forward into a healthier understanding of this beautiful gift of sexuality that God has given us to enjoy, sometimes we have to first look back and untangle the knots of the toxic messages we've received. That's where we're going to start in this series with today's episode.

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Today's guest is a therapist and an expert, especially on the phenomena of purity culture, that so many of us grew up a part of. And she's here to help name the myths and toxic messages that so many of us internalized as millennials or Gen Xers, especially within the context of church culture.

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Purity culture was so much more than a message about abstinence and purity. It actually shaped how we viewed ourselves, our relationships, and our sense of worth. And the problem, as you'll hear from my guest today, was that sex wasn't discussed in a way that allowed us to understand the nuances and the complexity and embrace our sexuality as a natural, integral part of how God designed us.

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Many of us as a result, experienced fear, shame, and disconnection from our bodies in ways that don't disappear with adulthood or even in the context of marriage. Many people are still grappling with the effects of not really being brought into the fullness of a healthy sexuality, and it can feel embarrassing or even shameful to ask questions about sex, even years into healthy marriages.

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So what does it look like to reclaim a healthy, holistic view of sexuality? And how do we unlearn the shame and embrace both our faith and our sexuality in a way that's life-giving? To help us navigate these questions, I am honored to welcome Dr. Camden Morgante to the show.

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Dr. Morgante is a licensed clinical psychologist and coach who specializes in helping people recover from the effects of purity culture. She's passionate about guiding individuals through the process of identifying harmful beliefs around sexuality and helping them build a healthier, more integrated understanding of sex. One that aligns both with their faith and their personal growth. 

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Dr. Morgante's personal experience as a millennial who grew up within the context of purity culture combined with her professional expertise makes her uniquely qualified to guide us through this topic. She's been featured in numerous publications and podcasts where she speaks on the intersection of faith, sexuality, and mental health.

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Her compassionate, nuanced, thoughtful approach to the conversation acknowledges both some well-meaning intentions behind purity culture and the real harm it's caused. Dr. Morgante's work is grounded in the belief that sexuality is a core part of who we are as human beings and that God created us to embrace this part of ourselves fully and without shame.

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She has a brand new book out this week. It's called Recovering from Purity Culture: Dismantle the Myths, Reject Shame-Based Sexuality, and Move Forward in Your Faith. It's such an incredibly rich and empowering deep dive into the nuances of how we think about sexuality. I am so thrilled to bring you my conversation today with Dr. Camden Morgante.

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***

Hi, Dr. Camden. I am so thrilled to have you here today on the podcast. We've been following each other online for a little while and it's really fun to have this conversation with you about this new book you have coming out.

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Dr. Camden: Yes. Thank you, Dr. Alison. I'm thrilled to be here and to see you again and connect with you again.

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Alison Cook: You were so kind to do an Instagram live with me, I think it was about The Best of You. Is that right? Yeah. You've been great. I think it was a DM you sent me that said, it is so refreshing to see people talking about these topics who are still Christian. I see you as well, really fighting for your faith, even as you're trying to disentangle from some of the toxic messages that so many of us have gotten. 

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To that point, you've got this new book coming out all about purity culture. We've seen that phrase thrown around, but you're really an expert on it. You're a psychologist. You've studied this. Talk to us a little bit today as we're getting started. What is this thing, purity culture? We're naming something, and it's important to name things accurately. So we've got this name–purity culture. What do we mean by that? What are we actually trying to identify in that term?

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Dr. Camden: Yeah. There's different ways people define it, but the way I define it in my book and in my work is that it was a largely evangelical movement that peaked in the 1990s to 2000s that attempted to persuade young people especially to avoid premarital sex using shame and fear as tools of control and coercion. 

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So I distinguish between the belief in waiting until marriage for sex, which I call a traditional Christian sexual ethic, I distinguish between that and purity culture. To me, those are two different things. What really separates those is that purity culture added the shame and fear and control. 

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It wasn't really a thoughtful choice that people could make, to wait for marriage to have sex. It was really coerced out of them with shame. And that's the distinction I make. Not many other books on purity culture make that same distinction.

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Alison Cook: Yeah, I really appreciated that about your book. There's a lot of nuance in it. We're talking about a movement, and it's less about what was taught, although some folks might completely disagree with everything that they were taught, but I heard you saying in your book, a lot of it is about how it was taught–using coercion and fear. Tell me a little bit more about that.

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Dr. Camden: Yeah, it was really the myths, the false promises and the messages that were used to try to persuade young people that has caused so much harm. Because again, it's different from holding that belief and holding that value for yourself. 

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It's about offering these false promises of what you'll get if you believe. It's about what I call “the myths of purity culture” that didn't come from the Bible, but yet were taught to us as if they were biblical truth. It peaked in the 1990s to 2000s, because that's really when millennials like myself were going through high school sex ed and youth group at church, and reading these books that were geared towards especially teen girls and purity and modesty and things like that.

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The true love waits movement. And that's also why it's a culture and not a belief; a culture involves things like purity rings, making a “true love waits” pledge. Some people went to rallies, some people had purity balls. It's like this whole culture of books and speakers and conferences and sermons solely focused on this topic.

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That's what it was built around. Our faith became entirely built on this concept of purity.

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Alison Cook: Interesting. Okay. I'm Gen X, more raised in the eighties, college in the nineties. So it's really interesting to hear you make that distinction because I definitely had some of that. I remember being at a Christian conference in ‘88 and we all had to stand up and take the pledge to wait until we were married.

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But I will say, a lot of that stuff you're describing, the books that started to come out around it, the movements, the culture, I think the era was a little bit more local. So there might be some slight differences, but definitely the seeds of it, I caught early on. I'll have conversations with my friends about, gosh, wouldn't it have been nice if we'd had some conversations about a whole-being sexuality? 

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Not “wait until you're married” and then you're expected (and you use this word in the book) to flip the switch. That's one of the myths.

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Dr. Camden: Yeah, I would say my Gen X clients usually got these messages either later in high school or in college. Maybe from a college ministry or around the time that I Kissed Dating Goodbye was released. I think that was like ‘93 or so. So if they're in college around that time, it may have informed their choices to get married or who they married. 

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But the reason why I say it affected millennials specifically, is because abstinence-only sex ed was also a part of the public school curriculum when we were growing up. And we got it not in religious settings, but also in public school.

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Also, it happened during more of those formative years, like the middle school and early high school years for us. It really shaped our understanding of our bodies and of sexuality and even of relationships in a different way than I see with Gen X or even Gen Z coming up, because they got some of it too.

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Alison Cook: It hasn't been fantastic for a long time. And yes, it affects different generations differently. That makes sense to me. Tell me a little bit about in your practice, how do you see the residual effects on particularly women, but also on couples, on folks who not only missed a whole gap in their human development, but also got some of these toxic messages around sex.

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And again, I want to be clear. We're not necessarily saying the toxic messages have to do with premarital abstinence. You talk about that in the book. It’s the way that was pushed, the way it was talked about. So how do you see the residual harm of some of those methods?

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Dr. Camden: I'm a licensed psychologist, so I have a private practice where I see women and couples in my therapy practice. And then I also do coaching online, specifically for purity culture recovery. I see couples all over the country and women for that. And the ways that I see it mainly manifesting is causing problems in one's faith, sexuality, and relationships. 

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Those big three key areas. It causes a lot of faith struggles for a lot of people, faith doubts, periods of disillusionment, or feeling distrusting or distant from God. It causes problems in sexuality, and we can get into the specifics, but sexual pain, low sexual pleasure, low desire, difficulty connecting with their spouse once they're married, and flipping the switch.

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And then problems in relationships, and that can be with others, like in a marriage, because there were very limited roles and stereotypes that purity culture used that can limit the ways that husband and wife interact in marriage. Also your relationship to yourself, your own mental health, your body image, and shame about your body and your sexuality. Those are the three main areas I see the effects showing up.

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Alison Cook: Why do you think that is? What are some of these messages that are subtle and that people might not even realize? They've internalized these shaming messages. When you're doing work with folks, what are you trying to get to the root of?

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Dr. Camden: Yeah, I'm trying to get to the root of what are your beliefs and where did those come from? And if you can identify who it was that taught you this or what book you read it in, where did it come from? That can help them start to disentangle it a little bit to see that this wasn't biblical. There were parts of it that were biblical, but a lot of it came from humans who are fallible.

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We had good intentions for the most part. These people that taught us purity culture had good intentions, but there were a lot of unanticipated consequences that didn't show up until 10 or 20 years later that we couldn't have expected. So I'm trying to get to the root of that and see, yeah, your faith, your sexuality, and your relationships got so entangled with this and how do we find a healthy path forward?

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Alison Cook: This gets to some of those myths you talk about. What are some of those myths that people have internalized that really wreak havoc on a healthy sexual and spiritual identity?

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Dr. Camden: Yeah, you mentioned the flip switch myth, so I can start with that one. This idea that as soon as you get married, you flip a switch and sex is going to be instantly pleasurable and easy, only if you wait for it…that really affects people's sexuality because they realize sex takes a lot more education than we were ever given.

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It takes communication, it takes teamwork, it takes a compromise. There's a lot that goes into it. But it is not an overnight success. It takes work like any other skill in marriage. And it also affects people's faith because they were given this false promise and told that God promised them this.

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So then when it doesn't happen, I see people have a lot of disappointment and that distrust in God, like, why did I wait, if this is what I'm getting? Where's my reward? And that's also very connected with the fairytale myth, which is if you wait, then you'll have a fairytale marriage. You'll find your spouse.

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And for many people who are single much longer than they wanted to be, or who are in very unhappy, unhealthy, or even abusive marriages, and maybe go through a divorce or who are widowed, that promise does so much harm. That's really the myth that affected me the most, as I share in the book.

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It affected my faith the most, because I thought, where's the reward I get for waiting? Why haven't I met my husband? Because I met him a little bit later than I expected to. I was single for almost all my twenties, which was very different in my cultural background and upbringing; in my religious community that was considered pretty unique, to be single throughout my twenties. So that was the myth that affected me the most and affected my faith.

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Alison Cook: That's interesting. There's a promise of, if you do this for God, God will do this for you. And then when that doesn't happen, it's devastating. It makes a lot of sense. It's interesting when you talk about the myths you use this word, and I have a lot of feelings about this word, and I think the word gets misunderstood, but I actually think it's the right word in this context. 

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You use the word “deconstructing” for some of these myths, and what I want to say to the listener is that it is really important to understand this word in context. Bracket all the things you've heard about this word--because it gets so misused and so misunderstood. But honestly, I had to deconstruct some of the messages I got about sexuality from religious communities.

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I also had to deconstruct messages I got from Hollywood movies about sex and love. And that's why I like the use of that word in this context and how you use it in the book, because you're really saying exactly what that word is.

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We have to look at these messages and deconstruct them. We have to pick them apart and go, what is really at the root of that? That doesn't make sense. This isn't logical or theologically sound. For example, to your point, this idea that God rewards people–if you do X, Y will happen– isn't a biblical or theologically sound assumption.

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Dr. Camden: Yeah, I use the word deconstruct because we're taking it apart and then seeing what part is biblical and true and good and beautiful and from God and consistent with our faith and values. And then what part was wrongly interpreted or handed to us by people with maybe good intentions, but it's not true. 

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I talk about deconstruction on this kind of spectrum of home repairs. Not everybody demolishes their house with a wrecking ball. And that's what we sometimes hear about deconstruction: that it's a wrecking ball to your faith or to your belief system.

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But it can be a remodeling of seeing what parts of this house are still working and what parts aren't, what parts are no longer serving us well, or they need to be updated because they were good materials back in the seventies or eighties and they're not now. So you can deconstruct and still hold on to some parts of it too.

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Another misconception is that when you deconstruct, you throw it all away, and you completely start over from scratch. But that's not what it's looked like for me. It's looked like a careful and methodical process of picking apart what is true and what's unbiblical, and still leaving a foundation of truth in there.

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Alison Cook: I love that. I love that, Dr. Camden. And you really talk about that in the book. You actually say in the book, "what's interesting is that some critics of purity culture may say that my own beliefs represent purity culture 2.0, since I still hold on to an ethic of premarital sexual abstinence, but the belief itself is not what makes something purity culture."

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I love this argument. It's how we believe what we believe and why we believe what we believe and what is underneath what we believe in. It’s how you're talking about it with your spouse, with your kids, with your friends, that you're bringing a whole body and your whole being into it.

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And you're also not assuming that your own perspective is the perspective for all people at all times, in all places either. There's a humility. One of the things I really like about what you do in the book is you provide a framework. You talk about Kohlberg's theory of moral reasoning and Fowler's phases of spiritual development. 

It’s this idea that as we develop emotionally, as we develop more emotional maturity, as we develop cognitively, as we develop more cognitive maturity, we develop more critical thinking skills. We're also going to be developing in our moral reasoning, and we may arrive at the same conclusions, but the way we've reasoned through those hard issues looks very different.

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It leads to more, again, humility, a more robust, whole body, you use the word “empowered”, being. Talk to me a little bit about that. I thought that was a really helpful reframing.

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Dr. Camden: Yeah, as we develop cognitively with the ability to have abstract thought, critical thought, instead of concrete black and white thinking, that goes hand in hand with our spiritual and our moral development too, because we're thinking about things in more nuanced ways. 

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We're thinking about the gray areas. We're thinking about complexity. My goal for the book was really to help people think of how to think differently, and give some tools and some frameworks for doing that without telling them what to believe. I really wanted to give people the tools to try to figure that out for themselves because we didn't get that in purity culture.

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We were told what to believe, what to do, what not to do. It was handed to us, and that didn't allow us as teenagers or young adults to apply the critical thinking that's necessary in order to make these really complex moral decisions about sexuality. And, like you said, to have a holistic and integrated sexuality, which I think is what the Bible supports.

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Alison Cook: That's so good. And the book is filled with tools. One of the things I really like about what you do in the book is you say very clearly, look, I'm going to give you a wide list of tools, list of resources. I don't necessarily even agree with all of these lists of resources, but I believe in reading widely.

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And I thought that was an example of what you're trying to teach. Listen, We don't have to be so threatened. We can listen to numerous perspectives and arrive at our own sexual ethic, at our own moral reasoning that's biblically informed. There was this phrase I used to love in graduate school.

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One of my professors would always say, there are a lot of issues out there about which reasonable people can reasonably disagree. You're not trying in the book to tell people, as you said, what to believe. You're trying to say, listen, here's a bunch of different ideas about this. It's complicated. It's hard. Let's engage in it. Let's not be afraid of it. 

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And that's going to lead to this more wholehearted, more holistic way. I am curious toward this end. I know listeners are going to be thinking, okay, this is great. This is great for me. And I'm already married. I've figured it out. Oh my gosh, this is a lot of work and it's hard, but I'm already living this ethic, so how do I talk about it with my kids?

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Dr. Camden: Yeah, that was the last chapter of the book because that's pivoting to, where do we go from here? And I will have some clients that will say, like, why do I even need to rethink my sexual ethic? Because as you said I'm married, I'm monogamous with my spouse. This doesn't really matter anymore, what I believe.

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But I argue that it really does because doing the work to think through it yourself and arrive at a place where you feel confident and you feel like it's congruent with your theology and your faith and your values is empowering. So that's the first reason to do it. The second would be to teach your kids, because we have to know what our values are in order to communicate those to our kids. 

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At the same time, knowing that they're going to have autonomy to make their own decisions one day and arrive at their own conclusions to their own thought process and respecting their critical thinking and their journey in this.

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But I want to teach my kids my beliefs and my values about sexuality. I also want to equip them with some critical thinking skills for them to think through how to apply this in their own life and the unique challenges that they're going to face in our changing world with media and all that kind of stuff.

