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I am so thrilled to have my friend, Dr. Curt Thompson, on the podcast today. I have been deeply transformed by Curt's work, and in today's conversation, Curt breathes fresh life into a topic that is too easily tossed around and oversimplified-Hope.We take a deep dive into the intricacies of hope from a neurobiological, relational, and spiritual perspective. It's a must listen for anyone going through hard times.
Here's what we unpack in our conversation:
* What's happening inside our brains when we hope? (11:59)
* Steps you can take in daily life to foster hope (17:55)
* The link between hope and secure attachment (15:35)
* How we embody and become hope for one another (21:04)
* Reimagining hope in today's world (22:41)
Thanks to our sponsors:
- Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
- Go to Reliefband.com and use promo code BESTOFYOU to receive 20% off plus free shipping.
- Visit seed.com/BESTOFYOU and use code BESTOFYOU to redeem 25% off your first month of Seed's DS-01® Daily
Music by Andy Luiten
Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
Resources
- Curt's new book: The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope
- Other Books by Curt Thompson: The Anatomy of the Soul, The Soul of Shame, The Soul of Desire
- Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederich Buechner
- Romans 5
- More about "glimmers" in The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation by Deb Dana
- The Bible Project
- Genesis 1-6
- John 1
- James 5:16
- John 18:10-11; Matthew 26:50-56; Mark 14:46-50
- 2 Kings 6:17
- Acts 7:54-60
- The Being Known Podcast
- CurtThompsonMD.com
Transcript
Alison: Hey everyone. Welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I'm so thrilled you're here today, and I'm especially thrilled to bring you this conversation with my dear friend and fellow therapist, Dr. Curt Thompson.
Curt was on the podcast in Episode 58. He was on with his friends, Pepper Sweeney and Amy Cella. It's a great episode and you get a real sense of their friendship. Curt really lives out what he teaches, but I wanted to have him on to talk about hope because I think hope is one of the most fundamental life skills that we all need to develop. Curt has a wonderful way of talking about it.
Curt is an author and a psychiatrist. He's the founder of the Center for Being Known, an organization that develops resources for hope and healing at the intersection of neuroscience and Christian spiritual formation. He's the author of The Anatomy of the Soul, The Soul of Shame, The Soul of Desire, and his latest book that came out, it's called The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope.
Everything Curt does really speaks to me. we get pretty personal today on the podcast–both Curt and I are deep feelers. So when we're talking about this stuff, there's often tears in the back of our eyes.
So you'll hear some moments of quiet where there are tears showing up both in Curt and in myself. It was a beautiful, powerful conversation. I took so much away from it personally. It moved me and I'm so thrilled for you to now join me in this conversation with my dear friend, Dr.
Curt Thompson.
*Music*
Alison: Curt, I realized it started recording, can you say that quote again? I want to capture it. I love that.
Curt: Yeah. From Frederick Buechner, Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.
Alison: I love that you thought of that quote as I was asking you how you're doing. It's such a beautiful segue into your book, which is to me this paradox of hope and suffering. The both-and, the one not being able to really exist without the other, which Buechner is getting at.
Always a little bit of both. I'm so looking forward to this conversation. By way of background. We've been going through a series, and this episode will be the last in this series, on these psychology building blocks. I'm calling it Psych 101, these skills that we all need to build to become really a healthy human adult.
We've talked about emotional intelligence, about resilience, about relational habits. I don't think you can become a flourishing, healthy human if you don't understand hope, and if you don't understand how to develop hope, and I love in the subtitle of your book, you talk about the formation of hope, and I'd love to start there.
This is a terrible question to ask, what is hope? Is it a feeling? Is it a mindset? Is it a skill we develop? What's your understanding of hope? We toss the word around a lot. We see it in memes, we see it in cliches, but it's a really deep concept. What is your understanding of it?
