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Conflict is a part of every relationship. It's normal to disagree from time to time- even (especially!) with the people you love the most. Yet so many of us fear conflict and do all we can to avoid it. In today's episode, I show you how to transform conflict into an opportunity for growth.
Here's what we cover:
1. The causes of conflict (6:48)
2. 5 benefits of conflict (10:17)
3. The top 3 reasons we avoid conflict (21:18)
4. 4 steps to mastering conflict (30:40)
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Music by Andy Luiten
Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
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.
Resources
- Pre-order I Shouldn't Feel This Way on Amazon!
- The Best of You by Dr. Alison Cook
Transcript
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am so glad you're here. I loved all the feedback you've been giving me about these last two episodes, about what happiness really is. The whole point of this series is that happiness is more complex than what it seems at face value. It's all about putting yourself on the right path. So today we're going to lean right into that complexity and talk about walking into conflict, as a way of moving toward increasing degrees of happiness.
Now, if you subscribe to my weekly email, it goes out every week to over 60,000 people. You were the first to find out that I have a brand new book coming out May 7th. It's called I Shouldn't Feel This Way. This book is all about working through the inner conflict that so many of us face, those inner tensions that keep us stuck and defeated and far from the happiness we really crave.
On one hand, you feel like you should show up for your friend. But on the other hand, you are wrestling with feelings of hurt or betrayal. You feel like you should have positive feelings toward your spouse. But on the other hand, you wrestle with feeling lonely or disappointed. You feel like you should have unwavering faith on one hand. On the other hand, you wrestle with doubt or discouragement when it comes to your relationship with God.
These inner tensions, inner conflicts are normal. We all feel these ways at times and the path toward health, toward wholeness, and yes, toward increasing degrees of happiness isn't to guilt trip. It isn't to shove those inner tensions aside.
It's to work our way through them. That is what I Shouldn't Feel This Way is all about. I poured over these pages last year, laying down my own three step framework to work through those inner tensions so that you can move from stuck and defeated and trapped into courageous action. So it would mean so much to me if you go pre order I Shouldn't Feel This Way.
But in today's episode, I want to give you some background teaching. So you understand that the true path toward happiness inside yourself and in your relationships means you have to find a way through conflict. You can't avoid it. You can't bypass it. You can't pretend like it's not there. You have to learn how to deal with conflict in your relationships.
The truth is facing conflict in your relationships leads to greater degrees of happiness. The opposite is also true. If you're suppressing conflict, if you're avoiding it, if you're bypassing it, if you're on the path and you're seeing conflict there and you're doing everything you can to get around it so that you don't have to walk through it, you're actually weakening your relationships. That's the most important thing I want you to take from today's episode.
If you're avoiding conflict at all costs, you aren't helping your relationships, you're not improving your relationships. In fact, you are actually in jeopardy of weakening them. Research shows that when you learn to proactively engage in healthy conflict, you improve your relationships, improve your own well being, you earn the respect of your peers, and you will experience less depression, anxiety, and loneliness.
Listen, I want to be honest with you here. I hate conflict. I hate it. I am one of those people that when I see conflict there on the path, I will do anything to walk around it, anything, including hurting myself. I have also found it also hurts my relationships. It's not good for me and it's not good for other people.
So I need this episode today as much as you do listening. This is hard. I remember years ago someone challenged me on this very point. They said, wouldn't you rather be respected by other people than liked? I had to think hard about that because there is a strong, pleasing part of me that would settle for liked over respected, but I'm learning to change.
I'm learning to grow. I'm learning that short term instant gratification of making somebody happy is not worth the long term sacrifice of respect, of trust, of dignity that actually leads to greater relational health over time.
When we avoid conflict, we risk damaging relationships which leads to greater degrees of isolation. Conflict is necessary for growth. We have to learn how to face it. So without further ado, let's talk about how to achieve happiness through conflict and small, brave steps we can take to move through conflict instead of avoiding it.
So what do we mean when we talk about conflict? What is conflict?
In the context of our relationships, that term conflict refers to any disagreement, clash, or even a mild tension. It could be massive, it could be tiny—anything that occurs between you and another person, a friend, a family member, your own child, a spouse, a parent, any relationship where there are two different viewpoints.
There might be conflicting needs, where you have one need and your loved one has another need. There could be conflicting goals, where you want to go one way and they want to go another way. It could be conflicting values.
Here's the thing: we're going to have conflict in every single one of our relationships because human beings never completely align. You and your very best friend at times are going to have differing viewpoints. You're going to have competing needs. You're going to have different goals or even slightly different values. We don't ever line up 100 percent with another human being. This is a good thing. I worry when someone is so mapped on to another person that they don't have their own distinct viewpoint. That's not healthy. That's getting into codependency.
So in healthy relationships, on any given day there are going to be clashes between individuals. These can be tiny things. It might be who got to the grocery checkout line first, and you've got to navigate that conflict. It could be a conflict with one of your kids who doesn't like the curfew that you set. It could be a conflict with your spouse about how to unwind after dinner, what television show to watch. It could be a conflict with one of your friends who said something that kind of stung when it landed.
And these are the smaller ways that we clash with other people. There are also bigger ways. You might hold different political viewpoints from someone you love. You might hold different religious viewpoints from someone you love. You might even have the same faith, but differ about where you want to go to church or how you viewed a sermon. There might be bigger conflicts about how to raise kids or how to spend money.
These types of conflicts are part of being in relationship with other people. The only way to not have conflict is to live in isolation and that's not a good option.
We have to learn to deal with conflict.
Now, I Shouldn't Feel This Way starts with the inner conflict that we feel because usually that's where it starts. We feel something that we don't like, or we notice that we're not aligned with the other person, that we're feeling differently than they're feeling. What do we do with those feelings? Do we hide them?
Do we bury them? Do we suppress them or do we learn how to speak on behalf of what we feel in a healthy way so that we can experience the positive benefits of being in relationship with other people who at the end of the day are different from us.
This is a beautiful thing. God made us with a lot of differences, with a lot of diversity. We have different viewpoints. We have different beliefs. We see things differently. This is a good thing. We do not want to be clones of each other.
And part of our work in this world is to learn how to work our way through these differences to arrive at even better solutions.
That leads us to why is conflict so important? What are the benefits of conflict?
Well, learning to engage in conflict has been shown to be necessary for so many reasons. Number one, it improves a sense of self confidence. Learning to navigate conflict and resolve it effectively gives you an incredible boost to your self esteem. In short, it helps you grow. It helps you grow in how you show up with your kids and how you show up with your friends in how you show up with a partner, with a spouse and how you show up at work. It makes you a more effective leader in all of those categories.
Number two, engaging in conflicts improves relationships. It's not fun to name something hard or something that's not working in a relationship. It's not fun. It's hard to do. It takes some trial and error to figure it out.
But the alternative is to suffer tensions or misunderstandings or miscommunications that don't need to be suffered. Often when you are willing to address an awkward conversation where you name something, especially in healthy relationships where there's a baseline of trust, the other person is relieved.
They're like, man, that wasn't working for me either. Together you look at the problem. You're not blaming each other. You're saying, this isn't working. This thing outside of us isn't working. Can we find a better way? So for example, maybe at work, you're frustrated with a colleague who always pushes things right up to the edge of the deadline, but you're also aware that you've never actually asked them to get things to you a little bit sooner.
So it's hard. You're gonna take a risk, but when you name something and say, hey, listen, next time, could we try something new? Could we try to get this together a week out so that we have margin before the deadline to fix anything that doesn't work? Would you be willing to do that with me?
That other person might be like, yeah, that's a really good idea. I tend to work to the deadline. It's a bad habit. I'm so glad you spoke up. I'm happy to try that. Let's do that together. So you're bringing a gift that you have to the table that will actually free this other person to grow a little bit too.
Now listen, I know that it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes the other person is like, no, I'm not doing that. But at least you forced that problem to the surface and you've given yourself a fighting chance to approach it in a way that would be beneficial for both of you.
Number three, facing conflict helps you clarify your values when you face the conflict, especially inside of your own self, when you're really honest about these two different conflicting things you feel. If part of you is feeling like, oh, I don't want to be a squeaky wheel. I don't want to raise this issue in my friendship.
But another part of you is going, this actually really matters to me. I do care. I don't like it that we're always doing things that are more expensive than what I can afford, or I don't like it that my friend is always pushing me for more time than I have to give, or I don't like it that my friend doesn't reach out to me, that I'm always the one initiating. You boil it down to, I love this friend and this thing that's bothering me really matters to me.
It's a value that I have. So in order to honor that relationship, I need to honor that value. So when you face the conflict, especially the conflict inside of yourself, you force yourself to get really clear about your values. Is this something I really care about, in which case I need to bring it to the table?
Or is this a value I can set aside? I don't care that much. It's not worth fighting for. But when you face that conflict, you make a clear decision. You don't bypass what you feel. You don't avoid it. You actually look at it and clarify your values.
Facing conflict can expand your perspective. Sometimes you go to the other person and you raise an issue and you say, hey, this has been a little bit hard for me. Can we talk about it? you find out valuable information about the other person. Maybe you go to someone and say, hey, it's kind of hurt that I haven't heard from you in a couple of months. Can we talk?
The other person says to you, hey, man, I'm sorry. So sorry, I have been so stressed out because of X, Y, and Z going on in my life. I haven't had the bandwidth to reach out to anyone. Suddenly, you have information and you can pivot and you can say, oh my gosh, I don't want to pressure you.
I want to support you. How can I be praying for you? Take the time that you need.
So facing the conflict allows you to gain information that changes your perspective, that allows you to become an even better friend. Facing conflict helps you engage in problem solving. When you walk into conflict, you name something hard and it allows you to problem solve together with the other person.
It helps you build resilience within the context of your cherished relationships, not only resilience in yourself. You're learning to be brave to raise things that matter to you, but also resilience within the context of your relationship.
Sometimes it takes a couple laps around the track to get it right with someone. You might go to someone with something that you need to talk about. And they say, oh, that's hard. I don't know if I can do that, but let's see if we can tackle this together.
It puts you on the same team with somebody and together, you don't have to figure it out right away, but you can start to have conversations that show how much you care about each other and develop resilience and problem solving skills over time,
Lastly, facing conflict can create closure. Sometimes you go to someone with something you need to address. You've thought it through. It's a value. You need to raise it. You need to talk about it. Maybe they aren't able to join you in resolving that conflict. That's painful, but you get valuable information that allows you to move toward closure.
Sometimes closure is the very best next step. So facing conflict builds a muscle where you learn to name what's hard, raise it in healthy ways. It allows you to gain a deeper understanding about the other person and about the nature of your relationship.
Facing conflict isn't demanding a certain type of solution. It's not demanding something from the other person. It's saying, I care about you. I need to have this conversation with you. Will you join me in talking this through?
So, in light of all these great benefits of facing conflict, why do we avoid it? Well, there are a lot of reasons we avoid conflict, and I'm going to walk you through some of the most common, but the bottom line is most of us have a lot of fear about jeopardizing our relationships. We avoid the possibility of a rupture at all costs. There are a lot of reasons for this.
There's no shame in being someone who avoids conflict. Like I said, I'm an incredibly conflict avoidant person myself. I identify with a lot of the reasons I'm about to lay out, but it's really important to get curious and consider: why do I avoid conflict? What's at the root of that? What do I fear would happen if I were to walk through conflict instead of working overtime to walk around it or avoid it?
Here are some reasons that might resonate with your experience.
Number one, you might be someone who doesn't like to face the negative emotions that often precede a conflict. We covered the importance of working through negative emotions. You can go back to episodes 80 through 83 for a deep dive into how to start facing your own negative emotions.
But the bottom line is that we don't like those emotions. We avoid emotions like anger, frustration, sadness, or fear inside ourselves, which means we end up avoiding opportunities for growth and intimacy with other people. Facing those emotions inside of us helps us gain clarity, which in turn helps us gain conviction, which in turn helps empower us to enter into our relationships with more courage, with more clarity, with more confidence.
Number two, we have a strong bent toward harmony. For those of you who are high in empathy or who are peacekeepers, who have a genuine desire to see others thrive, you often don't want to be the source of tension or stress for another person, even when that tension or stress you're introducing is for the other person's good.
You may prioritize maintaining peace or harmony over resolving genuine issues in a relationship. This gets back to personality type or natural God-given strengths or those Enneagram types we discussed back in episodes 49, 52, and 53.
We talked about how some of these things are hardwired, sometimes you simply by nature, by your God-given design, tend to prioritize other values. So for you, it's working against the grain of your God-given design a little bit to learn the benefit of introducing some healthy conflict for the good of everyone.
Another reason we avoid conflict is a lack of skills. You don't know how. You'd love to figure out how to talk about something hard with your kids, with your spouse, with your friend, but you literally don't know how. Because you don't have the skills, because no one taught you, when you have tried to introduce conflict, maybe it didn't go well. Maybe the other person responded poorly. So you stopped trying.
Sometimes we avoid conflict because of wounds from our past. If you grew up in a high conflict family where there was a lot of negativity around conflict or where you have some trauma, where conflict was dealt with in an abusive way, or maybe where someone even used toxic strategies with you.
When you did try to talk about something that was hard for you, parts of you learned to survive, right? You've learned how to cope. I will never go down that road again. I want to honor that. If you're someone who has learned to survive by avoiding conflict at all costs, that makes sense.
That part of you learned how to survive through not saying anything. I want to honor that–that's a survival tactic you may well have needed in the past.
If you're currently in an abusive relationship or in a toxic relationship, you may be using that coping strategy of avoiding conflict. I get it. That makes sense. If this is the case for you, I want you to honor that. I can't engage in conflict because the cost is too high, either because of this current toxicity that I'm involved with, or because in the past I was so hurt that it creates too much anxiety or tension inside of me to consider dealing with conflict in a different way.
If that's the case for you, that's a great reason to reach out for support from a therapist to learn how to both heal from those past wounds and engage conflict in different ways in your present and future relationships.
Then finally, sometimes we avoid conflict because of cultural or social norms. It may be that you grew up in a family that really valued politeness, that things were shoved under the carpet and that wasn't all bad. It kind of worked in your family of origin and now you find yourself in a whole different world where maybe you married into a family with different cultural norms or different social norms, and you don't know how to fit in because that's not the way that you were raised or that's not how you did things in your own family.
You're working through that. Again, I want to honor that. There are a lot of different cultural norms around conflict and there's no one right way to do this. Navigating conflict within the context of your relationships can look really different from one relationship to another, from one family to another. I want to honor that.
I don't like one size fits all solutions. The way that one couple, for example, resolves conflict might look so different from the way another couple resolves conflict. Some families use a lot of humor as their way of dealing with conflict. Some are really direct.
Regardless of how you go about facing conflict, what matters is that there's a path through it. In fact, part of the joy in relationships is learning, within the context of your own unique relationship, how to face conflict.
For example, some couples hit it head on. They might have weekly meetings where every week they get together to have an issue-clearing. It's the place they set aside every week to put the issues on the table and talk them through.
Some couples have a weekly therapy session where they use that time to raise issues that need clearing. Some families have monthly family meetings with the kids and everybody in tow. This is the time where we're going to raise the issues that aren't working. We're going to go head on into conflict.
So that's a really structured approach to conflict within relationships. Others do it a little bit more organically where you bring things up directly as they occur in the moment. Some couples use written communication when it comes to navigating conflict, because they find that writing things out tends to take out the emotion and gives the other person time to respond.
Now for one couple, that might work. For another couple that doesn't work at all. So again, there are different ways to approach this. What matters is when I ask this question to you: “how are you navigating conflict in your most precious relationships?” is that you have an idea of how you walk through it.
You know, we tend to kind of tease each other. That's what works for us. When we're both having coffee, we tend to kind of teasingly raise the things that are hard, but we both feel pretty good about that.
Or, I'm someone who needs to name it when I see it. I've got to bring it up. I've got to address it. This is what I have to do. Or I'm someone who needs structure. I will not raise the conflict so I've got to have scheduled check-ins for that express purpose.
Whether you're someone who does that a little bit more organically, whether you're someone who does it in a very structured way, whether you're someone who uses humor, whether you're someone who needs to really rely on the clarity of the written word to communicate, what matters is that you feel empowered to face conflict in your most beloved relationships.
I want to leave you with four steps you can take to find happiness through conflict. These are for those of you who really hate conflict, to begin to shift your mind to help you begin to move through conflict instead of avoiding it.
As you consider these four steps, I want you to remember what we talked about back in episode 84–that the goal of happiness is not instant gratification. Happiness is about putting yourself on the right path, the path of more creativity, the path of a clearer calling or purpose, the path of courage, and the path of connection.
When you raise a hard topic with someone, you ignite each four of those qualities. You have to get creative. You have to be courageous. You have to think about your values. You know what? I think there's a higher purpose here than my own comfort level. I think there's a calling here to go deeper in this relationship.
You are taking a step toward connection. This leads us to the very first step I want you to take as you consider your own relationship with conflict. It's to reframe conflict as a courageous conversation. As an opportunity to be brave. It's an opportunity to walk into a courageous conversation.
So when you notice yourself avoiding that conflict, because you don't want to hurt someone, you don't want to disappoint someone, you don't want to be a bother. You don't want to cause someone else stress. You don't want to jeopardize a relationship. Remind yourself that this is an opportunity to be brave. It's an opportunity to hold a courageous conversation.
When you reframe conflict in this way, you remove the pressure, you remove the expectations. You don't have to do it perfectly, it will probably be messy, but what you're doing is giving yourself permission to be brave. You're giving yourself permission to say, I care enough about both myself and this other person and the relationship that I'm willing to be brave.
You reframe your benchmark for success. Your benchmark for success isn't to get the other person to do something, to get your way. Success won't be that the conversation goes perfectly because it might not. Success will be, did I take one tiny step toward being a little bit more brave?
So number one is to reframe how you think about conflict in your mind. Conflict is an opportunity to be brave. In fact, if you don't face the opportunity for conflict, you might actually harm the relationship. We tend to tell ourselves, well, if I hurt someone or if I disappoint someone, or if I am the squeaky wheel or create stress, then that's bad, but what if doing those things actually leads to a healthier relationship and what if not doing those things allows or enables an unhealthy pattern to continue?
Number two is that you got to deal with the guilt and the self-gaslighting. This is exactly where I came up with the title of this next book that's coming out called I Shouldn't Feel This Way. That's our inner guilt tripper talking. It's telling us, you shouldn't feel that way. Stop caring, stop being frustrated, stop caring so much. And that guilt-tripper is trying to help, trying to keep the peace, but you've got to face those negative feelings in order to find a better way.
When you face those negative feelings you are feeling inside, the frustration, the hurt, the annoyance, the anger, you gain clarity. You also calm your own nervous system. You shift from guilt tripping and gaslighting yourself to holy curiosity. I wonder what that's about. Why do I feel this way?
You invite God into that process. God, what is going on here? Why are these feelings here? They're not going away. What do I need to know about this situation? Can you help me understand? Maybe this isn't something I should try to make go away. Maybe there's an invitation here.
What if these negative emotions are an invitation to be brave? So when you shift from guilt tripping yourself to facing those negative emotions in partnership with God's Spirit, you're already taking a brave step.
Sometimes this can take weeks or even months to work through, especially when there's a history of a really toxic or abusive relationship where you've learned to avoid conflict for a very good reason. Learning to really honor and validate those painful emotions that you experience is in and of itself a brave step toward facing conflict.
You're learning to face that conflict inside yourself and inviting God in to help you work through it instead of trying to sideline legitimate emotions.
So number one is to reframe conflict as an opportunity to be brave. Number two is to stop guilt tripping and gaslighting yourself and really face that inner conflict, those negative emotions that are refusing to go away. Those two things happen inside yourself. You're reframing your own thoughts about conflict and you're working through your own inner tensions, your own conflicting feelings.
Then when it comes to actually taking a brave step toward conflict in your relationship, number three is to start with a safe person first.
Don't go right into your hardest relationship with your hardest conversation. Start by naming it with a safe person. You can ask for support from a safe person in a couple of ways.
You might ask them to support you on your journey of learning to face conflict rather than avoid it. You might say, I really need to work on facing conflict. I need to start naming some things that are hard. I need to work on this especially in these relationships, would you hold me accountable for that?
Would you support me on that? Could we check in about how I'm doing on that goal once a week or once a month? Could you be someone who journeys with me as I work to go through conflict instead of avoiding it? So naming it to a safe person can be helpful.
Secondly, you might start practicing with a safe person, which is what I call starting with the low hanging fruit. You might go to someone who feels pretty safe and where you don't see any really good reason not to, and practice being a little bit more honest,
Maybe you have a friend who always wants to go out to pizza for dinner and you actually don't really like pizza. So you practice the next time you're getting together saying, could we do something different? Could we try taking a walk instead of going out to eat? Now, listen, that's really low stakes. Arguably that might not even be raising conflict, but for some of you, just introducing a shift like that might be the next brave step you need to take..
Lastly, a fourth step is actually to have that courageous conversation now. There's a whole section on this called The Negotiation Conversation in The Best of You. So I'm going to go through these steps quickly.
When you start any courageous conversation, you affirm the good, with something like, I care enough about this relationship that it's important to talk about this. You state the deeper longing that you have for yourself or for the relationship. You propose an option that might work for both of you and in the words of Brene Brown–I love that she says this–you want to stay awkward, brave, and kind.
When you affirm the good, you name the deeper longing, you propose an option, and you embrace the awkward and you stay brave and kind, it's really hard to go wrong. It's really hard to go wrong. Remember, you don't have to get it perfectly. If you start off affirming the good, and you have clear options and you have clear conviction and even if you stay awkward, if you're brave and you're kind, it's really hard to go wrong.
Here's the thing. No matter how the other person responds, you will have taken a brave step to put yourself on that path toward deeper satisfaction and greater happiness. You're taking command of your own life. You're not avoiding conflict. You're walking through it and you're reframing your expectations of yourself.
Your goal is to show yourself that you are worth facing conflict one brave step at a time. This is part of growth. Jesus was the Prince of Peace and also Jesus named what was hard. He did not walk around conflict.
He walked through it. Part of growing to become the truest, best version of your God-given self is learning to move through conflict in partnership with God's Spirit.
It's hard to lead a family. It's even harder when you didn't experience health in your own family as a child. Today, I'm walking you through what a healthy family looks like and what happens when it gets out of balance. This is a practical, non-shaming guide to identifying what's working in your family and how to course-correct when it's not!
Here's what we cover:
1. The goal of a healthy family (5:19)
2. Signs of dysfunction vs. signs of health (8:07)
3. 6 extreme roles children get pushed into (19:44)
4. 4 simple, research-backed strategies to create harmony within your family (37:28)
Resource
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- Get 35% off your first order of Sundays. Go to SundaysForDogs.com/BESTOFYOU or use code BESTOFYOU at checkout.
- Go to thrivemarket.com/bestofyou for 30% off your first order, plus a FREE $60 gift!
- Go to AquaTru.com and enter code BESTOFYOU at checkout to get 20% OFF any AquaTru purifier!
- Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/BESTOFYOU and get on your way to being your best self.
Music by Andy Luiten
Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
Transcript
Hey everyone. And welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad that we are here. In this new year, this new year of 2024, the new year is just an opportunity to be just a little bit more intentional about how we want to focus the direction of our lives.
And in today's episode, I wanted to address a topic that so many of you have asked me to address. And it's: what is a healthy family? What do healthy families look like?
We spend a lot of time talking about how to recover from childhood wounds, how to heal from painful events in the past. So what does a healthy family look like? Some of you are trying to understand that as you lead your own family. Some of you are just trying to understand it as you consider your past and try to locate your own experience on a spectrum.
Because as we all know, there's no such thing as a perfect family. There are some families that operate in a healthier way than others. And then there are some families that are extremely dysfunctional and most families fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum.
So whether you're thinking about your past experiences in your family of origin or whether you're thinking about the family that you're trying to lead right now, in this episode we'll walk you through what a healthy family looks like. What are some of the most common pitfalls that show up that lead to varying degrees of dysfunction in families?
And finally, we're going to end with the most important skill to learn as you are trying to lead a healthy family of your own. Lots to cover today. Let's dive in.
So what is a healthy family? Well, there are lots of definitions for a healthy family, but there's one word that I always go to when I'm describing a healthy family system. And that word “system” is important here. All it means is that a system is a collection of different parts and each part of the system is important, but each part is also intricately connected to the other parts and all of the parts working together create the system.
And one of my favorite metaphors to use when you're thinking about a system is to think about a middle school band. Maybe you were a part of one. I was part of one. I played the alto saxophone. I wasn't very good at it, but I have some knowledge of how a middle school band functions. And if you think about that band, there are so many different parts to it.
There's the flutes, there's the clarinets, there's the saxophones, there's the drums in the back, there's the trombones and the trumpets, and each one of those parts plays an incredibly important role in creating the whole of the system.
If any one of those individual parts of that system gets too loud or starts playing off key or loses the beat of the song, the whole thing doesn't sound very good. It's really discordant. There's sort of a cacophony that erupts, but when every individual part plays its role well, you get this beautiful sound. We hear music that is enjoyable, that is pleasant to our ears. The whole system is working together to create a beautiful harmony.
And that's the key word, harmony.
So according to family systems theory and psychology, the goal of a healthy family is this word harmony. And what that means is we're looking for harmonious interactions among and between the different members. It doesn't mean that there's never conflict.
It means that as you look at the family system, and all of the individuals who have comprised the family, every family member has a role that is important in the family. Every family member is valued. Every family member has a chance to thrive.
Every family member has a voice and also every family member needs appropriate boundaries. If you think about that middle school band, every part has to play its role, which means you don't want one part taking over the whole system, but you also don't want one part of the system sidelined, not getting any attention at all.
You want every single individual member of that family to feel valued, heard, seen, known, Like they're contributing within appropriate boundaries. And so this is a lot of work. And if you lead a family of your own, you know what I mean.
And I'm sure you're going, yeah, right. There isn't harmony around my family dinner table. You know, we're not all just speaking pleasantly to each other all the time and making sure that every voice is heard. And I, I want to be clear. That is not what we mean by harmony. The way that we work out the day to day health of a family is incredibly messy.
It's not always that perfect picture. And again, if you think about that middle school band, there's a lot of rehearsal time, a lot of practice time. Every single day, that band is getting together to rehearse and sometimes it sounds terrible. And sometimes the conductor has to take more time with the violins because something's not working there.
And meanwhile, the saxophones are off by themselves, kind of entertaining themselves, right? The goal of all that rehearsal, of all that time in the messiness of trying to figure it out, it's just a moment, one evening of glorious harmony and that moment of glorious harmony makes all the work so worthwhile.