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Alison Cook: So what are some examples of how you might engage those conversations with your kids or how you might teach or how you might coach some of your clients through those conversations?

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Dr. Camden: Yeah, we start with basic things, because I really think this can start from birth. Sex-ed is not a one and done talk, and that's how it was for me. Many of us growing up may have had this big talk, with our same-sex parent. I was sent to read a book and “come back if you have any questions”.

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But it's really an ongoing conversation that starts when they're young, talking about their bodies and non-shaming ways, using correct names for body parts, modeling consent, empowering them to be able to say no if they don't want hugs and kisses and and things like that. So it starts really young with those kinds of concepts.

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And then as they get older, infusing conversations with your family's values, making this part of your everyday conversation of when things come up. Ask your kids questions when something happens on TV, on a show. What do you think about that? Here's what we might think about this, or here's what we think the Bible says about this.

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Why do you think that is? I think those open-ended questions can really help foster some of that critical thinking.

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Alison Cook: Oh, that's really good, to actually use the media instead of turning it off. We don't watch this. This is bad. Instead saying, okay, this is interesting. What do you think about this? Because in that conversation, you're also”deconstructing” some of the cultural messages or the media messages about sexuality. You're having those conversations with your kids and together normalizing and demystifying. We need to talk about this. 

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Dr. Camden: I think those natural opportunities that arise are the best time to talk about it. When a new baby is born in the family, that's a time to talk about how the baby gets out and maybe how it got in there. With my little kids, that's what I would talk about. 

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How do you make decisions about when you know you're in love or when you feel safe with someone? What does that feel like? Those are some of the more nuanced questions I might have with older children and teenagers. Yeah. Looking for those opportunities every day, I think, rather than making it that “one and done” talk.

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Alison Cook: Yeah. That's great. That's super practical. What do you say to folks who are really struggling with the disappointment, whether spiritual disappointment or disappointment in marriage, who are finding themselves like, man, this is not what I thought it was going to be? How do you talk with folks through some of those challenges? 

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Dr. Camden: The heartbreaking clients I work with are those that waited until they were married to have sex and maybe even waited to kiss until their wedding day because they thought that was the holiest choice. They courted instead of dated and they got married young and now they've been married 20 years and their sex life has never been enjoyable. It causes a lot of disconnection between them because they can't seem to make it work.

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And they've got guilt and shame and then maybe some resentment too. And it's heartbreaking because they'll say, we did everything right. We followed all the rules. Why has it turned out this way? And I really make space to validate those feelings of disappointment without spiritually bypassing them. You've taught me that term of like, saying something like, everything works out for the good, or trust God.

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But no, really allowing you to grieve that. When I work with couples, I'm really big on, this is not a mere you-problem. This is an us-problem. And this is something that is outside of ourselves. It's a third thing outside of the two of us that we can unite together to fight against.

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And we can recognize that you didn't cause these problems. These are problems outside of ourselves that we had very little control or choice over, and we can have empathy for ourselves and each other because of that.

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Alison Cook: I love that. That's really non-shaming. Let's come together in this, which also then leads to greater intimacy, which is truly what leads to healthier sexuality. It’s that ability to connect with each other through the pain of that.

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Dr. Camden: Yeah, I hope by not seeing each other as adversaries, but as we're on the same team together and we're grieving together on how this problem has affected us and the pain that it's caused us over all these years. I hope by doing that, that they can feel closer and connected to each other. 

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And my definition of intimacy is anything that makes you feel close and connected to your spouse or your partner or another person. Often intimacy gets very narrowly defined as sex or physicality. The emphasis gets so put on that, like we're not having sex enough or we need to have more sex or I have low sex drive, when really it's more holistic. 

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Are you feeling emotionally connected? Are you socially connecting, having fun together and doing activities together? Are you spiritually connected through praying together, serving at your church together? And then are you intellectually connected, talking about your thoughts and feelings and reading books together or whatever it looks like for that couple? 

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There's so much more to intimacy than sex. When we focus on those other areas, couples will naturally feel closer. And sometimes that has an effect on their sexual desire and their connection. 

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Alison Cook: What would you say to the listener who, especially as a woman, wants so much to be a good wife and has internalized a lot of messages and feels a lot of guilt and shame for that part of her marriage? What words of encouragement or wisdom would you have for her?

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Dr. Camden: I believe shame is not from God. God does not use shame as a tool to try to get us to change. I really differentiate in the book between guilt and shame, and I know you've talked about that too. We all borrow from Brene Brown with that too, of guilt as “I've done something wrong” and shame as “I am wrong”.

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Women have a lot of both, but especially shame about their sexuality. Something about my sexuality is wrong or bad, or I'm not measuring up as a wife. If we can separate those two and really eliminate the shame part, and then examine the guilt part, are you acting in alignment with your values and beliefs?

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If so, then the guilt is also not justified. That's one of the tools I use to help people to deal with their shame, and helping women feel that they're allowed to say no to sex. They're allowed to not always feel like they have to give their husband sex because again, it's not a give and take, it's a sharing.

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We're sharing this experience together. We're sharing intimacy in our bodies together. But that was a very prominent teaching in purity culture and really broader than just Christian culture, this idea that men need sex and women have to be available and serve their husband's needs.

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I want to empower couples to feel like they can say no in a gracious way and that they can navigate that together without resentment and bitterness towards each other and without guilt and shame.

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Alison Cook: Yeah. You talk about in the book, the need for embodiment. In many ways, the purity culture messages around sex were very disembodied. Talk a little bit about how we can regain that sense of embodiment as an avenue for healthier sexuality.

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Dr. Camden: That's an area I'm still working on, too. Hilary McBride has taught me a lot about embodiment, and I quote her in the book. That's very much still in process for me, is getting my mind and body integrated and aligned and really paying attention to my body. But I offer some suggestions in the book of ways that people can embrace and enjoy sensuality and being connected to their body and their senses, even if they are single or choosing to be abstinent.

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You can still affirm your sexuality and recognize your desires. That doesn't mean you have to act on them. We can experience pleasure and express gratitude to God for that pleasure, that he made our bodies with the capacity for all sorts of pleasure. I'm not talking about sexual pleasure, but the pleasure of good tasting food or pleasant smells or sights in nature and things like that.

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So really getting in touch with your five senses helps with that embodiment, and checking in with your body. That's a practice I'm trying to work on, of checking in with how my body feels and what information it’s giving me about my emotions or about my mental state or about my needs. Does this mean I need to eat? Does this mean I need to rest? Our body gives us such good information and many times we've been taught to ignore it.

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Alison Cook: . Yeah. That's such a great thread that you pulled. And I agree. It's hard for most of us women. We have struggled with that embodiment piece. There's definitely the purity culture messages that I got as well, held in tension with what it’s supposed to look like in a Hollywood movie.

And I don't always feel like I’m in a Hollywood movie. Sex is not always like a Hollywood movie. Again, it seems so important to honor the bodies God gave us in a non-shaming way.

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I love how you're describing the ability to teach couples to look at this as something they're in together, as opposed to against each other. I think playfulness can be so helpful with that, finding the humor in these bodies that God gave us and the play that leads to that intimacy you're describing. 

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It isn't Hollywood glam, and passion isn't always part of it. Sometimes, it's laughing together. It's enjoying each other, and even laughing at the absurdity of it all at times.

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Dr. Camden: Yeah, it doesn't have to look like a movie set all the time. This is real life, and real bodies, and kids, and jobs, and the house, and physical health, and lots of life that we deal with. But I had a client the other day tell me, when she went through premarital counseling, the pastor told her she was supposed to be a tigress in bed.

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That planted the seed of “I'm not good enough”. That planted the shame of I'm not a tigress. I don't feel that uninhibited and constant sexual desire, whatever the tigress means. She felt a lot of shame about that. And it was like, your husband married you for you.

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If he is a good and healthy and loving and godly man, he accepts you for who you are and your body for how it is. And he loves you for that. You can feel safe to share that experience with him.

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Alison Cook: Yeah. I love that. I love that. I think it's such important work that you're doing. You're really naming it and you're really helping people reframe it and arrive at a healthier, better place, which is how God wanted it. I'd love to circle back to the rest of these myths. What are some of these other myths that you keep encountering with folks?

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Dr. Camden: Yeah, another one is the damaged goods myth, and that's the one that causes the most shame. Because for people who do have premarital sex, for people who are sexually abused and didn't choose that, they are called damaged goods. They are told they have less to offer their future spouse. 

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And that's so damaging and so not biblical. God doesn't look at us and see a damaged rose. He looks at us and sees his beloved children, his beloved image bearers. He offers us forgiveness. He offers us restoration and wholeness. I think that myth is probably the most damaging. 

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The gatekeepers myth is really pitting women and men against each other and creating this sense where women are the gatekeepers of sexuality. That they have to be the ones to set boundaries before marriage and constantly monitor how far we are going. But then after marriage they always have to be sexually available and meet their husband's needs. 

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That's the one I see causing the most problems in a marriage, in a relationship, but also sexually, because it's hard for women to turn that off and to really be in their bodies, to be embodied, and to enjoy the sexual experience with their spouse.

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Then the last one, the spiritual barometer myth, where we are better Christians and our spirituality is measured by our virginity prior to marriage. That affects my clients in that sometimes they get married and they think, am I no longer pure because now I've had sex? Does this mean I'm dirty? And it still feels wrong and dirty. 

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Or I feel like I've lost this part of my identity. Virginity became so much a part of your identity, your purpose, your worth. And I also don't think that's biblical, because our purpose and worth and identity is found in Christ and what he's done for us and our relationship with him and following and serving him.

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It's not about this narrow definition of purity as virginity, it's about serving God with our minds, heart, bodies, and souls.

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Alison Cook: I love that you're naming that. Those are really helpful namings for people listening who are suffering with residual shame. And I'm curious as we close, Dr. Camden, you talked a little bit about your own journey through your twenties, carrying some of these messages. What would you say to that younger single you now, with all that you know now? What would you want her to know? What would you say to her?

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Dr. Camden: Yeah, I have a different vantage point now because I am married and I have two children and I feel very blessed. I no longer see it as an if-then, because I followed the rules, then I'm blessed. I see these blessings as God's grace to me, this unmerited gift.

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I wrote my dissertation on grace and couples, and that really made an impact on my faith and being able to reconceptualize that these are all gifts of God that I didn't earn. I didn't perform to get them, and so I think I would go back and tell myself, this is God's grace. Whether you're single, whether you're married, whether you have children or not, whether life hasn't turned out the way you expected, or whether you feel like you're living your best life–this is God's grace to you, and really trusting him in that.

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Alison Cook: Yeah, there's no hierarchy of grace, whether you're single, whether you're divorced, whether you're married, whether you're struggling. God's grace is right there for you. He loves you. I know what you're saying. For so many of us, there was this hierarchy, and there still is, to a large degree.

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It flies in the face of the gospel. I love that you would be able to give her that message now, that she's not trying to earn something from God.

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Dr. Camden: And with that, I want to be sensitive to, if you're in a state where you've been through abuse or a really traumatic divorce or something where you think, how is this God's grace? I don't mean to say that God caused that or that God will work it for good, any of those kinds of things. I mean it to say that even so, God's grace is with you. God's grace is available to you. He loves and sees you. And he's with you in your pain, too. I really believe that he sees our pain. He's with us in it and through it. 

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Alison Cook: Yeah. I know what you're saying. It's a subtle distinction. I think about my own single years, where there was so much turmoil. I was also married into my 30s. And it's not to say that this is God's grace. It's to say, whatever your circumstances, God is there with you. There is a subtle shift there; even if the circumstances are really hard and I don't want this set of circumstances it's not that I've done something wrong to be in this situation. 

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Nor is it that I can do something to earn something different. Sometimes we find ourselves in hard situations, whether married, single, sexually active, not sexually active. Sometimes things are hard.

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Dr. Camden: And that doesn't mean God's punishing you. I think there was this sense that this must be God's punishment that we're struggling in our sex life, because we did have premarital sex or something like that. And I don't believe we serve a God that arbitrarily punishes us and causes that suffering to happen.

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I think the world is hard, life can be really hard, and hard things happen. Suffering is there, but He's with us even in the midst of it. 

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Alison Cook: That's right. And sex is complicated and hard to figure out and that has nothing to do with God's punishment. I love that you've written the book. It's such a helpful resource. I think there's a lot of people who've been hurt by this, but don't know how to rethink their sexual ethic and what they really believe and what they want to claim and what they want to reclaim.

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And you're really giving people tools to do that for themselves and also to do that as they parent kids and move into healthy relationships. It's such a great resource. Tell people where they can find you, where they can find your work, the book, all the things.

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Dr. Camden: Okay. Yeah. My book is Recovering from Purity Culture. It's available on October 15th. You can find it wherever books are sold. And my name is Camden Morgante. You can find me on my website, drcamden.com, and on all the social medias @DrCamden.

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Alison Cook: Thank you. It's been a wonderful conversation. Super grateful for your work and thanks for giving us your time

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Dr. Camden: And I'm thankful for your work too, Dr. Alison, because even though you don't use the word deconstruction, you've really helped us to see that some of these teachings need to be deconstructed. Like turn the other cheek–you've taught me about that one. You've helped us see, what does God really mean by that? How can we have a healthy spirituality and healthy emotional life?

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Alison Cook: Thank you. I've appreciated your encouragement along the way. Pick up a copy of Recovering from Purity Culture anywhere books are sold. Thank you again.

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If you’ve ever struggled to set boundaries or wondered why it’s so hard to respect them in others, this episode is for you. We dive deep into how to set and receive healthy boundaries, and why so many of us confuse healthy limits with toxic behaviors. Spoiler: setting boundaries isn’t selfish—it’s necessary for healthy, thriving relationships.

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But that’s not all. When our boundaries are shaky, complicated emotions—like guilt, resentment, or anxiety—often arise. And instead of dealing with them, many of us reach for quick fixes: we numb. We avoid confronting those tough feelings that boundaries bring to the surface. Today, I’ll break down why we numb, how to recognize it, and the steps you can take to stop avoiding your emotions and start healing.

‍

This episode covers:

* The difference between healthy boundaries and toxic behaviors

* How to communicate boundaries without guilt or shame

* Practical ways to receive boundaries from others gracefully

* How to recognize when you’re numbing emotions (and what to do about it)

* Why boundaries and emotional numbing are deeply connected—and how to untangle them

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You deserve relationships that nourish you, not drain you. This episode will help you understand the power of boundaries and guide you toward emotional freedom.

‍

Resources:

• The Best of You Podcast question form
• ‍DrAlisonCook.com/podcast
• ‍The Best of You by Dr. Alison Cook
• Boundaries For Your Soul by Dr. Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller

‍

If you liked this, you’ll love:

• Episode 36: An Update on My Social Media Detox & How to Create Boundaries With Toxic Distractions, Numbing, & Unhealthy Coping Tactics
• Episode 24: Boundaries, the Spectrum of Toxicity, and a Note About Evil
• Episode 26: How to say "No" to toxicity

‍‍Thanks to our sponsors:

• Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
• It’s never too late to start healing. God’s heart is always ready to help you find your way Home. Healing What's Within by Chuck DeGroat is now available wherever books are sold.
• 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.
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Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik

© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.‍

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Transcript:

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Alison Cook: 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 have so appreciated the questions you've been leaving in The Best of You Podcast question form. You can find that question form in today's show notes or at DrAlisonCook.com/podcast. 

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Click on today's episode and you'll find that link if you have questions for me. It is so helpful to read through what you're thinking about, what's on your mind, so that I can think about and prayerfully discern how best to serve you with this podcast. I'm always thinking about how to combine faith-based wisdom and science-backed research from the field of psychology.