Curt: Alison, I would say in some respects, one way to begin to talk about it is that first of all, it's to put it in perspective. Starting big picture and then moving closer in, into who we actually are as real people and with our real stories.
One thing we said when we talk about hope, we're actually talking about something that has to do with our anticipated future. It’s a thing that's happening somewhere. Five minutes from now, five years from now. So it's a future state thing. Then if we consider it very generally, as it turns out, hope is the word that we use that is like a euphemism for any part of my anticipated future that I would find to be something that I would actually look forward to with joy as opposed to looking forward to it with dread.
It’s a hopeful future. Now what's interesting is that without calling it hope, this is what we are doing from the time that we come into the world. We are generating hope. You come into the world as a newborn and you start to cry and mom comes for you and you discover that mom comforts you. Then the next time you do it and the next time you do it, and so forth and so on.
What you're doing is you're developing an anticipated future in which you are gonna be cared for when you are in distress. If that's the kind of family you're growing up in, if we have a secure attachment, for the most part, we form hope long before we call it that.
But what it is, is a future state in which I expect good things to happen. Really the simplest definition: it is a thing that we are doing every time I pull out of my driveway and I drive my car, and without imagining it, I hope that everybody else who's coming my direction stays on their side of the highway.
I hope they do. Now, I'm not thinking that, but that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm driving hopefully.
The other thing, too, that is important, then, is to know that hope is actually a thing that I am in the business of forming neurobiologically. Interpersonally.
We often talk about it as if it is this kind of abstract thing, or at least it's a thing that is independent of anything that I have to do with it. I either have it or I don't have it. Maybe it'll drop into my lap. Maybe it won't. I hope that I'm able to hope. But I don't have any way of being connected to its formation.
Then the other thing that we would say is that hope that is durable, I don't know if we would say always, but it appears frequently that hope that is durable is always formed in the kiln of some kind of suffering.
Alison: Yeah, even in your very first example, the baby who is crying, the impetus for the hope is the pain, is the suffering, is the need. Is that, would you say that in order to hope, one has to suffer? Would you say that they are intimately linked in that way?
Curt: I don't necessarily have to suffer to hope that people will stay on their side of the highway when they're driving toward me. But for durable hope, for me to hope durably, for me to hope in a moment in which my pain is still with me, that's a different kind of hope, and this I think is what Paul is getting at in that passage in Romans 5 that we explore in the book.
This notion that hope emerges in this crucible of suffering. As long as I'm able to recognize that the crucible of suffering itself is preceded by a certain set of assumptions that Paul is making about our relationship with Jesus and about our relationship in the community to which he's writing. I'm not expected to pick up that book of Romans and read it and think, oh, Paul's writing to me, Curt, as the individual, and I'm going to have to suffer and somehow white knuckle myself through perseverance so that I can get to hope.
Paul's writing to a community. It is in the context of that community that we are seen, soothed, safe, secure. The body becomes the person of Jesus to me, in which we are loving people in wild and crazy ways that in that context would have never been predicted outside of the presence of Jesus. In that community, it creates the opportunity for me to reveal myself in my pain to others who are going to be present with me, which enables us to form hope.
I don't form hope for myself. We form hope for me and we form hope for you.
Alison: Yeah I love that. That's a key point in the book. I want to circle back to that “we” hope in the context of community and connection, but I love what you said. I want to pause there because I think so many of us, I was thinking about it as I was reading this book, that Romans 5 passage, it's so familiar.
I've always felt the linear kind of part of my brain. Like you said, it's not that encouraging to me. It's like a hard thing happens, I have to work really hard, then it's sequential. In the end, I might get this feeling of hope. That's a fruit of all this hard stuff. And that's not a super hopeful or pleasant way of looking at it.
You are expanding it–it's more of this virtuous cycle where all of these things are happening simultaneously. It's an action. It's a forming, in the context of community, I want to circle back to that, but I have a question for you before we get there.