And so I want you to think about that when you think about leading your own family. The goal is not perfection every single day or every single meal. The goal is that you're working it out. You're working out the kinks of family harmony every single day, so that every so often you get these glimpses of wholeness. You get these glimpses of what it's like when you're just enjoying the heck out of each other.
Okay. So I want you to keep that goal in mind. Imagine being in a family. And if you think back to your own earliest memories of family, in most dysfunctional families, there is almost never a moment of joy. There's almost never a moment of, oh my gosh, this is just such a delight to be together. It feels so comforting, so safe, so secure to be with my people here in our home, as a family.
In those extreme cases of dysfunction, there's so much chaos. Where there's just no order, you never knew what you could expect or rely on from your family members. Or there's just constant, persistent, unresolved conflict where there's a state of tension and emotional distress constantly.
You never feel that sense of peace in a highly conflicted family. In a highly dysfunctional family, there might be an extreme lack of emotional support. You don't have any memories of feeling really loved or comforted or cared for. Maybe your parents were around, but they really didn't pay attention to you.
You were kind of on your own, and so there weren't those glimmers or those glimpses of, oh, this is what love feels like. This is what it really feels like to feel close to a family member.
In really dysfunctional families, we also see an absence of communication. And again, if you think about that middle school band, part of what makes it work is the different pieces of the band have to communicate with each other. Everybody has to wait their turn and come in at the right time.
And, each part has to listen for the other parts so the different parts aren't playing over each other. In an extremely dysfunctional family, there's no communication at all. Nobody's really asking hey, how was your day? Or, hey, could we connect? I'd love to share with you what's going on with me. I'd love to learn what's going on with you.
Instead, you're just kind of ships passing in the night and no one's really ever stopping to connect. In contrast, in a healthy family, in a family that's moving toward this idea of harmony–again, it's not achieved every single day for sure, but you're moving toward harmony–here are some of the features that you'll see.
And it's the opposite of what we just laid out. You'll see a lot of effort at communication. It doesn't always go perfectly, but a lot of frequent efforts to connect where the parents are frequently checking in with the children. How are you doing? I want to check in with you. What's going on with you? Can we connect?
And the children have a sense of that safety so they respond. Again, these bids for communication don't always go perfectly, but there are frequent attempts to connect through using words to ask questions and to listen to the responses of the other person.
Number two, there's a pathway through conflict. And this is really important. It doesn't mean there's no conflict. In families where there's no conflict, that can actually be a sign of emotional disconnection. It's almost impossible to be close to another human without some form of conflict.
Conflict in and of itself is not the problem. What healthy families have is a path through conflict. This means there's an avenue to name conflict when it happens and address it in a healthy way. And this skill of addressing conflict within a family or within any relationship is such an important skill that so many of us never learned.
I'm going to return to that at the end of this episode, because there's one skill that is critical to resolving conflict in a healthy way. But healthy families have a path through conflict. They don't avoid conflict, nor do they live in a state of high conflict where everybody's always yelling at each other and they're never really connecting.
In healthy families, we see conflict. Man, I think I just hurt your feelings. I'm really sorry about that. Could we talk about what happened? Or wow, that conversation just went sideways. I can see that you're upset. I didn't mean to upset you. Can we talk about it? In healthy families, those conflicts are named and there's a path through them so that you can repair and come out stronger on the other side.
Number three, healthy families also show a high degree of emotional support. So instead of leaving each member of the family to just sort of function on their own and find their own way through life, in a healthy family, there's a lot of emotional support where parents or caregivers are checking in on their kids. Again, it's part of this communication, but it's not just words.
And we talked about this all the way back in episode 16, when we talked about attachment. Emotional support really gets at this idea of presence. It's not always words. It's having a calm enough nervous system that you're really present to what's happening in the people around you.
You're picking up on nonverbal cues. Maybe you're noticing that your teenager has gotten quiet or withdrawn and you might not even be sure exactly what to do or say, but you're aware. You're processing that information, you're present. And as a result of that presence, you can attune to your child and figure out how best to check in with them.
That emotional presence is really important for young children. Again, it's not always verbal, but we have this sense that someone is present to us. They're available to us. And if you think about when you feel seen by somebody, you feel somebody's eyes scanning yours. You feel somebody's arms go around you.
It's almost an intangible thing to describe, but you know it when you feel it, that the other person is orienting their whole being toward you. And it creates this supportive container that is deeply settling to our nervous systems and deeply critical to achieving harmony within a family.
So again, if we zoom out to that metaphor of the middle school band, if I'm the conductor of that band, I only have so much energy to go around. I can't be present to every single part of that band simultaneously. So it's not being omnipresent as God is, right? We're not God as we parent our families and our parents weren't God either. It’s about seeking moments where you're really zooming into each member to give them that quality of your presence.
Healthy families also have clear boundaries. There's no rule confusion. In fact, it's one of the crucibles in which healthy boundaries are for. So if you struggle with boundaries in your current life, it may be because you didn't experience healthy boundaries in your family of origin.
Healthy boundaries mean that there's a clear distinction between the parent and the child, and if you look back on the way that you were raised, you may have experienced something that we call parentification, where there was a role reversal. Where you were expected to parent your parent.
In healthy families, those boundaries are clear, where the caregivers are the caregivers, the adults are the adults, and the children get to be the children. And this can be communicated in a lot of ways. It can be communicated through actions, but it can also be communicated very specifically where a parent says to you, listen, I see that you care. And I see that you want to solve this conflict between your dad and me.
It's not your problem. This is for your dad and I to figure out. You get to be a kid. And what matters is that we love you and that we're here for you. And yes. We're in a little bit of conflict right now. We'll figure it out. It's not yours to solve.
Because kids pick up on the conflict between adults and their families. It doesn't mean that as adults, you can never have conflict. It does mean that you're clear about your role and it is never a child's role to take on the job of being a conflict mediator between two adults.
Now, role confusion can also show up among siblings of a family. Oftentimes in unhealthy families, we see the children getting pigeonholed into rigid roles, and this isn't healthy either. Healthy families create a flexible enough family environment where every child feels valued, feels like they can play a different role, but they're also not pigeonholed into an unhealthy extreme.
And I want to spend a little time here because this is a big place where a lot of you listening will relate to one of these unhealthy roles that you might've gotten pigeonholed into.
There are six roles that sometimes get extreme in families. It can be convenient to let a child play a certain role that becomes unhealthy. It's unhealthy for the child, but it's also unhealthy for the entire family. Again, in healthy families, everybody's playing a role that leads to the individuals’ benefit and to the overall health of the family.
We've got to have families that are flexible enough to include the gifts and talents and different voices of all the family members, even as each individual family member is willing to set some things aside for the good of the whole family. This is how we learn this beautiful dance of autonomy and connectedness that we all need to bring into our adult relationships.
It's not all about me, but it's also not never about me. And some of you have had that experience where it was never about you in your family of origin. And so it's really hard for you to figure out how to take up space in your adult relationships.
Other folks have the opposite of that, where maybe it was all about them in their family of origin, and so they don't know how to share space in their adult relationships. I want to walk you through six of these most common roles that children get pigeonholed into in unhealthy families.
Now, again, if you're leading a family of your own right now, if you're parenting kids, you will notice trends. You will be like, I think one of my kids fits more into that role. And another kid fits more into that role.
The fact that you can name that with humility means you're already well on the path toward health, because if you can name it, you can then begin to ensure you're not shoving your kid into a role that's not healthy for them.
Think about your family of origin, the family you were raised in. And notice if you may have been pushed into any one of these six extreme roles.
The first one is the golden child. This is the child who can do no wrong, no matter what they do. The parents just think they're amazing. If you watched the sitcom Friends, with Monica and Ross Geller, brother and sister, it’s a comedic take on this, but Ross is the golden child. He can do no wrong, no matter what he does.
The parents think he's amazing. Even if he does something really stupid, he's just always thought of as amazing. Now, if you were the golden child, there are ways in which that can feel really good, but there are also problems with it.
If you grow up and you never really learned how to receive constructive feedback from a parent, or you never really learned how to tolerate the reality of disappointing someone else, it can have a negative impact on the way you relate to your peers or your adult relationships.
You might struggle with getting your value and your worth from people outside of you and not know what to do with it if someone just doesn't like you, or someone differs with you, or someone is disappointed by you.
That may feel incredibly uncomfortable because you never learned to tolerate that within your family of origin. And again, if you think back to healthy families and this idea of harmony, part of being part of a healthy system is giving and receiving feedback. It's learning to be able to hear from someone, hey, this disappointed me and learning to tolerate that.
You can work through that with a family member and come out the other side even stronger and even more connected for having had that hard conversation. So while being a golden child might feel good in the moment, it can lead to problems in adulthood.
Secondly, we have the comedians. And in fact, a lot of actual comedians in real life talk about how one of the ways they coped in families with high conflict was to become the funny one, was to alleviate tension, tell a joke, do something funny, make everybody laugh. It would calm everybody in the family down.
And made them feel good. And that became this role that they learned how to play. One of your own children may have this skill. It can be a gift. It's not a bad thing, but if that was the only role you were really validated for playing in your family of origin growing up, it can lead to issues in your adult relationships.
You may not know how to process your own painful feelings. It may be hard for you to be vulnerable. You're so busy trying to make everybody else feel better or laugh, that you don't know how to say, man, this is hard for me. I'm the one who's hurting. This is painful for me. You may not know how to express vulnerability.
In a healthy family, it's not that we don't have these tendencies, but that child tends to be the one to alleviate pressure by telling a joke or making people laugh. We want to honor that gift while also ensuring that that child doesn't feel like that is their job. We want to help create balance where that child can also come to the table and say, hey, this doesn't feel very good to me. I don't like it when everybody's fighting.
The third role is the scapegoat, and this is the person who becomes the outlier, the one who is different from everybody else. They're often the focus of the family's problems. They're sort of identified as the problem child.
It's the opposite of the golden child. So if you were a golden child, you might've had a sibling who was the “problem child”. The family norms work in such a way that this one person is sort of left outside of those norms.
Oftentimes those family members really are just creative. They're different. They might have unique needs. They might have unique challenges. Maybe they're acting out for a specific reason. And so it does take some work to figure it out. I'm not trying to say this is simple. Your present day family may have a child who sometimes it's easy to scapegoat and think, oh man, they're the problem.
But when you find yourself doing that, you wanna pull that back in and ask yourself, what does my child need? Because if you were scapegoated, it's really painful and if the family doubles down on the exclusive norms that the child doesn't fit into, that child is gonna polarize against the family even further.
I've worked with families over the years where this has happened. The family will come to me with a sort of identified scapegoat. Can you fix this kid? If we could fix this kid, our family would be okay. Now, again, I don't want to minimize the reality that sometimes there is one person or one child in a family that is really difficult. Maybe they're addicted to a substance. Maybe they're really acting out. Maybe they're really going their own way and you need to set healthy boundaries.
I do not want to minimize that. I'm talking about something a little bit different. It's where the family norms aren't flexible enough to allow for a child that just doesn't quite fit in. It might be a child who's really creative and thinks outside the box and doesn't really love the family rules or wants to do things a little bit their own way.
It's not that they want to go do bad or immoral things. They just want to do things a little bit differently. It might be a child who's really honest and speaks up and says it like they see it. They're not afraid to call a spade a spade, and it's kind of off putting to the rest of the family members.
If you were one of these children, maybe you were the kid who was just kind of saying, this is dumb. I don't know why we do this. I ended up getting in trouble for that, when you really were just being yourself, you were just trying to be honest, and then you end up feeling like an outsider to the rest of the family.
And it can be really painful when you get scapegoated, when you're simply trying to be honest. You're trying to be true to your God given self. If you were a child who was scapegoated, as you enter into your adult relationships, you might notice that you tend to feel misunderstood, that you tend to feel ostracized, that you tend to feel like an outlier in your adult relationships or in adult groups.
You may even seek out other scapegoats, right? Other folks who didn't feel like they fit in because you feel more at home with those folks. And so it's something to be mindful of as you think about your family of origin. In a healthy family where we're trying to move toward harmony, we'd slow the system down and take the time needed to get to know the unique needs of this child.
I get that this takes a lot of work and that we do not do it perfectly. I've worked with enough moms and enough families to know this is not easy. But it's reframing what's happening in your mind. Okay. I don't always get this child. I don't always understand what they need. Sometimes this child even triggers me and that's okay. Sometimes some children trigger you more than other children.
When you name that with humility, you can take brave steps to gain understanding, to gain the skills that you need to parent that unique child so that they feel like a part of the family system. And again, if you think about that middle school band metaphor, you might think of a really cool instrument that isn't necessarily that common that comes in and plays an amazing solo. That wouldn't be possible without that unique gift.
If you were scapegoated as a child, if that's how you were treated, please hear me say you have tremendous value to the group. You may not be the person just sort of seamlessly cruising along with the rest of the system, with the rest of the people, but you may be the one who comes in at key times and shows up and changes the whole thing for the better. Your role matters. It matters for you and it matters for the good of the group.
Next, we get to the invisible one. If you were an invisible one, you'll know it to your bones. You were the child who was just trying to survive. You stayed out of the way, out of the fray. Off the grid.
You didn't get the positive attention. Maybe your parents were preoccupied. Maybe they weren't present to you and you surely did not want the negative attention. So you flew under the radar. Unseen and unnoticed. And if you were the invisible child, it can be hard for you as an adult to feel worthy of being seen, to feel worthy of love, to feel worthy of making your presence known in your adult relationships.
If you were one of those invisible children, your job as you heal is to learn how to insert your voice. Now again, for those of you parenting and and thinking about your own kids who might be quieter or might be tempted to stay under the radar, your job is to stay connected to them, is to try to gently keep them active, keep them involved, keep them engaged in the system.
The last role I want to cover is the caretaker. And I'm guessing a lot of you will relate to this one. A lot of what we talk about on this podcast is learning how to not take responsibility for everybody else in our lives. And in many ways, a lot of that starts in childhood, where as a child, you were the one who took responsibility for supporting everyone in your family. You might've tried to cover up the unhealthy behavior of another family member.
And this is a role that I see so frequently in women, especially. These are the children who take responsibility for everybody else. If you were somebody who took on a caregiver role, you might've taken responsibility for a parent where you became the parent for your parent–maybe they had an addiction issue or a mental health issue. Or maybe they were just emotionally immature and you tried to care for them as a child.
That became a role that you took on. Maybe you were caring for siblings because your parents or caregivers weren't taking leadership, weren't taking on that responsibility and you saw a need. And so you stepped into that vacuum of leadership and started taking care of your siblings.
And these are beautiful qualities. If no one ever came alongside you as a child and reminded you that at the end of the day, you are not an adult, you are not the parent, you are a child, and those responsibilities were never meant to be yours, it can be really challenging to learn the boundaries of those caretaking skills.
As an adult, you can slip into codependency where instead of focusing on identifying and meeting your own needs, you over-focus on meeting the needs of everyone around you. It can be really hard for you as an adult to learn where the healthy boundary lines fall between being a good person, a kind person, an empathetic person, and also not taking on other people's problems in a way that isn't healthy.
That can be really challenging if you were in that caregiver role as a child. For those of you, again, who are parenting and you have a child that kind of fits that description, that can be very empathetic, and that can tend to sense the needs of his or her siblings, it's really tempting to rely on that child, right? This happens in the best of families, where we just sense these different areas of giftedness, and we might over-rely on them instead of helping our children have healthy boundaries.
If you notice that in one of your children, it's so important to name that and have those conversations and be saying to that child, listen, I love that quality in you. That is such a beautiful quality, that empathetic spirit, that kind heart. And also it is not your job to take care of all of us. It is just not your job. And I want you to excuse yourself from that responsibility today.
You start to teach your child. Number one, that you see it, that you name it, and that you are going to help them learn to identify when they're overextending that part of themselves.
These are some of these extreme roles. When a family system gets out of balance for any reason, when the adults, the caretakers who are tasked with the job of maintaining a harmonious system, when for whatever reason that job gets abdicated, children get pushed into these extreme roles and the family gets out of balance.
Again, it's not only detrimental for each child who is part of the family. It's also detrimental for the whole family because the whole family isn't functioning in its healthiest way, where each family member is showing up as a whole person who has feelings, who has thoughts, who has needs, who can express their needs, can express their thoughts, and also meet the needs of others who can express opinions, who can also be disagreed with.
I mean, this is a healthy family. It's noisy. There's a lot going on in a healthy family. There are a lot of skills there. The ability to assert your voice. And also the ability to take feedback, the ability to help other family members, and also the ability to tolerate when we disappoint other family members.
The family is a crucible for learning these critical skills that we need when we move into our adult relationships. I want to pause here for a moment for a few words from our incredible sponsors. These sponsors allow me to bring you this content for free. And so I'm grateful if you take a few moments to listen to these words from them, and then we'll come back and talk about practical steps you can take to create harmony in your family.
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Here are the four most important things you can do to begin to create harmony in your family. Now, if you have kids, this could apply to the family you are leading. If you don't have kids, this could apply to any relationship, really, where you're living life together, where you're working through the kinks of life. Any relationship you have is a crucible for healing past wounds and learning new skills.
You can take steps in any of these four categories in any relationship, and you will be taking a step toward health and wholeness through these actions.
Number one, it sounds cliche, but it's open communication. In harmonious systems, each member of that system is encouraged to both give and receive communication. There's a time to share what's on your heart, to state a need, to state a preference, to ask for help. There's also a time to receive communication, to listen to the people around you.
It sounds so simple, but we don't always do this very well. A great strategy to get started just with leveling the playing field where everybody is invited to come to the table. The two minute check in. You just set aside time. It could be at the beginning of dinner, around the dinner table, it could be in the car, if you all drive somewhere together, where you do these quick two minute check-ins where each family member in two minutes gets to share whatever they want to share.
They just have to share an update. What's going on, something they're proud of, something they're worried about, something they're thinking about, something that happened, something they're excited about, something they really want, and just let each family member have two minutes to share.
Everybody else just listens. Nobody gets to cut in. Nobody gets to judge. Nobody gets to criticize. Everybody just gets to share their two minutes, whatever they want. And everybody else listens and sees what you learn about each other.
It’s a way to level the playing field. You know, if you've got a kid who doesn't talk a lot, or if you've got a kid that tends to take over, it sets a norm where we've got a timer, you got two minutes, go. And the kid who doesn't want to talk a lot has to fill that time. And the kid who wants to talk too much has to stop after two minutes. You're normalizing that idea that everybody's got a voice. Everybody's got a role.
Number two, the other research-backed activity that I really like is called clock contingent attention. And all that means is that if you're a member of a family, you're leading a family, you give clock contingent attention to each family member. What do we mean by that? Clock contingent means it's based on the clock.
It could be once a week that you spend clock-contingent time with each of your children. It could be once a day, depending on your schedule, depending on how many kids you have, this clock contingent attention could happen every day. It could happen once a week, but what it means is you're setting aside time regularly to give to each one of your children.
And during that time, you're going to do something together that you both enjoy. It's not based on how you're feeling toward that particular child. It's not based on how they've been behaving. It's not based on whether they've earned it. It's not based on whether you're in a good mood. It's just what you do.
If your kids are younger, it might be that every single night you read them a story before bed. That's your clock-contingent attention. It doesn't matter how the day went. You're going to end the day at 9 p.m. with 20 minutes of quality time where you are present to each one of your children.
You might take a weekly date night with each of your kids, where during that time, they get your full attention, they know what it feels like in their body to have the fullness of your presence.
As your kids get older, it might be that once a week you check-in with each other. Every Thursday night, we're going to spend 30 minutes together. And you do something that your kids like to do during that time. It's their time and you're just present to them.
This idea of clock-contingent attention reinforces that you are there for each member of your family based on the fact that you just love them. It's not something that they have to earn.
Now that doesn't mean there aren't going to be other times where you need to have hard conversations with your kids or negotiate boundaries or set limits, but that clock contingent attention is always going to be there as a time for you to reconnect and just be present.
The third strategy I call the no shame zone. We want to foster an environment where there's no shame. We can talk about what's hard. We can talk about things that are vulnerable. We can talk about things that we did wrong without shame.
And there are a couple of ways that you can foster an environment like that. The strategy that I like best to foster a no shame zone is what I like to call “two things can be true”. Anytime you're approaching a difficult topic or a challenging conversation, maybe you need to talk about the fact that the house is a mess and you need it to get picked up.
Or maybe you need to talk about something you've noticed, maybe you need to talk about a poor attitude that you've noticed in one of your children. Or maybe you need to talk about some secrecy or some sneaking around and you need to raise a hard conversation.
The premise of two things can be true is that you can both honor something good that you see and name what's hard. Here are some examples. No one did anything wrong and we need to talk about the mess. When you say something like that, you're saying, listen, I don't know whose fault this is. I'm not laying blame. Something happened here and we need to fix it.
Right there, you're neutralizing the shame of what's wrong with you guys? Why would you do this? How could you make this huge mess? You're neutralizing all the defensiveness, and you're just saying, listen, nobody did anything wrong. I am not laying blame here. And we've got an issue that we all need to help solve.
Another example, you might say to a child who's kind of showing some attitude or not necessarily wanting to pull their weight. I see that something's going on with you. I don't understand exactly what's happening and this attitude isn't going to cut it. We've got to have a conversation.
When you set those two things down side by side, you neutralize defensiveness and you give yourself a fighting chance of actually connecting with your child. You're honoring that there's a reason that they're behaving the way they're behaving. Something's going on. I get it. I don't know what it is.
I do know that this thing that you're doing isn't okay. And so we need to together figure out how to come up with a better way. The idea of a no shame zone isn't that we all communicate perfectly all the time. We don't, but when you use those “two things can be true” statements, you're reflecting reality, which is, listen, we are all doing our best. This is hard. And also, this isn't going to cut it.
We've got to figure out how to navigate that middle ground. I'm going to go back to that middle school band–if you imagine yourself as the conductor going to the violins going, I get that you are doing your best. You are playing your heart out. And also it's a little out of tune. It doesn't sound quite right. Can we try something else?
I get that the drummers are just giving it your all. And also we've got an issue here. This isn't quite working. We need to bring it in a little bit. And when you take that two things can be true, you assume the best of the other person while simultaneously pointing out the thing that needs to be corrected, that needs to come into alignment.
You create this no shame zone and it allows the pieces to all come together. Every family member learns that they are important, that they are valued, that they're trying their best, and also sometimes they're going to mess up.
They're not going to be quite in alignment. They're going to miss some cues and it's your job to point that out so that we're working toward this end goal of harmony.
Finally, to close, I want to share with you what I think is one of the most important skills that you can have in any family, really in any relationship.Here's the thing, there is going to be conflict in your family. There's going to be conflict in your relationship. They're going to be ruptures. You're going to hurt other people. Other people are going to hurt you, especially in our families.
It just happens. We trip over each other's triggers. Sometimes it's intentional. Sometimes it's unintentional. We just do it. We are human. We're going to trip over each other's triggers from time to time. So therefore what we have to be able to do really, really well is repair.
Now there's a really good TED talk that Dr. Becky Kennedy gave on this very topic. She believes the number one most important strategy for any parent to understand is the art of repair. And she does a fantastic job of describing it in her TED talk. You can check that out. We'll have a link to it in the show notes.
Repair is modeling the art of empathy. It's modeling the art of going to a child and naming what happened. Here's what happened. I can imagine how hard this was for you. Here's what I want you to know. I was having a bad day. I didn't treat you right. I didn't say what I wished I would say.
It takes a lot of humility to go and say, I was not having a good moment there. You know, that thing that you saw me do, it wasn't right. And it wasn't your fault. You didn't cause me to do that. I was having a bad moment and this is such a healing act. And the reason I know it is so important is because I want each one of you listening to think about some of the heavy weights that you carry and imagine if your caregivers, if the people who cared for you came to you and said, you know what, I did that thing. It was not my best moment and it was never your fault.
I am so sorry that happened. I love you and I wish I could have done a better job, we all need to hear that from the people that we love, and we all need to extend that to others. When we are able to humble ourselves and say to our children, I own it. At that moment, I was out of line and you did nothing to cause that. That was on me and I take responsibility.
When we do that, nervous systems calm and we open up to the goodness and the kindness and the grace of God, who doesn't expect us to be perfect. In those moments of surrender where we say, oh my gosh, that one is on me. I am so sorry. That is not your weight to bear. God shows up in powerful ways. He releases those burdens and everybody feels just a little bit lighter.
In those moments of repair, the harmony of our family, of this symphony we are creating together, becomes something beautiful for the benefit of everyone.
Most of us want to be happier, but we don't even know what true happiness means! We walk around feeling unmotivated, stuck, and unsure of our next steps. The truth is that the path to happiness is just a few steps away. In today's episode, I'm walking you through exactly what happiness is and exactly how you can put yourself on the path toward finding it.
Here's what we cover:
1. What exactly is happiness?
2. 4 myths about happiness
3. 4 truths about happiness
4. Simple, practical steps anyone can take to feel happier
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
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.
Resources
- More from Harvard professor and happiness researcher Arthur Brooks
- Adam Grant on languishing in 2021 New York Times article
- John 10:10
Transcript
Hey everyone. Welcome back to this week's episode on The Best of You Podcast. I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad we made it through the holidays and into this brand new year. I have so many exciting things in store for us this new year and I cannot wait to share them with you. I loved getting all of your feedback on the survey–thank you so much for taking the time to fill that out and giving me such thoughtful ideas.
It feels like a true partnership where I was benefiting from the wisdom and your questions and your ideas and what you want to learn about and how you want to grow. It just meant so much to me. So thank you for taking the time to do that. I look forward to circling back and bringing those into upcoming episodes.
As we kick off this new year, I wanted to hit the ground running with a conversation about happiness. So many people come to see me, whether as a therapist or through my work creating this podcast, people ask me so many questions, and often what is underneath is:
I want to feel better. I don't want to feel this pain. I don't want to feel this chaos. I don't want to feel this confusion. I don't want to feel this frustrated. I want to feel better. I don't want to feel this way. I want to feel better.
Often when we're thinking about what that better is, we don't even really know what it is. I just know I don't want to feel this way, but I'm not exactly sure what it is that I'm supposed to feel. What should I aspire to? What is a healthy expectation of my family, of my friends, of my work?
All of those questions get at this idea of what is happiness? The truth is there are so many false ideas about what that is out in the world that we don't even know what it is that we want. We just know what we don't want. So today I'm going to walk you through what science has to say about happiness, what the Bible has to say about happiness, and spoiler alert, it's surprisingly similar.