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I've noticed a theme in some of the questions these past few weeks about two important and connected topics. The first is numbing, and the second is healthy boundaries. And it got me thinking about how these topics overlap, and so I want to address some of those questions today as we discuss both topics.

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We all have moments in life when we turn to numbing behaviors. We wanna numb the emotions that we're experiencing. But here's the thing about numbing that occurred to me as I was reading through some of your questions. Oftentimes, those painful emotions that we end up trying to numb are evoked as a result of boundaries issues in our relationships

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Here's what I mean by that. Whether we're the ones who need to be more assertive with our boundaries in a relationship, whether it's a relationship with your kids, in your marriage, with your friends, whatever the case may be, that tends to evoke uncomfortable emotions inside of us.

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But what's also true is that when other people assert boundaries with us, whether they do that really well, or whether they do that in an unkind or cruel way, which as you'll hear me explain in this episode, I don't actually think is what we mean by the term boundaries. Sometimes boundaries get conflated with toxic behaviors.

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But regardless, when someone else sets a boundary with us, whether it's healthy or whether there's a toxic component to how they do it, that also evokes a lot of complicated feelings inside of us.

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Relational boundaries really evoke a lot of emotions inside of us. That's why I think boundary setting is so complicated, especially if you're someone who's high in empathy, especially if you're someone who's highly sensitive or intuitive about how other people feel.

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This is why I wrote The Best of You, especially for women who are high in empathy and who are very much in tune with the emotions of other people. Because I think it makes boundary setting particularly hard for us. I put myself in that category.

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Either way, whether it's because we are struggling with feeling hurt by someone else's boundaries, or we're really struggling because we need to say a healthy no, or we need to reduce our capacity or set a limit in a certain relationship, or even within an organization, numbing those emotions isn’t helpful, but it is often what we do. 

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Today we're going to explore how to manage the discomfort that comes with other people's boundaries, how to discern between healthy limits and harmful behavior, and finally, how to make wiser choices when we notice those uncomfortable emotions surfacing.

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So let's start with boundaries, because whether we're setting them or receiving them, boundaries stir up sometimes painful, always uncomfortable emotions. Laura wrote in, and I thought this was such a great question, Laura. Thank you for taking the time to write. You wrote this: 

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“You speak a lot on how to set boundaries with people, but it could be interesting and helpful to learn how to respect boundaries that others have placed on you without being offended”.

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I love this question, Laura. I love the honesty in it. There is so much truth in what you're saying. So often when other people set boundaries with us, we can feel that offense. We might feel hurt. We might feel annoyed. We might feel indignant. How dare they? We might feel rejected. There's so many feelings that can stir up inside of us.

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When someone else says no, states a limit, backs out of something, that can be really uncomfortable for us. So I love that you're highlighting this, Laura. And what I love about it is this: if we want to be people who are setting healthy boundaries with others, we do have to do our own work with those emotions that we feel when other people might set a healthy boundary with us.

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This all comes down to learning how to untangle the knots of those uncomfortable emotions. So to answer your question, Laura, I want to turn to the framework that I lay out in I Shouldn’t Feel This Way–how to name, frame, and brave those internal reactions to other people's boundaries. 

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Before we get there, it is so important to distinguish between two kinds of boundaries. The first is a healthy boundary. A healthy boundary is a clear, respectful, and yes, sometimes assertive communication of a personal limit.

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It's about protecting your wellbeing while maintaining mutual respect in a relationship. A healthy boundary is inherently respectful. It's rooted in self-awareness and self-respect and consideration for others. A healthy boundary is calm. It might be assertive and confident, but it's not confrontational.

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It's not trying to make a point. It's not trying to belittle you. It's not about insulting you. It's about calmly stating a need that I have. It focuses on what I need in this situation and what I'm feeling in this situation instead of blaming or attacking you.

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So here's an example of a healthy boundary. I need time to myself after work to unwind, so I won't be able to talk on the phone or take phone calls in the evening hours. That's a simple statement of, this is what's true for me.

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Another example of a healthy boundary: I really value our friendship, but I've got so much on my plate right now. I'd love to get together later this week, later this month, later this year, whatever feels right when I have some bandwidth.

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You're taking ownership of the fact that your need is to step back. Now that can be really hurtful for the other person. We're going to get to that, but you're not saying anything cruel or selfish or mean. There's a statement of need in that.

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Another example of a healthy boundary is, someone says, I'd love to help you out with your nonprofit or with your ministry needs. I'd love to help you out with this need that you have. And I can't do it right now. I really hope you find some people who can give you the support that you need. So there's not even really an excuse there. I can't serve in this way. I can't do it. That's a healthy boundary.

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Now on the other hand, an unhealthy boundary, and this really isn't even a boundary, I think these are examples of toxic behaviors. These are actually attacks. This is when boundaries get weaponized, when somebody uses a boundary as a weapon to try to hurt someone else or try to go on the attack.

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It's often reactive or aggressive. It's often controlling, manipulative, and designed to be hurtful. It's not inadvertently hurtful. It's trying to hurt someone under the guise of a boundary. So instead of communicating a need, an unhealthy boundary tries to exert power over the other person or blame the other person for how you feel.

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The purpose of an unhealthy boundary isn't to protect my own emotional, spiritual, and physical needs. It's in fact, to try to control, punish, manipulate, hurt someone else. And that's not actually a boundary.

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Again, these are toxic behaviors, but oftentimes they show up under the guise of a boundary. Here are some examples of these unhealthy boundaries. If you were to say to someone, you're always interrupting me and I can't stand being around you anymore. That's hurtful. That's an attack. That's saying there's something wrong with you, therefore, I'm not into this anymore. That's an attack on you. 

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If there's really truth in that, a healthy version of that might be to say to someone very calmly, maybe you take some time with your own emotions, and you go to that person and you say, I noticed that when we're talking, I don't always get to finish my thoughts.

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I'd love it if we could please be really careful to ensure that we're both able to fully express ourselves during the conversation. What if we each take turns? Because we both get excited. What if we are really careful to take turns. Maybe we even set a timer.

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Here's another example of an unhealthy boundary that's really all about control. If you don't cancel your plans and come to my event, I'm going to be really hurt, and I don't know if we're going to stay close after that.

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There's a threat there. You're trying to control someone else's behavior, trying to manipulate them with a threat of removing your affection for them. Again, a healthy boundary in this case would be to say, I'm so bummed you can't come, but I completely understand. You're acknowledging that you're hurt, but you're not putting it on the other person. 

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Finally another example of an unhealthy boundary. If you're having a hard conversation and you say something like, I'm done talking to you. This is over. If you don't agree with me right now, if you don't stop right now. This is over. You never listen anyway. I'm done. This is an extreme shutting down of a conversation. 

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A healthy boundary might be to say something like, we're getting heated. I can tell I'm getting agitated. I need a few minutes. I need to calm down before continuing this conversation. A healthy boundary takes personal responsibility, takes ownership. It doesn't put it on the other person.

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To answer your question about how to respect other people's boundaries, it does involve some discernment about what you're feeling in response to the boundary that's been set. I want to talk you through that very practically using the three step process I lay out in I Shouldn’t Feel This Way. This is the three step process for navigating our own emotions, these emotions that come up in this case in response to someone else's boundary. 

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Number one, the first thing is to name it. What am I feeling? I got this text. I got this phone call. I got this email, and I don't like how I feel. Notice that inside your own self first. Name what's hard. Start with yourself. I say over and over again, we're not going to react to the other person. We're going to notice, man, I'm feeling offended.

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And that's an okay thing to feel. The fact that you feel offended isn't the problem. It's what you do with that feeling that could become a problem. So the fact that you feel offended at someone else's boundary is something to notice initially. I feel offended. I wonder what that's about.

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Get curious about it. Maybe you feel angry. I'm really angry. How dare they set this boundary with me when I've been bending over backwards to show up for them! That's another feeling. It's a normal feeling to feel when someone sets a boundary with us. We don't like it. These are feelings we need to notice and name.

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We don't need to exile them. We don't need to shove them aside. We need to be honest with ourselves and with God about what the boundary stirs up inside of us. Maybe we feel guilt. Oh, I must've done something wrong. That's why they set that boundary. I must be a terrible person. Maybe shame gets stirred up.

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That often happens when someone else sets a boundary with us. Oooh, there must be something wrong with me. The whole purpose of the name, frame, brave framework is that we don't know yet what those emotions mean, but we do need to honor them.

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What I feel when someone else sets a boundary with me is shame. I feel like I'm the problem. I feel like I did something wrong. The feeling of being offended, that feeling of anger, that feeling of shame, these are really common emotions that we feel when other people set boundaries with us. So we're naming that. We're getting curious about that. 

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Isn't that interesting? This is what I feel inside. And then we've got to move into that second step, the frame it. We've got to frame what actually happened. We have to take some time. We have to create that pause, that place in between, to get curious about what really happened. We have to discern. What actually happened?

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If you think about that word offended, when we are offended, we feel like somebody has wronged us. We feel like somebody has disrespected something we stand for or disrespected our personhood. It can feel like somebody has demeaned us, belittled us. It can feel like somebody has rejected us. Again, these are all feelings that we have to discern.

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Did that actually happen? Maybe that person did do something offensive. To feel offended is the correct emotion in that situation. Maybe the person did reject us. The fact that we feel rejected actually makes sense, but maybe they didn't. 

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So often our emotions are a combination of what's happening in the present moment, right in front of us, and what's happened to us 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago, all of our past wounds, all the times we've been rejected, hurt or offended, all get intertwined with what's happening in the present moment. 

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So we have to give ourselves a minute as we frame it and ask ourselves, what are the facts? What really happened? What did they actually say? How did they actually say it? What was the tone of it? What do I know to be true about this person's character? Have they been consistently hurting me over time? Is there a pattern here or does this feel really out of character? 

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Maybe something else is going on. We have to really think about it. Now, the key question when you're feeling offended is, did they actually do something wrong and would an objective third party think that they actually did something wrong? And this is where we all need really good friends to help us discern what we feel when someone else sets a boundary with us. 

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When someone else says, no, I can't do that. Or somebody else even lets us down in a relationship. We need those really good friends who will say, I get why that hurts. I get why you feel the way you do, and, I don't think that person did anything wrong. I think they're bumping up against their own limitations. It hurts and I get it and that's hard and I'm here for you in that hurt.

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I don't think you can blame that other person in this. I think they did the best they could. I think they're genuinely dealing with their own limits. That's a really good friend who can help you discern that.

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So when we're framing it, we're trying to figure out, did that person actually do something wrong? Or were they stating a healthy limit? And yes, it hurts. Yes, I feel rejected, but they didn't do anything wrong. And when we frame it in that way, we're going to brave those uncomfortable feelings differently.

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Let's say you're somebody who's inclined towards shame. When someone sets a boundary with you, you feel like a terrible person. Same kind of principle applies. What are the facts? Did I actually do something wrong? Was I being insensitive to them? Was I interrupting all the time? Did I in fact expect more of them than maybe was fair or maybe more than they promised?

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Can I face that and go, ooh, that hurts to see that. I wish I hadn't done that, but I'm also not a terrible person. I'm a good friend. I'm a good spouse. I'm a good parent. And I sometimes make mistakes. So we have to reframe that. If you're someone who's inclined towards shame, you have to really look at the facts.

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I don't like it that this person had to speak up about this. It induces shame. And it doesn't mean I'm a terrible person. It means I'm human and maybe I made a mistake or maybe I had a blind spot there. That is such an important skill to be able to bring into relationships, to be able to see our own stuff. 

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We have to be able to sit with the pain of that and simultaneously keep the shame at bay because shame doesn't help. It doesn't help us go, yeah, I'm sorry. I have been jumping in a lot in our conversations. I need to listen better. It doesn't lead us to that healthier conclusion.

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It might even be that nobody did anything wrong. You didn't do anything wrong. They didn't do anything wrong. They can't meet that need or that expectation that you have. And it's not because you did anything wrong. It's because we're humans and that person can't show up for me. That happens. 

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So we really have to do that work of framing when it comes to other people's boundaries. What really happened here? Did they do something wrong? Were they hurtful? Were they harmful? Were they being cruel, controlling, or manipulative? Or were they setting a healthy boundary and I've got to deal with that?

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I can feel what I feel, but I can't take it out on them. I can't blame them for that. Or we have to ask ourselves, did I do anything wrong? Maybe I didn't do anything wrong. I was being myself and that person said no, or can't do that thing I want them to do.

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So I've got to learn how to grow resilience. Sometimes that hurts, but I didn't do anything wrong. They're not doing anything wrong. We're not lining up or aligning on this particular issue or in this particular situation. It doesn't mean that anything wrong or bad has happened.

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Sometimes it might mean I did do something wrong and I actually need to honor and respect the boundary and their limitations. And I need to grow and learn and change. And this gets a little bit into the distinction I make in I Shouldn’t Feel This Way about false guilt and true guilt.

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Did I actually do something wrong or am I feeling guilty when in fact I am not to blame? It's such an important distinction if you're somebody who struggles with self-blame and self-shame. 

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Finally, we get into braving. So now we've owned the emotions that we feel. We've framed them. We've discerned what really happened. And now we can take the next brave step. If you're feeling offended or hurt, but the other person didn't actually do anything wrong, that's what I like to call clean grief. We can grieve it. We can say, oh, I didn't like it. That hurt.

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When someone sets a healthy boundary with us, it can cause that temporary emotional discomfort, especially if we're not used to hearing no, or if we expected more than that other person can give us. And it hurts, but it's rooted in our own disappointment, our own unmet expectations.

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It's not because they actually did something wrong. The pain in those situations comes from realizing that people have limits and that's disappointing. The brave path in this situation is to honor the part of you that feels bummed out, that feels disappointed, that is aware that, man, people do let us down. 

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Even the best of people. Honor that. And also be really clear with the other part of you that they didn't do anything wrong and I'm going to respect them. This is the magic of the “two things can be true” reframe.

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We take a deep breath. We open our palms to God and we say, God, two things are true here. I'm disappointed and they didn't do anything wrong. And, there's this beauty of surrender here. It's a really spiritual practice of surrendering the both-and. I'm disappointed, and, they didn't do anything wrong.

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I've got to let this go. Two things can be true. Now, if you're dealing with a situation where the other person was cruel, was manipulative, was trying to control you, you might feel a more complicated set of emotions, including betrayal, anger, or deep emotional pain, which arises because the person's actions or words are intended to belittle, control, or hurt you.

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They're calling it a boundary, but really they're being cruel and that cruelty adds a whole layer of toxicity to what you're feeling inside. When someone is cruel, it feels personal. It feels intentional. It was designed to attack you. It's not based on mutual respect or healthy communication. 

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So you feel betrayed. And in this case, you might feel offended because there was in fact an offense. if you're feeling those betrayal emotions, you're going to need to brave a more significant path of talking about it with someone, letting other people into the complexity of those emotions, maybe seeing a therapist, maybe talking to a really good friend so that you can untangle the knots of those emotions 

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That's going to take more time and attention to heal from when there's actually been a betrayal. So that was a long-winded answer to your question, Laura, but the answer to that question, how do we not feel offended when other people set boundaries with us, begs this larger process of why am I feeling offended?

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What actually happened? Did they do something wrong? Or do I need to work with God to release these uncomfortable feelings that are normal, but really aren't reflective of what actually happened?

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This whole conversation about complicated feelings leads into several questions that I got about numbing. We are so inclined to numb when we get hit with any of these uncomfortable emotions.

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I got questions from Haley, from Sierra, from Emily, all about struggling with numbness. Now, there are a lot of reasons that we numb. Sometimes there's more chronic numbness with almost a dissociative quality that we've learned how to do as a result of deep trauma.