There's a way in which, when you talk about hope as being future-oriented, a way of looking toward an outcome that is favorable that we hope will come to pass, it almost sounds a little bit like the opposite of anxiety, where there is this futuristic orientation toward what could go wrong.
It almost sounds to me as if hope is in some ways the antidote for anxiety and it's not positive thinking. It's something much deeper and much more robust spiritually and neurobiologically than the power of positive thinking. Does that make sense?
Curt: Yeah. What I would say in this regard is that we form hope. But what we form is actually a byproduct–I don't form hope because I set out to form hope. I form hope because in my suffering, I allow myself to be revealed to you. I do it over and over again, despite the fact that my pain isn't leaving, which is perseverance.
In the course of that work, I become a person of character that I couldn't have been if I'm trying to do this all by myself, or if I'm trying to do this by myself without revealing myself to someone else. That movement from the suffering, practicing perseverance, the development of character, as we like to say, we always remember our futures.
Our future is only ever constructed out of my remembered past. I don't ever construct a future that I'm not imagining from my past experience in some way, shape or form. So when I talk about hope, what I'm really talking about is an anticipated future that is built out of multiple moments of embedded experience that I commit to memory in which I have experienced my pain in the presence of Alison, who is with me with loving kindness, and my friend Neil, and my friend Rich, and Byron, these people who are with me, and I encode this, and this becomes my source for my anticipated future.
I'm building a neural base of memory of, when I am in pain, I am also experiencing the presence of those who are with me. It categorically shapes and changes the nature of the story that I tell about the pain, including how I experience the feeling of it.
That means that as I imagine, my future becomes one of repeated moments like this. When I do think about my future, that future is coming out of this series of present moments that I have felt, this seabed, if you will, of seeds that we are planting of the presence of Jesus through his body being with me.
When I imagine my future, I'm like, oh, Curt, when is this problem that you have that is so awful gonna stop? I think I don't know, but when I think about having it next Friday, I think about the sense that I'm not by myself with this, and it categorically changes it. I have a hopeful future, and that actually circles back around to change my present moment itself.
Alison: It's really a paradigm shift in that it shifts the focus of the hope from the outcome out there and onto the journey, which is, I don't know what's going to happen, but I do know I'm going to receive care and love and kindness and connection and beauty in this moment.
Again, that's not necessarily what we want, maybe the outcome will come, but it doesn't matter. I'm receiving something even more beautiful, perhaps, in the moment. Curt, I'm imagining the person listening, especially if we think about hope being formed literally, from the moment we experience comfort as a newborn baby, as a child.
What happens if we never encoded that kind of positive experience as a child, for whatever reason, as a result of emotional neglect, abuse, traumatic experiences, and so our brain really does go to when bad things happen, I am alone and I don't have a different memory for that.
Curt: My guess is that if they're listening to your podcast, they didn't randomly flip a coin and land on Alison's podcast. They're probably listening to you for a reason. Even if they grew up in a place where they knew very little of a secure attachment, if they're listening to you, it's because at some point and on some level, they are forming a secure attachment with you.
Even if you're not in the room, it's happening because this is the work that you do. I know you, I consider you to be my friend. I love being in the room with you. Who wouldn't love being in the room with you? I'm really serious. Like the sense that if somebody's listening, they're already hopeful and they're hopeful because not because, oh, Alison provides great information, which you do, but they're not coming for your information.
They're coming for you. This is why your listeners are coming and what's happening for them means that, maybe it's not picture perfect because you're not in the room and you aren't sharing meals together and so forth, but there are going to be listeners whose attachments are being formed differently because they're listening to you.
They're listening to us now. We would say to those listeners, gosh, I wonder what it feels like to imagine Alison being with you in your kitchen and having a cup of coffee together, what do you imagine that would be like? I imagine that there'd be a lot of people who would love that.