Then I'm going to walk you through a very practical set of questions to help you increase your understanding of what the true nature of happiness actually is. Because if you don't know what you're aiming for, how can you achieve it? Even worse, if you're aiming for something that's actually faulty, you have a misunderstanding of happiness, you're going to be heading down the wrong path.
If you understand what happiness is and how it really works, you can then take the steps that you need to move toward increasing degrees of happiness. So let's dive into learning what happiness actually is.
What is happiness? Social psychologists have studied happiness for years and the answer is that it's a complicated psychological state. It's not a simple feeling. So if you're pursuing a feeling of, oh, I just want to feel happy, you’re pursuing something really fleeting, sort of like a feather floating in the wind that you can't really ever grasp.
That's not a worthwhile pursuit. So right here at the top, I want to say, if you're pursuing this idea of, I just want to feel happy, you're pursuing the wrong thing. You're pursuing something that you can't really get. Harvard psychologist and happiness researcher, Arthur Brooks, says that happiness is a complex state that includes three distinct elements: enjoyment, purpose, and satisfaction.
Each of those three ingredients is fairly complex in and of itself. He also says that happiness is not a destination, and that's what I mean by that feather floating around in the wind. It's not something you're actually going to find and go, I have it. I have achieved happiness.
It's a pursuit. It's a direction more than it's a destination. It's impossible to arrive at the location of happiness. It's a way of being in the world where you orient to those things that tend to bring you more happiness.
So if you make your goal happiness, as in, I just want to be happy, you're setting yourself up for failure. Instead, Brooks suggests making your goal to become a little bit happier. That's something you can pursue through orienting yourself to the substance of what brings happiness. Sometimes I like to think about this as the metaphor of the steak and the sizzle.
So much in our culture promotes the sizzle, not the steak, the deep, substantive ingredients that create a really healthy, nutritious meal.
So happiness is not just a fleeting sense of a dopamine hit. You can chase dopamine hits all day long, and you're never really going to experience happiness on a deep core level. Happiness comprises all that life has to offer, including what's hard in a way that orients your whole being to contentment and satisfaction.
This is what the Bible calls joy, a deep abiding, stable sense of no matter what life brings my way, I'm okay. I'm content. As Paul says, it's a deep nuanced state of being that has to be broken down and pursued in its component parts. It's an overall orientation of your life toward good, noble, beautiful things.
It takes a whole body shift, an orientation of your mind, your heart, your will, even your nervous system to the things that actually move you toward increasing degrees of happiness. Sometimes it's helpful to understand happiness to think about its opposite, which isn't necessarily depression. It's more along the lines of what psychologists call languishing.
This is a term that Adam Grant popularized in a 2021 New York Times article, where he described this pervasive sense of languishing that we're seeing in our culture. He defines it in this way: languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you're muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield.
Grant says languishing is the absence of wellbeing. It doesn't necessarily mean you're in a state of deep depression, it just means you're not fully thriving or flourishing in your life. You're not thriving. You're not experiencing that abundant life that Jesus talked about in John 10:10. This is really common. So many of us often feel this way.
I really liked that definition of languishing that Grant supplied because I think it's a really interesting category for so many of us where, again, you're not in a deep state of depression, maybe you're functioning in your life, but you also don't feel this elusive feeling that we often call happiness.
You might be noticing inside yourself, things like, I don't know if I feel happy. I'm not sure my life is happy. You might not even really be taking the time to unpack that, but you're just aware of that inside.
To understand happiness a little more, I took out some of those terms from Grant's definition of languishing and looked at them against their opposite. What is the opposite that would essentially help us move the needle toward happiness.
So first, if you look at that term of stagnation, which is sort of a lack of progress, a feeling of being stuck, not really moving anywhere, not really growing or seeing results in your life, the opposite of stagnation is a sense of generativity, a sense of creativity, a sense of movement, a sense of forward motion of progress of, of moving toward health. We need that to feel a little bit happier.
Number two, he talks about emptiness, and if you think about the opposite of that, it's a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning, a sense of what I do matters. That's an essential ingredient to feeling that happiness that we all long for.
Number three, he described a sense of foggy focus. if you think about just a lack of direction and foggy focus the opposite of that, you might think of words like clarity, perspective, even conviction. I know where I'm going. I know what I'm doing. Even if I don't always like it, I have a sense of clarity. I know what I'm doing, which leads to a greater sense of happiness.
Number four, he talks about languishing as being unmotivated. What's the opposite of being unmotivated? Feeling inspired, imaginative, or brave. It's that oomph to get up and do the thing that you don't really want to do, but that actually leads you to feeling a little bit happier.
Then lastly, he talks about a sense of feeling checked out or disconnected, the opposite of which is connection. It's moving toward others instead of away from them. There's a gap in between each of these, from stagnation to generativity, from emptiness to purpose, from a foggy focus to clarity, from unmotivated to inspired, from checked out to connected.
There's a gap in between each of those states that requires you to take an action step. These things don't magically happen. We have control over that gap. We have to do something to get ourselves from stagnation to creativity, from emptiness to meaning, from lack of focus to clarity, from unmotivated to inspired or brave, from checked out to connected. We have to do something to bridge that gap.
We have agency, we have the power to put ourselves from that pool of languishing where we're just drowning in muck to the path that moves us toward happier lives. Here's the paradox of moving toward happier–it requires you to confront the hard things. It doesn't mean that you pretend like what's hard isn't there, like what's holding you back isn't there, like what's keeping you feeling stuck or empty or unfocused or unmotivated or checked out isn't there.
It's facing those things honestly, and making a choice to move the needle toward what's ultimately going to bring you more happiness. We're going to get into how you can take steps practically each day to move that needle.
There are four words that I want to boil this down to, to give you a directional aim, if you're feeling any of those qualities of unhappiness or languishing. I want you to think about four words to orient the next decision or next step that you make.
How can I move toward creativity?
How can I move toward a sense of calling?
How can I move toward courage?
How can I move toward connection?
Again, it's just one tiny step and that language of moving toward makes it manageable. It's not, how can I become creative? How can I become courageous? How can I become connected? But if you think about it as moving toward, how can I take a step toward creativity? How can I take a step toward a greater sense of calling? How can I take a step toward courage? How can I take a step toward connection? Happiness becomes manageable.
It becomes right in front of you. It's in that next brave step that you take. These words give you a directional aim. In that very orientation you're making a choice to move toward happiness, and this works. This is a foolproof way to create more happiness, more abundance, more of what the Bible calls joy in your life.
So at the end of this episode, I'm going to get into some steps you can take literally today to put yourself on the path toward happiness, which is the goal. The goal is to be on the right path. Remember, it's not the destination. It's to be on the right path. You're not going to avoid suffering. You're not going to avoid things that are hard, but you're on the path that gives you what you need to experience increasing degrees of happiness, regardless of what you travel through in your life.
This is possible. It's a possible goal to be on a path that no matter what comes your way, you have a stable abiding sense of wellbeing. But before we get to those practical steps you can take, I want to talk about what doesn't lead to happiness, because we need to be able to identify when we're on the wrong path, when we are completely going down the wrong road and we are not putting ourselves in the position to experience greater degrees of happiness.
The first step to getting a little bit happier is to recognize where your ideas about happiness are misplaced, where you're seeking happiness in all the wrong places. This can be really subtle. It can be really insidious. Oftentimes, we have the right principles or the right ideas.
We know that happiness isn't found in this or that. But little messages inside of our minds creep in and we start subtly deceiving ourselves about where happiness lies. These subtle messages are even harder to detect and weed out because we are bombarded with false messages about happiness all the time, constantly from the media, from advertising, from shows that you watch, from social media.
So it takes some work to detect what is coming into our minds that is leading us down the wrong path so that we can orient ourselves to where true happiness lies. Now again, what I'm sharing with you today comes from decades of social science research, which very much validates what we know to be true about happiness as it's found in the Bible.
It is fascinating to me that what social scientists are finding empirically validated over and over again underscores what we know to be true about happiness from the Bible. So here are four myths about happiness.
The number one myth is that happiness is found in fame or fortune. Now, many of you listening are like, I know that. I know money doesn't make you happy. I know being famous wouldn't make me happy. But I want you to really take a minute and think about subtle messages you may tell yourself. Even if part of you believes that, okay, money and fame are not going to actually make me happy, there may be subtle messages inside your mind.
Oh man, if I just had a house that I loved, or if I just had a little more of this or a little more of that, or oftentimes this comes in with comparison. If I just had what she has, then I would feel happier. You may not consciously tell yourself that, but I guarantee if you take a look for just a moment inside the thoughts that swirl through your mind, you will find some of those thoughts.
If I just had a little more of that, I'd be a little bit happier.
Now the truth is, when it comes to financial stability, it is essential to have your basic needs met. More happiness comes when you are able to put a roof over your head and provide for your basic needs, your basic food, your basic shelter for your children, and you're able to provide for yourself.
It is true that as you are able to provide for yourself with basic financial stability, you do experience more happiness. The problem is once your basic needs are satisfied, we tend to get on a treadmill of wanting more and more and more and more.
Once your basic needs are met, additional wealth, additional accumulation of more, more, more actually begins to have a diminished impact on happiness. So the pursuit of wealth in and of itself to a certain point after your basic needs are met, leads to more stress, more comparison, and more strained relationships.
This is empirically validated through scientific study. You want to have enough. If you're struggling to meet your basic needs, that can lead to greater stress and diminished happiness. But once those basic needs are met, the pursuit of more wealth actually leads to diminishing returns.
Our culture tends to tell us we want more. We want more. You need more of this. You need more of that, you need more. It tends to set you up to compare yourself to unrealistic expectations that you see on tv. You see in movies, you see in advertisements, when in reality, if you have enough and you have a roof over your head and you can feed your kids good food, to be able to show gratitude genuinely in your heart for what you have puts you on the path toward happiness.
But if you subtly start to want more and start to tell yourself, if I had more of this or more of that or more of what she has or more of what her kids have, you're going down the wrong path that will not lead you to more happiness.
The same is true for this idea of fame, or what we might call external validation, being known, having people love us. It doesn't necessarily have to be fame, as in I'm a famous person. It's having the love of many people–another word you might use is popularity.
The myth is that getting a lot of approval and validation from others is often perceived as a path to happiness, but it is a false path. You might feel a dopamine hit when someone likes your post or someone compliments you, it might boost your self esteem for a moment, but pursuing those likes is a dead end road. It does not lead you to happiness.
The truth is that if you pursue other people's approval and being liked by others, whether it's on social media or whether it's in your real everyday life, it does not lead to happiness. It's the wrong path. We do need connection with others. We do need to feel known and understood by a few people in our lives.
But true happiness, that abiding sense of joy and satisfaction and contentment does not come from pursuing external validation. That's a dead end road. It's just like money. The more you get, the more you want, the more you get, the more you want.
It's a dead end road. It will not lead you to happiness. It leads to more comparison, more feelings of inferiority and more stress as you want more. Instead, the path to happiness is identifying the people who love you for who you really are, who know you and come alongside you and experiencing gratitude for those people–that moves you on the path toward happiness, moving toward true connection versus external validation.
Number three, I know many of you will relate to this. Happiness is not found in the pursuit of perfection. Again, another hamster wheel, another dead end road. The myth is that striving for perfection, whether it's in your appearance, whether it's in your achievements, whether it's in your relationships is often seen as a way of attaining happiness. Again, this is magnified by social media.
If I could just be a little more perfect, then I would be happy. That's a myth. It's a lie. That's the wrong path. The truth is that the pursuit of perfection is a never ending journey that leads to unhappiness. The pursuit of perfection fosters self-criticism, anxiety, and unrealistic expectations.
Here's the paradox, as you embrace imperfection, as you embrace the beauty of flaws in your life, you grow in self compassion, which helps you set realistic goals, which puts you on the path toward true happiness. The more you embrace the imperfections, the flaws, and you learn to release them and you learn to even enjoy them and appreciate them, you move down the path toward true happiness.
Lastly, there's a myth that if you could avoid all negative emotions, you could find happiness, and it's a complete myth. You see this in toxic positivity or in faith communities, you see it in spiritual bypassing. If I just pretend like I never experienced a negative emotion or never experienced any doubt, then I'll be happy.
Again, this might not be a conscious thought, but you might notice that you try to suppress or ignore any feelings of sadness, of anger, of grief, or you try to avoid thinking about those emotions, then that's how you become happy. But the truth is, and we just went through this in the whole series in December, negative emotions are a natural part of what it means to be a human.
They provide insights that help you grow. If you suppress or deny those negative emotions, you're suppressing cues that your body is sending you to help you move toward greater degrees of happiness. When you notice feelings of sadness or grief or anger, and you pay attention to those cues, then use them as information to help you grow or heal, or remove yourself from unhealthy situations, you move down the path toward happiness.
So on your road to happiness, you've got to watch out for that subtle insidious chatter in your mind. You may not literally be pursuing fame or fortune or popularity or perfection or the avoidance of all negativity. Maybe you agree with me. You're like, Alison, I know that I know those things, but here's the thing.
You've got to watch out for those thinking traps that we talked about back in episode 51 that subtly encourage you down this road toward unhappiness. So here are some examples. Comparison. If I had what she had, then I'd feel better. I'd be okay. My life would be working. If I just had what she had, that's a slippery slope. You've got to catch those thoughts.
Blaming. It's his fault. If he would change, then I would feel happier. That doesn't work. You have to take charge of your own happiness.
Avoidance is a trap. I'll just ignore it. I'll just pretend like it's not there. That doesn't get you to that next step. That doesn't move you toward those four words. Creativity. Calling. Connection. Courage. Avoidance doesn't move the needle.
Numbing. Oh, just shut it all down. Now, so often we don't consciously think that. We just reach for the food or we reach for a glass of wine. I just can't deal with this and we just numb it down. That does not move the needle. That does not move you on the path toward happiness.
Finally, shame is a big one. I'm just not worthy. I'm just not worthy of happiness. I'll never be someone who feels this way. That doesn't move the needle.
Remember you have agency. No matter what's hard in your life, you have agency to move the needle toward creativity, connection, calling, and courage. You have choices you can make to put yourself on the path.
Use the hardships in your life as an opportunity to move toward happiness. Don't bypass the reality of hardship or suffering. Instead, name it, invite God into the struggle, and then take a small step toward creativity, connection, calling, or courage.
To close, I want to walk through those four categories and talk about practical steps you can take today to put yourself on the path toward happiness. Now remember, this is not the instant gratification path. That is not the path that leads to happiness.
The instant gratification path actually leads to unhappiness; the path toward happiness is a series of intentional steps that you take. These are empirically validated steps. They're validated by science and they're validated by the Bible.
If you take these steps, you will put yourself on the path toward happiness. Number one, taking steps toward connection. Remember, it's connection that moves the needle toward happiness. It's not popularity. It's not the dopamine hit of a like on social media. It's not scrolling.
You might get some instant gratification by turning to your phone in a moment of unhappiness. But true happiness requires you to take a step toward actual human connection. It means picking up the phone and calling a friend, calling someone who loves you and saying, I'd like to connect. Could we take a walk this weekend?
It's showing up at your church or at your local community center and joining a group, knowing that it might take a few tries to find a group you actually like. If you're at work, instead of eating lunch by yourself, you know what? I'm going to see if this colleague that seems kind of interesting to me wants to eat together.
It's taking a step. Maybe they don't. Maybe you do eat together and it actually turns out to be kind of a bust. But you took a step to put yourself on the path toward happiness.
Now remember, I didn't say you will experience happiness in that moment. You might not. Maybe you don't connect right in that moment, but you're putting yourself on the right path.
If you keep taking those steps, you will find connection, which will lead you to greater degrees of happiness. Science tells us this, and the Bible tells us this. What is a step you can take to move toward connection with other people?
Number two is courage. What is a step you can take to be brave? This gets right into what we were just talking about. The path to happiness requires courage. It is not the path of least resistance. It requires the courage to do something new.
What is a step you can take toward courage? It might be getting up and turning off the show you've been streaming on Netflix and having the courage to walk outside and enjoy the sunshine. That might be your brave step that puts you on the path toward happiness.
It might be having the courage to move away from that second glass of wine, set it aside and move toward something life giving. That takes courage. It takes courage to change a numbing behavior.
It takes courage to face a thinking trap in your mind. For example, if you've been listening and you heard me talk about comparison and you realize oh my gosh, I do that I tell myself. That if I only had more of this I would be happier. A courageous act would be to say to yourself, what if just today I practiced gratitude.
I am grateful for the home that I have. I am grateful for the job that I have. I am grateful for the friends that I have. I am grateful to be talking about how to practice gratitude. Shifting the way that you think that will put you on the path toward happiness.
Number three, let's talk about taking steps toward calling. Instead of languishing, instead of stagnating, instead of feeling unmotivated, instead of feeling unfocused, what's a step you could take toward a sense of calling?
You might go take a test online to determine your strengths. We talked about Strengthfinders back in episode 53. You might take a step toward prayer to say, God, what are my gifts? What are the talents you have given me? You might make a note in your notes app on your phone of the three gifts you feel like you have to offer other people. That's putting yourself on the path toward happiness.
You might think about someone you could serve. No matter what your job is, no matter whether you work at home or in an office, no matter whether you wait tables or whether you're an engineer, it doesn't matter. You might take a step toward how can I be useful? How can I be helpful in this situation?
That's moving toward calling, which moves you toward a sense of purpose, which leads to a sense of satisfaction and that puts you on the path toward happiness.
Lastly, what's a step you might take today toward creativity? What's a hobby that you've let go by the wayside that brings you joy, that you'd like to pick back up? What's an activity, whether it's taking a jog, or walking under the stars at night before bed, or playing with your dogs, or laughing with a friend? What's an activity that you enjoy? Move toward that.
What sparks your imagination? Is it reading a good book? Is it writing? Is it journaling? Is it drawing? Do it. Move toward that. That puts you on the path toward happiness. Now again, it's a step. It's going to take several steps. Maybe you pick back up the paint brushes and you're like, I don't even remember how to do this.
I haven't done it in so long. it's a little bit frustrating the first time. This is not about instant gratification. This is about taking steps to move toward creativity, toward imagination, toward a sense of refreshment that will put you on the path toward happiness. These things are empirically validated.
It is also what the Bible tells us to be true. As we move toward a sense of connection with other people, as we move toward brave acts of showing up in this world, of taking control of our own lives, as we move toward our calling and a sense of purpose as we move toward creativity and imagination, we put ourselves on the right path, and happiness becomes a byproduct of being on the right path.
Happiness flows from the inside out, as we are known, as we are connected with others, as we understand our calling and purpose, as we are courageous in how we show up in our lives, and as we participate in creativity. Happiness flows out as a result of those brave acts.
Today as you're listening, what is a brave step you can take to move toward connecting with someone who loves you? What is a courageous act you can do to show up more authentically and more honestly In your life? What is a step you can take toward the calling or gifts God has put inside of you to use for good in this world? How can you move toward creativity, imagination, the good things that bring you life? Every brave step you take will unlock the happiness, the joy, the abundance that God created you to enjoy.
Most people feel anger, sadness, or fear at some point during the day. It's normal to feel these emotions. The question is, what will you do when they show up: Will you let them sabotage you? Or will you turn them into your allies?In today's episode, I teach you the skills you need to turn these feelings into your allies so that you can experience more joy and healthier boundaries.
Here's what we cover:
1. The #1 question to ask yourself (6:38)
2. How anger is trying to help (6:53)
3. What to do when you feel sadness (11:03)
4. An illustration from one of my favorite movies (15:11)
5. Why we need fear (19:41)
6. A powerful exercise to use at any time (29:00)
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Music by Andy Luiten
Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
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.
Resources
- Fill out the The Best of You Podcast Survey
- The Best of You by Dr. Alison Cook
- Boundaries For Your Soul by Dr. Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller
- The scene in Good Will Hunting
Transcript
Alison Cook: Hey everyone. Welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. This is our last episode of 2023. We hit the ground running again the first week of January.
So we want to hear from you before we move into 2024. We want to know what content you've appreciated, what content you want more of, what you're dying for me to talk about that we haven't talked about yet, what guests to interview, so we've created a survey. I'd be so grateful if you would just take two to three minutes to click on the survey link–it's in the episode show notes, or you can go to the episode page on my website, DrAlisonCook.com/podcast, you'll find the link there.
When you fill that out, we are going to give five randomly selected participants a free copy of The Best of You as well as Boundaries for Your Soul. So five of you will get a copy of each book, The Best of You and Boundaries for Your Soul, as our way of saying thank you for taking just a couple of minutes to fill out the survey.
Again, you can find that survey in the episode notes of this episode, wherever you listen to it, whether it's on Apple or Spotify, or you can go to my website, DrAlisonCook.com/podcast, and you'll find the link under the episode show notes there.
We would be so grateful to hear from you as we seek to serve you through this podcast with the best resources available, bringing together spiritual wisdom with practical tools from psychology.
Today's episode is the last episode in our series on Five Steps to Navigating Overwhelming Emotions. You've learned how to focus on an unpleasant emotion. You've learned how to befriend those emotions. You've learned how to invite God to be with you in the experience of an emotion. You've learned how to unburden painful emotions in last week's episode.
Today I want to talk about how we bring it all together. How do we integrate those emotions into the rest of our lives? Because here's the thing–those emotions are trying to help. Each emotion that you experience is a clue; it has information for you about how to make a change or make a decision or something.
You need these emotions, once you focus on them, befriend them, invite God to be with them, and unburden them, so they can become your allies on your journey toward wholeness. They help you become a more effective decision maker. They help you set healthier boundaries. They help you care for yourself. They help you to forge healthier connections with other people.
So today we're going to walk through THREE of the most common emotions, and how each one might be a cue that you need to make a subtle shift in your life, especially here at the holidays. I want you to pay attention. If you've been experiencing any of these emotions, you can make just a subtle change that will help you find just a little more peace, a little more joy, a little more groundedness this holiday season.
So I want to start today with the emotion of anger. The reason I want to start with anger is that it's often one of the first emotions that we notice. Anger has a lot of cousins. It doesn't always show up as just red hot rage, although sometimes it does. There's a lot of different permutations to how anger shows up.
For example, anger can show up as just irritability, maybe a sense of annoyance with others, where you just feel negative toward yourself or others. It can show up as judgmental or overly critical feelings toward yourself or others, where there's just a little bit of an edge.
Another way it might show up is as resentment; you start to resent the very people that you're actually trying to serve this holiday season, you start to resent the very people you're trying to please.
So anger as a broad emotion has a lot of ways that it shows up. From one extreme of lashing out, yelling, being verbally abusive to other people, all the way to more internalized anger that can show up as frustration, irritability, or hypercriticism.
If you are noticing any of those manifestations of anger, that's your cue to work the five steps to focus on it. Isn't it interesting that I feel so critical of that other person? I'm going to focus on that for a second. I'm going to pay attention to that. Or I'm just so bitter about my work. I just noticed a lot of bitterness. I need to look at that bitterness to focus on it and see what's going on there.
Then you have to befriend it. Right away. It's there for a reason. I don't have to beat myself up for feeling this way. What's going on? What's that about? Invite God into that experience. Ask God to be with you. As you begin to unpack that emotion, unburden any messages that might be there all the way back from the past.
Things like, everyone always lets me down. No one ever gives me a break. Notice those messages, pay attention to those messages. As you do this work of engaging with that emotion of anger, of journaling on behalf of it, maybe talking to a friend on behalf of it, I want you to ask yourself this clarifying question.
How is my anger trying to help? Just begin to think about that. How is this emotion trying to help? And notice what comes to mind.
Here are some examples of the ways that anger might actually be trying to get your attention to help you. It might be trying to protect you from danger. It may be that you're feeling all of that negative energy because you're in a situation that's not safe, and you actually need to do something to protect yourself.
It may be that you're letting people walk all over you. The fact that you're feeling angry inside is actually a cue that you need to set some healthier boundaries. You might need to speak up for yourself. You might need to get more assertive with a friend, with your family, with work.
You might need to say, guys, I'm overwhelmed. I need to get some things off my plate. Could you help me? You might need to have a hard conversation. Maybe somebody has hurt you, so you're just noticing that cynicism or that bitterness fester. Instead of beating yourself up for that, you might need to let that be a cue that you're going to have to brave that hard conversation. Maybe it's an opportunity to say to your family, let's set some boundaries around gift giving this year, or I'm going to focus on giving the gift of quality time this year. So you take command of something that you can actually do to bring a little bit of change into the situation.
Anger, when we focus, befriend, invite, unburden, then integrate, is mobilizing. It helps us take action and create change that is good for us. If it's good for you, I promise you, it is also going to be good for the people around you. When you say yes to God, yes to your own health–even when that means saying no to some of the things around you, you are honoring God. You are also honoring the people around you.
Even when they're disappointed.
Okay. So look at anger as an opportunity to set some healthy boundaries, to assert yourself, to use your voice, to speak up for something that will help you take command of your own health this holiday season. It could be around food. It could be around gifts. It could be around conversation topics.
There's so many ways you can speak up on behalf of yourself to give yourself the gift of agency at the holidays where you have some choice. You are not only at the mercy of the people around you, of all the expectations around you. So anger, when befriended, can become an emotion that helps you establish healthier boundaries.
Next, I want to look at sadness or hurt. This is often the other side of anger. Often our anger surfaces when another more vulnerable part of us is really hurt. Maybe you're hurt that no one is actually noticing your needs this holiday season. No one's coming alongside you saying, hey, how can I help you?
Maybe you're hurt that a friend seems to be ignoring you or disregarding you this holiday. Maybe you've been hurt by a family member. You're angry on one hand, but on the other hand, you're really hurt, and you don't know what to do with that feeling.
Maybe you're sad because of a loss. We talked about this in Episode 80. You've experienced loss and the holidays are pushing on that bruise where you're feeling that loss very keenly this holiday season. Sadness and the hurt that you feel is not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of your deep capacity to love and to connect with other people. It's an emotion we want to honor.
Oftentimes we want to bring in that emotion a little bit closer so that we can get curious about what we really need. So if you're noticing sadness or hurt, work on those steps of focusing on it, befriending it, inviting God into your experience of that sadness of that hurt, and then unburdening any pain that feels like it's from the past, that feels like it's interwoven with messages that aren't helpful to you.
And then let's find a way to integrate that sadness into your experience of the holiday season. I want to give you some examples of this because it's really powerful.