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Sometimes we are numbing on a more day to day basis. Ooh, I don't like what I'm feeling, so I am going to check out. In my book Boundaries For Your Soul, we describe the three categories of the parts of the soul. It's based on the internal family systems, the IFS model, that there are three categories of parts.

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The second category of parts are protective parts. Richard Schwartz, the founder of the model, calls them firefighters. Why are these parts of us called firefighters? It's because they get active after the flame of pain surfaces. These parts of us detect pain. They detect complicated feelings. They detect anger. They detect that betrayal that we were talking about. 

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And their job is to put the flames of that pain out, no matter what. And these are the parts of us that immediately reach for the Netflix binge. They reach for the potato chips. They reach for the food. They reach for the scrolling. Scrolling is such a fast and quick way to numb out, to douse those emotions with whatever is at our easiest disposal. 

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These are parts of every single one of us. We all have these firefighter parts of us. That is their job. They detect pain and they check us out. Now, when they get extreme, they can go for booze. They can go for drugs. They can go for self-harming behaviors like cutting. They can become addicted. They can turn into sex addictions, drug addictions.

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They can get really extreme, but they also are parts of us that on any given day are like, I don't want to feel this way and this bag of potato chips or this binge watching shows for six hours tonight after work is the path I'm going to take. I'm going to take that path because I do not want to sit here and face the uncomfortable emotions inside of me.

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Doing the work of facing our uncomfortable emotions can be hard at times. We don't want to do it. I want to let you know, there is no shame in these numbing parts of us, especially if there's been trauma. These are parts of you that have helped you to survive. They've helped you to survive more pain than you could tolerate. 

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You didn't know how to tolerate this kind of pain, especially as a kid. You learned how to drown it out with whatever was at your disposal. That's what these parts of you do. They're survival parts. They're protective.

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They're protecting you from too much pain. So if you've got a long history of numbing, that's something you want to work through with a trained therapist. This IFS model can be really helpful in working with these firefighter parts because they're there for a reason. They're trying to protect you from feeling too much pain.

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Here's the thing about numbing on a more day to day level. If you notice, man, I'm just, I'm not wanting to face myself. I'm not wanting to journal. And this is usually what happens with most people–they notice the numbing behaviors first, they don't notice the painful emotions. Because the numbing behaviors are doing their job.

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This happens to me. I was talking about it on last week's episode with Chuck DeGroat, Episode 123. We were talking about how we'll go days checked out. I will notice those behaviors before I notice what's underneath them. Because the job of those numbing behaviors is to keep us from painful emotions.

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Almost always what I will do when I begin to notice myself checking out, is scrolling more than usual, binge watching, avoiding myself, essentially not journaling, not wanting to pray. Because I don't want to deal with it. When I notice that, I have to take a deep breath and show myself, I'm checking out because this is hard.

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I don't want to feel this way. I don't want to wade through the complicated mix of emotions that I'm feeling. I don't want to wade through the fear, the heartache, the sadness, the anger. I don't want to wade through these feelings that this situation has stirred up inside of me.

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I start there. That is the lowest hanging fruit of dealing with numbing. It's befriending those numbing parts of us. Isn't that interesting? I watched Netflix for four hours without thinking about it. I wonder what that's about. It starts that simply. Isn't that interesting? I'm eating a lot of sugar right now. I wonder what's going on.

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That simple act of getting curious, of noticing, brings a little bit of your prefrontal cortex online. It brings another part of your brain online. It's a healthy differentiation. I'm aware that I'm doing this thing.

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It puts even a paper's width distance between you and the numbing behavior. Oh, this is what's happening. That's naming. And naming is the opposite of numbing. Naming is the opposite of numbing. You don't have to get right into the deep heart emotions initially, especially when you're noticing the numbing behaviors.

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Name that you're numbing. This is what's happening. That's what I'm doing. God, help me. Help me take a deep breath and bravely face whatever it is that's going on. And then maybe take the next step. I need to start to journal. I don't want to face what I'm feeling. God, I wonder what that's about.

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Start with the lowest hanging fruit. When you start to name numbing behaviors, you give yourself a fighting chance of actually facing the emotions that are underneath them. Now listen, I go through numbing in depth in chapter six of I Shouldn’t Feel This Way. But please hear me say right now in the context of boundaries, either setting them or receiving them in the context of deep pain–numbing parts of us are not your enemies. 

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They are parts of you that are trying to help, and shaming yourself for the numbing never helps. Get curious about it, naming it gently but honestly–this is what's happening. This is what I'm doing. That is a brave step in itself. So start with naming, noticing without shame, without criticism.

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And slowly you'll start attuning gently to the beautiful intricacies of your mind, of your heart, of your body. And you'll start to learn as you start to name the numbing and you begin to notice the uncomfortable emotions. You will start to learn what actually brings you comfort or relief, what brings you actual peace or delight. 

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Here's the thing for those of you who have these very skilled numbing parts of you. It's not that we want to rip the bandaid off. It's that we want to gently learn how to face the hard emotions, while trusting ourselves that we can keep ourselves safe, that we can give ourselves the actual good things that our souls need in partnership with God's spirit.

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When you name your numbing behaviors and the painful emotions that lie underneath them, you come alive to yourself and to God and to the wonder all around you. You start to feel again. And it's such a beautiful process. You become empowered to set the healthy boundaries that you need and to honor the disappointment that we all feel at the hands of others, 

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You start to nourish a beautiful symphony of feelings inside yourself. You start to learn what brings you joy, what brings relief, what brings play and how to soothe yourself in healthy ways.

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What do you do after someone hurts you?

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How do you heal the pain that lingers inside of you?

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This is such an incredibly helpful, honest, and vulnerable conversation with my friend and fellow therapist Chuck DeGroat, author of the brand new book Healing What's Within. Chuck taught us so much about the harmful realities of narcissism in his book, When Narcissism Comes to Church, and now he's helping us heal the lingering wounds.

Here’s what we cover:

1. The moment that launched 5 years of inner chaos for Chuck

2. 3 surprising questions God asks to each of us

3. How Adam & Eve were manipulated

4. The first step when dealing with narcissism

5. How take feedback from others

6. How to ask for what you need from others

Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here.

Pre-order Healing What’s Within: Coming Home to Yourself--and to God--When You're Wounded, Weary, and Wandering

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Resources:

• Pre-order Healing What’s Within: Coming Home to Yourself--and to God--When You're Wounded, Weary, and Wandering by Chuck DeGroat
• When Narcissism Comes to Church by Chuck DeGroat
• Other books by Chuck DeGroat
• ‍Genesis 3
• ‍The Sickness Unto Death by Soren Kierkegaard
• ‍Our Many Selves by Elizabeth O’Connor
• ChuckDeGroat.net

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If you liked this, you’ll love:

• Episode 97: I Shouldn't Feel This Anxious—Insights on Trauma & Healing with Monique Koven

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‍Thanks to our sponsors:

• Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
• 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.
• Pre-order Healing What’s Within: Coming Home to Yourself--and to God--When You're Wounded, Weary, and Wandering by Chuck DeGroat!

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.‍

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Transcript:

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Alison Cook: Hey everyone. Welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I was so looking forward to this conversation today with my dear friend and fellow therapist, Chuck DeGroat. Chuck has a new book coming out called Healing What’s Within: Coming Home to Yourself--and to God--When You're Wounded, Weary, and Wandering.

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It is such a beautiful book on healing. You'll hear some of the framework for the book in our conversation today, and toward the end of the episode, he gets pretty vulnerable about some of the feedback he got early on as a young therapist in training, 

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Chuck DeGroat is a licensed therapist, a spiritual director, and the author of five books, including the best selling book, When Narcissism Comes to Church. He also serves as Professor of Counseling and Christian Spirituality and the Executive Director of the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan.

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Chuck is such an incredible human and a gifted thinker at the intersection of emotional and spiritual health. His new book, Healing What's Within, is out this week everywhere books are sold and I cannot recommend it more to you. I actually was honored to write the foreword for the book. I am thrilled to bring you my conversation today with Chuck DeGroat. 

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***

Alison Cook: I am so thrilled to talk with you. You've become a friend. You're someone whose work I so admire. It was such an honor to read this book and write the foreword for it. It's such a beautiful book. So thank you for writing it. Thanks for being here.

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Chuck: Yeah. Thank you for writing the forward.

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Alison Cook: What I loved about this book, Chuck, and I'd love to start here, you open the book talking about a season of time 20 years ago when you were working as a pastor and you were fired from your job. You don't give us the details. You're very clear that's not the point of that illustration–the point of that illustration was that it launched five years of inner chaos.

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Chuck: Yeah, that's right. I wondered if I should write that in the previous book, the narcissism book. I didn't want to center my own story, but I was encouraged to write more of my own story and I do in this book. That's a early pivot point, to say that there are these things that happen to us, these ways in which we're harmed and wronged and abused.

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And we can talk about those kinds of things. If you spend any time on Twitter, we talk about those things all the time, but we have to shift the conversation inward. At some point, we've got to begin to do the work that you've been teaching us to do, frankly, for a number of years now. We've got to shift the conversation inward. The trauma is not what happens to us, but what happens within us.

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Alison Cook: That's really powerful right there, Chuck. So essentially, this is what I love about you. We'll dive right in. Essentially, that incident, you could frame as spiritual abuse. You could frame it as something wrong that happened to you. That's true. That's valid. We could talk about it from that place, but what you're trying to encourage us to do in this book is, no matter what's happened to us, I'm responsible for what happens inside of me as a result of that.

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Chuck: Yeah, that's right. It doesn't absolve external institutions and churches and organizations from responsibility at some level. But the healing work is the work that happens when you turn within. You probably know stories like this. I know stories where people have received the justice that they longed for.

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Maybe a wrong was righted externally. But a year later, they're still dealing with some pain, intrusive thoughts, anxiety, panic, whatever it is. Now they need to turn their attention inward. We have to take responsibility for what happens within and heal what happens within.

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Alison Cook: I was thinking about this interview this morning and I noticed this in myself; I'm curious what you think about this. Because I teach about this, you teach about this, and the whole book, Healing What’s Within, it's right there. I am going through something externally with family dynamics, and I noticed I've been avoiding myself for a few days. 

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And what I mean by that is, I don't want to journal. I don't want to pray about it. I don't want to turn my attention inward. I've been spending tons of time analyzing, how should I act? What should I do? How should I talk about it with other people? I couldn't believe it. This morning, I was preparing for this interview and I was refreshing my memory because I read your book a while ago. 

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I was refreshing myself on the notes, and I thought, oh my gosh. I turned inward. I started to cry.

Right now the tears come up. I hadn't even considered the grief that's underneath. Yes, I have to make decisions. Yes, I have to do some things. I've been doing this work 20 years, as you have, and what is it that makes it hard to look inward? 

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It's so intuitive, it's so logical on one level; of course we need to look inside, but you talk about how It took you five years to really begin to look inward. Why do we resist that?

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Chuck: Yeah. It really helped me to begin to understand that at the heart of trauma is disconnection. You hear this from all the folks that you and I revere. Gabor Maté, Peter Levine, Stephen Porges, others like that. At the heart of trauma is profound disconnection, profound alienation.

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That's in part why I started with Genesis 3 this time. It’s the primal story of disconnection, of alienation. The question God asks is “Where are you?”. Because God meets us in the midst of our disconnection. But the wild thing, what you're talking about, is that we can go for days, weeks, months, years–for me, it was at least five years before I got into therapy.

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Then I'd say a few years later, when I ended up in a hospital in Mexico in severe pain, I won't go into the details here, it was pretty nasty, but where my body had kept the score. So it took about five years to get into therapy and then three more years for me to hit this point where I am continuing to live in this disconnection and I've got to do something about it.

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Alison Cook: Let's go into that. In the book, you go through those three questions. Where are you? Who told you? Where have you taken your hunger and thirst? It was fascinating to me to think about those questions in a non-shaming way.

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Chuck: That's it. Because I think you and I may have grown up with pastors and in churches where we learned that Genesis 3 story was a story of this great tragedy. This cosmic tragedy that we're all implicated in, and God was raging mad. So I've always thought, well, of course, we've got to hide because God's angry. 

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And we could talk about that a lot longer, but to me it's really thrilling to see what's happening in the text. God is walking in the cool of the day, when God would normally be walking with Adam and Eve when the sun has gone down. That's when they go for their afternoon walk. But God's looking around like, where are you? It's time for our walk. 

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That first word, “where”, is the first word of the book of Lamentations. It's a word of longing. It's a word of heartbreak. There is this sense of “I miss you. Where are you?” For me, that was a game changer, because I'd grown up in a tradition where God's angry and God's looking for you and God will find you. The reality is, God comes with kindness and curiosity and compassion to meet us in our place of greatest pain.

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Alison Cook: Yeah. That is a profound shift. It's not an angry “Where are you?” I wonder if when we've internalized that, that's a little bit why we're reluctant to face ourselves. Because when I'm turning my attention inward, what am I really feeling? What's really going on inside of me? 

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That's where we're meeting God in truth. If there's shame there, if there's any condemnation, I don't want to do that. I don't want to go there, but if it's a, oh, where are you? I miss you. When you say that, I just, I feel that. 

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Chuck: Yeah, it's an invitation to slow way down. I've called this the Genesis Examen for years. In the Christian tradition, there are these ways of self examination, the Ignatian Examen. But these three questions, this Examen, is a way for us to slow down. I was driving this morning, and I do these five day intensives and they can be very intense.

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I was driving this morning, and I heard that question, where are you? I would have liked to have been anywhere but where I was, and I was thinking about later today and a nice meal that we're going to have with some friends. I was thinking back to some other things, and I was like, where are you?

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I'm not here right now. I need to be right here right now. I need to be grounded in my body to do this work for the next three hours. So it was an invitation back to my body, back to my breath, back to presence.

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Alison Cook: That's it. Sometimes I don't want to feel grief. I don't want to go into this hard broken place. But when we surrender to that in response to the loving question from God, we are so much more able to move through it with integrity, with that Holy Spirit led self presence.

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Chuck: Yeah, that's it. It's all about attention. It's all about noticing. It's all about presence. I don't know about you, but I can live hours of my day and hours of my week disconnected. My family knows and sees it. Some of my colleagues and friends see it as well. it's always an invitation back to presence.

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Alison Cook: I want to pause there for a second. Because even when you say that, I'm imagining the listener saying, wait, isn't that normal? To be driving in my car, thinking about dinner, thinking about this, thinking about that, how is that disconnected?

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I can go for days, like you're saying, and I haven't actually checked in. You're in your car and there's some part of you that's been trained to hear that voice from God. How do we start that work? Or how did you begin to learn that practice? I think it's a practice is what I'm trying to say. There's a little bit of a discipline to it. I hate to use that word. 

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Chuck: Yeah. I think it's the practice of attention. It does take time. If we've lived inattentively or in an externalized way, where we're constantly thinking about these things that we need to do, or perhaps because of the trauma of life in a hypervigilant state, we're going to live functionally disconnected from ourselves, and we might not even know it.

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That's the thing. That's the reality of the work that we do. A lot of the folks that we work with and probably our stories as well, what we discover is that I didn't know that I was disconnected. I thought this was life. I stayed busy. That busyness has kept me from some of that pain that I really don't want to look at, and so this is a brand new invitation to folks. 

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That's why I love it through the lens of “where are you” in Scripture? I'm sure you get accused of this sometimes: “You're a therapist, you're a psychologist, that's what you are supposed to do”. I want to say, no, actually, that's where God begins when we've experienced alienation, where we've experienced disconnection. God invites us back to ourselves, back to God, back to one another.