Why do you think that is? Because you've already had this felt sense, literally, in your chest that this is a woman who's willing to both be vulnerable, but also who listens well. Who's willing to be present with you in the room with the parts of you that are hard. When that begins to happen, that's the kind of experience that we want to have you practice paying attention to.
My hopeless future, my dreaded future, is really me paying attention to the things that I've always paid attention to. Again, this is why we talk about hope being formed. It is not a thing that is going to fall out of the sky into my lap because I want it to.
God takes us very seriously and expects us to be involved in the hope-forming project. For those people who haven't had it at the cradle, my guess is that we would say, oh then we're gonna want to work on finding relationships where that can become possible.
Alison: I love that. It's a spin on you always saying pay attention to what you're paying attention to. That applies to shame but it also applies to hope. Paying attention to that feeling of: there's something here that gives me hope.
Curt: Again, if I were to get up and walk down the hallway at my house, I say I hope that the floor holds. I don't think I'm going to say I hope the floor holds, but I'm living as if I do hope the floor holds.
Why is that? Because I've had an embodied encounter with the floor thousands of times. So when we talk about this kind of hope for relational wholeness, we're talking about putting ourselves in a position in which we can have greater numbers of experiences in which we are being seen in this way that we're talking about in the middle of our pain.
Alison: Yeah. Maybe the first step, if you're someone who struggles with a lot of anxiety, a lot of despair, a lot of hopelessness, however it shows up in your life, is beginning to notice, what are those times when it feels like the floor held a little bit, when it feels like someone, a glimmer, to use, Deb Dana's word, she uses this word glimmer that is like the opposite of a trigger.
It's a moment of hope. I'm not sure she would contextualize it that way, but it's when your nervous system feels all those good things of, okay, maybe I can do this. It's noticing those glimmers and capturing them intentionally. The moment after I talked to that person, I felt a little bit better. Cultivating that, being mindful about gathering up some of those hopes so that you can follow the breadcrumbs to greater and greater awareness.
Curt: I mean, I'm sure that you have this experience when you're in the consultation room with folks. You have an experience with a patient in which something happens and you sense them sensing that they've been seen. There's some moment of felt connection and when this happens in our confessional communities, when there's 10 of us in the room, we pause, we stop the moment and we say, tell us what happened.
We want to draw their attention to what they feel in their chest, what's happened in their body. We want them to be explicit and tell us who said what? What were they looking like? What was the tone of their voice? We want them to practice this.
Then we say, your assignment between now and next week is every day, I want you to rewrite the screenplay of what happened here. I want you to begin to remember. This is the Old Testament. “Remember”. This notion of literally practicing, neurally embedding this moment, such that this becomes what generates your anticipated future, more and more, which is essentially what hope amounts to.
Alison: Practicing hope, really. Practicing it. You talk about that. We have to practice it, to catch that glimmer of it. I love what you also said about secure attachment. I'm curious as a therapist what you think about this. Part of why I appreciate so much what you said about the podcast is because I've thought a lot about what is the purpose of this? Why do I do this?
Some of it grew out of my work as a therapist, and it's fascinating to me. It's not the brilliance of what I say. It's not the therapeutic modality, although I love IFS. There's different interventions that certainly work well.
What people remember and consistently would say to me is, I would start to hear your voice in my head. What would Alison say at this moment? It was never the most brilliant thing I said. It was hope. It was just, oh, Alison would say, and they're starting to internalize that voice.
That's so much of what we need. Do you, does that, you're laughing. So I presume it's humbling. It's both humbling and it's also freeing. It's, oh gosh, this is so much simpler, this work, it's more complex and more simple than we make it out to be.
Curt: Yeah. That's really well said. I'm reflecting on this work that happens in these confessional communities that we provide. We know there is a moment for every one of the participants that typically happens when we hear them say some version of, “I had the hardest conversation I've ever had with my boss yesterday and every single one of you were in the office and I know exactly where you were standing, and Susan, you were actually sitting right beside me”.