Sadness reminds you of your need for others and for God. It helps you become aware of needs that you have, of places where you're tender, that you need to receive care. It helps you develop empathy. It helps you come alongside others in beautiful ways, and it also helps you speak the truth about your story and about some of the hardships you're facing. Which helps you create more authenticity in your relationships.
Here's the thing though, if you don't honor sadness, if you try to exile it, it can get really big and it can lead to feelings of being invisible or worthless, or it can lead to feelings of fatigue or insecurity.
So you want to notice that sadness and let it inform you. Again, I want you to ask yourself a question. If you're noticing any of the manifestations of sadness this holiday season, I want you to ask yourself, how is sadness trying to help? What does it need you to know? Look at sadness as a wise advisor. How is it trying to inform you this holiday season?
Maybe it needs a safe place for you to grieve a loss. It needs you to carve out time with a trusted friend or with a counselor, with a small group where you can let them know what you're dealing with. Maybe it needs validation that it's okay for you to feel sad that what you're dealing with is hard and that it's okay that you don't have a quick fix.
Maybe it needs a gentle boundary to be reminded that yes, while some things are hard, there are also some things that are good and you can hold both side by side.
***Music Break***
To give you an example, we just watched the movie Good Will Hunting again. I hadn't watched it in years. and there's a couple of powerful scenes in that movie, but one in particular where the main character, Matt Damon's character, unburdens a hurt from the past with Robin Williams' character, who plays the role of his therapist in the movie.
If you've seen that movie, there's a powerful moment where Matt Damon is talking about the abuse from his past and the pain of it.He's very rational and Robin Williams keeps saying to him, it wasn't your fault. and Matt Damon's character keeps replying, I know it wasn't my fault.
Robin Williams keeps pushing in because what he senses is that a part of him is still carrying the weight of that pain. And sure enough, as he pushes in and pushes in, pretty soon, Matt Damon's character is just sobbing and letting Robin Williams love him and honor the pain with him in that moment.
He has a release and unburdening where he's no longer carrying the weight of all that pain alone in that moment. He's brought the force of all that emotion to the surface with someone who loves him and who cares about him, and he's unburdening the excess baggage, the excess weight of that pain.
There's a moment of release. And that moment of release frees him to then make changes in his life. So pretty soon we get to the end of the movie, spoiler alert, and he's finally able to make a decision where he leaves his old neighborhood. He leaves his past behind and he takes a brave step to claim a different future.
The ending of that movie is so profound because it embodies the both-and of sadness and joy. He unburdens that hurt, he unburdens that pain. There's a departure at the ending of the movie where he says, “I got to go find a fuller, more whole expression of my life and my talents and of the gifts God has given me”.
That means I have to leave my childhood neighborhood. And that's both sad and also incredibly joyful. What I love about that ending is, it is a happy ending in a way, but it's a true ending because so often when you're dealing with hurt or you're dealing with pain, joy is right around the corner. There's something there for you.
Maybe there's a hurt that you experienced long ago that makes the holidays hard for you. Maybe it's hard for you to gather with your family this holiday season. But as you unburden that hurt and you share what's hard with someone who loves you, something amazing happens. That thing that was hard becomes an avenue for deeper connection and that deeper connection with someone who loves you and cares for you in your present life leads to an experience of joy.
Sadness and joy are intimately linked in that way when you look at sadness and you face it and you honor it and you unburden it with someone who loves you and you share that heartache with them, it's amazing what happens. You find connection. Sometimes you end up laughing together.
Sometimes creativity sparks and you decide to do something to honor that loss together. Maybe you decide to do something completely different on Christmas day, because you can't figure out how to do the thing that everybody wants you to do. Maybe you end up getting creative to find new ways to celebrate the holidays as you honor what's also sad.
For example, maybe you spend some time volunteering or spending time with folks who are hurting. There's sometimes solidarity in reaching out to be with others who are hurting at the holidays where you don't feel alone, or maybe you get creative and create a game or a scavenger hunt or eat different foods or make plans to see different people that you don't usually see on the holiday, just to shake things up a little bit and open up new pathways.
Once you honor sadness and share it with someone who loves you, you'll be surprised at the way that creativity starts to pop and you start to see ways to create moments of joy, even as you honor the sadness.
Finally, let's talk about fear. Fear is a pervasive emotion. It's arguably the most primal, most pervasive of all emotions. It's that racing heart when you're about to give a big presentation. It's that pit in your stomach when you have to have a hard conversation. It can turn into anxiety if it gets really big.
Here's the thing about fear. It's also trying to help. Fear can alert you to real threats that you need to get strategic about facing. Sometimes fear is telling you something that you need to know. Hey, you need to have a plan because when you spend time with this family member, things don't always go well. They're inevitably going to hurt you. How are you going to respond? What are you going to do? So fear can be really helpful in alerting you to slow down and create a plan for an unsafe situation.
Fear can also just be a reminder of your vulnerability. You might fear someone's rejection. You might fear that if you disappoint someone, they'll reject you. You might fear that if you don't get things perfectly, people are going to laugh at you or shame you. Fear is so pervasive. It drives so much of what we do. and so it's so important.
Again, if you notice fear, if you notice that pit in your stomach, or you notice that feeling of holding back or wanting to play small or wanting to play it safe, or maybe you just notice the ways that fear manifests as incessant people pleasing, or perfectionism, or constant internal chatter, overthinking, not being able to get things done.
Because you're just analyzing and analyzing, trying to figure out the perfect way so that no one will ever be mad at you. That's another way fear shows up. It is so important if you're noticing that to focus on that feeling, name it. Oh my gosh, that's fear. I'm afraid. I'm terrified of making that person mad. I'm afraid of getting it wrong and making a fool of myself. I'm afraid to make a change because what if I don't have what it takes?
Befriend that feeling. It's okay that it's there. It's there for a reason. We don't have to fix it. We don't have to make it go away. Just notice it and befriend it. Invite God into your experience of fear. God, I'm frightened. I want to be wise. I'm also scared. Help me in that fear.
Unburden the fear. Remind yourself that you are beloved and that no one can take that away from you. Even if you do disappoint someone, even if someone does get mad at you, even if you don't get it perfectly, you are going to be okay because you're a beloved child of God and no one can take that away, even if the worst thing happens, you are going to be okay,
So you unburden that fear, and then you allow that fear to inform your decision-making, but you don't let it drive, you don't let it lead you. Again, you ask yourself this powerful question, how is fear trying to help? It's not maybe using the best strategies, but it's there for a reason. It's trying to help.
So often, what fear needs from you is your validation, number one, just your non-shaming presence. It's hard. Yes, that, I get it. Yes, that is scary. You're right. It is hard. And it also needs you to lovingly remind it of the truth of God's power. Oftentimes, we have to negotiate with our fear a little bit.
Maybe you want to set a really extreme boundary. You wish you could just go to a different place for Christmas and avoid everybody. Your fears, they're going, you can't do that. Everyone will be mad at you.
Fear in that case is actually helping you be reasonable. Let's negotiate internally. Let's think about a way that we can honor other people and simultaneously honor ourselves. So maybe you end up coming up with a hybrid solution where you spend half of Christmas day with your family, but you carve out an hour or two hours to just do something that you want to do for yourself.
Or maybe you're worried about all the people you might disappoint this holiday and you're fearful of just losing love. That is such a big fear for so many of us. We are hardwired for connection. So many of us have those attachment wounds, where we just can't bear the thought of hurting someone and losing that feeling of connection, even when we're doing harm to ourselves by not establishing a healthier boundary.
So if you notice that you're pleasing others or working overtime to make sure no one else is disappointed, maybe you're avoiding conflict out of worry or fear. You've got to extend compassion to your fear. Of course, I don't want to hurt anybody. Of course, I don't want to let anybody down. Of course, I wish I could make everybody happy.
And also, I'm not God. I am not omniscient. I am not all powerful. I have human limitations and I have to operate from within those human limitations and that's normal and it's okay to operate within my own limitations.
If other people don't like that, it's not my responsibility. I have to release that. I have to release them over to God, even as I claim the limits of my God given capacity and you gently work with your fear to soothe your fear. It's okay. Yes, it is scary.
I don't want anyone to be disappointed. And also, it's okay. I am beloved by God. I am going to be okay. And you walk yourself through that experience of fear. Fear, when integrated into your internal family, becomes such a beautiful channel of humility. Or better yet, what I like to call brave humility, where you humbly acknowledge your own human limitations and you do the best that you can and you release what is not your responsibility.
Anger, sadness, and fear become your allies on this journey toward wholeness. Anger helps you speak up for yourself and establish those healthy boundaries. Sadness reminds you to care for yourself and connect with others authentically so that you can be surprised. It's the joy that comes through the power of authentic connection and fear can help you stay kind and humble even as you release expectations of yourself that you were never meant to meet.
These emotions, when befriended and invited into your internal family, help you create a wise tapestry of your life that involves caring for others, even as you honor yourself; that involves setting healthy boundaries, even as you sometimes make sacrifices; hat involve honoring the good things in your life, even as you also honor what's hard.
***Exercise***
I want to close this episode today as well as this entire series by giving you some powerful questions you can ask yourself under each of these five steps. When you encounter a big emotion, you can engage these questions in real time right now as you're listening by hitting pause. on the podcast and journaling about the questions or just quietly noticing inside your soul how you would respond to the different questions.
You can also go to my website www.dralisoncook.com/podcast and find the full transcription for this episode in the episode show notes. And you can use the written version of these questions to help guide you in your journaling. This is a tool for you to use whenever you're noticing a big emotion. So here are the questions.
The first step, Focus.
\Where do you sense the emotion physically?
Is there a thought or image that comes to mind when you focus on it?
What situation evoked the emotion? What's an early memory of when you've experienced this emotion in the past?
Step number two, Befriend.
How do you feel toward this emotion?
If you notice any other emotion like criticism, shame, or frustration, ask that other emotion to step back and see if you can engage this original emotion from a place of compassion or curiosity.
Can you befriend this emotion and welcome it?
Number three, the step of Invite.
What happens when you invite God into your experience of this emotion?
What fears do you have about inviting God to come closer?
Is there anything you sense God has for you in your experience of this emotion?
Number four, the step of Unburden.
What burden does this emotion carry?
Are there any messages that go hand in hand with your experience of this emotion? There might be messages from the past about your worth. About not being good enough, about being rejectable, unlovable, invisible. Notice those heavy weights and see if this part of you would be open to reframing or releasing those messages.
What is a new message you want to tell yourself as it relates to this emotion?
Finally, Step five, Integrate.
How is this emotion trying to help?
What needs is this emotion trying to alert you to in your real life?
How can you work with this emotion to identify a change that you can make? A way to assert yourself, care for yourself, or set a healthy boundary.
And as we close, thank God for your experience of these emotions. They're trying to help you become a fuller, more beautiful version of your God made self.
***
Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you'd take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts and click the plus or follow button. That will ensure you don't miss an episode and it helps get the word out to others.
While you're there, I'd love it if you leave your five star review. I look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best. of who you are. You honor God, you heal others and you stay true to your God given self.
We all over-react at times. I know I do! Maybe someone is late, and you get really angry instead of a little annoyed. Or your colleague gives you constructive feedback, and you feel decimated inside. You don't know why you had such a big reaction. What if your "overreactions" are actually clues to unpack?
In today's episode I walk you through an incredibly practical way to use the power of big emotional reactions in the present to help you heal from events in the past. When you decode the information in your overreactions, you can finally unburden yourself.
Here's what we cover:
1. The main reasons we overreact (8:27)
2. Why we pick up burdens from the past (16:36)
3. The effects of parentification (18:55)
4. How to become a cycle-breaker (23:27)
5. A real-time exercise in unburdening (29:20)
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Music by Andy Luiten
Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
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.
Resources
- Boundaries For Your Soul by Dr. Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller
- 2 Corinthians 10:5
Transcript
Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad you're joining me for this whole series, Five Steps to Navigating Overwhelming Emotions.
We have two steps left and today's is so important. We're going to touch on so many things that so many of you ask me about regularly. I love today's topic. We're going to get into this question of how do I break cycles and what does that have to do with my current day emotion?
Now, listen, if you are not already subscribed to The Best of You Podcast, please take a moment and subscribe to it right now. You can click the plus sign or the follow sign wherever you listen to the podcast. When you subscribe to it, you'll get reminders every time there's a new episode so that you don't miss one. Now, if you're on my email list, I also send out email reminders, but the best way to never miss one of these episodes is to click that subscribe button.
So what we've talked about so far is the very first step is to focus on an emotion, especially an emotion you don't like, we want to make them go away. But the first step is to actually stop yourself long enough to focus on it, which is immediately then followed by the second step of befriending. You focus on the emotion and you befriend it. You welcome it. It's there for a reason.
We're not saying that you welcome it to let it take you over, but you welcome it so that you can figure out why it's there and what you need to do on behalf of that emotion.
The third step, you invite God into your experience of that emotion. So now you're aware of the emotion, you're extending compassion toward the emotion, and you've invited God into your experience of that emotion. If you think about it, all of this is leading toward a wiser way through it.
These emotions are there for a reason. They’re cues that, when harnessed, can help guide you into healthier decision making, healthier actions in your day to day life.
Today's step is the step of unburden. Sometimes these emotions get complicated. Sometimes they're deep. They're rooted in pain. All the way from the past. In this case, the emotions are bigger than the immediate set of circumstances.
You might notice that you're more angry or more sad or more anxious than the actual situation in front of you warrants. If that's the case, that's just a cue that you need to do some work of unburdening. You've picked up a burden or two, and I'm going to get into what I mean by that.
We need to take a little more time to go deeper and unburden that part of you that's picked up this pain from the past so that you can free that part of you from the unnecessary weight of the emotion. There's a quote from my book with Kimberly Miller called Boundaries For Your Soul. There's a quote where we say, suffer what you have to suffer, but don't suffer what you don't have to suffer.
What that means is you might feel a little sad. Or a little anxious, or a little frustrated. That might make sense. That's suffering a little bit, but sometimes when these emotions get bigger than the situation warrants, it's because we're suffering something that's unhealed from the past. We're bringing past pain into present pain, which makes it twice the pain, and we don't need to experience that extra weight of pain, so we can unburden that emotion.
We're just experiencing a normal range of emotions without that excess baggage from the past. So with that being said, let's dive into this fourth step of unburdening a painful emotion.
The first question that I usually get asked when we're talking about unburdening an emotion is how do I know that I need to do this work? How do I know that one of my emotional responses has gotten extreme? The answer is, it's when you have an overreaction emotionally.
I want to be clear, there's no shame in this. We all overreact. When someone is overreacting, it's just the reality that you're getting more emotionally charged than the situation warrants. Let me give you some examples of what I mean by that.
A classic example is you lose your temper or yell over a minor mistake. Maybe one of your kids spills their milk, or maybe a spouse forgets about an appointment and you just lose it and you yell or you get really angry at them. That's a classic example of an overreaction. The situation warrants frustration. It might even warrant anger, but it doesn't warrant that extreme anger response.
Here’s another example that has to do with anxiety. Maybe a work meeting that you've been really nervous about gets changed. The schedule gets changed on you. While that change might evoke anxiety, an overreaction might be if it evokes extreme anxiety or even panic. Same thing if someone's late, maybe a friend is late to meet you for coffee.
While you feel a little bit stressed, you're a little bit worried. Where are they? An overreaction would be that you start to catastrophize and you start to imagine that they've been in a car accident and they're at the hospital when really they're just 10 minutes late. So that would be an example of an extreme emotion where you're having an emotional response that doesn't exactly match the situation in front of you.
A third example is that you get extremely sad over a minor disappointment. So for example, maybe you don't get invited to a neighbor's get together and it's disappointing and you're bummed out. But an overreaction might mean that you get really depressed and you start feeling like you're just never gonna be included anywhere.
It really was just one gathering. Or maybe someone at work or someone in your family gives you some constructive feedback and you just break down crying. You just get so sad. You have an extreme emotional response to a situation that really warranted a mild feeling of disappointment or a little bit of hurt, but not a major reaction.
That's what we mean by an overreaction. It just means that we have an emotional reaction that's not proportionate to the situation at hand. Again, there's no shame in this. This is a cue that we might need to unburden some part of us that's experiencing the big emotion.
The first thing we have to do is look at the underlying reasons for why the emotion might be so big. So, here are some of the reasons you might be having these big reactions:
It might just be stress or emotional strain. This is really common during the holidays, and we use that phrase, sometimes it's the straw that breaks the camel's back. The thing that happened hit you at a moment where you just didn't have anything left and you exploded in a big emotional reaction. Now, if that's the case, you will know, because pretty quickly you'll realize, oh my gosh, I completely overreacted.
I'm so sorry. I'm just stressed out. ‘Cause there's a lot going on. Here's why. You'll move on. That in and of itself is an unburdening. You recognize, oh, I'm carrying a lot of weight and this one, and this one thing was just too much.
So you unburden the weight of that shame. You name it, you honor it, and you let your loved one know, hey, this is what happened, and you're good. You repair. So that could be one of the reasons you have a big reaction, but today, what I want to get into is the reality that sometimes there's a deeper reason that you had a big reaction.
Something happened in the past that is just similar enough to this situation in the present, that those emotions from the past are sneaking in and ambushing you in the present situation. So I'm going to unpack this a little bit for you, but this is really common. You have an overreaction in the present because there's something in the past that still hasn't been unburdened, that you still haven't fully healed from, and that part of you wants to get healed, so it sneaks into the present, hijacks you in the moment.
You have this big reaction. You can't figure out why. Well, in this case, it's what we call a trail head. It's a cue that you need to look back and follow the trail to what is the actual event that happened in the past that is actually related to the big emotion that you didn't get to have back then, and you needed to have back then so that you could heal and repair.
Okay, so here's an example of what I mean by this. Let's go to the situation where your anxiety gets really big when someone changes the schedule. Let's say in this case you and a few friends were planning a get together, you've been looking forward to it, you've been so excited about it, and suddenly your friend backs out. They have to change the schedule, and it's for a very understandable reason, and you're disappointed by it, but you have a huge reaction to it.
You're angry, you're upset, you feel abandoned, you feel betrayed, you feel almost inconsolable. In that situation, the real thing that happened is that you've had a history of people canceling on you, of people ghosting you.
In fact, the history with this particular emotion of feeling abandoned might go all the way back to childhood where around Christmas time, there was a family gathering and you were so excited about it.
Maybe your parents had a history of being erratic or inconsistent in their behavior and they just canceled the event, didn't explain it to you, and you were just left in the dark.
Suddenly it's just gone and you're alone and nobody ever explained to you what happened. Nobody ever talked you through it and you were just left alone with all that disappointment and all those feelings of sadness. No one ever talked you through it and helped you heal that wound.
In fact, maybe that was a pattern. Maybe that happened time and time again, where there was just this inconsistency, where your parents were coming and going and no one stuck to this schedule, and you never knew what was happening, and you look forward to something, and then it'd be canceled, or one parent wouldn't show up, and for whatever reason you just constantly felt alone and abandoned and disappointed.
You've never really dealt with that. You never really had a chance to process that trauma and the memory of that feeling of abandonment still lives in your body. So when something happens in your present life that is just similar enough to that past experience, it triggers that backlog of emotions from deep inside of you.
Instead of just getting a little bit of disappointment, you get that whole geyser of emotions that's been buried inside of you for decades in some cases. You have this huge reaction to what really in the present tense was just a minor disappointment. So that's just an example of how painful events from the past can create these burdened emotions that are just buried deep inside.
When something happens in your present life that even loosely resembles one of those painful events from the past, those burdened emotions take the opportunity to just show up in a big way.
The good news is that when that happens, it's an opportunity to give yourself the care that you actually need. To unburden those painful emotions from the past so you can separate what happened in the past out from these very normal, very real, more manageable disappointments in the present.
This is the heart of the work that is so often done in therapy. It's noticing these big reactions and helping you identify what is rooted in your present circumstances and what is residual, unhealed pain from the past so that you can disconnect the two and have a normal reaction in your present. Oh, that's disappointing. Or, oh, I'm kind of bummed or, oh, that worries me a little bit, but those emotions match the situation in front of you.
You're not carrying all the weight of those burdens from those past memories. This is an example of a cue that you might need to do some unburdening: it's when your emotions in the present tense are bigger than the situation in front of you warrants.
If you're noticing that, if you're like, man, that is me, I do that. I have these big reactions that I can't figure out why they're so big. I can't figure out why I can't just be a little bit disappointed or a little bit angry or a little bit anxious. You know, because that feels like the normal way to respond to these events.
Please do not beat yourself up or shame yourself. This is just your body, the way that God designed you to give you a cue. Oh, I need to do some unburdening work. I need to do some healing. There's something in my past that maybe needs my attention.
So what do we mean by burdens? Well, the burdens that we pick up are these extreme beliefs or feelings. Sometimes they're physical sensations. Where we'll feel a disproportionate amount of tension or tightness in our stomach. Parts of you have taken on as a result of painful experiences from the past.
You can develop these burdens at any time, but often they develop in childhood. When you're a child, your mind can't process complex emotions or complex situations. So when something hard happens, even in the best of parenting situations, you make sense of those events, you often interpret those events in ways that aren't helpful.
That's when you pick up a burden, a belief burden, or an emotional burden that you were never meant to carry, but it never gets healed at the actual place where the injury occurred. Parts of your soul are still hanging on to these burdens from the past. So I want to give you some examples of these burdens. if you want more examples, there's two pages devoted to these examples and how to resolve these examples in Boundaries for Your Soul in the chapter on unburdening.
So here are some examples. My parents are fighting. It must be my fault. As a kid, your parents are fighting all the time. You hate it. No one's really naming it. No one's really helping you understand what's happening.
So you tell yourself, and this is so common, it must be my fault. If I could behave better, if I could be more perfect, my parents wouldn't behave in this way. So you take in that burden and it helps you explain a really hard situation, even though it's not true.
There is no correlation between your behavior and your parents fighting. But you tell yourself that because it helps you make sense of a painful situation, you carry that burden with you all the way into adulthood. So whenever anybody's fighting around you, you feel like it's your fault. It must be my fault that there's conflict. Even though it has nothing to do with you.
Anytime you're with people who are fighting or there's conflict, even normal conflict or healthy conflict, you start getting so anxious inside because in your mind, this is catastrophic. I can't let this happen. Because you're still back as that young child where it really was catastrophic to be a child witnessing two adults argue and fight and be angry with each other without anybody caring for you through that.
Another common burden that you pick up as a child and bring into adulthood is, I am responsible for everyone around me. Now, I bet a lot of you have that one. I am responsible for everyone around me. Now, listen, in a small dose, we are responsible to some degree to be good to the people around us in a normal way.
But let me walk you through how that oftentimes is rooted in a belief burden. You're a young child. The caregivers in your life aren't taking care of themselves.
Maybe one of your parents has an undiagnosed mental illness and you watch them not really be able to get out of bed or not really be able to care for themselves or be really erratic emotionally and you take on the responsibility for that. You start parenting your parent as a young child.
There's a term for this in psychology. It's called parentification. You become the parent for your parent, and it's never a child's responsibility to parent their parent. A child has a basic need of being cared for and loved and nurtured by an adult caregiver.
When that role gets inverted and the child is asked to care for their caregiver, that burden gets formed. It's my responsibility to be responsible for everybody else. That burden can sometimes get translated as, I'm not worthy to receive care from others because as a child, nobody ever cared for you.
You never had a lived experience inside your body of what it feels like to be cared for by an adult, by a parent, and so you tell yourself, oh, I'm not worthy of care. So not only am I responsible for everybody else, I'm also simultaneously not worthy of receiving care.
That's a double whammy of a belief burden. Either one of those is hard enough. But they're both rooted in a situation where as a child, you didn't get the care you needed from a caregiver and you picked up a burden. Listen, this is not conscious. You don't know that you're doing this when you're a young child.
You don't consciously say, wow, it's my job as a five year old to be the most responsible person in the room, to be the most mature person in the room. It's not conscious. It's just what happens. You start to notice that no one else in your household is taking any responsibility for their health or well being and so you do.
You just step up and do it and you tell yourself at some deep level, you internalize the message of, this is what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to be responsible for everyone. You take that with you into adulthood, and you don't know how to let go. You don't know how to let other people take responsibility for what is actually their responsibility.
So these are belief burdens we pick up as young children. We internalize them and they're operating silently under the surface, but they're influencing the ways we show up with others.
Again, let's say you're an adult and you're just overworking to the point of almost harming yourself to do things for other people that are not your responsibility to do for them. Maybe someone comes to you and gives you some constructive feedback and says, hey, I don't want you to do this. I don't want you to micromanage me in this or stop asking me about this or stop trying to do what's mine to do.
You feel incredibly hurt by that when in reality they're actually trying to be helpful. They're trying to say, listen, you don't have to do this for me, but you carry that burden of, that's the only thing I know. I only know how to take responsibility for everybody around me.
So if you try to pry that responsibility away from me, I feel decimated. I don't know what to do with that. I don't know how to let people come alongside and share the weight with me, so you have a big reaction that's rooted in a burden from the past.
Now, here's the thing. Rationally, you may well understand that you shouldn't be thinking or feeling in the way that you do. You may be able to tell me, I get that that thing that happened in the past wasn't my fault. You have some cognitive awareness about it, but the reality is some part of you deep inside may still carry a residual experience of that burden.
When a similar situation happens, that part of you tends to come to the surface. So that's where these steps are iterative. When that happens, you focus on it. Oh, I just had a big reaction. You befriend it. This is a cue. My body's trying to tell me something. Something happened that needs my attention. You invite God into that experience. God, help me understand. Then you can go through this process of unburdening.
So I want to end this episode with a little exercise in unburdening because the best way to do it is to experience it. But before we do that, I want to touch on this idea of cycle-breaking. You may have heard this. It kind of floats around social media from time to time, this idea of being a cycle breaker.
A cycle breaker is someone who works to disrupt and change a negative familial pattern. If you think about it, these patterns get handed down generationally. So, for example, the burdens you picked up as a result of the way you were parented, your parents probably picked up the way they parented from their parents.
So when you break cycles, you work to identify an unhealthy pattern in your family of origin, something that happened that caused you harm. So you work to identify it, heal it in yourself, and then as a result of that, you then no longer pass that same unhealthy pattern down to your own offspring.
So you become a cycle breaker. You stop the pattern. This work of unburdening is really important. As you unburden your own painful emotions and your own painful memories, you're breaking the cycle of a pattern of behaviors.
You're consciously choosing a different path. You're choosing to heal and in doing so you create ripple effects of healing into the people around you, including your own family and the next generations ahead of you.