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Alison Cook: Yeah. It's really the essence. You can't bifurcate what's going on spiritually with what's going on emotionally and mentally. To geek out here for a second, one of my favorite books of all time was Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death. Wonderful title. He talks about how we're going to be nailed to ourselves, essentially. 

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I always remember reading that going, whoa, then I better get really at home with myself. There's something powerful about that, that at the end of the day, whatever we mean by the afterlife, but also right now, the eternal now, we're going to have to make peace with ourselves.

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That's the person we're going to be with. And the more I can do that in the light of God's compassionate invitation, “where are you?”, we're aligning with the truth. In thinking about trauma, even if the truth is, I can't go there, there's too much, that's a starting place. That's a starting place. 

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Chuck: That's a starting place. I've heard you talk about it on the podcast–we've both been informed by internal family systems. This is a contemporary way of doing counseling, if listeners are not familiar with it, where we talk about these parts of ourselves. Years ago, I may have told you this before, but years ago, I was introduced to the work of a woman named Elizabeth O'Connor. 

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She was a pastor in Washington, D. C. alongside Gordon Cosby and she would lead spiritual retreats. So back in the late 60s, there's a book called Our Many Selves that came out of a retreat that she would lead where she'd simply greet people.

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She had no idea about this sort of contemporary therapeutic modality. All she was doing was leading a spiritual retreat and she was asking people to identify the many selves that are caught up in the many things out there that lead them into fragmentation and to come back to the ground of their being.

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This is old news, good news; this is not contemporary psychology. This is the ancient Christian tradition as well.

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Alison Cook: That's exactly right. When you go back to the older ideas, what they're talking about is alienation from the self, and we actually have to be reunited. This isn't a modern psychology thing. 

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The second question also really blew my mind. “Who told you?”, which again, can have the connotation in my mind of shaming. “Who are you listening to? Why aren't you listening?” as opposed to how you recast it as from this place of curiosity. I think about it as, where did you get that message? Who told you? Where did you pick that up?

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Tell me a little bit about how you've wrestled with that in your own life and with clients.

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Chuck: Yeah, there again, it feels like another question that comes out of heartache. Who's telling you this counterfeit story? I created you for Eden, for goodness, for all these things. Who told you that you weren't enough? Who told you that I couldn't be trusted? It's an invitation to curiosity.

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The other thing that I wasn't told about Genesis chapter three is that Adam and Eve were victimized. They were deceived. There was so much emphasis placed on Adam and Eve's responsibility–and I don't want to minimize responsibility. You go down those rabbit holes and you've got people who want to catch you in some heresy.

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Okay. We're responsible. I get it, but we were deceived. I think what God is asking is, what are the voices that you're listening to? What stories are you telling yourself that don't reflect the goodness of my story? My whisper of worth and belonging and purpose over you?

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Alison Cook: That's really powerful to think about it in those terms. She was manipulated in that story, totally manipulated. How often are we unwittingly manipulated, controlled, whatever it is? Like you're saying, there's responsibility, especially once we become aware, but I love that. I found that so powerful, that recasting of “Who told you? What lie did you believe?”.

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Chuck: Yeah, so we can look at our stories with some curiosity again. I did this work today. I was sitting with a man where we gently walked back through his story and learned that early on in his life, the message that he got, it wasn't a message that he heard, it's a message that he intuited because his parents weren't around, was that you've got to go it on your own.

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I was like, that's the story. That's the primal story. That's the story that all of us at some level end up believing. “I'm on my own. I'm not enough. God isn't enough. God's goodness can't be trusted. My own instincts, my own intuitions can't be trusted”. The invitation is to gently walk back into your story and into the stories you tell yourself.

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Even right now, you can go back into your past, but the reality is, you're probably telling yourself some version of that story right now.

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Alison Cook: Yeah. To become curious, as you say.  So that invitation, even driving in the car, taking a walk, “Where am I, where are my thoughts? What am I thinking? Who told you? Let's check where the messages are coming from ". Then this last one, “Have you eaten from the tree?”, that gets at, “Where have you taken your desires?”. Talk to us a little bit about that.

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Chuck: This was the one that stumped me years ago when I was doing some of this work on retreats that I was leading. I served out in the Bay area in San Francisco, and so I would take Silicon Valley executives for 48 hour silent retreats, no phones. Can you imagine what that would be like?

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I'd invite them into these questions and that third one, have you eaten from the tree? I was like, God, you asked two really beautiful open ended questions. And now this. And so as I listen carefully, what I started to hear is, “Where have you taken your hunger? Where have you taken your thirst? Where have you taken your desires?” 

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In other words, I long to fill you up. I long to satisfy you. But where do you go to cope? Let's get curious about where you go to cope, because I think that what we know about what happens within us, what we know about trauma, is that we seek to medicate it in one way or another.

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If we begin to pay attention to the things that we go to, the things that we chase after, the ways in which we chase worth or belonging or purpose in a variety of different ways, we'll begin to understand a bit more about how we're coping and self-medicating in light of that wound within.

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Alison Cook: Yeah. I thought that was brilliant. It makes sense. Where have you gone to feed this? Again, in a non shaming way, in a naming way, let's talk about it. Let's be honest about it. 

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Chuck: It's really that simple in a sense. As therapists, people come to us with so much shame in the midst of addiction. I want to stop doing this. I don't approach it with yeah, we've got to get you to stop doing this right away. It's instead an invitation to get curious about what that's about. How are you medicating the wound? 

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It's a strategy that's protecting you from the story underneath, and so let's get curious about the story underneath. I bet the strategy will go away as you get more curious about the story underneath.

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Alison Cook: Of attentiveness, of that awareness, of consciously, again, in the terms of IFS, differentiating when I go for that apple, when I go for that food, when I go for that booze, whatever it is, oh, there's a wound and it's powerful. That is what makes the work. The integration of the spiritual and the mental and the emotional work all works together because we create that space for healing for the way that God designed us to heal. It's like we give the oxygen that our systems need to shift.

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Chuck: Yeah, that's it. I love the oxygen metaphor, like maybe that's what these questions offer. An opportunity to simply breathe and attend, and the act of doing that the healing is already beginning. We can do a lot of work. We can do a lot of talking. We can do a lot of looking at your life, your story, your trauma, but it begins as we breathe. As we notice. I love the idea of introducing some oxygen to the system.

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Alison Cook: Yeah. It's a little bit of a paradox. Even my experience this morning of, oh, I actually need to tend to the grief inside of me. It is actually now going to unlock and bring more oxygen in, which is going to allow me to brave a better solution or a better way through. Like your experience in the car, it's so life changing and earth shattering. It sounds so simple and yet it really is the path to healing and wholeness.

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Chuck: Yesterday–you're going to appreciate this, I hope–I was feeling some of the pressure of hard, challenging client situations. I was actually sitting with my intensive client. It's been about two and a half hours and I felt in my body that sense of pressure.

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We've got one day left and I put my hand on my chest and I breathe and sometimes I'll do that. That's become a practice of even now when I do that, I can feel it in my body like, oh, okay. there's a blessing that God can offer in that space. It’s relaxing and calming.

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That's really beautiful. We've got to find our way to those resources and practices, of course, that work for us. But for me, in a moment where I was feeling some pressure, a hand on the chest, the deep breath, and I was back in my body. It didn't fix everything. It didn't make me a brilliant therapist for the next half hour. It allowed me to be more present.

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Alison Cook: It brought you back to yourself, which brings you back to God, which opens up more. You're operating then with the grain of the universe. It's so good. It's such a good, powerful, powerful work, Healing What’s Within. 

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I am curious, Chuck, you've written a number of books. A lot of people know you by your work with narcissism. You wrote the book When Narcissism Comes to Church. Why was this the next book for you?

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Chuck: Yeah, I feel like this brings it all together and that's a really incredible feeling in some ways. Back in the late nineties is when I began seeing women who were emotionally abused by their partners in a church where I was serving. That began the work for me.

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I began trying to figure out this emotional abuse thing and find books. I remember finding one that was translated from Dutch. It was one of the only resources back in the day on emotional abuse, and I ended up going to court for some of the women that I was working with, but a lot of reading, a lot of learning, some supervision, some new modalities like IFS and other things.

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For a number of years, I felt like I was piecing things together. The narcissism work felt like an important and timely work to name what I and others have been seeing in the church for many years. This isn't new. This isn't a new phenomenon. Christians have been abusing power for centuries. 

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There are stories in scripture that show that. This to me was the culmination of over 25 years of pastoring and practicing as a counselor. It's really fun to be able to anchor it in a biblical story and to re-narrate that story and show people in concrete ways how they can go within and do this inner work in a way that is transformative. 

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Every once in a while, I think your last book did a really beautiful job, it's simply naming the process, and every once in a while you land on something as a writer, as a teacher, that helps you articulate it simply and invites people in. For me, that's what these three questions do. I can use this in counseling or as a pastor leading retreats. 

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It really brings together a lot of the divergent threads of a 25 year vocation of counseling and pastoring and retreat leading and more.

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Alison Cook: It makes sense. You're naming. On one hand, we have to name what's going on systemically; we have to name what's going on outside of us. Also, we have to name what's going on inside of us. They're both important. In fact, Healing What’s Within is actually then the brave path that one has to take.

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Chuck: Everyone that I've worked with will know this and I'm sure you'll do the same thing–when people come to me and say, I've got this narcissistic pastor in this traumatizing system. My first counsel is to do your own work. They're like, what do I do? What do I say to the pastor? I think I should confront him. Maybe I should write a letter. I feel the anxiety in the email, in their voice. 

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Okay, let's slow down and let's make sure that you get care so that whatever you do is coming from our true selves, from our core, and not from a reactive or anxious place. That's the work. 

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In a sense, people are asking, is this a follow up to When Narcissism Comes to Church? The answer is, in a very real way, yes. This is the work that you need to do so that you can be healthy and whole as you engage the complexities of our church and our world.

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Alison Cook: Because the one thing that you can take responsibility for, it's a cliche, but it's true. You're never going to be able to change the other person. The only way through is to get really deep within yourself and find your own way through whatever the case may be. You have to do that work from within.

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Chuck: Again, that's going to sound cliche or it's going to sound therapeutic to some. I want to say, even this morning, sitting with a pastor, he said that very thing. I said, do you know St. Augustine from church history? Oh yeah. I know St. Augustine. Have you read the confessions, where he says God, you were within, but I was on the outside looking for the answers out there?

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Augustine says, return to yourself, go within. We get scattered, we get pulled and the movement for the sake of wholeness is always a movement within that allows us then to move out and to be healers. That's the work that you and I do because in part we've done the work within.

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Alison Cook: Yeah. It can feel like a paradox, but it's absolutely the way through. I wanted to ask you, this is a little bit of a tangent, but I'm curious because I don't know this about you personally. How did you end up counseling women? How did you end up counseling emotional abuse survivors? Did you stumble into it? Did you set out? How did that evolve for you?

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Chuck: I was a seminary student in the mid 1990s and I was about to start a PhD program in New Testament studies with a well known and regarded New Testament scholar. I had gotten the blessing of this particular scholar, but I was a nervous wreck. I was so anxious about it.

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I sat down with a counseling professor at my seminary, and this is going to sound really funny because I'm a counseling professor at a seminary now. He said to me really honestly and kindly, but it was hard, he said, if you don't do your work, you're going to be dangerous to the church. You're probably already dangerous to your wife.

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That sounds hard. It was probably harsh, but I was invited into this incredibly relationally-oriented counseling program where I was invited to listen to the experiences of my fellow students, and to ask them about their experiences of me. The program at the time was by and large women.

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I put that question out there, and what I started hearing is, you're arrogant, you're off putting, we don't feel safe with you. We wish you wouldn't have started in the counseling program. This was devastating. At the same time, it was a truth serum. I needed to hear this and it set me on my own journey. We could talk about this a lot longer Alison, but they were naming misogyny. They were connecting it to my mother. This is what we therapists do.

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Alison Cook: You were all training and there was this invitation. You'd asked and they were willing to fill in. 

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Chuck: Yeah, and I had supervisors. When you go through programs like this, you've got your fellow students and you've got supervisors and you're jumping in the deep end. It was a revelation of the ways in which I was hiding, a revelation of the ways in which I needed to heal.

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What happened is it really opened my eyes to how women were experiencing not only me, but the seminary setting I was in, the complexity of male female relationships, and the late misogyny. Again, this is back in the late 90s. We weren't tweeting about this. We weren't holding up signs of “down with the patriarchy”.

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Alison Cook: It was before it was trendy.

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Chuck: It was before it was trendy. It gave me an opportunity as an on the ground pastor to do the work, to really listen to the stories of women. That's where it began.

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Alison Cook: Okay. So as your friend, I find it hard to believe with the way I've experienced you these last few years. Do you think that there was truth in it? Do you think that you were a bit of a lightning rod for a lot of what was going on around you? Do you think a little bit of both? 

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Chuck: What they were seeing in me? Yeah, I think I was a part of a group of men at the seminary who were clicky. We were tribal, we had all the answers to the questions, and the experience was, they're in and we're out. There was a sense of arrogance that they were rightly perceiving.

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Now what they didn't know was that I was the most insecure guy in the pack, and I was clinging to a sense of security. I wasn't the pack leader. But I was certainly participating in something that to them felt very arrogant. I remember sitting in one conversation where I fought them for about 20 minutes and then I was in tears for about the next 40 minutes as I started recognizing some of the connections. 

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I heard the whisper of, “Who told you?”, and I started making connections to my own story and my own insecurities and the ways in which I was grasping for my own sense of worth and purpose and status and other things like that, and so it was a pretty radically transformative two years, but the fruit of it was now I could hear and see in ways that I couldn't hear and see before some of the stories of women in this largely complementarian context that I was in, where they were experiencing harm in their marriages. Yeah, that was it.

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Alison Cook: Are you okay with sharing that Chuck?

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Chuck: Yeah. I am okay sharing it. I don't share it very often and I notice discomfort in my body as I share. I actually think it's probably good that people experience my discomfort with this.

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Alison Cook: I don't know about you, but I know for me as a therapist, I can much more easily elucidate concepts sometimes than talk through some of my own stuff. I remember listening to you and thinking, that's part of the training. It's a good part of the training of becoming a therapist; you expose and open yourself up to the feedback of others. 

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I remember moments like that in my own seminary training, in a different context of people putting their finger on things. I'm curious because honestly, a couple people put fingers on things in my life that I was like, nope, and I knew how to smile and nod, but inside I was like nope, I won't be going there. And then a few years later going, oh my gosh, they were exactly right. 

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Chuck: It could be one of the lines from the narcissism book that is most quoted–it's the question, “how do you experience me?” That came out of that early training. In my work, because I've started a couple of counseling centers at different churches and started a couple of training programs, in every place of leadership, that's been a core question that I've asked people who I've led. 

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How do you experience me? That's, I think, a really important question for us to always have at hand, particularly for leaders. But if we're friends, spouses whatever, how do you experience me?

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Alison Cook: I think we often lead out of what we've had to learn. I know for me in various junctures, when I was writing a lot about boundaries, my kids and my husband are like, this is not one of your strong areas. I'm like, exactly. I have to think about it so hard. It is so hard for me.

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At my core, I'm such a pleaser. It would be my joy to make every person feel totally happy. So I'm constantly having to push against it. I only say that to say, often, what becomes so powerful to us is what we're learning about. Oh, this is how people experience me. How do I grow and change? I think it's really powerful about you that it has become your strength.

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Chuck: Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't end. I had a student march up to my second floor office a couple of years ago when I was up there and say, that question that you ask us to ask in class, can I answer that for you? Can I tell you how I experienced you? I was sitting there like oh, of course. Sure. 