Of course it's easy for us to say, I'm making stuff up in my head. I want to say, of course it's in your head in that it's neural. But this is exactly what we do with everything that we do. When a toddler goes off to preschool, she takes mom and dad in her head with her, even though she doesn't know that's what she's doing. The reason she can go off to preschool is because mom and dad are with her.
This is not an imagined fairy tale. No, it is really that people take up residence in the presence of others. So when Paul uses this metaphor of the body of Jesus, there were all kinds of other words they could have used to describe the church. But he's really taking something of this material world and maximizing its efficacy for us, recognizing that taking Jesus literally is the taking of these people that I know, and they're going to be in the room with me.
That kind of work is so antithetical to how we are in our kind of modernist way of thinking that spirituality is this rather abstract thing that happens out in the ether rather than beginning with our bodies. Hope is a thing that actually, as it turns out, is formed by virtue of me imagining that my friend's bodies are in the room with me in the middle of the hardest places.
Alison: I wanted to tell you, I love how in all that you do, you bring us back to this idea of embodied hope. You have been the voice in my head that has helped me understand the power of community. I want you to know that.
For me, I can do the internal work. I can be a good parent to the parts of myself. I can co-parent with God, with Jesus, with parts of myself. I can be with the hurting parts of me. I can invite God.
But boy, to let other humans near those hurting parts is a challenge for me. I talk about that and the way that you describe these confessional communities, the way that you describe the body of Christ as embodied withness, as in and of itself, bringing hope has been so meaningful to me.
I want to say that to you while you're here with me, because you are that embodiment of hope for me. The way that you describe this whole process as happening in the context of withness has really helped me become a hope seeker in my relationships. So thank you for that.
Curt: First of all you're very kind to say that. That feels really good to hear. I'm really, I'm just, I'm taking that in. Really grateful. It's a lovely gift on a Thursday afternoon that I didn't see coming. It's really lovely. So thank you for that, for your words.
I would say, as our friends at the Bible Project like to say, everything you need to know about human beings, you can find out by reading the first six chapters of Genesis. You read that, and there's nothing more, like everything you need to know, it's right there.
One of the very first things that we read has to do with how God formed the human and that he begins with mud and he breathes the breath of life into the humans and nostrils and the human becomes a living being. We might say therefore that if we take away the dirt, or if we take away the breath, that we stopped being human.
So they're both equally important for us to be human, but there is a sequence in which we are formed, and that same sequence, as it turns out, is followed in terms of how our life is actually lived in the world. First we sense, and only then do we make sense of what we sense. First we have an encounter, we behold the word, and only then do we write in John chapter 1 how we beheld. The theology and the written text only follows the embodied experience and it then turns around to inform my embodied experience and so forth. But I think it has been helpful.
I've grown up in the same world that everybody else has taught us. The Christian story is about a set of beliefs and so forth and so on. That's primarily what it is.
But it necessarily involves my body first. It doesn't make sense to me because that's not the world that we live in, but it would have been the first century Hebrew’s world. As it turns out, there is an infinite array of practical ways that we can apply this in the form of healing for our patients. We see that the mechanics that we learned about is walking in lockstep with the story that we hear about in the text.
Alison: How did you arrive at your own experience of, you presumably went to medical school, you become a psychiatrist, you're interested in helping others. How did you begin to conceptualize from a felt need place in your life, oh, this needs to happen in community? This needs to happen with other people.
Because speaking for myself, I go into this field with a little bit of, I know intellectually we should be doing this in community, but how do we actually do that? In your own personal life, what are some milestones where you realized that there's something bigger going on here than an expert with a patient?
Curt: Yeah. For the Hebrews, coming out of Egypt is the formational story. For me, I finished residency in 1992. We moved to the DC area that summer. We joined a church. That fall, we had our first covenant group gathering.