Here are some examples of what I mean by that. Oftentimes, addiction or misuse, what causes some of these injuries, is in your childhood. When you break a cycle of addiction and you heal and you obtain your sobriety and you no longer use, you're breaking a cycle and you're no longer handing down the damage that comes from substance abuse.
You're healing what happened to you and you're stopping that pattern of injury that occurs in families where their substance misuse from being passed down to the next generation. If there's a pattern of untreated mental illness, such as untreated anxiety or depression in your family, maybe that's the reason that your parent, when you were young, wasn't available to you, or why you don't have a secure attachment.
What you've decided to do is prioritize your own mental health so that you are healing those wounds and as a result, no longer passing down the damages of untreated mental health issues in your family.
It can happen. You can break the cycle of unhealthy conflict where maybe you were really harmed by the way the adults in your life handled conflict. so you, as a result of that, have decided I'm going to become someone who's really good at navigating conflict.
I'm going to unburden and heal the damage that that did to me. Then I'm going to work to create places of healthy conflict in my family going forward. There's so many ways we can become cycle breakers and cycle breaking comes out of this work of unburdening.
It's a byproduct. It's a fruit of this work. As you unburden and heal from the pain of your past, you create a ripple effect of change. You start to show up as a healthier version of yourself and your own family and your healing creates a ripple effect.
When the Bible talks about generational sin, I often think of it as generational trauma. We're passing down the generational trauma of our ancestors. You have an opportunity as you engage in your own healing work to unburden these painful emotions from the past, stopping that generational pattern and ushering in a generation of healing. This is amazing work.
We are part of that together. That's really what this whole podcast is about. It's unleashing a movement of healing because as you heal, you heal everybody around you.
Sometimes parts of us are fearful of unburdening. It's scary. Change is hard. Sometimes we like to keep the status quo. Again, the chapter on unburdening and Boundaries For Your Soul is an invaluable resource, walking you through some of the different fears that you may have about doing this work.
I mentioned this here because I want to say, if you have a deep reservoir of pain from your past, you don't want to do this work alone. This is work you want to do with a therapist or with safe people where you begin to unpack some of the pain from your past.
But it's so important for all of us to do the work of noticing where is there a big reaction, or a big pattern of emotional reactions in my life that I'm just not able to get on top of, and maybe that's a cue that there's some unburdening work I need to do. There's some painful experiences from my past that need to be healed and where I need to do some of the work of unburdening.
So I want to end with an exercise where you can begin to get a glimpse of this work of unburdening. As we walk through this exercise, if you want to pause the podcast, wherever you're listening, to give yourself more time to reflect, just feel free to do that.
Take this at your own pace. I'm going to walk you through some questions so you can just listen and learn, or you can actually try to engage the questions in real time by hitting pause and maybe doing some journaling work as I ask you each of the questions.
Think of a recent situation that evoked a strong reaction in you. Maybe it was at work, maybe it was at home, maybe it was with a friend, but you had maybe an overreaction. Just think about that situation and see if you can work through those first three steps as it relates to the emotion.
What was the emotion? Just focus on the emotion for a moment apart from the situation. Were you angry, were you anxious, were you sad? Were you scared? And then see if you can befriend that emotion. See if you can get curious about it or become compassionate toward it and just kind of notice what that emotion is.
If it feels overwhelming or too extreme, that's a cue that you might need to process this with another person, that you don't want to do this alone, because sometimes that can happen if you're new to this work. But if it feels comfortable to you, just notice the emotion and from a place of compassion and notice what it feels like in your body. You might even notice what it feels like as an image in your mind.
Then as you're connecting to the experience of that emotion, whatever it is, just letting yourself be present to it, you might invite God to be with you in that experience as well, to gain deeper understanding through the power of God's presence. What was that about? That sadness, that anger, that big reaction.
I'm aware of it. I'm connected to it. I'm not shaming myself for it. What was that about God? You're kind of becoming a detective or a student of your own soul. You're becoming aware of the emotion from a healthy distance.
Just notice what that feels like. Let the situation fade away as you tap into the emotion you experienced in that moment. As you're present to that experience of the emotion, whatever it is, begin to ask yourself some unburdening questions.
What is an extreme belief or a message? That goes hand in hand with this feeling. So here's some examples of what I mean by that.
As you're present to the emotion, you might become aware of some messages you tell yourself about the experience that evoked that emotion. For example:
No one ever helps me. I'm always on my own.
It's my fault. I should have tried harder.
No one will ever understand me.
If people are angry, I'm not safe.
If someone is mad at me, it must be my fault.
If someone is disappointed with me, it must be my fault.
If someone ignores me, it's because I'm not worthy.
If things don't go perfectly, I am a complete failure and no one will ever love me.
These are all examples of belief burdens, and notice if any of those types of messages resonate with your experience of that emotion. If so, I want you to make a note of that burden. What is it and what might that part of you that's been carrying the weight of that burden need from you or from God to create what I call a holy reframe? What's a holy, healed, healthy message that that part of you needs to hear?
When you create a holy reframe, I want you to imagine that part of you feeling the emotion as a child. What would a child need to hear in that moment of feeling the weight of that burden? Here are some examples:
Sometimes you feel alone, but there are people willing to help. Let's stay persistent.
It may take time, but someone will understand and love and appreciate you for who you are.
It's uncomfortable when someone is upset with you, but it doesn't mean everything will fall apart. You're safe.
Disappointment is a part of life. It doesn't mean that you did something wrong.
There might be many reasons someone ignored you, but you are always worthy of honor and care.
Criticism can be hard to hear, but it doesn't have to define you.
Take what's helpful to grow and release the rest.
It doesn't have to be perfect to be a success. Let's celebrate the good that we were able to accomplish.
As you reframe those painful burdens, it's really important that you're connecting with the part of you that experienced the big emotion. In that moment, you're reparenting yourself in a way.
You're helping a young part of you release an old burden and recognize that there might be a different way to see this situation. This hurting part of your soul can learn to release some of the weight of that pain that it's been carrying from long ago. You begin to care for yourself in that moment, in the way that maybe no one ever cared for you back then.
This work of unburdening is a process of releasing old messages you may have carried around for decades and replacing them with truer, more beautiful messages infused by God's Spirit. Messages rooted in the truth, that you are enough, you are worthy, you are beloved.
No matter how hard this situation is, you have what it takes in partnership with God's Spirit to face it. It's a process of tenderly attuning to every part of your soul in need of your care from this place of compassionate presence.
Remember, suffer what you have to suffer. There are hard situations that you have to work your way through with your family, with your friends, with the holiday season. But don't suffer what you don't need to suffer.
Take captive every thought, Paul said. It applies to these messages. You tell yourselves in these moments of big emotions, notice what messages you're telling yourself, release those messages and replace them with the truth of your belovedness as a soul created to bear the image of God.
If you're struggling to feel connected spiritually or stuck in negative emotions, you're in good company. Research shows that 9 out of 10 people struggle with stress during the holidays. In today's episode, I walk you through my simple but life-changing strategy for unlocking spiritual connection and experiencing more of God's loving presence.
Here's what we cover:
1. 3 reasons painful emotions get heightened at the holidays (2:32)
2. A simple hack for experiencing more spiritual vitality (8:22)
3. The neurobiology of what happens when you connect with God (9:43)
4. How to transform mundane moments into spiritual encounters (12:18)
5. How to harness your external environment to change your mental habits (23:03)
Thanks to our sponsors:
- This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/BESTOFYOU and get on your way to being your best self.
- Listen to Girls Night with Stephanie May Wilson wherever you get your podcasts!
- Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
- Get 35% off your first order of Sundays. Go to SundaysForDogs.com/BESTOFYOU or use code BESTOFYOU at checkout.
Music by Andy Luiten
Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
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.
Resources
- Boundaries For Your Soul by Dr. Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller
- The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence
- Galatians 5:25
- The Garden Within by Dr. Anita Phillips
Transcript
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. I'm so glad you keep coming back each week.
The response to this new series on five steps to navigating overwhelming emotions has been amazing. So many of you have written to me, letting me know that yes, this holiday season, you are dealing with so many tough emotions.
The holidays amplify our emotional states, this is a well researched fact in psychology. The holidays put a magnifying glass on family gatherings, on times that are supposed to be joyful and celebratory.
And so they evoke memories from the past. It's normal and natural that you feel heightened emotions as you anticipate these gatherings. If you've had a loss in your family, or if you've got acrimony or discord in a family, or if you have painful memories from past holidays, it makes sense that the coming of December will trigger some of those emotions.
Our emotions often have roots in memories from the past. Which means they're often influenced by previous experiences. So when you encounter a situation that's similar to a situation you've encountered before, maybe numerous times, if you go back through the course of your whole life, your brain can trigger emotions based on those past experiences.
So what I mean by that is as we move toward Christmas, there could be a young part of you, a part of you that is still stuck in a five year old memory of a traumatic Christmas. This is really common, these holidays have a lot of buildup around them.
And so if you've got some unresolved pain from your past, it makes sense that the coming of the Christmas holiday will start to tap on areas where you might have some lingering wounds from things that occurred a long time ago.
So that's one reason why emotions get intensified at the holidays–this idea of stored memory where a holiday triggers these memories from the past. A second reason is that there's a lot of pressure on the holidays.
There's a lot of stress on trying to make everything just right, make everything perfect, make everybody happy. Keep your kids happy. Keep your extended family happy, navigate different expectations that other people around you have for the holidays, navigate invitations or the lack of invitations. There's a lot of pressure to please, perform, produce, compare, all of those P words we went through last year at this time.
These over-working parts of us tend to come out this time of year under all the pressure of the holiday season. It can amplify those feelings of being less than, or shame for not having things perfect. Or those feelings that surface when you feel like you can't please everybody.
Or the feeling of self defeat when you feel like you can't produce at the level that everybody expects you to produce. Or the feelings of inferiority if you feel like you're not measuring up to what you see everyone around you doing. There's so many ways that some of these go-to parts of us can surface.
So if you're noticing yourself feeling more of those feelings than you normally do, don't be surprised. The holidays tend to activate some of these feelings. And then finally, the third reason that our emotional overwhelm can get amplified during the holidays is that the holidays can serve as a milestone or a marker for grief and loss.
The holidays tend to evoke those memories of the people we love who are no longer with us, or the people we love who are far away or who we can't be with during this season. And so you may feel the tension of the holiday season, wanting to experience the joy of the holiday season while simultaneously being even more aware of the grief or the loss.
This is normal, and throughout this series, I really want you to honor these different emotions that surface during the holidays. If there's one thing you take from this entire series, it's this: all of those emotions are welcome.
All of those emotions have a seat at your table, this holiday season. I can feel both joy and sadness this holiday.
I'm actually going to focus on that feeling and befriend it and incorporate that emotion into my experience of the holidays this year. Those are the first two steps to dealing with overwhelming emotions. We're going to get to the third step in today's episode, which is to invite God into your experience of that emotion.
***
The third step of the five steps to navigating your overwhelming emotions is based on my book with Kimberly Miller, Boundaries For Your Soul. This third step of “invite” is so important. This is the step where deep healing and transformation occurs.
You've got to first focus on that emotion. You've got to stop trying to banish it or make it go away. You've got to befriend that emotion, make peace with it. Then, where the real transformation occurs is when you're present to that emotion, whatever it is, you invite God to be with you in your experience of that emotion.
This is holy ground. This is where transformation occurs, where you not only become present to your own experience of an emotion, but you invite the one who made you and who loves you to be present with you in your experience of that emotion.
And I want to simplify this process because it's a really deep transformational process, but there's a really simple way into it. It's what I like to call “comma, God”. It's a really simple hack that I've found to be transformational in my own life.
What you do is no matter where you are, it could be right now, wherever you are listening to this podcast, it could be while you're journaling, it could be while you're grocery shopping, it could be while you're in the car pickup lane, waiting to pick up your child from school.
You become aware of the emotion. You focus on it. Oh. There it is. There's that emotion. There's that feeling I wish I didn't have. I do have it. I'm going to befriend it. And as you're naming that experience of that emotion, I want you to simply add a comma, God to your experience of naming that emotion.
Here are some examples of what I mean. I'm worried about all of these things. I'm worried about my kids. I'm worried about money. I'm worried about my health. Start to add a comma, God. I'm worried, God. I'm sad, God. I don't have time to pray, God. I'm angry, God.
And suddenly you just start to name these different experiences, and you're inviting God into the experience with you. I'm so mad right now, God. I don't have enough help. I'm all on my own. No one is helping me with anything.
“I feel so alone” becomes “I feel so alone, God, help me find support”. And you see the difference when you're in the emotion and you're ruminating in the emotion–I'm worried, I'm angry, I'm this, I'm that–you're blended with the emotion.
As you begin to bring that emotion out in front of you, you focus on it. You befriend it. I'm worried. And then you invite God into it. I'm worried, God. Help me untangle the knots. And suddenly you're engaged in a lived embodied form of prayer. Instead of walking through the grocery store lines, mindlessly ruminating, you're mindfully aware of the things on your mind in partnership with God's spirit.
It's a simple way into an ancient practice that Brother Lawrence talked about in his beautiful book, Practicing the Presence of God. Every single moment you become aware of an emotion, wherever you are, you name it, you befriend it, and you invite God into your experience with it.
You just add a comma, God. Comma, God is a simple way into a deeply transformational practice, literally wherever you are, whatever you're thinking about, add a comma, God.
What's happening in that moment is a deeply profound act of becoming consciously aware of the contents of your own soul, getting them out of your mind, getting out of your amygdala, out of your left brain where you're ruminating.
You're becoming consciously aware of whatever it is that's on your mind, whatever emotions, whatever thoughts–you're bringing them out in front of you, with those first two steps and then adding that comma, God. Suddenly you're not alone. You're aware of your feelings in partnership with God.
This is a transformational way to go through your day.
As you invite God into whatever it is that you're experiencing at any given moment of the day, you transform your spiritual practices. No longer is prayer this sort of 20 minute quiet time that you guilt trip yourself for not having every single morning–all of a sudden prayer becomes an embodied way of being in the world.
And you begin to bring every part of who you are into relationship with both yourself and with God. And here's the thing: even if you notice that you don't want to invite God into that moment, I'm mad at you, God, I don't really want to talk to you about it. Right there, you're still engaging a form of prayer.
Your comma God is: I'm mad and I don't want to talk with you about it, God. I'm hurting and I don't want to pray, God. Suddenly you're telling God about how you feel about talking to God, which is a form of prayer in and of itself.
It's amazing when you start to add a comma God to the end of every single feeling and every single sentence that you notice in your heart, mind, and soul. So I want to end today's episode with some other ways that you can practice this embodied version of prayer.
Many of us measure the success of our prayer life by maybe the intensity of connection that we feel with God or the minutes on the clock or how much we're able to focus with our eyes closed on God or meditating on scripture. Now, listen, those are all really fantastic practices, and we need to do those things, but I'm pretty sure that practicing the presence of God and inviting God into everything you're experiencing is equally as important, if not more.
It's what we see in the life of Jesus. It's walking in step with God's Spirit, which is what Paul talked about in Galatians 5. Let us keep in step with God's spirit all the time, everywhere we go. This is not shaming nor judging, this is a reorienting of your mind, heart, and soul to the presence of God.
In order to do that, you first have to be aware of the contents of your own soul, of what you're really thinking and feeling. And you have to believe that the God you're inviting into the contents of your soul loves you and is not judging or fearful of anything that God will find there. A lot of times we're having to get rid of old messages that we've inherited somehow.
It's a practice. Here are some really practical ways to train yourself toward this practice of paying attention to your feelings, even as you're inviting God into them. So the first step is to think about a time of day when your mind drifts, whether you're gardening or walking or driving to work or cooking or in traffic. These sort of dead periods where you're doing something, but your mind is free to wander.
These are the best moments to begin to capture this step of invite, in this step of using the comma, God hack where you become consciously aware of whatever it is that you're thinking and feeling and adding that comma God to the experience.
So the very first thing to do once you've identified those places where your mind tends to drift or where the emotions could potentially stir up, because you've got some dead time where you don't have to be focused on work or on somebody else. And just begin to notice, what are you actually thinking about?
What are you actually feeling? And then add that comma God, invite God into that experience. Isn't that interesting? I'm worried about my bills. I'm worried about my health. And then just take that next step. God, here's what's happening. I'm worried about my bills.
I'm worried about my health, God. Help me think clearly about what's really going on. Be with me as I work to get to the root of these fears or, I can't shake this idea that someone is mad at me, that I'm letting someone down, that I'm disappointing someone, God. Isn't that interesting?
Could you be with the part of me that's ruminating on this? They can't stop thinking about this. Could you help me consider the facts of the situation, God? Could you help me discern, God? If I actually hurt another person, if I actually did let someone down or if I didn't, God, could you help me think through this situation?
Suddenly you've got a partner as you become mindful of this fear. Or I'm wrestling with grief. God, I don't want to feel grief. I want to numb out. I want to make it go away, but I can't. It's here, God. Could you be with me in the grief? Could you help me honor the grief without letting the grief take me over?
Could you help me, God?
Carve out times to grieve, and to simultaneously still honor the good gifts that are available to me right now. God, could you help me honor both? I'm worried, God, about the conflict that I know is going to ensue on Christmas Day between my parents who are divorced or between my siblings who don't talk to each other anymore, between my kids who don't really get along.
I'm worried, God, could you join me in that worry? Could you help that part of me to calm down a little bit, because when I calm that worry a little bit, that's when creativity starts to show up. Could you help me, God, to calm that worried part of my soul? I'm tired, God. I don't have the energy to do all this.
Could you come be with that part of me, Lord? That's exhausting. Could we just tend to that weary part of my soul and could we stop forcing her to get it together for just this one moment? Suddenly you're tending to these different parts of you in partnership with God. You're taking otherwise ordinary moments of the day and turning them into healing moments where you become aware of what your soul actually needs.
Creativity shows up in those moments of holy, God-driven, compassionate self-awareness.
So the first way to invite God into this process is to identify those times throughout your day where you have that dead time, where you're doing something, some sort of task, but your mind tends to drift. Your mind tends to wander. Capture those moments to do this work to focus on the emotion that you're feeling, whatever it is in that moment.
Befriend it and to invite God into it through using this comma God exercise. So that's the first thing you want to do. I want you to harness the power of those moments that we all have throughout the day. There's no excuse not to do this work. We all have moments of time where we're participating in a somewhat mindless activity. Turn those mindless activities into mindful moments with God, where you do this work again of focusing on an emotion that you're feeling, befriending it and inviting God into it.
The second thing that you can do in order to invite God into more of what you're experiencing each and every day is to harness the power of your external environment. Notice the things around you, particularly in nature. Nature is filled with reminders about the power of God. And that's why Jesus used so many metaphors related to the mountains, the hills, the trees.
He was always looking to nature as a reminder to point us toward God. Nature serves as this very practical, concrete, reminder. Whether you're in a house looking out the window, whether you live in an apartment in a city or whether you live out in the country, you can always look out your window and see what is going on outside and use that as a cue to remind you about God.
So you start to add a comma God to whatever it is that you notice when you're looking at what's around you in your external environment. So here are some examples of how you can use those external cues, especially from nature to practice inviting in the presence of God. So the first thing is just to look at your window and notice, do you see trees?
Do you see mountains? Do you see grass? Is the sun out or is the sun setting? Is it night or is it day? Each one of those things that are always going to be around you becomes a cue. Let's say you're taking a walk and you start to notice the trees around you. I see those trees, God, those trees remind me that all seasons pass.
Maybe you notice that it's winter, that there's snow on the ground. I see the snow on the ground. The trees don't have leaves, God, this is a reminder that everything has its season. It's okay for me not to feel the glory of all the fruitfulness right now. This season matters. And this season will also pass.
Maybe you put a plant in front of you that you tend each day. And every day you see that plant becomes a cue to invite God into whatever it is that you're experiencing. Every time I water this plant, God, I'm reminded that I need to water my own body, literally, that I need to tend to the garden of my own soul. Every time I notice that this plant needs me to remove some weeds or some dead leaves, it reminds me, God, to check in on the soil of my own soul. What does my own soul need?
A powerful resource that I want to, that I can't recommend and a powerful resource that I can't recommend enough is Dr. Anita Phillips’ new book called The Garden Within. It's a beautiful book that uses this metaphor of the soil of your soul and how you need to tend to it. And so maybe you read that book and you buy a plant, and every day that you have to care for that plant becomes a reminder to you to add that comma God.
Here's this plant that needs my care, God. How can I apply that same wisdom to my own soul? Maybe every morning or every evening, as you watch the sun set, you notice that sunset and add that, comma, God. The sun is setting, God, you do that.
I have no control over that. I can't make that happen. And yet, every evening, the sun sets, God, and every morning, that same sun rises. Those two things happen and they remind me that you are ultimately in control, God, and I am not. What are the things in my own life that I need to send off with the sun as the sun sets and let it go for the rest of this evening?
Because guess what? Those things will come back tomorrow when I wake up with the sun and the sun rises. Those things I'm worried about will still be here tomorrow, God. But I can let those things go with the sun as it sets right now.
Okay, so that’s the second practical thing you can do. The first one is just to identify those places during the day where you've got some mindless time, where your mind tends to wander. Turn those mindless times into mindful times where you invite God into whatever it is that your mind goes to during those times, because there's really no such thing as a mindless time. Your mind is dwelling on something during those moments. So use those dead times to focus, befriend, and invite God into whatever it is that you're experiencing.
Number two, use those external reminders, especially from nature. And again, the reason I love using those cues from nature, whether it's plants, trees, hills, the seasons, the sun rising or setting, whatever it is that's around you is that they are just beautiful reminders of how God shows up in every detail of every day.
Every time you notice one of those objects in nature, remind yourself to add that comma, God. What does that tree have to teach me, God? What does the fact that the sun is setting right now have to remind me of you? Use those external cues. And then number three, the last practical thing you can do to invite more of the presence of God into your day to day life, is your breath.
Your breath is such a powerful tool. It's literally what keeps you alive. You do it all the time. And so often we are not mindful or conscious of the fact that we're breathing. But when you notice those moments, again, going back to those typically mindless moments, when you're in traffic or you're picking up your kids or you're running errands.
Start to notice your breath. Notice what it feels like to take a deep breath in and take a deep breath out, and then add a comma God. I'm worried, God. Inhale. I trust you, God. Exhale. This is called breath prayer.
And it's really powerful. And you can do it wherever you are at any moment of the day. Begin to notice your breath. “God, I'm struggling”, as you breathe in. “I need you”, as you breathe out,
“God, I'm scared”, as you breathe in. “Be with me”, as you breathe out. “God, I'm overwhelmed”, as you breathe in. “Be with me”, as you breathe out.
And as you do that you're practicing an embodied version of prayer. You're incorporating your whole nervous system because taking those breaths calms your nervous system. You're also opening up those connection pathways in your brain. You're connecting with the God who loves you, which brings endorphins in.
It brings good chemicals into your body. Suddenly, you're not alone. You're working in partnership with God. It's not that your problems magically go away, but you're incorporating the power of your God-given design as you invite God into whatever it is that you're experiencing. As you do that, your nervous system calms, good chemicals come in, you feel more grounded.
And from that place, we know from all the psychology research and all the neurobiology that when you're a little bit more grounded, when you're a little bit calmer, when you're experiencing that sense of connectedness, creativity starts to spark, and it's from this place, this calmer place inside this connected place inside where you're present to what you really feel.
In partnership with God's Spirit, you will begin to discern your next brave steps. You'll start to find a way forward. I want you to practice noticing, “What am feeling right now?”, befriending it, and inviting God into whatever it is that you're experiencing right now.
This is the path to transforming overwhelming emotions into your greatest allies in partnership with God's Spirit.
What if your emotions aren't your enemies afterall? What if they actually help? This holiday season, I'm taking you on a deep dive into my proven 5-step method for finding joy and peace by bringing harmony and wholeness to your inner world. Today, we'll walk through the first 2 steps that are crucial to developing a healthy relationship with your emotions.
Here's what we cover:
1. 3 truths about emotions
2. A counterintuitive first step
3. How to speak on behalf of an emotion vs. from it
4. The surprising solution to negative emotions
5. How to finally move from self-condemnation to self-compassion and why this is Biblical
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 AquaTru.com and enter code BESTOFYOU at checkout to get 20% OFF any AquaTru purifier!
Music by Andy Luiten
Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
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.
Resources
- Boundaries For Your Soul by Dr. Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller
- Matthew 5:43-45 (The Message)
Transcript
Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am so glad you are here. We are starting a brand new series this week. It's going to be the next four weeks leading into Christmas. We are in the midst of the holidays, and so I'm gonna walk you through five steps to navigating overwhelming emotions.
This is based on my book, Boundaries For Your Soul: How To Turn Your Overwhelming Thoughts and Feelings Into Your Greatest Allies. These five steps come directly out of that book and they're pretty deep steps. Each one warrants almost a whole episode.
This takes some work to really look inside of yourself and begin to establish a healthy relationship with the different emotions or the different parts of you that inevitably get triggered or activated, especially during the holiday seasons, but really at any time in our lives. What I want to do in this series is really dig deep into each of these steps, because each one is sort of a whole world in and of itself, as a way to equip you with tools this holiday.
So every single episode, you'll have a new tool to begin to manage the feelings that stir up inside of you, especially the hard ones. Especially when there's anger or irritation or annoyance or anxiety or frustration. Or even sadness or grief or fear. These are normal emotions to experience anytime, especially at the holidays, because the holidays tend to evoke a lot of these different emotions inside of us.
This series is designed to help you look at this as an opportunity. An opportunity to grow in extending compassion toward yourself, to grow in regulating your emotions, which is a skill we all need. If you go back to episode 70, I did a deep dive into mastering the art of emotional intelligence, one of the skills required to be an emotionally intelligent person.
It doesn't mean stuffing your emotions. It doesn't mean criticizing yourself for having emotions. It means learning to regulate emotions. It means learning how to tolerate the experience of emotions, even the negative ones in a healthy way, and allow them to inform your decision making so that you can set healthy boundaries on behalf of yourself, so you can speak up on behalf of yourself, so that you can take charge of the plans you're making.
This month of December is an opportunity to pay attention to your own internal landscape, to the cues your emotions are sending you so that you can lead yourself wisely. Because as you lead yourself wisely, as you show yourself compassion, as you pay attention to the cues your emotions are sending you and give yourself the care and attention that you need, you will create that same kind of oasis of emotional and spiritual health for everyone around you.