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He said, "You talk a lot about presence, but you walk really fast through the atrium in the seminary from one thing to another. It always feels like you have a lot going on and you don't have enough time for us”. It was like, oh thank you. Let me sit with that and process that, metabolize that and understand what's going on.

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He was exactly right. I was in a season where I was traveling a lot. When I was down in the atrium, I was avoiding people because I didn't want to get caught in a conversation because I had too much to do. He gave me the gift of that reflection and I needed it.

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Alison Cook: Yeah, that's a hard one listening to you, because I'm even imagining the listener and I'm thinking of myself in those seasons, and that ability to be present and open to the feedback of others. It comes all the way back to not shaming. Yeah. I haven't been present in these moments with my kids, or I wasn't present here. I wasn't a great friend in these situations. 

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That's true. Part of me is like, I gotta go fix that now. It comes right back to, where are you? Oh God, that is where I am. I might not even do anything about it, but I can honor that. There's truth in that.

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Chuck: Yeah. I can listen in a way that acknowledges the impact on the other and I think that's a really important piece that came out of the narcissism work. Can we acknowledge our impact? What's tricky for me as a counseling professor and someone who talks about these things, is that I have students or clients or family members, by the way, who can perhaps gaslight themselves into thinking, it's probably not dad or it's probably not my professor or my counselor because he talks a lot about presence.

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He's good at that. It must be me. The reality is, and yeah, in a non-shaming way, I could say, Chuck, that is a propensity of yours. You got really good at hiding and disconnecting. It's another invitation, but it's a kind invitation.

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Alison Cook: That's a really good point about the gaslighting. Because it's not that we have to be perfect. It's not that we have to fix it. It's that we can honor that other person's experience. What you're sensing there is accurate. We're honoring the reality of their experience of me without shaming ourselves–that takes a lot of internal fortitude. It's the fruit of the work of healing that you've been doing for 20 years.

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Chuck: This is why it's not selfish. I always tell people it's not selfish, because this allows you to love your neighbor. This allows you to listen well and honor your neighbor, honor the pain, the harm that you might've caused or created. None of us are immune to that. And then we get to live.

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I'll often say to my clients, now you get to live the rest of your life in this. There's no arrival point. You continue to do the work with curiosity and you listen for those questions and you assume that you're going to be disconnected again.

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But you come back and you begin again. That's a phrase, by the way, from the Christian tradition that you see in all the great contemplatives and mystics. Begin again. It's simple and it's non-shaming. If you fail, begin again. If you get stuck, begin again. If you're disconnected, begin again. It's okay.

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Alison Cook: That's beautiful. That's a beautiful summary. That's how then we continue to live. It's a virtuous cycle of more and more goodness. It's not that we don't continue to have to begin again, but it gets a little easier. There's more compassion. 

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I have a couple more questions. Are you then also able to find pockets in your life where you can more honestly speak about what's hurting you or what you need from someone else? Do you feel like that's also a fruit of doing the work internally, of being able to then voice, oh man, that hurt? Does it flow both ways?

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Chuck: That's been an area of growth, and I think I'm getting better at saying I'm hurting or this is what I need, because I think for a long time a part of my own self-medication cycle was to be quite externalized and to help others in the midst of their needs. It's a classic sort of helper syndrome.

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So in another moment this week, in a similar way to what I described earlier, in the midst of a pressure packed, challenging situation with a pastor that I've been doing some work with, I put my hand on my chest again. My clients all discover this after a while.

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They're like, what are you doing? Are you saying the Pledge of Allegiance? What's happening right now? But, I whispered to myself, Chuck, you do hard things. It's okay. I think that in the work that we do, there needs to be an acknowledgement at times that this is hard.

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I know one of the messages that I had growing up was that I had to always look and dress the part. I couldn't have needs. I couldn't be weak, fragile, or needy. There's that sense of, yeah, this is hard. This hurts. Or you're tired. Or you need a break. Things like that are growing practices. I think even today, having done this for such a long time, I'm still a work in progress when it comes to that. Yeah.

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Alison Cook: Yeah. That's also vulnerable. I've noticed that in myself and sometimes I don't verbalize it, but shifting into myself and what I need in the moment can be a subtle cue to someone I love or someone around me. That subtle, like you're saying, deep breath, putting your hand on your heart, as a way of being known and of showing up in your own needs.

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Chuck: Yeah.

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Alison Cook: I want to end by asking you a couple of questions I like to ask my guests. What would you say to that younger 20, 25 year old you now, if you could sit with him for a few moments?

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Chuck: Wow. That's such a good question. I’d look him in the eye and co-regulate, as we say, and say breathe. Breathe. Because I think I lived my early years holding my breath a lot, pushing through and yeah, I say breathe. It's okay. That might be it because I think younger me would be in tears at that point.

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Alison Cook: It's beautiful because that's what you're doing now when you give yourself that. Yeah, that's beautiful. Chuck, what's bringing out the best of you right now?

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Chuck: Oh yeah, that's another good question. It's a sweet time in our family right now, Alison. There have been some ups and downs over the years, but my oldest is living with us for the first time in a number of years. She's 23 and she's getting married, and two weeks from Saturday, she'll be married. Sarah and I, my wife, Sarah, we've got two daughters, 23 and 21.

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We're getting to really invest in our oldest in a way that we haven't in a while. She reminded us the last time that she was the only one that lived with us. It was from zero to 16 months. We are loving time with her and time with her fiance.

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I live in Michigan in the summer and it's gorgeous. We sit on the back deck and have these unhurried conversations. That's been really beautiful.

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Alison Cook: I love that. Where can people find you and find the book? We'll link to it in the show notes, but this is going to come out probably the week it releases. I don't know if you have any kind of bonus order items or anything like that.

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Chuck: I'm on Myspace and the book, if you're listening to this days before the book comes out, there's a little bonus if you pre-order. You can get a two plus hour workshop on spiritual abuse, religious trauma and systems thinking, and how we transform ourselves and systems.

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It's a two plus hour lesson that I'll send you a code for. You can go to my website for the pre-order link. The website is ChuckDeGroat.net, and then I'm on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook, but not TikTok. I can't do it. I have not been able to do it.

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Alison Cook: The book is Healing What's Within: Coming Home to Yourself When You're Wounded, Weary, and Wandering.

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Chuck: Forward by Alison.

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Alison Cook: Yeah, that's right. It's a fantastic, beautiful resource that everybody needs. I'm thrilled. Thank you for sharing with us your expertise, but also your personhood.

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Chuck: Yeah. Thanks friend. Good to be with you.

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Has anxiety ever made it hard for you to connect with God? Do you love God but sometimes struggle with church?

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Today's episode is such a breath of fresh air. I had the pleasure of diving into a deep, insightful conversation with New York Times bestselling author John Mark Comer. We explore the powerful intersection of mental, emotional, and spiritual health, uncovering how these aspects work together to create a whole, integrated person.

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Here’s what we cover:‍

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1. Misconceptions in the church about true discipleship

2. The benefits and limits of therapy for personal growth

3. What to do when anxiety or past trauma make it hard to engage spiritual practices

4. John Mark’s candid experiences with therapy and what he’s learned

5. The two essential spiritual practices for holistic well-being

6. Our thoughts on the overlapping circles of emotional & spiritual maturity

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Resources:

• Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus. Become like him. Do as he did. by John Mark Comer
• Other books by John Mark Comer
• The Practicing the Way nonprofit
• Dr. Alison Cook with John Mark Comer on the Rule of Life Podcast
• The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud by Philip Rieff
• Freya India’s substack
• Wayfaring by Dr. Warren Kinghorn
• Episode 113: A New Vision of Human Flourishing—A Christian Approach to Mental Health with Duke University Psychiatrist & Theologian Warren Kinghorn
• I Shouldn’t Feel This Way by Dr. Alison Cook

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If you liked this, you’ll love:

• Episode 67: The Link Between Faith & Emotional Healing—Gen Z, College Life, & A Hidden Search for Meaning with Cindy Gao

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‍Thanks to our sponsors:

• Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
• Head over to WildHealth.com/BESTOFYOU and use code BESTOFYOU at checkout for 20% off!
• 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.
• 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!

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.‍

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Transcript:

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Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am so thrilled you're here today as we round out this series on “Culture and Mental Health” with a guest who is likely familiar to you. My conversation today is with John Mark Comer, the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Practicing the Way, and today's conversation is a fascinating deep dive into these overlapping circles of spiritual formation and mental health. 

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John Mark has such an interest in the realm of psychology and really sees it as integral to our overall goal of spiritual formation and being made into the likeness of Christ. What he lays out in Practicing the Way is such a nuanced, robust, rich vision of what it means to be formed into the likeness of Jesus.

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I loved this conversation. Toward the end, he asked me about a theory he's working on that gets at the overlapping circles of emotional health and spiritual health. It's a fascinating riff there, right at the end of the conversation. We could have kept going for hours. We had to stop because of time, but it was such a fun back and forth, a deep dive into this work of what it means to become a whole person, being formed by a God who loves us and who longs to be invited into deeper and deeper facets of our lives and truly transform us from the inside out.

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John Mark Comer is the New York Times bestselling author of Practicing the Way, Live No Lies, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, and four previous books. He's also the founder and teacher of Practicing the Way, which is a nonprofit dedicated to integrating spiritual formation into your church or small group.

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Prior to starting Practicing the Way, he spent almost 20 years pastoring Bridgetown church in Portland, Oregon, and working out discipleship to Jesus in the post-Christian West. Please enjoy my conversation with John Mark Comer. I can't recommend this book, Practicing the Way, enough to you and to your church communities if you're longing for a richer, more holistic, deeper understanding of what it means to be apprenticed to the person of Jesus. 

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***

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Alison Cook: I really want to go on record saying how much I immersed myself in Practicing the Way. I mentioned to you before we started recording that I can sometimes go into books specifically about spiritual formation with a part of me that wonders, “Are they going to spiritualize everything?” 

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I could sink into this book. There was something about it that I trusted because you're bringing the whole body into it. And that allowed me to really ping off of these overlaps between what a Christian psychologist does and what spiritual formation is.

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And it's not because John Mark, you're necessarily veering into the realm of psychology specifically, but more because I can tell in the way you're so well read in these ways, there's a real integrated quality to this book all the way through. It was really fun for me to read this beautiful book. It’s so loving and so needed and I appreciated it so much. I want to thank you for that.

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John Mark Comer: Oh, that is my honor, and that means a lot coming from someone like you. I hold you in great regard.

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Alison Cook: We're so thrilled to have you on the podcast today. I want to anchor our conversation. I thought it was fascinating how you describe what it means to apprentice to Jesus in such a robust way. A little bit into the book, you described three of the bad strategies, or the three myths of modern day discipleship that really rang true. It’s part of why my antenna goes up with this idea. 

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You talk about willpower, you talk about more Bible study being the cure for all things. You talk about the magical zap of the wand, the spiritual bypassing that we talk about all the time on the podcast as being part of the problem. So I want to set that aside for a second for the listener to recognize, that's not where you're going with this. 

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How do you think about what it means to apprentice to Jesus and how is it different from what a lot of us are getting taught or seeing modeled in the church?

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John Mark Comer: Yeah, pretty much all words change meaning over time. Often, we're using the same word in a conversation with another person, but we mean something totally different. Discipleship is one of those words that means different things to different people. And there's a few reasons that I prefer an alternate translation of the Greek word, which is mathetes, or the Hebrew word talmid.

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One is because I think it's a better translation of the original language. So a number of Greek scholars, who are much more intelligent than I am, would all argue that, this Hebrew talmid, or Greek mathetes, which is the word that is translated “disciple” in most English translations of the Bible, can be translated as disciple, or as follower, or as student.

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The word most literally means disciple, learner, but we don't translate it that way because the ancient near Eastern model of education was so vastly different from the modern Western model of education. A number of scholars think that our English word “apprentice” is the best kind of analog we have to the original language because it taps into a model of learning that is relational.

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You can't apprentice under a book, you can't apprentice through an online course; you have to apprentice under a master. He has to or she has to accept you, and you have to be with them. I'm sure you did that after you completed your degree–you have your advisor or whatever. The language used in psychology is a relational process. It's holistic. 

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In the ancient world, apprenticeship isn't about head knowledge, it's about skill. It's about what we would call character–who you are as a person. It's a long process. It's not necessarily linear. You may follow some kind of curriculum, but it's not like working through the chapters in a textbook. It's this kind of iterative process. It's very unique to the learner, beginning where they began and leading them forward. 

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So one reason I call it apprenticeship is, I think that along with a lot of other people, that's the best English word we have for what Jesus means by if anyone would be my mathetes–my disciple, my apprentice.

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The other reason I use it is because I think a lot of people grossly misunderstand what discipleship to Jesus is. We take this ancient concept, we tear it out of its historical context, and we import into it modern day meanings. They may be really good things, and I name in the book a few of what I think are common misconceptions. Maybe that's too strong of a language. 

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A lot of people, by “discipleship”, mean one-on-one mentorship, where a younger Christian would meet with an older Christian on a weekly basis. Beautiful thing. But I don't call that discipleship, I would call that mentorship, which is a good and necessary thing.

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Some people mean in-depth, inductive Bible study, where you get together with that mentor or group of people and you do in-depth biblical research. Somebody criticized the vicar of our church recently saying, why is our church so weak on discipleship? And when he began to press them saying, what do you want more of? What is it you feel that we're not doing? And they basically said we don't have small group Bible studies. There aren't in-depth, small group studies. So in their mind, small group Bible studies and discipleship were synonyms. 

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And then for other people, discipleship is like leadership development. So Jesus had the 12, he's raising up 12, who are you raising up? And you get the Amway model of discipleship. Those are all good things that all have a good and necessary place in spiritual life. But I don't think that's what Jesus means when he says, “come and be my disciple”.

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Discipleship was a part of Jesus' world. It was the pinnacle of the first century Jewish educational system, which began with our equivalent of elementary school, where you would study the Torah off the side of the synagogue, and then most people would finish their education by about 12 or 13.

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Then they would apprentice in the family business or help run the family farm. A small number of people would go on to a second level of education called the house of learning, where they would study the entirety of the Hebrew Bible, or what we call the Old Testament, under a scholar or a scribe or a rabbi. And that was very prestigious.

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It was sadly for men only in that patriarchal culture. And it would normally end by about 15 or 16 years old, but then only the best of the best. So this would be our equivalent of people that get into Harvard on a full ride scholarship. Only the best of the best would qualify to become a talmid or a disciple or an apprentice of a rabbi. 

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Rabbis were like the rock stars of first century Jewish culture. Very hard for us to imagine. We think of pastors as nerdy or whatever, but man, rabbis were all that back in the day. Rabbis would regularly take a small coterie of disciples of apprentices, maybe two or three, maybe six, maybe 12, maybe 70. They would have followers that would literally follow them around. 

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It was not like you would attend class Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and you would apprentice under them. Apprenticeship in that culture essentially meant you had three goals. If you made it into an apprenticeship program under a rabbi, your first goal was to be with him. You'd leave your family, you'd leave your friends, you'd leave your job, and you would literally follow. It wasn't a metaphor–you would literally follow your rabbi around. 

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Your second goal was to become like him. You wanted to be formed into the kind of person who was like your master. So this is 2000 years before radical individualism. That's not how people are thinking. That's not the highest value in that culture. You wanted to literally talk and adopt the mannerisms of not the theology and ethics, but the behavioral ways of being of your master, because you saw them as this great luminary, not of mind, but of life and heart. You wanted to embody something of what they embody. 

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And then third, your goal was to eventually do what they did. You don't call it apprenticeship in psychology, but if you're training under an advisor or whatever, I know there's a period there where you have somebody watching you and watching recordings of your sessions. What's the name for that?