It's our small group. They call them covenant groups at our church that we are still part of here. There were about, I don't know, eight or nine of us that were in the group. We decided, hey, this would be a good idea since many of us are coming to this group brand new to the church, brand new to each other, for us to tell our stories.
The woman who is now, and has been, my literary agent, Leslie Nunn Reed, who now lives in Dallas, but who at the time was living in the DC area, she was part of our covenant group. Leslie was the first to decide that everybody's gonna tell their story. Take one night, tell their story.
The very first night, Leslie says to us, “I realized that as I approach this, there are two stories I could tell. I could tell the story that would be easy to tell, and that's the kind of story that everybody here would find easy to tell. Or I could tell the real story. I've decided I'm gonna tell the real story”.
It was one of the game changing moments, not in my life, but in the life of this entire covenant group. She told the good, the bad, and the hard, and that vulnerability was like the horse left the barn and there was no getting the horse back in the barn.
From that time forward we began to live a life together in which, and to this day, there are four couples that are part of it. To this day, I would say there's very little, if anything, at least the men in that group, there's nothing about me they don't know. There's nothing about us as couples that for the most part, we don't know.
We have loved each other. We have fought with each other. We have been mad at each other. We have had to repair ruptures with each other. What was interesting about it is that the whole time that this is happening, I'm a newly minted out of residency psychiatrist.
I'm taking care of patients while I'm having this experience personally about the time interpersonal neurobiology rolled around or before that. It became clear that what we were doing in that community was transformational for us. It transformed everything that we are doing.
I think walking into that workshop with Dan Siegel 20 years ago, that it's oh my gosh, these are the mechanics of what we've been doing for the last, however many years, 15 to 20 years. From that time forward, and then you start to read the scriptures, and you're like, holy freaking cow.
Alison: That's right. It's so cool. I love that. Is that the woman to whom you dedicated The Deepest Place? Now I understand even more deeply why that's so formative, because then you could see what's happening and what we've looked at as a spiritual practice, which is the practice of gathering and fellowshipping and breaking bread and all the things that are in scripture, and said, oh, this is actually in our brain.
There is a neurobiological basis for this. This is actually how God designed us and put all that language to it. So powerful. That's so beautiful. I love that.
Curt: Thanks for asking. I love telling that story. Because I love talking about Leslie in that way. I don't think anybody else would have even thought to have told the real story in the way that she did. As does all healing, it upended all of us in the most beautiful and sometimes difficult ways.
Alison: Thank you so much for telling it. That's very brave, what she did. It's a really helpful reminder again, going back to how to begin to be a glimmer gatherer or a hope seeker, someone who's looking for these moments of hope. Right there, she did something in that moment that you were aware of and moved toward. You moved toward that as a group.
Here you are 20 years later or however many years later with this rich, robust experience of hope that you're now pouring out to so many others.
Curt: I, this morning, I was at breakfast with one of one of the husbands of these families, his name's Rich, lifelong friend of mine. On Monday, I'll be with Neil. These relationships, these are not therapeutic relationships, but these are deeply formational relationships for me because they're all part of the larger context.
It's not this individual thing that I've had. It's with each of them in the context of this community in which the community itself is providing a crucible ballast support, but also a certain level of conviction of loving and kindness when pressure needs to be born on. When love is demanding things of us that I would rather it not demand of me. Yeah.
Alison: Yeah, it's real community. It's real embodied withness that is transformational. It is the context of this sort of hope-suffering partnership that is the topic of the deepest place. I want to circle back to when you were saying about how even these words that we're saying right now, being on a podcast, we can form these secure attachments that can do some good.
Everything I think about therapy has a place. It does some good. This has a place, the written words that we do have a place. There's probably nothing that can take the place of that kind of confessional community that you described so well, those real transformational on the ground relationships. I long for people to experience what you experienced with Leslie. I do. I think that's where this transformation occurs. I long for more of it.