It spills out, when you nurture the inside of your soul from a place of curiosity and compassion, the oasis that you create spills out to everyone around you. Okay. So we're going to start with some quick, basic truths about the role of emotions.
Number one, emotions in and of themselves are not bad or good. They're not bad emotions or good emotions. Emotions just are. They're cues that your body sends you, and they're important cues. They're cues that help you understand how you are responding to the environment around you. As you notice an emotional cue inside of you, there's a signal.
Something is happening here. Something is happening that is activating my nervous system that I need to pay attention to in order to respond in an appropriate, healthy way to the environment around me. When you notice something like anxiety or overwhelm or stress or negativity, what most of us try to do is we try to brush it aside. Or we try to numb it.
One of those two things. We try to talk ourselves out of it. Logic our way out of the emotion. I shouldn't feel that way. It's stupid to feel that way. I'm a bad person for feeling that way. We try to guilt trip ourselves out of feeling that way, or we just try to distract ourselves or numb ourselves from feeling the way we feel.
But what we really need to do is simply notice, pay attention. Oh, that is so interesting. I'm not feeling excited about the holiday coming up. I'm not feeling excited about this family gathering. I'm feeling stressed out. I'm feeling sad. I'm feeling really frustrated. I wonder what that's about. We need to pay attention to those emotional cues.
As we pay attention to those emotional cues, we get healthier. We learn to make wiser decisions on behalf of ourselves and on behalf of the people who are in our lives, because when our boundaries are healthy, we're going to show up in a healthier way with the people that we love.
The goal of this work of paying attention to our emotional cues is not to silence our emotions or to make them go away. We want to experience a full range of emotions. That's what makes us human. Jesus experienced a full range of emotions. We see this throughout the scriptures. We see Jesus experiencing the full range of human emotions.
As we attune to ourselves, the goal is to experience that full range of emotions without being taken over by those emotions. Because it's a paradox. When we try to stuff or silence our emotions, they actually get bigger and hijack us in the moment. So if you're feeling anxious, you don't want to be at a family gathering, you wish you didn't have to go.
Instead of paying attention to that, you just try to ignore it or bypass it. You end up spending five hours at this family gathering because you didn't say, hey, I'm going to put a limit on the amount of time I can be there because I know it's not going to bring out my best self.
Then you're sitting there and you've silenced those emotions. Guess what? Someone looks at you sideways or someone says something that lands on you a little wrong and all of those emotions explode. They erupt in that moment. If we don't do the work on the front end of paying attention to the emotions of building trust with our own emotions, those emotions will come out.
They're going to hijack us in the moment and they're going to come out way bigger than if we had simply attuned to them and cared for them all along the way. So this is incredibly important. This emotional maintenance, paying attention each day. What am I experiencing today? What am I noticing? What am I feeling?
If I don't pay attention to that, it is going to come out somehow. This is a daily practice of noticing, of becoming more aware of your emotional states. You can make these emotions allies on your journey toward health. Your emotions will help you establish healthier relationships with yourself, with God, and with other people.
Today we're going to take on the first two steps, because they go hand in hand. The first step is to focus on an emotion. Now that can sound counterintuitive at first. You're like, why would I want to focus on my emotion? Especially if it's an emotion I don't like.
But the reason that it's important to focus on an emotion is this: think about if you were to look at an object under a microscope. You take the object and you put it under the microscope so that you can see it better. When you do that, the minute you take that emotion out in front of you and look at it, you've created distance from it.
This is a process that psychologists call differentiation. You differentiate from that emotion. So suddenly, instead of just feeling so angry, when you focus on the anger, you say, oh, there's anger. Oh, I'm angry. What is that anger about? You get a little distance from that anger.
You take that anger out and you put it in front of you. You're looking at it from a healthy distance so that you can see it more clearly. So often what happens is the emotion takes us over. I'm just so angry. I'm just so angry, anxious, or sad.
You're already triggered or activated. You're aware that there's negativity inside your soul. You can even do this as I'm talking with you right now–notice, where do you feel that emotion? Where do you feel that activation in your body? How do you know that there's negativity inside of you?
Whatever it is, just notice that feeling of activation that feels unpleasant. In that very act of noticing it. In that very act of going, man, I just don't feel good right now, I'm angry, or I'm frustrated, or I am just so exhausted, you are noticing something really important.
You're noticing that cue. Focusing is simply taking that one step further, like that microscope going, wait a minute. I'm going to examine that for a second. I'm anxious. Isn't that interesting? Where do I notice that anxiety? Oh my gosh, I'm so tense. You start to ask yourself questions.
Where do I feel it physically? My body is just so tense. Or, man, I just feel it in the pit of my stomach. Or I can just feel this charge of energy, you know, coursing through my veins. Like I just feel so adrenalized.
You begin to notice–what is that feeling and how does it show up in my body? Then you might take it one step further as you focus on that feeling. Is there a thought or an image that comes to mind when I focus on it? You might even close your eyes and just imagine, do a body scan and kind of notice in your body, man, I feel like I'm revved up like an engine.
Or I just feel so angry, I want to crawl out of my skin. I want to lash out at somebody, but I'm trying to hold myself back or I feel so scared. I want to disappear and go away. Or I just feel so worried. My thoughts are like a spinning wheel. Begin to notice or focus on what it is that you're feeling.
Again, the goal here, as you focus on this feeling, you're getting a little distance from it. You're moving from being inside the feeling to having a tiny little bit of healthy distance from it. Okay. That's where that anger is. I feel it. It's not comfortable. I don't love feeling that way, but there it is. I'm naming it.
I'm calling it into being. It's true. It's what's happening. I'm not going to gaslight myself out of feeling this way. This is how I'm feeling. I might as well get curious about it. Curiosity is a huge part of this step of focus.
It's getting curious about what you're really feeling. How familiar is it to you? I've been feeling this way a lot lately. Isn't that interesting? I wonder what that's about. When did it start? Have I been feeling this way for months or did I just notice it today? And if I just noticed it today, what was it that triggered this emotion?
You're engaging in a process of curiosity as you notice this feeling that's been activated inside of you. As you get curious about this experience of activation, this powerful act of differentiating from it gives you just a little bit more control over it. You start to control your emotions versus the other way around.
You're the wise parent in the room. This is all based on the internal family systems model of therapy. I've talked about it a lot here. I did a whole six part series on this model, starting with episode 39 back in February called Boundaries for Your Soul. It's a whole series.
You can go back and listen to that series for a more in depth overview of the different components of this model, but the key thing that you need to know is as you put your focus on this negative emotion, this negative experience of activation inside your soul, you're creating healthy distance from it, which empowers you to manage and lead yourself through the experience of that emotion instead of that emotion leading you.
I want you to hear the difference when you differentiate from emotion and you gain a little bit more control over it. It allows you to speak on behalf of that emotion in a constructive way, as opposed to speaking from the emotion. We talk about this in Boundaries For Your Soul. I want to give you some examples of that. It's super powerful when you are aware that you're getting angry and you feel it in your body and you focus on it and you're like, I am angry right now.
Let's say you're with a spouse or you're with a family member and you're starting to feel heated inside and you start to become aware of your anger. If you're speaking from anger, you might get really loud. You might yell. You might get sort of passive aggressive. Here's an example of speaking from anger.
“Fine. Just have it your way. It's always your way anyway.”. Door slam. Right? That's what it sounds like when you speak from anger. Now, here's what it would sound like to speak on behalf of anger. You're getting a little heated. Tensions are starting to run high.
“Listen, I'm noticing I'm starting to feel angry and I don't think I'm going to be able to participate constructively in this conversation right now. I'm going to excuse myself until I can calm down and we can have a more constructive conversation.”
Then you leave. You exit the room. So you're taking command. You're saying, I'm going to lose it right now. I'm noticing that I'm angry, but you're saying that from a calm place inside.
Here's an example. If you're feeling sad, sometimes we kind of sink into the sadness and when we speak from it, the other people around us don't know exactly how to help us. So it might sound something like this: “I don't really care what we do. I don't know. It doesn't really matter.”
Now, imagine you spoke on behalf of that sadness and you said something like this: “Listen, I'm noticing I'm feeling really sad. I'm just kind of down and discouraged. So I don't really know how to make plans tonight. Could you help me figure out a good plan that honors the fact that I'm actually feeling really discouraged.”
Suddenly you've invited that other person into helping support you in that feeling versus speaking from it. When you focus on an emotion and differentiate from it, you remind yourself that this is just one part of who you are. It's not the whole story. You are not only your anger. You are not only your depression. You are not only your anxiety.
It's a way of reminding yourself–there's a part of me that's angry. There's a part of me that's really sad. There's a part of me that's really anxious. It might even feel like a really big part of me. Sometimes you can only get a paper's width of distance from that emotion.
But even just a little bit of distance reminds you it is not all of who you are. That emotion is not all of who you are. That little bit of differentiation gives you the ability to speak on behalf of it. Oh man, there's that sadness. There's that anger. There's that anxiety. There's that grief. There's that fear. There it is.
I see it out here in front of me now. It's not just coursing through me, and I can invite you in to see it with me too. This is what's happening right now inside of me. I have a name for this feeling. This feeling is present in this conversation. That becomes a healthier way of communicating with other people, which increases the likelihood that you'll be heard and understood.
It's really different when you say, listen, I'm feeling sad today and it's informing how I make decisions. Someone else is probably going to respond to that with some empathy. Or when you say, listen, I'm starting to get angry, I need you to know this, that other person has been cued that if they continue with that behavior, you're going to be angry.
Now they may continue with that behavior because they don't care. But then that's on them. You've alerted them to your emotional state. Finally, it enhances trust. You are able to trust yourself because you're able to articulate the emotion that you're experiencing. You build trust with that emotion. You honor it. You create a space for it without being taken over.
So learning to focus on an emotion and speak on the half of it is critical to emotional health. The process of focusing on an emotion leads us right into this second step. These two steps really go hand in hand, and that is the step of befriending.
When you focus on an emotion, you name the emotion without shame and when you name without shame, you are able to take it one more step and befriend that emotion. You're welcoming in that emotion, you're extending hospitality to it, and this is radical. I'm convinced that this process of learning to befriend your emotions and extending hospitality toward them is the essence of transformation.
It unleashes a radical act of healing and transformation when we surrender to that moment and say, oh my goodness, I don't want to be angry, but I am here. What we're doing is we're honoring our God-given design. This is the way God designed us. He designed us to have these emotions as cues to help us navigate through life.
When we notice those emotions without shame and befriend them, we are honoring our God given design and we are surrendering to the truth of that moment. I am anxious. I wish I wasn't, but I am. I am anxious. I can name that. I can take a look at it without shame. I can even extend compassion to that anxious part of myself. This is radical stuff. This is gospel love.
This is the way Christ enters in and loves every part of who we are. When we get to that point where we can notice that we're anxious and we can be present to that anxiety inside our own souls with radical self compassion. That part of me is anxious right now. I don't hate that part of me. In fact, I welcome that part of me.
It's there for a reason. It's part of my God-made self. I'm going to extend the compassion of Christ to that part of me. That anger that is present to me right now. That is a part of who I am. I am aware of that anger. I can extend the compassion of Christ to that part of me that's feeling that way. This is beautiful, deep, transformative love.
This is not saying it's okay for me to go act out and be a jerk. I am not saying that. I am saying that when you begin to name these different feelings without shame and extend the compassion of Christ to these different parts of yourself, you will transform.
You will experience the love of Christ so deep within your soul that you have no choice but to be transformed. I don't know any other way to put it but gospel transformation. When you begin to extend the compassion of Christ even to the parts of yourself that you don't like.
I want you to imagine those parts of you that have given you so much trouble. Maybe it's the part of you that just so desperately wants to numb or shut down or. Maybe it's the part of you that just cannot let go of a grudge or resentment. Maybe it's the part of you that just compares all the time. Maybe it's your inner critic that just beats you up. I want you to imagine that part of you as another human.
Someone in the world that has just been so beaten down and beaten up and criticized by others that it is just barely hanging on by a thread. This is a part of you that has just received no love, no care, no loving kindness, no compassion. Can you imagine extending the love of God and the compassion of Christ to this part of you that the world has despised and that frankly, you have often despised?
You feel like this part of you causes all of your problems. What if this part of you is in need of your care? What if this part of you is in need of the compassion of Christ? As you begin to extend that kind of radical hospitality to the parts of yourself that you don't like, you will experience deep transformation inside.
You move from a state of self-condemnation where you are just constantly beating yourself up and judging yourself and condemning yourself, which is a state that so many of us live in. You move from that state of self-condemnation to a place of warm, welcoming hospitality.
I see you there, anger. It's okay. You can have a seat at this table. I'm not going to let you take over because there's more to me than you, but you are welcome to have a seat at this table. I see you there, fear. I get it that you're here. You are welcome. You get to have a seat at this table too. I am not going to let you take me over, but you can be here.
You serve a function for me, and I'm glad that you're here. I see you there. That part of me that just wants to indulge in all the food and all the drink and just wants to have lots and lots of fun and not think about the hard stuff. I get it. I see you there.
You get to have a seat at this table too. We want you there, fun part of me. You get to have a seat. I'm not going to let you take over either because we also have these other parts of us, but you get to have a seat at this table. you know what? I see you there, sadness. I see you there, grief, you are precious parts of who I am and you get to be here too.
I'm going to care for you and I'm going to welcome you. You are each cherished, valuable members of my internal family, and you each get to be here at the seat of this table of my life. I'm going to care for you in partnership with God's Spirit. You are welcome. I extend to each of you the compassion of Christ.
As you begin to relate to these different parts of your soul from this place of compassion, notice what happens inside these different emotions. They start to soften. They don't feel so extreme. These parts of you feel seen and heard. You notice, I'm feeling a little sad, or you notice, I'm feeling a little anxious. Okay. That's all I really wanted. I just wanted that validation.
I don't have to get so big to get your attention. These different parts of you, they start to soften just a little bit. instead of these extreme polarizations inside where you just feel the extremes of the emotions, you start to notice a beautiful vitality. A textured complexity of, I have a lot of different parts of me.
One moment I'm sad, one moment I'm joyful, one moment I'm so mad, and then the next moment I'm... kind of laughing about it. Because this is what it means to be alive.
This is what it means to be a multifaceted human made in God's image. We are meant to experience the whole range of emotions. We're complex beings. We can experience a couple of different emotions at the same time.
As we tend to those emotions, each one being granted a beautiful place at the table, we become more whole. Sometimes one of those emotions needs more care than another. Sometimes we're really hurting and then those other emotions come in and help out. Maybe we need to give our anger a little shot at setting a healthier boundary on our behalf.
Because a part of us has been really hurt. So let's talk about how to deploy some healthy anger to set a healthy boundary with someone who hurt us. Or maybe we're feeling really fearful and the rest of our family needs to get on board and be like, man, she's scared. What can we do to help bring her some encouragement?
Maybe that fun filled part of me needs to help that fearful part of me remember that she's not alone, that there's more to us than just fear. You start to tell the story of all of who you are, not just any one single one of these parts. This is what it means to extend hospitality to all the parts of your soul.
We do not change and become more whole in the context of criticism and self-condemnation. That is not the gospel message. We change and we become more whole in the context of Christ's compassion, and it starts with learning to extend that radical transformational compassion to the parts of your own soul that you don't like.
I'm telling you, this is powerful transformation. What is a part of you that you've hated, that you've tried to will away, that you have criticized and judged and condemned? I want you to consider inviting that part of you to have a seat at the table of your soul and to extend the love of Christ even to that part of you.
When Jesus said, I'm telling you to love your enemies, let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer for then you are working out your true selves, your God created selves. That's from Matthew 5:43-45, the message version.
What if Jesus meant to extend that radical compassion, to the parts of you that feel like your enemies? Now, listen, remember Jesus is no fool. We talked about this back in the episode on turning the other cheek. We don't extend love to our enemies out of a position of being doormats, we extend love to our enemies because love is transformational and powerful.
It's our most powerful weapon. Always remember that when we extend love and compassion to these parts of ourselves that are giving us a hard time, we are saying, I see you. I see what you're doing. I'm not stupid. I'm not naive. I see what's going on here. I love you so much that I'm going to sit here with you until you start to soften and until you trust me and until you see that I have nothing but good for you.
You have to do it in relationship to the one who made you and the one who knows you and the one who wants what's best for you–that's the power of love. Now, listen, our external enemies, sometimes they do not want to sit with us and be transformed by the power of God. Then we got to send them on their way.
But those internal parts of us, we have a lot of power to say, I see you, I see what's going on here. I am not blind. I am not naive. I see what's going on here and I am willing to do what it takes to be with you and to hear you out and to hear all about how much pain you've experienced until you are ready to be transformed all the way from the inside out.
Imagine what it's like to sit with a child who's acting out and what do they need the most from you? Any child who's acting out needs your love before they need your correction. They need to feel connected to you before they will receive your correction. It is the exact same with the parts of our soul.
Those parts need to experience connection to you and to the God who made you before they will receive correction. It's a process of saying to the part of your own soul, I see you, I see what's going on with you. I am not going to leave you. You cannot push me away. You cannot scare me away.
I will sit here with you long enough until you experience enough of my compassion that you trust me to help you go about this in another way. You see, these parts need our compassion to change. We change in the context of compassion and connection, not in the context of criticism and condemnation.
I was thrilled to have this conversation about a book that's easily one of my favorites this year. The brilliant author, professor, and public theologian, Esau McCaulley is here to share his personal experience with the many faces of trauma and how he stayed connected to the goodness of God through all of it.
Esau's new book, How Far to the Promised Land, is a gripping, powerful story of one man's journey of survival and hope. This conversation is packed with so much incredible insight all the way through to the end.
Here's what we cover:
1. Esau's early experiences with trauma (6:59)
2. How being a dad has been part of Esau's healing (11:48)
3. Racial trauma (18:08)
4. How to integrate different parts of yourself (28:53)
5. Why we have to tell our stories (31:18)
6. Esau's thoughts on forgiveness (40:35)
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Music by Andy Luiten
Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
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.
Resources
- Books by Esau McCaulley:
- Genesis 33: Esau forgives Jacob
- John 18:23
- Surprised By Joy by C. S. Lewis
- More about Dan Allender's theory
Transcript
Alison: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I'm so glad you're here for this final episode in this series on Faith Talks.
Today's guest, Esau McCaulley, is the author of a brand new memoir, How Far to the Promised Land. I've been listening to this memoir, and I love the genre because I feel like memoirs give us insight into people's lived experience. It's the story of their lives. Esau is a New Testament theologian and scholar, but listening to the story of his life really helps connect the dots to some of the Bible teaching that he's also known for.
It's such a powerful book. It's a beautiful story. It's well written. It just draws you in. But as I was listening to the book, I thought, this is really a story of forgiveness. Esau acknowledges in our interview today that it really is, although he doesn't necessarily say that up front.
If you missed last week's episode, go back to the beginning of that episode where I talk about different types of forgiveness and when I'm talking about forgiving others. I talk about how sometimes we have to forgive others who hurt us and they apologize and change. Sometimes we have to forgive others who maybe acknowledge the hurt, but they don't ever really change.
Sometimes we have to work through a process of forgiveness when people never acknowledge the harm that they've done. then sometimes we have to work through a process of forgiveness when a group of people or a culture or a community harms us without ever acknowledging the wrong. There are all these different ways that we have to wrestle with forgiveness in our own lives.
Remember, forgiving doesn't mean continuing to put yourself in harm's way. It means working to release resentment and anger in our own hearts for our own good, spiritually and emotionally. As I was listening to this memoir, I thought, I need to have Esau on the podcast to talk about his experiences because there's just such a beautiful tone throughout this book.
He does not shy away from naming what's hard, and the traumatic abuses that he encountered in his own home, at the hands of his own family, his father, and some really hard things that happened to him at the hands of the culture at large growing up.
He talks about those things, even as he talks about the goodness of God. You can just tell that he is someone who has wrestled deeply with this idea of forgiveness. He is not shying away from what's hard, even as he's wrestling with his own healing and doing his own work.
Esau McCaulley is a professor of New Testament at Wheaton College and a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. His articles have appeared in Christianity Today, Religious News Source, and the Washington Post, and his book publications include Sharing in the Son's Inheritance, Reading While Black, and his brand new memoir, How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family's Story of Hope and Survival in the American South.
I hope you will check it out. You will not be disappointed. It's such a great read. I am delighted to bring you my conversation with Esau McCaulley.
*Music*
Alison: Esau, you're a New Testament theologian and scholar. Then you write this memoir that's your lived experience, and they're both powerful. They both matter. You talk about that in the first part of the book, the introduction, you're like, when people ask you these questions about racism or whatever, you're like, you need to know the whole context. I love that.
Esau: I think that sometimes when we arrive at adulthood, and maybe people see us, we go and speak places, we have nice outfits on, and at least for me I'm shaved and all of the things–I’m put together. They think, oh, you're a Christian because Christianity worked for you. That things went a certain way in your life and that Jesus makes everything go.
They may sometimes extrapolate from the present picture that they see and suggest that we're only Christians because God is helping us in a way that's visible and material and I want to say no, you met me at this point in my life, but God met me a lot earlier.
In order to understand what I say now about God, you need to understand how God was there from the beginning of my story and through the generations of people in my family.
So you're right, it's a much different kind of writing process, but I think it's more along the lines of saying, these accounts that I give about God and the Bible and Scripture and these things aren't simply intellectual. They're also deeply personal.
Alison: That's right. They're lived, they're experienced. The book is not explicitly about forgiveness, but I saw that thread all the way through it. I also wanted to tell you Esau, my husband and I were just talking last week about how we'd never heard a sermon about Esau, the character in the Bible.
I'm getting to the end of your memoir and I'm like, oh my gosh, you connected those dots to the Esau who forgave. To take us back, take my listeners back–Esau, you tell many stories in such a beautiful way. It's a beautiful book. It's insightful. Like you said, it's not heavy handed. You tell your story as it is. But there are these moments that you described.
The first one that stood out to me was a moment when you were a little boy. I thought about trauma. I think about how we talk about trauma on the podcast as unwitnessed pain, as something that happens, especially as children, that goes deep inside where there's not an adult there to help us make sense of it.
You talk about these moments of being hurt that you internalized without necessarily having an adult there or a father there to help you process those. So tell me a little bit about that younger you.
Esau: It might be helpful for the reader, I'm assuming, and the listener, if they haven't read it, I'm going to put the book into a bit of context, and I'll try not to ramble too long. In 2017, my father passed away in a single car accident. He was a truck driver heading back from California back to our family.
We don't actually know what caused the accident, he just dies. It quickly becomes clear that my family wants me to do the eulogy for my father. That was tricky because my father was, he struggled with addiction throughout our entire, most of his life. So he was in and out of our family, in and out of jail, in and out of our lives.
That kind of absence created its own sense of trauma and brokenness. So now I'm tasked with this idea of telling his story because the eulogy is an attempt to tell someone's story and tie that story to the wider purposes of God. So I was really struck with this idea, but how can I tell the story of someone who I don't know?
It generally leads to me sitting down with friends and family who knew him, relatives who were alive when he was a child to get an idea of who he was. That process though, of returning to his past, caused me to return to my past. Because his story and my story aren't easily separated.
When I began to write, the book has two versions of my father. The perception of my father that I had as a child, and then the perception of my father that I developed later, after I learned his story. One of the stories that I tell early on in the book is in a chapter called, The Making of a Villain.
When my father came home and he struggled when he was high on drugs, he would also become violent and abusive. I talk about what it's like to be in that room, afraid and praying to God that God might be there to rescue us. In one of the stories, the police are called and he comes in and he's sent off to jail. But the next morning I have to go to school and I misbehave in the school and I get in trouble.
So the teacher is asking, why is this person misbehaving? Why is this child doing these things he or she shouldn't do when they know that they should be listening to what I say? It's because I was so hyped up on adrenaline. I couldn't focus. But I also didn't have the tools to explain to the teacher, my family life is chaotic, so I don't care about anything you're trying to teach me in this class.
That idea of the person who you want to love you the most is the person who causes you the most pain. When you're a kid and something bad happens, who do you run to? You run to your parents. What happens when one of your parents is the person who's doing the bad thing?
Or what happens when your mom is also dealing with the trauma from having an abusive husband? I can't go to my mom and talk to her, so a lot of this stays inside for a long period of time.
Alison: You're saying that so well, and I so appreciate what you're describing. Those moments where you don't know how to give language to, and so you internalize, I would think, some shame. You're getting in trouble.
Throughout the story, there's this sense you're a pretty good kid. You're trying to do the right thing, but you don't know how to make sense of these things.
Esau: Yeah, I think you're really afraid because you don't want anybody to know. Like you go to school and you walk around and you think, can people see it on my face? So it's not just the difficulties of what's happening to you. That's it’s own trauma. But the trauma that there's no one you can share it with is a double pain.
I talk about this in the book, that as far back as I can remember, it's actually been a tricky part of me becoming an adult. As far back as I can remember, I didn't have any career goals. I never had career goals. Like, I didn't want to be a doctor. I didn't really care. I just want it to be a husband and a father because as a kid, I had this, I had an awareness that what was happening to me wasn't good and that it was damaging me in a certain way.
I wondered what would happen to a kid if from the moment they were a child all the way through their adult life, if they had a parent who loved them. I wonder what would happen to a woman if she had a husband who thought she hung the moon.
Before I thought girls were gross in middle school/elementary school, I had this idea almost like a lab experiment. What would it be like, to be in a house that was different than the one that I was in? So in some sense, the trauma turned me inward because like I said, I couldn't share with anybody, but it also shrunk down my goals. My entire life, I only wanted to be a husband and a father.
It was funny–yesterday I was playing basketball with my son. We had just bought him some new shoes. They're like 40 or 50 bucks, but they were the Giannis Antetokounmpo shoes and they came in the mail and he's got the Giannis’. It doesn't matter. There was the last season. He doesn't know. He's eight years old, nine years old, doesn't get mad at what I give him his right age.
He went outside and you could tell–we have a little goal in the backyard–you could tell that he was trying to do moves that he couldn't normally do but he thought, I got new shoes on. And so he just wanted to play. He wanted to play with his dad.
That moment, it was such a joyous, untroubled moment. He's just a kid thinking he can play basketball like the guy he saw on TV. In a lot of ways, those moments that I have with my son are very poignant. He doesn't understand why dad is so emotional when he's just playing basketball.
But for me, I really thought to myself, this is all I ever wanted. I just want to see a kid be happy. So I think that in the first part of the book, the writing is even trying to reflect that reality. I'm trying to describe what it is like to see the world through the lens of a kid who's undergoing particular traumas.