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Alison Cook: It's exactly like what you're saying. It's your trainer. It's your thesis advisor. There are all sorts of names for it, but they're exact. And it's terrifying. They're watching you to see if you are ready and then they're going to entrust you. I think about those early years after going through years of training when I saw my first clients, and they're watching your every move and it's terrifying. Oh my.

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John Mark Comer: You're recording yourself. I've read about that. The end goal of that process is not for you to be able to read a psychology book off Amazon and know the definitions to terms. The end goal is for you to become a psychologist, for you to become a master, for you to be able to sit with someone and participate in the healing of their soul.

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In the same way, an apprentice to a rabbi's goal was to become a rabbi, and rabbis were not necessarily full time vocational jobs in that day. Most rabbis were bi-vocational; most of them would farm or run a business, and then in the off season or in free time, they would travel around from synagogue to synagogue and teach.

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If you take this, that's what discipleship is. Period. Full stop. And then if you translate that, if you flip that around and translate that into what does it mean to apprentice under or disciple after Jesus in our world today? It's to essentially organize your life around those three same driving goals.

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Whatever your job is, whatever your daily responsibilities are, your three organizing principles are to be with Jesus, to become like him, to be formed into a person who is on the inside, not in your behavior, but on your literal inner woman or man, has taken on the shape to mirror the properties of the inner life of Christ. And then to do as he did, to begin to live as he did, even vocationally in the way that we go about our business to live as Jesus would live if he were us. So that's my basic take.

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Alison Cook: It's so good. It begs the question for me as I was reading, I'm going to launch into some of these overlaps. In the book, and again, it's not a critical book, you do a really good job of naming, you're a namer of things, you're not criticizing, you're not trying to shame, you're saying, hey, here’s reality as I see it. I think you do a really good job of that. 

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But you talk about how some of these “one and done” models of, “I'm saved, and I'm good to go” are in many ways, part of the problem of folks leaving. Because first of all, it's not realistic. It's not how we actually change or grow. You're casting this vision of this model, of a process. It takes a long time. It requires skills. 

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You talk about the intersection between, it’s not willpower, but we do have some responsibility, and putting ourselves in the position to work synergistically with God's grace, through becoming an apprentice. I thought a lot about my process of becoming a psychologist. It was years, and then again, once you graduate and you're launched…

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John Mark Comer: You're still beginning, and you never stop learning. You never want to stop growing.

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Alison Cook: You're constantly learning. So I loved that. We have this whole culture of therapy that has developed, this whole world of psychology that has trickled down and become so mainstream, where you can, and I'm not saying this is right or wrong of an apprenticeship model, you can go weekly to meet with your therapist.

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You're getting someone attuning to you. You're attuning to those processes of, how do I regulate my emotions? How do I learn to recognize when my nervous system is moving into fight or flight? And it actually makes sense. You're actually getting some of these skills that allow you to do some of these things. There's this practicing of becoming healthier, and that person is attuning it to your uniqueness. 

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Maybe you've had some trauma. That's why this is hard for me. You're getting all this attunement over here and all this equipping. This is me armchair experting here, but I wonder if a little bit of what happens is church becomes I don't know. I'm not getting that kind of depth of formation there.

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I'm getting told to read the Bible more. I'm getting told to pray more, but I can't really do those things because when I go to pray, my mind is racing. Or when I go to read the Bible, my nervous system is still jacked up. But over here, I'm actually learning some of these skills. And I think it's subconscious. I don't think it's happening consciously, but it got me to think, there's this therapized world, and you talk about it in the book, that I think about being part of that world. This is not the end. I think therapy should be in the service of spiritual formation.

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I want to hear your thoughts on that, but I do wonder if, because we're getting some of that deep tissue formation in that world, it is setting up a little bit of disillusionment with some of these less robust, less holistic spiritual practices that you're speaking about in your book. I guess that was a whole lot I threw out there. I'm curious how you might respond to that.

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John Mark Comer: Yeah. I think you're wrestling with great questions. A vantage point I have come to with a gentle but very firm conviction is that we need to adopt a holistic or whole person approach toward discipleship/spiritual formation/sanctification. There's lots of overlap between those three terms.

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This is an oversimplification, but the tragic split between discipleship, or what older generations called sanctification, and the therapeutic world, is devastating for both sides. So there's great disillusionment that we're really in touch with as people that grew up in the church from people that grew up in the evangelical model of discipleship and found it did not produce deep healing and significant levels of spiritual maturity.

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But what is fascinating, and I'm sure you see this more than me, but man I am seeing it start to explode, as therapy has gone mainstream over let's call it 10 years. Philip Reif writes about the shift from religious man to psychological man, forgive his male-centric language.

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He's writing that in the sixties. His famous line, “Religious man was born to be saved. Psychological man is born to be pleased” is in his book, Triumph of the Therapeutic, about the impact of Freud on Western culture. So obviously this is, at some level, 100 plus years old, this development into a therapeutic culture. But now the TikTok-ification of therapy is actually producing radical disillusionment from Gen Z over the limitations of therapy without God to actually heal the soul. 

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Alison Cook: Yeah.

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John Mark Comer:  A female thinker I'm following very closely right now is Freya India. She has a phenomenal Substack. She had an article recently, “Our new religion isn't enough”, that is basically this scathing indictment, not so much of therapy, but of therapy as a new secular quasi-religion without God. 

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It's interesting, if you separate these two things, if you separate, for example, therapy from Christian discipleship. As a Christian, if you participate in church, and that's one sphere of your life, then therapy is another more secular sphere of your life. 

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There's so much good about therapy. This comes with the assumption that I, and most of your listeners are fans of therapy. I’ve been in therapy for 14 years, I’m a big fan. But regarding secular therapy, many psychologists have told me, we're taught in school that therapy is to be objective. We're not to have a worldview. Yet that is totally unrealistic.

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You cannot give therapy without some level of worldview, some transcendent sense of good and evil. So therapy apart from God is radically individualistic. It's not communal. At some level, it's the professionalization of community. People often confess things to their therapist they would never in a million years say to their family or friends or community.

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So it enables this projection, often, of the false self to those people, because we don't actually have to come out of hiding with people where we have accountability and people who see us outside of this context, people who want to attune to us, but also call us on our crap because we're doing life together.

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Secondly, it can be ultimately narcissistic. I'm not talking about good Christian therapy, I'm talking about TikTok kind of therapy–some of the new slogans like, “Is this serving you?”. In a secular, pluralistic culture, often happiness or subjective emotional well-being becomes the litmus test of ethical decision making. Do you stay in a marriage or not? Is this serving me? Do I continue to ______? I don't know. Is this serving me? Is it helping me or hindering me? 

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And then third, it has no transcendent source of moral authority. So I read, I won't name it, but I read a very interesting recent secular book that has some really good things. I was very happy to incorporate some of their therapeutic thoughts, but man, never in a million years would I still be married to my wife if I were to follow that worldview. 

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There's all this disillusionment, and at some level, naming your wound is different than healing your wound. I still think modern therapy does a way better job at identifying what's wrong than it does at healing the deep parts of the soul. And the good versions of it do a really good job.

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But on the Christian discipleship side, we all have a model of discipleship, and the Jesus model is holistic. I think you get all of what you get in therapy and more, but the evangelical model of discipleship that I grew up with is so wildly deficient. It's enlightenment based, it's so Cartesian, it's so head-based, in science language, it's explicit knowledge based, not implicit knowledge.

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It doesn't attend to wounding, it has no concepts for trauma and attachment, it's not a super relational process necessarily, unless you get a one on one mentor, it's often one to many, not one on one, it's this very linear process, and it is head up, and it does some aspects really good, so it's not all bad.

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It tends to produce, it tends to be most impactful early in the spiritual journey, when your mental maps to reality are so screwed up by the world that remapping through learning Scripture, hearing good sermons, hearing biblical truth, remapping your mental imagination to what's good and true and beautiful produces a significant effect on you, which is why new Christians tend to just, I think by the intuition of the Spirit, consume Scripture and podcasts and books and sermons. It's like they're eating it up. 

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I think that's the Spirit of God saying, “Your mental maps to reality, your explicit knowledge is so wildly off base that as you refill your mind with truth, your body is going to begin to naturally realign to Jesus' vision of human flourishing”. The problem is, the moment we reach a stage in our discipleship where the problem is no longer that we don't know what Scripture teaches, or we don't want what Scripture teaches.

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It's that we cannot get our body, our heart, our will, or our desire to fall in step, the automatic responses of my body. The problems in my marriage are not most likely not going to be solved by a really good sermon on Ephesians chapter five. I know it, I've taught it, I know the Greek. The problem is not that I don’t know what the Greek means by “love your wives as you love your own flesh”.

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It's my self-preservation instincts, whether you want to go through evolutionary psychology or the flesh or the narcissistic traits that run so deep in me that when I'm tired, in particular, when I've had a stressful day, the automatic responses that come out of my body toward my wife have yet to take on the inner life of Christ.

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So I need something more than yet another good sermon through Ephesians five. I need a way to get this explicit knowledge, this truth, into the implicit knowledge of my body, which goes into all the work and the domain that you work in. Spiritual formation, and I'll end with this, is a newer phrase that started on the Catholic side of the aisle and spread into Protestantism several decades ago.

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It has been gaining steam for a few decades. One way to think about what spiritual formation is, is the evangelical model of discipleship, updated with the best learnings of psychology from a Christian worldview. And that's how I think about it. Or you could say it's a whole-person model of discipleship.

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You look at spiritual formation, it was mostly introduced to us, not by pastors and biblical scholars, but by psychologists, psychiatrists, spiritual directors, professors, and philosophers. Almost all the luminary voices come from that tradition. And I think they're absolutely updating what's missing in the evangelical world.

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Alison Cook: It sounds like you're almost saying spiritual formation is that integrated space where psychology meets the spiritual. It's mental, emotional, spiritual, it's the whole being. It's the nervous system. It's not that one dimensional, pray your anxiety away thing.

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There's a bunch of stuff you're saying. First of all, you're so aptly naming disillusionment everywhere. There's disillusionment with the limitations of what my church has offered me. I'm thinking of the listener. There's disillusionment with therapy. To your point, it's so isolated. It's so individualized. It is not an end in and of itself. 

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John Mark Comer: My therapist said to me recently, people come to me and they think that I will be able to stop their pain. They think I will offer solutions and an end to their pain. And then what you learn is there is no escaping pain. That's actually what growth is. 

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Alison Cook: Yeah. These are all spokes on the wheel. It's another tool to help you toward the end of what you lay in the book, which is abiding with Jesus, who is the true lover of our soul, who is the true one with whom there is no disappointment or disillusionment. I get what you're saying.

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There's lots of room for disillusionment on all sides with all of these fixes. I want to get to practicing the presence. You quote brother Lawrence, and when you're describing this, there's this integrated, don't be fooled into thinking, oh, I'm going to have to go pray my anxiety away. 

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It's not simplistic. It's an integrated, holistic, whole being, bringing everything into the presence of God. It occurred to me, John Mark, as I was reading, it's so beautifully written, so graceful, so loving, you want to melt into it. I started thinking about the mechanisms by which we can practice the presence of God. 

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You lay out the practices that we need to do. They're not legalistic, but these are the things we need to do. We need to be alone with God. We need to be in prayer. We need to be in Sabbath. There are some of these really ancient practices that are going to facilitate this. I started thinking, let's take prayer for an example, or when you talk about being with Jesus, I started thinking about where a psychologist comes in, or a therapist comes in. 

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You talk about every morning going into your room and sitting in silence. As an introvert, you love that. You talk about how your friend likes to go out and walk in the park because they’re an extrovert. I need some external stimuli. There's not a one size fits all. But let's say I'm doing that, and my mind is racing and I can't stop.

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There's so much pain that I can't be alone because what's happening actually is I've got some trauma that I've never dealt with. And what's happening when I'm sitting alone is, and this is the kind of thing my listeners will come to me with, that doesn't work for me. It's horrible. I have to leave and then I feel bad.

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And then I feel shame because I'm not able to do this and I can't sit with God. And I'm a bad Christian and all this shame fills me. What I'll say is, that sounds to me like your body is doing its job. There's a cue there. This is painful and it's not God. There's shame there. It's that, gosh, maybe I need to, in order to abide with Christ, my nervous system isn't letting me sit in silence. 

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This is where a good Christian therapist can come in and facilitate that process and help get to the root, like a surgeon, get to the root of what's going on here. In psychology, we talk about bottom up approaches to healing versus top down.

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John Mark Comer: Explain that to me.

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Alison Cook: Top down–this is also true in psychology, it's true in the church–top down is, we're going to look at cognition. We're going to look at insight. We're going to examine thoughts for someone who has trauma living in their body. It's not helpful. Bottom up approach is, we're going to start with the body.

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How do we learn to breathe? And I'll tell you in my own life, learning to attune to my body, my emotional state, was a portal to God's presence. Because I lived in my mind. I can evaporate into my mind and completely disassociate from my body and live there for days and years. And I learned to come into my body and those nervous system interventions that I learned as a psychologist. Suddenly, even now to this day, my best portal to connection with God is my posture.

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John Mark Comer: Interesting.

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Alison Cook: I'll start bottom up, instead of starting, and this might sound heretical, but instead of starting with going to God, because then I go to my mind and I start thinking about God. I go to my body.

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I take that breath, and suddenly, there's God–because God's meeting me right there where I need to be met. It's actually out of my mind, in my body. And that's where I began to be able to practice the present. So what I'm saying is, I think there are different ways. The nuances of the human soul are so different and so intricate.

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A good Christian therapist can come in and go, maybe let's start with the body. Maybe let's start with some grounding so you can feel what it is to be in your body, in a calm nervous system. And that might be the path to that experience of God's presence that has been so elusive to you.

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And that's how I was thinking as I was reading about this. I was like, this is where some of these therapeutic interventions that we’re trained in dovetail so nicely into this overall goal, but it's still not the end. It’s, oh my gosh, as I begin to attune to my nervous system, to these emotional states, suddenly there, I find God. 

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I'm sad right now, and I'm with God. Oh, I'm tense. What's that about? And that becomes that prayerful practicing the present. So I'm curious how that lands on you, but that's where I started to see where my work dovetails with this goal that you're laying out, which is practicing that constant presence of Jesus.

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It's not giving up on it because man, I can't do it. It's wrestling for how it works for my unique design and my unique history. And again, this is where that individualistic side of me, I was so trained to think about individuals, where if I'm thinking of someone, I'm always going through that lens of, okay, you've got this trauma history. You're disappearing into your mind as an escape hatch. Let's bring you into your body. And that might be where you find God.

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John Mark Comer: Yeah. I could not agree more. We're saying the same thing from different angles. The modern mind likes to categorize the human person. So you have your spiritual life and then you have your mental life and then your emotional life and your relational life and your physical life, but nowhere do we experience life in categories like that other than in chapters in a book or points in a sermon. 

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I'm not right now experiencing my mental life or my physical life or my relational life. I'm experiencing life. Now, I think if you define mind as directed attention, which I find is a compelling understanding of what the mind is, then I think we can bring our direct attention to different aspects of our whole self. 

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So we can think about the tightness in our chest, or we can think about anxieties that are coming up for us about tomorrow. We can think about another person that we're present to and we can focus our attention on these different aspects of our whole person, but it's all us.

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Many people don't even realize that in Hebrew there is no word for spiritual. If you get out a concordance or go to Bible Gateway or Bible Hub and look up the word spiritual, first off, you won't even read it, really, until the writings of Paul. It's not anywhere in the first three quarters of the Bible.

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And then in the New Testament, it doesn't mean what most people think it means. It doesn't mean immaterial. It's a relational word. It means in relationship with or in attunement with the spirit of God or with other spirits. You can be spiritual with other spirits besides the Holy Spirit.