You describe it so well in The Soul of Desire, that it's not a replacement for church. It's not a replacement for therapy. It is these communities in real life, these relationships when we are suffering, because suffering will come and you talk about that in the book, we will suffer. It's how do we suffer and how do we cultivate and form hope in the midst of suffering?
Really, Curt, in so many ways, what you're saying is it's in the context of being known. That's what we need. Leslie being so brave in her small group that wasn't set up for this and said, I'm going to tell you the truth today. I'm going to take a chance.
Curt: Yeah. We didn't even know that she was being brave because we weren't even imagining that this is the kind of story that who in their right mind would ever do such a thing to actually take the book of James seriously? If you're not well, confess. In the book of James, if any of you don't confess, tell the truth, tell your story, and all the parts about your story that are unwell, let it be prayed for such that you may be healed.
It’s essentially what she did. She's naming all the things. And, again, the whole notion, it's not good for the man to be alone, and you want to say no kidding. The degree I suffer is in no small part a function of the degree to which I carry it alone.
It is in naming them to a person who is willing to name the same thing to me about their own, that I discover that I'm not alone with this, and it is in not being alone that healing's door is opened. This is where the whole notion of what the Trinitarian theology of the church is such a big deal.
It's so important because of this notion that when Peter whacks off the ear of the high priest's servant in the garden of Gethsemane and Jesus heals him and then says, put away your sword. Do you not know that should I want to, I could call for 12 legions, 60,000 troops, and they would come.
Imagine you hear him say that and your mind is immediately drawn to Elisha and his servant and Jerusalem is surrounded and the servant is panicked and Elisha says, let him see. His eyes were opened, and he saw the host of heaven, the army of the Lord God Almighty. Now, nobody else could see this, but you figure, on Good Friday, it's easy for us to be so limited in our imagination that we don't see 60,000 troops that are at the ready, waiting for their captain's call, and he doesn't call them.
You can imagine, being the archangel, and you're wondering, why is he not calling? This sense of withness, this sense that Jesus has the awareness that he is not by himself, even in the middle of his suffering, because he sees things that even in that space, it would be hard for anyone to see. This is what we are called to be doing.
I'm reading today about Stephen and his stoning. He saw the son of man. There are things that he sees because he is so immersed in this community of the king.
Alison: Such that his face shines in the face of adversity. Yeah. He's not pep talking himself to that. That's a, to use your word, that's an encoded experience of something that is so real that in that moment of the worst adversity of being literally stoned, his face is beaming because he is with that memory, that lived experience of goodness and of love.
You're right, we practice that. I love that. We have to practice that and we have to practice that in community with others. We have to practice that and to use your words, we have to suffer differently. Sometimes I say suffer wisely, but I love you're taking it to suffer a little bit differently.
Tell somebody, get that experience of it didn't necessarily fix my problem, but I wasn't alone and something shifted. Something got encoded inside of me and I'm building on that. I got one, I'm going to look for another one to the point where we become like Jesus or like Steven. It's so beautiful, Curt. I could talk to you for hours. I love talking to you.
Curt: Back at you.
Alison: I love how real it all is for you. I think that's what speaks to people. All of your work comes from the overflow of your heart. I want to close because I ask when I do have guests, I ask them, what is bringing out the best of you right now? What do you hope for right now?
Curt: Okay, so I have in this list in this group of people that I'm with, I've got this covenant group and I've got these three other guys that I'm with every Tuesday morning for the last 25 plus years for confession and prayer and so forth. I say without these people in my life, I'm a dead man.
But in this context I've made a list of people that I have to forgive then there's 10 that are on the list and, you might think, okay, if I'm listening, am I on the list? No, but you're on a list. Okay, you're on a list.
There are people on the list and what has been hopeful has been the work of recognizing there's a certain suffering that goes with, I have to admit, oh I've actually enjoyed holding a grudge.