So even the writing and the way that the language, like it's, the book is written, I tried to simplify the prose.
Alison: Yeah.
Esau: As I try to think about how it felt as a kid, obviously complex memories have developed, but there's a certain sense in which I know what it feels like to be that young kid in that place.
Alison: You feel that when you're reading it. It's so well written. Like you said, you put us in those shoes. I want to touch on what you just said. You're describing so beautifully almost what we talk about in the therapeutic world–reparenting, where there's a sense of you're reparenting your own younger self as you're allowing yourself the taking in that moment with your own son.
That's beautiful.
Esau: One of the things that I tried to do was like, it's funny, I'm trying to do my best to avoid reparenting because when one of the other things that I've noticed is that with my daughters is a totally different experience because with my daughters, I don't know what it's like to be a young girl who's looking for a dad.
It just feels like the memories don't stack in the same way. So I feel freer in my parenting with my daughters. With my sons, I've tried very hard to allow them to be them and not to undo my past. In other words, like I'm a big sports person. I was playing sports growing up. My oldest son runs track, but athletics isn’t his entire life.
He actually is in the scholastic bowl. That's what he does. He's really good, like varsity, and he's amazing. So I go to his scholar bowl like things and I can't cheer it on because you got to be quiet. But I try to embrace him as him instead of saying he needs to be what I want him to be because when I was a kid, I wanted my dad to go to my football games.
My son's school doesn't even have a football team. So I've tried to do my best to unburden my children from the responsibility of undoing the things that I did, to embrace them as unique George, which isn't always easy. Because the feelings always come. They always come and you can't completely avoid it, but being intentional about saying he's not me and I'm not my dad.
Alison: That's right. Two things can be true simultaneously in that you can be fully present to your boy in his experience, which is so different from yours, and present to your own emotional experience and awareness of,oOh my gosh, I'm doing it. I love that.
Esau: Yeah. It's healing. It's healing to see untroubled joy. It just is.
I cannot articulate how much I enjoyed watching my son try to do a crossover in new shoes that he couldn't do because his dad bought him some shoes and he said, thank you dad. Even when we go on car rides, my oldest is 15 and turning 16–pray for us ‘cause he's driving now, but driving around just in the car with him and being able to have conversations.
In some sense, I don't know how to do this because my father was long gone by the time I was 15. I don't know what you ask a 15 year old. No one asked me anything. So those complex feelings are both new experiences, but like you said, the past is always with you as you live. I can't escape it, but I try not to pressure them with the responsibilities of undoing all my childhood trauma.
Alison: It's really beautiful. I want to ask you, Esau, there's so many things I want to ask you. In the interest of not using up your whole afternoon, I started to make a list as I was listening to your book, and it's really cool to listen to it in your voice.
The different injustices you've talked about–a few that were in your household with your dad, but then you also describe being handcuffed and detailed numerous instances of crazy injustices and as I'm listening, I'm like, I would be filled with resentment.
You're clearly a deep feeler. You're a big thinker. You're engaged. You're in tune. You don't minimize some of these things that happened, but you also don't strike me as someone who is filled with resentments.
Esau: Yeah. I think it was really hard because I'm trying to strike a particular balance that I think is important for people to learn how to function with–people as believers. I didn't want to say that things that happened to me weren't bad.
Because if you move towards forgiveness or grace too soon, then you can have the impact of minimizing these things. There's this point in the Bible where Jesus goes, if I didn't do anything wrong, why did you strike me? He's being questioned. He's no, like I need you to know that, and I know that what you did for me in this moment was an injustice.
So part of what I wanted to do was to write about those things. That those injustices were real and they happened. One of the tricky things when you start talking about things like this, I think about the different parts of the book. So when people talk about family trauma, it's a little bit less controversial. We can understand that. We at least empathize.
When people talk about racial trauma, they get defensive because they feel like they're convicted somehow. Then the idea of talking about racial trauma and family trauma in the book about finding God feels like that's a distraction.
But I want people to understand that it’s a part of my testimony. It's making sense of the goodness of God in the context of family trauma and anti-black racism. If I eliminate that portion of the story, then I'm cutting out a significant point of healing that God did in my life. What happens to a lot of listeners or readers is that they struggle to accept that as a true experience.
So what I wanted to do in the story is to say, these are the things that happened to me, so that you understand when I'm wrestling with the idea of God and how God can be good and kind and forgiving and just, I'm wrestling through these particular issues. One of my favorite books, by C.S. Lewis, I love C. S. Lewis, I've talked about him a lot, is Surprised by Joy.
He's converted in Oxford and he's dealing with these existential questions and like literally the greatest literary minds in human history are evangelizing him. So he's like arguing while talking about God.
That's not my testimony. I didn't come to God in the context of walking around Oxford, having these kinds of questions intellectually. I'm trying to figure out God in the midst of trauma. Anti-black trauma. So what I want to say to people is how do you make sense of that?
This may seem to be overly superficial–only God was there to help.
When I talk about that, how sometimes you can go to college, get an education, you learn and read all of these books, you learn about all of these critiques of Christianity and all of the ways in which God can be good, you start relitigating your past. But I can say the people who were encouraging me to set aside my spiritual values weren't actually there when I was suffering.
They were there to convince me that God wasn’t there in my suffering later on. So what I want to say is that in the midst of those things, who was the person who was my comfort?
Who was there? Who was helping me? I didn't have my dad, but I had a bunch of people who were men in my life from my church who cared about me, who prayed for me, who listened to me complain. So part of it was simply the presence of God is the reason that I survived. Another reason is to say that it was the people around me who loved and cared about me.
As to why I might not be as bitter, I'll put it this way. I don't think that we're always immediately ready to tell our stories. Sometimes we go through things and we just survive them. The only testimony we have is that God helped us survive them. So there's stuff in the book that I didn't talk about publicly ever, because for a long time in my life, all I could say is I survived it.
Alison: Yeah.
Esau: I think sometimes you get to a place where the stories no longer control you, but you control them. Once you have control of those stories, you can then redeploy them for the sake of healing and for God's glory. I talk about this and I thought about this a lot. I don't know if she ever listened to these podcasts, but I mentioned her a couple of times.
One of my heroes is Rachel Denhollander. Rachel went through a trauma that she now talks about for the sake of helping other people. It doesn't mean that every trauma survivor can do that or they're required to do it. For some people, that's too difficult. For every person there’s a cost.
Every interview costs a trauma survivor something to tell their story. But for those of us who feel comfortable, that they are in a place spiritually where they can tell that story, we can begin to use those stories for God's glory. So I'm at the point now in my life that I can tell those stories without bitterness and I can see the ways which I can use this story to help people live healthy and fuller lives.
But that wasn't where I always was. I like to give people time to say maybe in the grace of God, you might get to a point one day where your story is not something simply that you survive, but there's something that you can actually use for the glory of God. Not that God caused it or anything like that, but you can use it.
There's things that aren't in the book. There's stories that are not in the book because I'm not ready to tell those stories. People think, why'd you do a memoir? I said hold on. It's 60,000 words. These are like, like 10 or 15 stories. These are the ones that I felt comfortable sharing with people.
There's other stories that I'm still trying to make sense of as a believer. Maybe in the future I'll be able to tell those stories, but I'm not there yet.
Alison: Yeah. I love that. I love what you're saying. It's complex. There's different moments that I work through resentments in my life. We were talking with Curt Thompson a couple weeks ago, and he was talking about some resentments he was working through, and I was like, oh, isn't that interesting that I wouldn't talk about them at this point because they're very real. I could certainly tell you something about 20 years ago. So I love what you're saying.
Esau: There are two or three things that I'm just like, I can't talk about them. This happened like in the last three to five years. I think that the pandemic was hard on everybody. But the last five to 10 years of my life, a lot of things have happened that I haven't processed yet.
When I speak about them, I still feel the emotion, so I don't talk about them. There's a reason why basically the events of the book all end in 2017, effectively.
Alison: That's where you were ready to go.
Esau: That's where I'm ready. So that was one portion. We'll see if I'm ever able to write about what happened after that.
Alison: Tell me those moments when you were a kid, when you were a teenager, maybe as a young man, those moments of breakthrough. I love how you said “God was there with me”. There were a few people that broke through, I think you used the word uncomplicated joy to describe your son.
So for you, it was complicated. There was a lot of complicated, but there were moments as glimmers we talk about in psychology, where something broke through, whether it was through the Holy Spirit, whether through a human, where you were like, oh, I want more of that.
Esau: Yeah, I think a part of it was my mom who played a tremendous role in my childhood and she was one of them. I think it can be really difficult to talk about my mom because once again, there are other people who had great moms who ended up under different circumstances.
I talk about that in the book, but for this sake, I can say this: she could imagine a future for her children. It was not rooted in our circumstances. That was a deep conviction that she had from God, that God had better plans for us. Even when we didn't believe it, we believed that she believed it.
So that was one of those things that carried us up. The language of the book is like, how far to the promised land? One of the things that I realized is that in some sense, my mom's home was the promised land. It's this place of safety. Even before we arrived, it was like this kind of promise within the context of poverty and suffering and anti-black racism.
My mom said, you're not gonna let these people tell you who you are. I tell you, this one time where she said we can't, she came home, she worked for the school board, so she'll go across town and then she'd come back from across town because we lived in the black part of town and the school board is always in the white part of town.
She had friends over there and so she would say, man, they said that you all couldn't learn, that you couldn't think, that you guys are nothing but a bunch of animals. Is that true? Is that true? Is what they're saying about you true? Because if that's true, then I've failed as a parent. For me, that was it.
One of the other things, I don't know if I talked about this in the book, but it was our church. It was our church. Week in and week out the pastor would preach with such an urgency because I think he knew that life and death was actually the decision that we had to make each week.
I had this running joke where I was like, okay. We were in church every Sunday. The door was open. We was there. So I would say I'm coming to church and if the pastor preaches a good sermon, I'll be a Christian for another week and I won't sin. If he preaches a bad sermon, I'm in the streets.
So it was like a week to week thing and it's actually influenced how I think about preaching because I know what it's like to walk in a church on a Sunday with every desire not to have hope, and to have someone who will help me to hope for a little bit longer. I wanted to say that they did that more often than not.
Even when I thought it wasn't doing its work, I'm pushing these things off, they were somewhere inside of me doing their work and in the fullness of time, it bore fruit.
Alison: I love that. Esau, one of the things that I'm really interested in–the topic of my first book is this idea that we have an internal family of parts. It's a model of therapy that acknowledges we're complex. We have different parts of us and it helped me a lot being someone who has lived in a lot of different parts of the country, like I said, grew up in rural Wyoming, ended up at an Ivy League school in New England where I felt like a complete misfit.
I think about you, reading your memoir, you even talk about the different parts of you. You find your way to St. Andrews where you're studying with N. T. Wright, yet you carry with you all of these former selves.
I'm very interested in that. I think, especially as trauma survivors, those things don't go away, these parts of us, and we don't want them to. What's that like for you? Talk to me a little bit about how you bring all of these parts of you so that you feel like your whole self, wherever you are.
Esau: That's a good question because for a long time, I don't think that I did that very well. I think that there was this idea that in order to get to college, I have to be someone else.
Alison: Yeah.
Esau: Then they teach you who they want you to be at university. So then you become that person. Then I leave the South and I go to graduate school in New England. Then we eventually go to Japan because my wife is in the military. Then we go from Japan eventually over to Scotland.
I'm running. When you're in the rat race, when you're running towards something, it's almost like your bags were checked before the departure and you're flying without the bags, but eventually you land wherever you're going and all the bags come back.
Alison: That's good.
Esau: So at a certain point I arrived and this is what 2017 is, I arrived in the place where I was supposed to be and then all the bags showed up. I realized that I wasn't happy being the version of the person who they wanted me to be. That it actually felt stifling. That I was going to lose my mind unless I let everybody come back.
So part of my writing is my journey to reintegrate myself. I have to be someone who grew up in the black church. That's just a part of who I am. I'm someone who fell in love with the liturgy and I love the sacraments. That's just a part of who I am. I'm someone who loves the Bible. I'm a Bible professor. That's a part of who I am. I'm also a writer.
I'm like, I'm a mess of stuff. Like I have five books in five different genres that I've yet to read because I'm just interested in different things. So I am always trying to say now only in the last three to five years, how can I be who God made me to be instead of the person people wanted me to be? You want to say, how did you do it? I said, I think I had to do it to keep my sanity.
Reading While Black was for me. My first book that you all know about was my Declaration of Independence.
It was saying, I have to be a Christian this way or I can't do it at all. I'm going to be a Christian this way or not at all. So I can't be anything other than who God called me to be. How Far to the Promised Land is the story in a sense, of journeying towards becoming that person.
So I guess I want to say, I think there's a lot of people who get to a place in life where they have the things they want, but the cost is too high.
Alison: Yeah.
Esau: I felt like the cost of not being myself was so high, I had to integrate them back so that I wouldn't lose myself. So I try now to be utterly myself for the sake of my own spiritual, emotional, and mental health, which means that the people who liked the version I knew how to perform for them may not like me as much anymore. That's okay.
Alison: Preach it. I love it. That's so much of what we talk about here on the podcast is this internal integration, this integrity. It's not just emotional, it's a spiritual process. I'm curious, because you talk a little bit in the book about what you're saying, how I knew the person I needed to be to fit into whatever setting.
So was writing the book helpful to you, writing the story? I would imagine, helpful to you in pulling in the different threads.
Esau: I think that everybody should write a memoir. I don't know if everybody should publish one, but everybody should write one. Because what I realized is there are stories that happen to you. They just exist in your head that you return to over and over again, but aren't actually integrated in your life.
They’re just regrets. They visit you like the ghost of Christmas past. They're just unresolved. Because when they occurred, you didn't say what you wanted to say. There were things that were happening and what I figured out in writing this book was, and this was glorious, I wasn't expecting it, is that I can't undo the past.
I can’t undo what happened, but I can actually end the past. I could write a conclusion, not to redo it. I can say, okay, I didn't say this. I didn't do this. I regret it and I wish that I had, and had I had the wisdom, I would have done this. So what I've discovered in writing this book is it actually helped me in the process of integrating different parts of myself.
It helped me, the final chapters when I dealt with the story of my father and our final interactions with one another. That was, I think, some of the best writing that I've ever written in my life. Because it was honest. I realized that the things that I said at the time that I believed, that I actually believed...oh, that's actually true.
It's one thing to say you forgive someone and to feel it at the moment. But there is something in the sense of, in the context of writing the book, processing all of the forgiveness that I had articulated. So for me it was tremendously healing.
One of the other interesting things about it is like, there's been no other sermon in my life that I wrote and then I revisited six years later. The book is framed around the eulogy and the last chapter contains actual words that I wrote. Seven years ago. To return to that text again and to say, yeah, I actually believe this stuff.
Alison: Yeah.
Esau: A real account of what happened. It's true. One of the weird things is I've had people who reached out to me since I wrote the book to say, oh, I knew your dad. One person reached out to me cause the book concludes, I'm going to give it too much away, he ends up at Oak Cliff Bible Church with Tony Evans as the pastor.
It was a big church, influential with me as well. I ran into someone online who said that my dad was in the Bible study that he talked about in the book. He said, oh, I led that Bible study with your dad. He used to talk about you after church all the time. I was like, I didn't even know that. So maybe you put a book out into the world and you find out stuff that you didn't know.
Alison: Yeah, Dan Allender talks about narrative being so important to healing from trauma, and it's what you're saying. It's telling the story over and over. It's why we need stories. We're telling the story of our lives, trying to piece together the threads, and as we grow, as we mature, we pull in new threads and we start to see it a little bit differently.
We see a few more contours. I think you're onto something when you say, and even just the research on journaling, for those of you listening, telling your story, retelling your story and if it's painful, as I'm sure there are painful spots where whoa, I'm not sure I'm ready to tell that story.
Just notice. That's okay. You don't have to, again, you don't have to publicize it. You don't have to, there might be a time when you're ready to do that, such as you said, but I think you're really saying something profound about telling our stories, revisiting the stories, adding chapters to the stories.
Esau: I'm glad you talked about this. Sometimes you don't know that you're still angry about stuff until you start trying to talk about it. You realize, oh man, this really still bothers me.
Alison: Did you find some of that when you were writing?
Esau: Yeah. So there's a chapter called fleeing the South where I talk about the police encounters that I had, and it's the final police encounter that I had when I'm driving from my hometown back to my university and the police officer pulls us over. We're in the middle of nowhere in Tennessee, and he says, I'm pulling you over for a sudden change in speed.
We had gone from a speed of 55 to 35 because of the speed trap. That's how we changed speed suddenly. It was like the sheer ridiculousness of it. See I'm, you can feel it now. It's coming outta my voice, like the sheer ridiculousness of this thing.
But we're in the middle of nowhere, so I can't say to him, oh, you shouldn't pull me over 'cause what am I gonna do? Then he asked, there's two of us in the car, he asked for my license and the license of the person next to me because we told 'em we're going to college. We're going back to campus.
He asked for our student IDs, and there's no law in America that says you have to prove that you go to college. But once again, we are at the mercy of law enforcement in the middle of nowhere. So we have to do whatever he says.
Alison: You talk about how your mom had taught you.
Esau: You told me to do it. But I think, and I talk about this, like the idea of the fear, the confluence of bad days.
One of the ways that God was gracious to me is that every time the police officer was having a bad day and he was taking it out upon me, I was not having a bad day. I was emotionally in control. So when he's calling us, even though we're 22 years old, he's calling us boy, or 21 years old.
He's calling us boys. You boys go back to campus. The person in me who wants respect wants to say who are you calling a boy? That's what I wanted to say. But if I say that it escalates the situation. I had this fear, this real genuine fear of what happens when my bad day and their bad day occur on the same day.
And so that was one of those things that took me out of the South. One of the things that's been really interesting about the last five years for me, I've written so much about the South. This book is set entirely in the South. Reading While Black deals with a lot of the South.
I felt a little bit of sadness that I had to leave a place that I loved because it had broken my heart. So in the context of me writing that section of the book, I was like, man, I love this out. I'm so mad that they made me leave, and I felt that there was still a little bit of me that's a little bit still processing that particular trauma.
Alison: Yeah, I love that. Again, the power of going back, it's like pressing on an old bruise a little bit and maybe it's no longer a gaping wound, but there's still some emotion there. Thank you for the work that you put into that. It's amazing.
Esau: Thank you. I really felt and this is what I was trying to get at earlier. Really quickly the world is in some sense moved in a way from my discipline to your discipline. This might seem like a strange way of putting it, and I'm not saying we don't care about the Bible, I know you do Bible and theology and psychology, I know you do them both.
What I'm saying is, I was abroad, and when I came back to the states in 2016, 2017, there was the question–what does the Bible say about these topics? I feel like now the question is, given my trauma, can I trust God?
Alison: Yeah.
Esau: What I was trying to do was to say, I'm not giving you a prescription of what to do, but maybe seeing the life of someone who went through difficult things and who came out on the other side as someone who still has a robust trust in the goodness of God gives you as the reader, a chance to have that same confidence.
I feel like both of those things are necessary. In other words, I think that we need practical tools to help us process the complexities of life.
Forgive me for rambling on about this, but I remember thinking Christianity ought to be easy by now. When I was a kid, I thought, oh, you get married, you have kids, you got to rent to repeat until you die. It's hard and you live long enough and people who you really put your trust in break your heart. So how do you follow God after that?
Alison: Yeah.
Esau: I feel like the work that you and others are doing helps us process these things, and to think about how we might function as Christians. This is beyond my competence to be prescriptive. How Far to the Promised Land is descriptive and I hope that people can find that useful.
Alison: Gosh, that's beautiful. I really think about what you and I do, and this is why I was starting to be a psychologist, but I was like–it's Augustine–I can't study the soul without studying God. You can't study God without studying the soul. So what you and I do is, two sides of the same coin.
I lead with psychology, and a lot of what I lead with is, okay, so Jesus says, forgive. How do I forgive somebody who has never asked for forgiveness, who has never even owned it, which you have plenty of in your life? How do I forgive somebody who has asked for forgiveness, but has really hurt me?
How do I build trust again? You touch on that. You go down every single one of those in your story. I want to hear your theology about that, too, but I want to hear more about it after I've heard your story, because I'm like, oh, dang. It's just part of human nature.
Esau: I'm glad that you learned the secret because there's a bunch of ways into the book. But the way into the book that you capture the most of what's going on is a long meditation on forgiveness
Alison: That's how I took it.
Esau: It's like the secret sauce of understanding what's going on. The first thing that you actually read is the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Oh man, we love this story, the Pharisee and the Tax Collector.
The Pharisee thinks he's perfect and he says, God, I'm glad I'm not like this other guy. Then the Tax Collector goes, God have mercy upon me, a sinner. We love that story. Oh, we love it. Because we can say no matter what you did, God can forgive you and blah, blah, blah.
Then I said hold on for a second. Did the Tax Collector come to your house? He had taken the last bit of money that you had to pay for your kids' food. Now the tax collector has robbed you and your kids are starving. What has the tax collector done over 20 years? Basically, he was a terror to his community, destroying lives wherever he went.
That's what the tax collector was. I want to promise you that the Jewish people who were around that tax collector were not rooting for his forgiveness. When the tax collector converted, came back home, I'm pretty sure people are like, I'm not sure I want to kick with this guy, which is why people didn't want to mess with Paul in the Bible. It took Barnabas.
So the question I wanted to ask is what happens then if I'm trying to process in effect what a tax collector like character did for me? Because my father does have a turning at the end. But the turning of the end doesn't undo the 25 to 30 years of trauma that he caused.
That process of saying, I am glad the tax collector converted or repented. It's not as simple as we hear it in the story when we're actually a part of it. One way to read How Far to the Promised Land is to say, what happens to the child of the tax collector whose life is forever changed by the decision of his father?
I don't go too deep in the Bible, but I'll say a little bit more. One of the things about tax collectors is they were shunned by their community and oftentimes that shunning extended to their family. So you can imagine if the tax collector was the one who was robbing all of the families, do you think people want to play with the kid or the tax collector?
No. So the kid finds himself isolated. So you know what that means? He's often stuck in that same life of his father. It creates generational trauma. It's passed down. Tthe tax collector's son, his entire life, even the opulence that he has, is probably rooted in what he knows is the suffering of the people around him.
Now it's not a direct analogy because my father doesn't enrich our family by his actions. He makes us poor. But in the same way that everything that happens to me in the book is set in motion by my father's failure is similar to what the tax collector did in the communities around him. So you get to the end and you say, yes, I'm glad that he repented.
That's a journey the book chronicles, it chronicles both that journey and the chaos that was caused in my life by his departure.
Alison: Yeah, I think it's Bonhoeffer who talks about cheap grace. This is costly grace. Costly forgiveness. There's a cost to it. Also there's redemption in it. As you're made whole through your own journey as well.
Esau: Because I think you have to actually, and this is where things get really tricky. Because I don't want to, this is descriptive, not prescriptive because I have to own my own actual need for grace. If you're going to know how to forgive, you actually have to believe that you need the doctrines of grace.
What I mean by that is the difference between saying I like grace. Grace is a good comfort that helps me even though I think I'm 90 percent Christian and only need God to do 10 percent of the work. ‘Cause I'm pretty good.
But we say no. I actually need the grace of God to function as a Christian and that I'm not just someone who has victimized, who's a victim, which I am, but that in other ways I've also hurt and wounded other people.
The forgiveness that I want to be available to me in theory, I have to extend to other people. So it's only when you own in a deep way, God's grace, his ability to forgive you, that you can actually hope that God forgives someone else, even if you don't benefit from it.
So in other words, I got to the point where I couldn't have the father that I wanted as a child because I was an adult now. So I wasn't wishing for that. What I could say is I genuinely hope for a better ending for his story than someone who abandoned his family and then died alone.
Forgiveness wasn't reconciliation. It was actually hope–hope that even if I never get anything out of it, I hope that this person finds him or herself before the end.
Alison: Yeah, that's so powerful. It's so nuanced.
Esau: Yeah, people say what's this book about? It's just about life and life is complicated. Don't ask me to say it in a sentence.
Alison: It's a beautiful memoir. It is complex. That thread of forgiveness, you just move through it and not easily, but you walk us through it. It's so worth the read. One of the questions we ask, and you touched on this, is what's bringing out the best of you right now? How would you answer that?
Esau: I think that right now, two things. One of them is my family. I realized yesterday, I was on a walk with my dog. I said to my wife, people don't actually pay me to come and speak. I would do that part for free. People pay me to leave my family.
That's what you actually like. If you invite me to come somewhere, you're actually paying me to not be with these people whom I love and whom I care about. Because I just enjoy being with my wife. It sounds lame. I enjoy being with my wife and kids and they bring me real joy. I'm like, I think that you're amazing. And I like my wife and kids better.
So it's always so what's bringing the best out of me is seeing that it is a privilege to watch a life unfold before you. That's what you have in the family. It's an intense community watching a life unfold. So I would say right now my children and my wife are bringing me real and great and lasting joy.
I also say that I'm really enjoying the writing process. Writing is an act of creation. I don't know how other people write. But half the time I don't know what I'm going to say when I have a vague idea, and the thrill of putting together sentences and paragraphs and those kinds of things.
It's the joy of an anticipated door for someone else. Sometimes I write stuff and I say, I think this is really going to help someone. They're going to like this line. They're going to like the way these words function and it gives me joy.
Don't tell anybody, this between me and you, like for fun at night, I've been working on a fiction book and that's been like the thing that I've been doing for the last few months, about a month or so is thinking about what kind of fiction book might I write?
Alison: Cool. Do you mean literally I shouldn't record that?
Esau: I was just joking. You can put it in. Yes. I'm working. I'm doing more biblical scholarship. Don't yell at me, people who say when you're going to do the Bible, but I'm working on my next book, biblical theology, and I'm also working on a fiction book. It's actually a trilogy. We'll put that to the side. If I say it in a podcast, then it has to be real.
Alison: It's public accountability. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for all you poured into this beautiful book. Your books are amazing. I'd say read both and whichever. If you're someone who wants the biblical theological version, read Reading While Black first, if you need the lived story to go, I need to know this person's going to relate to my suffering and what I've been through before I trust his theology, read the memoir first.
Esau: I'm not saying I'm like C. S. Lewis. Remember when they talked about the order of the chronicles of Narnia? If I were the reader, I would read How Far to the Promised Land first, and then Reading While Black, even though they were published differently. But How Far to the Promised Land is the introduction to everything.