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And Jesus barely uses the word at all. The quip is, if you were to ask Jesus how his spiritual life was, he would probably look at you really confused and be like, my spiritual life…you mean my life?

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Alison Cook: It’s not bifurcated.

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John Mark Comer: Yeah, I think part of the problem is that we separate all these things. So we think of beginning and breathing and letting pain come up versus mental prayer versus church. There are different aspects for sure, but we think of them as different categories and that's wildly unhelpful. 

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This is where a good therapist or pastor or spiritual director is so helpful for knowing what your next step is, or what your doorway into God is. We don't all start from the same place. And what's easy for one is impossible for another. I write a bunch about the practices for a number of different reasons. There's no official list of the practices in the New Testament. 

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Some people say there's seven, some talk about nine, some people talk about 70 of them. You could argue that there are really two practices. Going into the quiet to be alone with God, and deep relational connection and community. Everything else–prayer, Scripture, worship, Eucharist, gratitude, all of it happens in these two buckets of what you could call the quiet or the deep relational connection.

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This is where I think you and I would be on the very same page. The goal of both of those is attunement in modern language. At some level, it's the healing of our attachment filters and our emotional memory that blocks us from trusting love. And I think, the goal of all the practices is attunement to God and to one another and how you get to that attunement.

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And you would understand better than I, the many things that often block our capacity to attune, not to God and prayer, but to one another. I'll watch that with certain people. You begin to connect with the person, and then something is said. It happened to me a few days ago, and I could see this person's brain went offline.

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They went straight into anxiety mode, and they were no longer emotionally connecting with me. They were marshaling an intellectual defense to try to tamp down their anxiety. It was visible. It was all over the person's face. And I'm sure that's because I mishandled the conversation. But you saw that relational connector; it's almost like there was a switch that turned off, and they went into a different thing.

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I think both of those are really tricky for people, and that's where the healing of the soul is incredibly important. And both of those spaces of solitude and community are often more diagnostic than therapeutic. Often they reveal what's wounded or broken more than they heal it, and again, they do both.

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Sometimes, if you go into solitude or you get into a deep relationship and all this crap comes up, wounding comes up and fear comes up and shame comes up, that's a gift in its own right. All of that's in you. It's sabotaging your life, your formation into a person of love. Let it come up. And the hope is to get to contemplative spaces where we're experiencing the love of God in prayer and safe, deep, trusting relationships where we're experiencing the love of God through another person's love.

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Alison Cook: Yeah, I love that. I think that is where hyperindividualism leads us nowhere good. We do have individual differences. So toward this end of being formed, I love how you talk about in the book, we are all being formed. We are all being formed by something or someone into someone. We are all being formed.

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So let's be real clear. We want to be formed by Jesus. And there are a lot of individual differences about how that might happen. One of the things I really appreciated, John Mark, is that you lay out nine practices in the book. Where you and I first met is, you had me on your podcast because you were doing a series on fasting.

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You talk about that as a practice. Jesus fasted. And you said, I want a mental health professional to talk about the nuances of fasting for particular groups of people, especially people who have dealt with eating disorders, especially people who have dealt with disembodiment. What you're doing there is so beautiful.

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You're saying, and I want people to know, as you read this book, it's not all or nothing. Bring your individual story to the table. If sitting in silence stirs up your anxiety, that's a cue. Don't beat yourself up for that. Don't throw the baby out with the bath. Oh, what is that about? Get some help, seek support, talk to somebody about it.

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If your church is fasting and for you, that's dangerous ground, that's a cue. That's another invitation for healing. So I like how you're saying that these practices aren't necessarily prescriptive. They're going to reveal, in a non shaming way, different areas of our souls that might need more attention, more healing.

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And a Christian therapist could be helpful in that, a spiritual director, speaking honestly about that. I don't think we have to throw out this emphasis that psychology has brought to us, of the individual nuances of our souls and our stories that matter to God, and also these universal practices that are so important. 

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We don't have to throw out one for the other. And that's where I really enjoyed reading your book and thinking about how we all are doing our jobs. You're helping remind us of these practices that are so crucial to becoming like Jesus.

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My work might be coming in and helping the individual figure out how to tune up or how to heal a specific area in a specific way that this practice is revealing. It brings some heartache or brings some pain or brings some specific issues in a non shaming way.

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John Mark Comer: Yes. Which is why for many people, I'm going to hesitate to say this, because they're not mutually exclusive, but the practices are not the place to start, with spiritual formation or discipleship. Relationships are; healing is. This is a clumsy analogy, but if you were to shrink your view of the person down a bit more to the body, I had a great chat with my son last night who's 15 years old, a sophomore in high school, who's an artist.

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He's a brilliant artist, and wildly out of shape. Doesn't play sports at all, has not done any working out, and he draws for hours a day and it's actually beginning to deform his body a little bit. He's maturing, he's growing, so he's on this new kick. He wants to start exercising.

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He started martial arts. And he was chatting about joining the cross country team at school, running and getting cardio. And it was all a delight to my heart to hear that he's beginning to realize, I have to take my body seriously. I can't sit around and draw.

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I'm a whole person. Let's say you are my son, Moses, or you're whoever, and you decide you want to start running cross country or you want to run a half marathon. There is one aspect of that which is discipline, skills, training, effort, hard work, building muscle, building capacities that you don't have through repetitive training in community.

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But if Moses has a broken leg, or stage four cancer, thankfully he doesn't have either, or a sprained ankle, then you don't start with running sprints. You don't start with, “drop down and give me 400 pushups”. You start with surgery, or healing, or chemotherapy. Now, these things are not mutually exclusive.

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You can do chemo and you're probably not going to be running five miles a day, but you should go for a walk every day at the same time, take a micro step forward toward moving your body. And I think in a similar way, this is an oversimplification, but there are these practices that are, at some level, disciplines and skills by which we open our inner life to grow into people of love.

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But often those practices are wildly ineffective if we're living with wounds beyond the normal cuts and scrapes of living through the world. The body self-heals minor wounds, but deep wounds need extra care. So if I nick my hand this afternoon and I bleed a little bit, I can wash it off and leave it alone and it'll heal by itself.

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If I get in a car wreck, I'm not going to go home and take some ibuprofen. I'm gonna go to the hospital and have surgery because my body's not gonna heal by itself. It will die without help. And I think our whole person is that way. There are certain emotional wounds that we can heal from. Just give them some time and some healthy movement, and you'll be okay. 

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And then other wounds where, no, you need some relational attunement to help heal from this in order to not die, but to flourish and thrive. We all have our own starting point. And that's why for some people, the step isn't to go on a seven day solitude retreat and memorize half the book of Psalms. It's to start therapy. We can only do so much at a time, 

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Alison Cook: To look at those attachment wounds or look at the shame that keeps coming up that keeps you from experiencing God's love because you've never experienced love in your body. So how would you even know what that felt like? Yeah, that's so good. John Mark. I love that. I love that.

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Start where there's a wound. Start there. That's a part of that formation. You're taking a brave step toward healing which will move you forward.

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John Mark Comer: We don't heal ourselves. We do not, so that's where the therapeutic thing falls down and often people become wildly aware of their wounding and how they got messed up and how their current behavior is tied to their parents or whatever, but then they're not really that different five years later.

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They're more self-aware. We cannot self-heal. And again, I have a holistic view of salvation, like I have a holistic view of discipleship. I think salvation is in part about the healing of the whole person, including the body and resurrection eventually. In solitude or in scripture, the real goal is not to control or mechanize or self-engineer our character formation.

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It's to set our self before God and let him do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. And therapy often works that way. You can't fix yourself. The insight is wildly helpful, but it is not sufficient for deep healing and change. Woody Allen is a wildly self-aware person who's been in therapy twice a week for longer than I've been alive.

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And if you know some of his marital, sexual history, it is shocking that he can walk around in public and be accepted. Self-awareness alone, insight, that's one of the myths of the therapeutic generation. We think that insight alone is enough to change. It's the myth of evangelical preaching and Gen Z TikTok therapy. If I know this thing, then I'll be okay. 

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But as you're saying, you can know how you're messed up. You can know how you got messed up. And still, what's the Thomas Keating line who was doing work in this vein long before my time? The issues are in the tissues. There is this deep sin in all of us, if you want to call it that. Brokenness, wounding, if that's more palatable language, is in all of us. All of us need to be healed and saved and formed.

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Alison Cook: Are you familiar with the Warren Kinghorn out of Duke?

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John Mark Comer: No, I'm not.

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Alison Cook: You'd love his book, Wayfaring. It's a brilliant book. We had him on the podcast a few weeks ago, but he talks about the seven pillars of mental health flourishing in the mental health community: resilience, emotional regulation, self awareness, all these things. They're great. These are good things. 

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And they're not ends in and of themselves. He uses Aristotle to talk about actual human flourishing. Even if you are very self-aware, you can regulate your emotions, all of these things, you're still not in the realm of transformation.

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John Mark Comer: Can I try an idea on you, Alison? And I want you to genuinely disagree with me if you don’t agree. I'm working a lot of this stuff out. I've been essentially trying to read my way into a Master's degree in psychology. And I think I might know enough only to cause damage at this point. But I've been thinking about Pete Scazzaro, who has done so much good work on this over the years about the link between emotional health and spiritual maturity.

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I have been defining emotional maturity and spiritual maturity with the huge caveat that these are not separate categories. We're whole people. The emotional category, emotional health or emotional maturity, I think of as two essential skills. One, it's the capacity to be aware of what you're feeling, of your internal state, to name and notice what's coming up in your body and your heart and ideally even notice maybe where it comes from.

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You know what parts of your past, your story, your family of origin, your experience is tied to and how that's mapping onto your present experience.

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And then secondly, to not be run by those feelings, to receive them hospitably, to welcome them, to learn from them. But to know they're not inerrant truth. They’re messages, they’re messengers, and they have their own bias. In psychology that would be called emotional regulation, and I think in the New Testament that's called self-control, and I think it's the same.

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I think it's the same idea. The ability to have these feelings, to be in touch with them, to notice them, and name them, and listen to them, and even welcome them without letting them necessarily dictate your behavior. Spiritual maturity I would define as the ability to know, and the ability and willingness to know and do the will of God. So it's the ability and the willingness. So you want to do the will of God, and you actually have the ability to know and do the will of God. 

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Some people don't know what God's will is for sexuality or money or whatever. They're still learning, hence the role of Bible study and sermons. And then the will of God often gets more complex as you age. And then there's the ability. Often I know what God's will is for me as a husband, but then I often don't have the ability, at least not consistently, to follow through on God's will. And that's where I think these two things rise together.

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You can only become so spiritually mature if you are emotionally immature. If you lack the capacity to be with your feelings, to know where they come from, to not let them run you, then no matter how well you know the commands of Jesus in the New Testament, you're not going to be able to consistently obey them because you don't have the emotional capacity.

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Or on the flip side, I know some people that are quite emotionally sophisticated and have good interpersonal relationships, but frankly, they are living by their own source of moral authority. They're doing their own thing. They're not interested in obeying the teachings of Jesus about marriage or money or you fill in the blank.

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For me, I'm wanting to bring these two things together, believing that they're not actually separate categories. They're actually two aspects of becoming people of love in Christ. So how does that hit you? Would you push back on that or interact with that?

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Alison Cook: You're speaking right to my playbook. In I Shouldn’t Feel This Way, which is my latest book. I lay out this framework of “name, frame, brave”. Naming emotions, to your point, is that emotional self-awareness, emotional framing. The second step is the least glamorous. It’s that process where those two things come together.

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If you are angry, for example, and you're aware of it, “I'm angry, mad at my partner, I'm mad at my kids. That framing step is the liminal place, it's the place in between, where you've named something, but you don't know yet the third thing, which is braving–what am I going to do with it? 

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Framing is that area for spiritual discernment, knowing the will of God, discerning the emotion and its role. It could be a pause. That pause of discernment, of deeper reflection,might lead you to “You know what? I'm angry for a reason”. And part of emotional intelligence isn't just knowing the emotion, it's actually speaking constructively when necessary. So the anger might be, I need to have a hard conversation with this person because I don't like what's happening here. I'm not going to lash out at them, but this anger is here for a reason.

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Part of that framing might be, I'm angry because I'm being a jerk and I'm being selfish. And I actually need to surrender that anger to God. This person isn't doing anything wrong and I'm being petty. So that framing, that discernment, is where I went when you said that it's where those two connect. 

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We're looking at the emotions while also discerning with God's spirit what to do on behalf of that emotion. The same emotion or the same set of circumstances could lead to a very different framing. What is the will of God, to your point? Is God inviting me to be brave here and actually speak up on behalf in a healthy way?

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John Mark Comer: What do I do with this anger? What is it moving my body to do? And is that in line? Yeah, you used a word earlier that I really love. You used the word integrated. I like to say I take an integrated approach to discipleship. And what I mean by that is, for me, my primary sense of self is as an apprentice of Jesus.

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My primary sense of the meaning and purpose of life is that I am following Jesus and apprenticing under Him into becoming a person, ultimately, of love over a lifetime and beyond. And for me, Jesus’, commands and teachings that come to us through the four Gospels, and the collection of writings that have grown up around them that we call the New Testament, for me, frames my worldview, my telos, my sense of what's good and beautiful and true, and what's bad and ugly and untrue. 

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I'm not questioning what marriage is, or what gender is–I'm getting all of that from Jesus. But then, how do I obey the commands of Jesus–be anxious for nothing, do not worry about tomorrow, honor others above yourselves, do not be afraid–these are the commands of Jesus. I am more than happy, because I am a whole person, to take a whole person integrated approach toward becoming the kind of person who can consistently obey the commands of Jesus. 

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So, do not worry. Great command. I cannot consistently obey that command based on insight and willpower. I'm very happy to go to church every Sunday to listen to sermons, to read scripture every day, to pray. I also do a cold plunge every single day. We have an infrared sauna. I'm on a number of supplements. I take L theanine. I've done the almond clinics, brain scans. 

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I'm on medication to lower my heart rate because I have a traumatized nervous system from a sudden infant death syndrome when I was three months old where I either died and resuscitated or was almost killed. Working with several clinical psychologists, they basically said that it permanently damaged my nervous system and put me into a kind of fight or flight, all the time. 

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So my whole body is in need of healing. I'm more than happy to take a whole body approach to discipleship, which is why I'm very happy reading the wisdom of therapists who are totally far from Jesus in their worldview. I'm adapting in attachment filters, sure. Because what I'm trying to say yes to is Jesus calling my life to become a person of love in him. 

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So that's where I think we have such an opportune moment here with the disillusionment in both the church and in the secular world, to bring back together two things that never should have been separated: discipleship to Jesus and the therapeutic healing and growth and development of the soul through relational connection. 

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All of it for me is ultimately about apprenticing under Jesus with my whole person.

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Alison Cook: I love it. I need to let you go. Thank you for being here, and Practicing the Way is a fantastic, beautiful, holistic read. I can't recommend it more.

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John Mark Comer: That's incredibly kind. So grateful for you, Alison, for the work you're doing. I know it must be hard to live inside the contours of the Western Protestant Church with the passions and insight and expertise that you have as a psychologist. And I want to say thank you for staying faithful.

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We need pastors to learn about the therapeutic, and we need therapists to learn and stay rooted in biblical orthodoxy. Tragically, the people that are biblically orthodox are very far from this conversation, and the people that are psychologically sophisticated drift theologically. Thank you for holding that together.

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I want to honor you and bless you and say, may your tribe increase, may your life be long, and may your podcast be well listened to. May the books be many and may the grace of God continue to be upon your life.

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Alison Cook: Thanks. Thanks so much. It means a lot. Appreciate it.

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