Alison: Yeah, it is. It's the prequel. It's amazing. Thank you so much, Esau,
Esau: Welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Today's episode is packed! First, I walk you through some practical, research-backed thoughts on forgiveness and grace. Then I invite you into a conversation I had with none other than Max Lucado about how God's forgiveness and grace played out in his own life.
Here's what we cover:
1. The difference between grace & forgiveness (2:20)
2. Personality type & forgiveness (7:11)
3. 3 types of forgiveness (11:03)
4. How to forgive (15:15)
5. Max's personal story (23:28)
6. Clear words of wisdom about toxicity (37:38)
Thanks to our sponsors:
- This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/BESTOFYOU and get on your way to being your best self.
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Music by Andy Luiten
Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
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.
Resources
- God Never Gives Up On You: What Jacob's Story Teaches Us about Grace, Mercy, and God's Relentless Love by Max Lucado
- Research on forgiveness
- "[Forgiveness] is an active process in which you make a conscious decision to let go of negative feelings whether the person deserves it or not." -Dr. Karen Swartz"
- Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods." -Dieterich Bonhoeffer
Transcript
Alison: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I'm so glad you're here. I am so thrilled for these next two episodes, the final two episodes in this series on Faith Talks. We're going to talk about grace and forgiveness, and the two concepts are fairly intertwined.
They're different, but they're intimately linked. So in the first part of today's episode, I'm going to talk about what grace is, what forgiveness is, how they're different. I'm going to talk about forgiveness and what's so tricky about it, what's so hard about it. Then we're going to jump into a couple of interviews with people who are talking about these concepts, who are illustrating these concepts, who are showing us how these concepts play out in their day to day lives.
So first let's talk about what grace is. We throw this word around–we want to be people who are gracious. We want to be people who demonstrate grace. We want to receive grace. We want others to be gracious toward us. So what do we mean by that?
Grace more broadly defined is a posture of kindness. It's a posture of what I like to call goodwill. Which might mean you tend to give others the benefit of the doubt. You tend to give grace. The reason that person cut me off in traffic or was rude to me in the checkout line is because they were having a hard day.
I want to have a gracious, generous outlook. We want others to have a gracious outlook toward us. We think about God's grace. We think about the reality that God is constantly showing grace to us, which means God constantly has a posture of goodwill toward us. It doesn't mean that God isn't aware of where we're getting it wrong, where we're missing the mark, where we're a little bit far from God.
I don't think God is naive. I think God sees those things, but God gives us grace constantly. God is the master of grace giving. As we receive more and more of God's grace toward us, it allows us to have a reservoir of grace inside our souls that spills out to the people all around us.
So grace is a general posture.
When we get into forgiveness, we're talking about a subcategory–a specific form of grace. Forgiveness is given out in the context of a specific offense. It's initiated by a wrongdoing or a series of wrongdoings, a lot of wrongdoings. It doesn't have to be just one wrongdoing. So forgiveness is a posture of the heart, the soul, the mind toward someone who has wronged. Something that violated us in some way.
It involves letting go of the resentment, the anger, or the desire to get even. Again, there's some assumption in this definition of forgiveness, that there is cause to be angry. There is cause to feel resentful. There is cause to want to get even. There is a desire at its best for justice–something wrong happened.
Forgiveness requires us to be very honest about the wrong that occurred. Forgiveness isn't glossing over things. Forgiveness requires us to be very in tune with, “This was wrong. I was wronged in this situation”. It means facing those unpleasant emotions, the resentment, the anger that pops up.
It doesn't mean denying those emotions. We're going to get into this. This is a little bit of a spoiler alert, but I've got a whole new series coming up on emotions that I'm so excited about. So I'm going to touch on it today. There's more to come in the coming weeks, but forgiveness means acknowledging those negative emotions that understandably surface when someone is hurting you, someone is mistreating you, someone isn't. honoring you, someone isn't respecting you, someone isn't giving you the kindness that you are giving to them.
It evokes negative feelings in us. That's normal. What we do with those negative feelings is on us. Forgiveness is one of the tools, one of the strategies that's available to us.
There are a couple of things I want you to hear today before we dive into these episodes:
Number one, a posture of grace and a posture of forgiveness in psychology research, these attributes are correlated with improved mental health in general. If we are people who tend to give others the benefit of the doubt, if we are people who tend to release resentment and anger and hold a forgiving posture toward others, we see improved mental health benefits.
This is secular research. These attributes are correlated with increased levels of happiness, decreased symptoms of depression and anxiety, and a generally more positive outlook on life.
In general, it's not healthy for us to harbor a lot of ill will. It's not healthy for us to harbor resentment and anger. It doesn't do good for our bodies, our souls, or our minds. We see this time and time again in the research. So we do want to be people of grace. We do want to be people of forgiveness.
But there are a couple of nuances to that. Number one, research in psychology has also established a strong correlation between the ability to forgive others and certain personality traits. You probably know this anecdotally. You probably right now as you're listening, can think about yourself and recognize, I'm someone who forgives pretty easily, even when I've been wronged.
Or you might be aware that it's really hard for me to forgive. I don't like it. I don't like seeing wrongs. It's really hard for me. There's probably a good reason for that.
Back in episode 49, we talked about the big five personality traits that are the most researched personality traits in psychology that tend to be how we're wired.They tend to be pretty stable over time. One of those traits is agreeableness.
Some people tend to have a more agreeable approach. For those folks, indeed, what we find is that forgiveness and grace come a little bit more easily than folks who have lower levels of agreeableness. Now, if you go back to those episodes, you remember there's not a good or bad here.
The people who score lower on agreeableness tend to be more invested in justice. They tend to be more invested in calling out wrongs. So there's a need for all types. If you're somebody who struggles with forgiveness, my guess is you are somebody who really hates injustice, and that's a good quality.
Doesn't mean you don't have to work on forgiveness or grace. But it does mean we don't want you to lose that quality of calling a spade and naming what you see and calling out wrongs. There's a real need for you in our world.
For those of you for whom forgiveness and grace come a little bit more easily, there's a need for you to not jump to a naive glossing over. That isn't actually forgiveness. I put myself in this category.
For those of us who have a highly developed fawn response, who are a little bit more of a people pleaser, we can call ourselves gracious and forgiving, but what's really happening is we're not looking at the hard facts.
We're not looking at the reality that there was a wrong. The invitation to us is to get a little bit more in touch with what I believe matters to God also, which is that justice piece, that truth telling piece. This wasn't right. The way this other person treated me, it wasn't right.
I'm willing to forgive that person. Yes, that may come a little bit easily to me, but I'm also working on naming when something isn't right. That's also a part of my growth spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically.
So the first thing as you're listening to these conversations I'm going to have today and next week, I want you to hold that in mind. Is there a personality disposition that makes some of these things a little bit easier? Where are you on that spectrum? If it's harder for you, what's your invitation in terms of forgiveness? If it's easier for you, what's your invitation in terms of forgiveness?
If it's harder for you, your invitation might be to go through the mental rigor of working to release resentments and anger. If you're someone for whom forgiveness comes pretty easily, your invitation might be to work on naming and honoring wrongs that have been committed at least before God and with a couple of other people being really honest about areas where you've been hurt.
There is hurt there and you need to also face the hurt before you jump into forgiveness because it's also not wise to let other people take advantage of us. We need all of these tools in our tool belt.
Finally, I want to talk a little bit about different types of forgiveness: number one, there's forgiving yourself. Sometimes we wrong ourselves. We do something we know we shouldn't do, or we do something that at the time is the best we can do, that years later we're beating ourselves up or we're mad at ourselves that we did that thing that we're now suffering the consequences of.
This is real self forgiveness, and this is where I love that parts work where we look at a part of us that did the best we could at a given moment in time. We bring that part out in front of us. We stop beating ourselves up. We invite God into that experience because God doesn't beat us up. God names without shame. We walk through a process of forgiving that part of ourselves in partnership with God's spirit. It's so powerful. We'll get into more of that in these upcoming episodes.
There's also forgiving others. This is the most commonly known form of forgiveness, and there's a couple of forms of forgiving others.
Number one, there's forgiving others when they ask for forgiveness, when they acknowledge a wrong. Maybe somebody has hurt you. A parent has hurt you. A friend has hurt you. A spouse has hurt you and they've come to you and said, I'm really sorry. I messed up. I'm going to do better next time. In those instances, forgiveness can be hard, but it's sometimes a little bit easier.
Then there’s when someone owns what they have done, sometimes somebody asks for forgiveness, but they don't really change. That's a little bit harder.
Then sometimes we have those situations where someone has wronged us in deep ways. Maybe they've wronged us systematically time and time again and they've never owned it. They don't even think they've done anything wrong. They might not even know the extent of the damage they've caused. Those are really hard situations to forgive, especially if you're still in a relationship with that person.
I'm going to come back to that in one second, but I want to name the third type of forgiveness, and that's collective forgiveness. It’s where a group of people or a community of people or a culture of people has harmed you. If you've been part of a church community that harmed you, the whole culture was toxic and that community harmed you, that can be really hard, especially if you cannot get away from the group that has hurt you.
So I want to touch on this category of forgiveness that so many of us, all of us at some point in our lives have experienced a hurt from someone else where that person doesn't know or doesn't care that they've heard us. This is really hard, especially if you're in an ongoing relationship with this person, and I want to say up front that I believe very clearly that boundaries and forgiveness go hand in hand.
I do not think forgiveness means continuing to allow yourself to be put into harm's way. If you've received any of those messages that you should forgive and forget and let this person keep harming you, that is wrong. You will hear our guest say this today, and I'm so grateful that he did.
Here's the tricky thing about forgiveness in those cases. We don't do ourselves any favors by holding on to anger and resentment. It doesn't do good in our own souls to hang on to those feelings longer than we should know.
We need to honor them. We need to notice them. We need to let those feelings run their course. But the minute we start to grab on and feed on anger and feed on resentment over time, that's not healthy for us. There's a lot of research that supports that. So we want to honor those feelings, but we want to release those feelings.
I believe that one of the best ways we can do that is to set healthy boundaries with those who are harming us. Once you trust yourself and God long enough that you've established that healthy distance from that person in whatever way that you can, then you can begin to do the work in your heart of releasing anger and resentment.
I want to be clear about that. Boundaries go hand in hand with forgiveness. Getting enough healthy distance from a person who has hurt you, especially if they're unrepentant, especially if they're not saying they're sorry, especially if there's no bid for restoration and where reconciliation is not possible.
Forgiveness is about getting healthy distance, whether that distance is physical and you never let that person into your space again, or whether there's emotional distance, maybe with someone that you have to have an ongoing relationship with, but you recognize that person will never be able to give me what I actually need.
You can then begin to do the work internally to release resentment and anger, and you release that to God, and you are able to release that to God because God is a God of justice. So you're not gaslighting yourself. You're not saying what they're doing is okay. You're saying that is wrong. Simultaneously, I can release that to you, God, because you are the God of all justice.
I can't do anything about this. All I can do is protect myself from further harm, while simultaneously releasing to you the anger and resentment I feel. You are the God of justice, and I can release that to you. That's powerful. That's a powerful form of forgiveness. It doesn't mean you let that person continue to hurt you.
How do you do that? Again, if you're in that category of someone who's been hurt, and maybe you've got some boundaries in place. You're learning how to get some healthy distance from this other person, from this situation. But you're aware of that resentment and negativity inside.
Dr. Karen Swartz, she's a researcher out of Johns Hopkins, she says it this way. She says, forgiveness is an active process in which you make a conscious decision to let go of negative feelings, whether the person deserves it or not.
That's tricky. That's hard. I like this definition though, because she's saying a couple of things. It's an active process. It's ongoing. It's not a one time event, especially if it's a really deep hurt. If it's an ex, if it's a parent, if it's a child, an adult child who's really hurt you.
It's a conscious, active process where you're having to do what I call “mind your mind”. There's some mental rigor of noticing, oh man, there's that negativity. Especially if you have to see that person, there's that negativity. It's a process of noticing that, naming that, and not shaming yourself for having that feeling.
There's a justification for it. That person hurt me. Also God, will you help me release that negative feeling? Will you help me release that resentment that I feel in my soul? Will you be the God of justice? Because I've done everything I can do to protect myself. This person isn't changing. They're never going to change.
It's not good for me to harbor resentment in this situation. I can name it. I can honor it. I can do what I can, what's my part to protect myself, and then I need to release it. God, I got to release it because it's not healthy for me to hang on to. Will you help me release it?
It's a mental muscle you're developing as you learn to forgive. It is an active process, and I believe it happens in the context of healthy boundary setting. You set the healthy boundaries. You do what you can to protect yourself from ongoing harm. That's part of wisdom. You notice the negativity when it comes up. You honor it. You go to God and you release it. God, you are the God of justice. I release that negativity. I release that other person into your care.
You are the God who knows all. You are the God who knows more than I do. You release it and God takes it from there. We can trust God because God is a good God. God is a God of justice. He sees everything. He understands everything. He's big enough to take these heavy burdens that we bear.
Alright, so I wanna move into today's interview. Most of you are familiar with Max Lucado. He is a pastor, a speaker, and a prolific best selling author. He is known for his deep understanding of grace.
I got a chance to meet Max recently and noticed that he is someone who embodies grace and it's not cheap grace. Dietrich Bonhoeffer talks about the difference between cheap grace and costly grace. Costly grace recognizes when there's wrongs. There's a cost to grace and Max is somebody who understands that.
Today we talk about Max's brand new book called God Never Gives Up On You: What Jacob's Story Teaches Us about Grace, Mercy, and God's Relentless Love. I love this conversation and it's a beautiful book. If you're in need of some grace of your own, some encouragement, this is a great book and you'll hear in today's episode that Max doesn't beat around the bush about toxicity.
He names it and he owns it and he calls it out where it is in the Bible. It's all over the Bible. Yet God is still a God of grace. I'm so pleased to bring you my conversation with Max Lucado.
Alison: Can you tell us a little bit, I know from your story that before you were a pastor, you worked to pay your way through college. It sounds like you initially wanted to become a lawyer before you discovered Bible courses and discovered the calling to be a pastor.
This is a while back. Can you tell us a little bit about that younger version of you and what his understanding of grace was at that time in your life?
Max: You've done your homework, Alison.
Alison: A little.
Max: Yeah, that's pre NOAA, pre ARC, I'm so old…
Alison: I love that stuff. That's the hard earned wisdom that you've earned.
Max: Yeah I don't know if you have kids, but you would not have wanted your kids to hang out with or date the teenage/early 20 year old, 20 something version of me. I was pretty much a scoundrel. I was a six pack a night guy, I was a brawler, I was all about me, and part of that was due to the fact that I had reacted to an understanding of faith that we would call legalism.
Where your relationship with God depends upon performance. I tried my best for a few years and I couldn't. A combination of peer pressure and raging testosterone and societal issues later, I cashed in that chip and said that's never going to work for me.
By the influence of a good friend, a guy who's still a friend to this day, I decided to try attending church again and I heard a pastor describe what we call grace and don't know how I missed it.
I don't fault anybody in my youth–I probably wasn't listening–but I became convinced that God could forgive a jerk like me. It was truly life changing, Alison. We hear people all the time say, my life was heading off the rails. My life was heading off the rails.
Alcoholism is a major issue in my family of origin. My brother died as a result of alcohol. I have several aunts and so I was headed off the rails and grace is what caught my attention.
Alison: Yeah. I love the focus on this in the book–God never gives up on you. Max, one of the things we focus on in this podcast is that healing is a process. It's not one and done. Grace comes in. Jesus comes in. We're changed. We're changing over the whole course of our lives, which is what I love about what you did with the story of Jacob.
In the book you talk about how Jacob had to reckon with his past at a key inflection point, and I write about this as well. I love this moment. I love how you describe this moment. What are some moments in your own life where you've had to reckon with the past and wrestle with God a little bit as you considered moving into your future?
Max: Boy, you get right to the core, don't you, Alison?
Alison: That's what we're all about.
Max: Yeah, that old saying is true. You can't move into the future until you've dealt with your past. And dealing with your past is challenging. Apart from the grace of God, I would think it's impossible. I had and have messed up some really good relationships through the years due to my inability to exercise self control. I also have an addiction to the approval of people, which is interesting because I have a real curiosity about theology, and sometimes what I begin to discover in Scripture is not what I was taught or what others taught me.
I'll have to part ways a bit with people and chart my own course. I find that very hard because I like people to like me so much. I'm not a disrupter. I'm a pleaser. I see that now. But I have found that I did not manage that well.
As you ask about my past, the two things that I've had to trust is that God's grace is adequate for forgiveness for my life in my early years, the inappropriate behavior, and in uncontrolled passions. Even as a pastor, sometimes I cut people off rather than talk it through with them. I would avoid them and that's not healthy. I've had to go back and mend a few of those bridges over the years.
Alison: Isn't that something? The benefit of growth as we grow in our own healing, we become more mature and we receive more and more of God's grace. It's paradoxical. It's not that we become more and more like what you call, I love what you call the super-saint. It's not that we become more aware of our super-sainthood.
It's almost that we become more aware of, oh my gosh, every step of the way, the more aware I become of God's goodness and God's love. Simultaneously, we become a little bit more aware of our failings. It is such a paradox is what I hear you saying. We have to constantly reckon with that.
Max: As God gets bigger we appropriately get smaller, and that's the way it should be. Trusting in the great grace of God, how strong He is, I was reflecting earlier, maybe three or four days ago, with my family, how we used to put our girls to bed at night.
We have three daughters, of course they're all grown now, and they have kids now. We were talking back when they were little, and we had a bedtime routine. Part of that bedtime routine is that I would allow each of my daughters to feel my biceps.
Now, once upon a time, I actually had biceps. I don't anymore. There's more sag than strength there. But we'd make a big deal out of it. They would say, daddy, you're so strong. Of course, they're already getting ready for bed. They've had their bath. This is the last thing I would do before we'd tuck them in.
My thinking was, I want them to go to sleep knowing that they have a strong father and that they will rest better having felt their father's muscles. I didn't know I was actually practicing theology by doing that but I do think that we're stronger as we let God get bigger and we allow ourselves to be small.
To be that child that feels the muscles of God. These stories in the Bible, like the story of Jacob, really celebrate not Jacob, but God, and give us an opportunity to really place our hand on his biceps and see that he's the one in control.
He's got a great plan for us. He's not going to deviate from it. He's not going to abandon us, and we can trust him to get us home safely. Because in the end, it's his strength that matters, not ours. It's his grip on us that matters, not our grip on Him.
Alison: Yeah. Thank goodness. I love what you said. You said apart from God's grace, I think it would be impossible to face ourselves honestly, to reconcile with our pasts. It's that cushion of grace and the bigness of it that makes it possible for us to tell the truth about our own inadequacies and the areas in our own lives. You call it the tilted halo, right?
Max: Anxiety is running unbridled through our society and I think one of the things that we don't talk about as a cause for anxiety is an unresolved past. If I've got secrets in my past, if I've got mistakes in my past that I've never dealt with in a healthy fashion, the unhealthy approach to dealing with my past, it creates stress.
I'm either suppressing it, I'm hiding from it, I'm working my way, shopping my way, eating my way, drinking my way to get around it…
Alison: …pleasing our way…
Max: lazing my way, and it becomes a hectic race to outrun my past. Christians, we can say, you know, what I did was terrible. It's horrible what I did. I will not pretend. I do not pretend it was good. Nope, no more. Not gonna justify it. Not gonna deny it. I'm gonna own it.
But I'm gonna present it to God and allow him to speak words of forgiveness over it. That I think, I really think, is an unaddressed issue or unaddressed approach in our dealing with anxiety. Because if we can let that pass, be presented, healed, prayed for, forgiven, then we've got a load we can release and move on with life.
Alison: Yeah. Again, that grace, I love how you're describing the bigness of God's grace is paradoxically what allows us to change and heal and grow. We don't heal in the context of criticism. We heal in the context of that compassion, that kindness from God.
You've met with, no doubt, thousands of people over the years as a pastor and through your books and through your ministry. What are some things you see that make it hard for people to really receive deep in their bones, this grace that you're describing?
Max: That's a great question. I think it's the fact that nobody else has given us that grace. If I have let people down, and I know I have, and they continually remind me of it, or shame me about it, for me to hear a pastor say, yeah, but God forgives you, in the back of my mind, I say, yeah yeah. You mean my ex-wife won't forgive me, but the God of the universe will? That doesn't add up.
Because others fall short, because forgiving others is hard, because others have a hard time forgiving you. Please, let God be God. He can. He's already seen your life from beginning to end. From start to finish. He's chosen you. He's decided you're worth having in His eternal kingdom.
Even if no one else can, even if you can’t forgive yourself, take step one–trust that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us and that the God who knows us, loves us, and he can forgive us. I think that's a challenge.
Alison: Boy, I think you're taking a peek into my playbook here. We did an episode recently with a young woman she works for me, who met Christ through her peers at Harvard. She was in a search for meaning and she said exactly what you said. She said, I'd lived a whole life of nobody really showing me love, showing me grace.
So when people tell me, God loves you, that doesn't mean anything to me. I don't have a lived experience of that. What she said changed were those people on her campus showing her that love, showing her that embodied glimpse of grace. That's where we also become that embodiment of grace for those around us.
Sometimes our showing that to other people is even more powerful than those words. We have to back that up. I'm in no doubt that you're showing that to so many people through your written words.
Max: I hope so. Being kind to people, being a genuine listening ear, and expressing acceptance. I know of a fella where I play golf who was involved in a horrible accident and a person died as a result of that accident. He is so broken, and this might sound like I'm self promoting, I'm not.
Every time I see him, we talk, I check on him and he tears up. He tears up. He said, people don't know what to say to me. So I think that's what you're talking about, that kindness. When others find it difficult, if we can at least extend a hand, put an arm around the shoulder, ask how they're doing…we likely underestimate how powerful that is in people's worlds.
Alison: More is caught than taught. You're showing him the love of God in that moment. I love that. One of the things, Max, I really appreciated and we talk a lot about on this podcast because in my world of trauma and therapy, the reality is we are bumping up against toxicity. It's real.
Sometimes folks find themselves in toxic relationships, in toxic systems. We have to be wise. We have to be shrewd. We can't be naive. You talk about unflinchingly the toxic cultures present both in Jacob's time and in our time today, and I appreciate that you named that. That you don't try to skirt around that.
I think people need to be equipped. We need to not be naive. I think sometimes as Christians we hear the message we need to love people and that doesn't always work. Tell me a little bit about why you included that, how you've navigated that as a pastor and in your own life.
Max: Yeah, the reason that conversation got included in this book about Jacob is that one of the saddest stories in the story of Jacob involved, toward the end of his life, he's returning to Bethel with his family. He had a large family, two wives, two handmaidens, a dozen kids, who knows how many servants.
They camp near a place called Shechem. Shechem has been unearthed by archaeologists. It was a city. Of course, they were Bedouins, and so they were probably attracted to this stone walled city with streets and shops and maybe an opportunity to drink something other than desert water, have a good meal. They started living and put their roots down near Shechem.
They weren't supposed to. They were supposed to keep going to Bethel. But while there Jacob had one daughter Dinah. While there, she was violated by one of the men. That man happened to be named Shechem, he was the son of the ruler, and then he not only violated her, but he wanted to bring her into the city of Shechem to be his either lover or wife or something.
He wanted her. It was pathetic. It's a horrible story of misogyny and brutality, nothing good, and it gets worse. Jacob was passive. He didn't respond. He didn't defend his daughter. When the blood brothers of Dinah learned about what happened, they went Rambo on the village and they convinced the men, (the story's brutal), they convinced all the men in the village to be circumcised. Then while the men were healing, they murdered all the men. People who've not read the Bible say that's in the Bible? Yeah, that's in the Bible. That's Jacob? Yep, that's Jacob.
It was horrible. What had happened is a toxic culture existed. A toxicity where the strong manipulate, control, brutalize the weak. Where those in power take advantage of those who have less power.
Toxic culture has a strict pecking order and those in control. Hurt those who have less control. It's not it's not a culture in which kindness is valued, but strength is valued in power. It's not a culture in which forgiveness is a virtue. Vengeance is a virtue.
We can find ourselves in these cultures. Jacob did. Jacob should have gotten his family out of there sooner. He eventually did, but not before the damage was done. Sometimes we find ourselves in a situation like that. It could be in a work situation, school situation, sadly a church situation.
It could even be in a family. In those situations, we need to number one, realize this can cause damage. Wives, if your husband is behaving like a shechem, get your kids and get out. Get out fast. Men, if you are turning a blind eye towards Shechemites, then you need to repent, take a stand for what's good and either get your family out or confront what the evil is.
This is something we can't mess with. Sometimes we can even see this in a nation. In a culture where we begin to elevate somebody who's full of braggadocio, is that the right word? Swagger. A lot of swagger. We need to watch out when that happens. We need to. It is a warning. I think this story in the Bible, it serves as a warning. A toxic culture can really hurt people, hurt a generation.
Alison: I appreciate your naming that so much as a pastor, as someone people look up to. I think that's so important, especially for women to hear, but for all of us to hear, to not be naive about the reality of toxicity around us.
Max, as we're closing today, I want to ask you a question I like to ask all of my guests, which is, if you think back to that younger young man, way back in the day, maybe before he had really encountered God's grace, what would you want him to know that you know now? If you could have a minute with him, a moment to meet with him, what would you want him to know?
Max: The honest conversation would have to do with treating women with respect, would have to do with acknowledging the danger of alcohol, and would have to do with choosing the right friends. I think he knew those things, but he wasn't listening. He needed somebody to sit down eyeball to eyeball with him and say them.
I'm making it sound like that period lasted a long time. Really, it was a two or three year period, 17 years of age. But I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful, Alison, that I didn't cause any damage during that time. I was bad enough to learn to acknowledge how bad I could be.
I am grateful my life was heading off the tracks. So I am forever grateful to the pastors, to the friends who taught me that God loves me and God gives a second chance, who introduced me to the Holy Spirit, who urged me to read the Bible. I'm forever grateful. But I would like to have a face to face with that kid.
Alison: I love that. I love that there's a loving firmness in the face to face. This is how God redeems all of our stories. The humility too. We all have that in our life. That's why I like to ask the question–every single one of us can look back and reconnect with that former part of us, both from a place of, wow, I've come so far and I’m so grateful because without that younger version, those needs, those raw edges, we wouldn't have stumbled into the fullness of what it means. We would be, oh yeah, I'm all set. I've been cool my whole life.
I love that. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been an honor to have you today.
Max: Thank you. All the very best. Thanks for letting me be a part of your podcast.
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