I've taken pleasure in holding a grudge about something like, I don't think about all these people all the time, but when they come up, I'm liking being pissed. I have good reason for it, but I'm having to burn energy to keep that story alive the way it is.
I'm having to come to terms with oh, this is a story that I have told. Yes, certain things happened, but now I recognize I have now been telling a story ever since it did happen, and I am my problem.
What has been hopeful has been practicing imagining Jesus being in the room with me, with them, and practicing telling a different story. Sharing this with these people in my group, and recognizing that there has been a shift in my posture. Now, I'm imperfect at this, and I still have a long way to go, but for the first time I'm getting to a point where I'm looking forward to not holding grudges.
I would much rather not do that, rather than enjoying it as much as I have been for however long I've been enjoying it. That's something that I can say that has been a hopeful thing. The way you get there is you gotta identify these other things that you're not very proud of.
Alison: I love it. You're practicing hope and you're right, it's that paradox. I want to encourage everybody, it's called The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope. It's that paradox of it doesn't feel that great to look at that, but man, when you do it in the context of safety, in the context of love, it feels great.
It breeds hope. It's amazing. So it is very hopeful. It's such a paradox. It's facing what's hard about ourselves, about our lives in the context of safety, love, compassion. It develops hope. You're going to get to a better place. Tell everybody how they can find you, how they can find your work, Curt.
Curt: Probably the way that most people are finding it these days is through podcasts that I co-host with my friend Pepper Sweeney. So that's called the Being Known Podcast. That's one way to find me. There's another way through my website, CurtThompsonMD.com. Then there's Instagram. Facebook and what used to be called Twitter. Whatever it is now, can find that on that account,
Then you can find me through the Center for Being Known, which you so kindly and generously spoke at last year. Through that and through this Connections Conference that we'll be having here in about a month. Those are some ways to find me.
Alison: I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but for folks who are interested in potentially doing a confessional community, they can get information about that at your website.
Curt: They can get information about that at my website through the Center for Being Known. Through our practice that does training, it does immersion trainings, intensives for folks. That's called New Story Behavioral Health that's here in Northern Virginia. So it's a way to do that.
Alison: That's great. You're the best. Always grateful for your time. Thank you!
Curt: Me too. You're very welcome. My pleasure.
If you've ever struggled to feel like you belong, this episode is for you. I've struggled with belonging for decades. I couldn't understand how other people seemed to find large groups of friends. But I've figure out how to belong on my own terms. And, paradoxically, I realized-that's exactly what belonging is.
Today's episode is personal, hopeful, and practical.
Here's what we cover:
1. The myth of belonging (9:08)
2. The 2 roads to isolation (5:36)
3. What about social anxiety? (9:50)
4. The surprising path to belonging (20:19)
5. 3 easy steps you can take TODAY (29:50)
Thanks to our sponsors:
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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
- The Best of You by Dr. Alison Cook
- Dance scene from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Braving the Wilderness by Brené Brown
Transcript
Alison: Hey everyone. Welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I'm so glad you're here and I'm so glad you are joining me for these foundational psych 101 building blocks that we all need to build in order to live the wholehearted lives mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically that God designed us to enjoy.
Today's topic is such an important topic. It permeates every conversation I have. Just this last week in conversations with family members, with friends, with myself, with clients, they were all talking about these hard challenges. What do you do when you are facing adversity, a really hard challenge in your life? And I'll give you some examples of what I mean, but the psychological word that we use when we're talking about this is this word resilience.
And it's something we all need to cultivate in our lives. We don't just automatically have resilience. It's not just something we get, it's something we have to develop mindfully with intention. It's a little bit like emotional intelligence, which we talked about in episode 70. It's something you have to develop mindfully and consciously as you face adversity.
I want to start just by offering a quick definition of resilience. You hear this word tossed around a lot. And one book in particular that I really that gets at the heart of resilience is called Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth.
If you want to go deeper on this topic, that's a great resource for you. But when we talk about resilience, we essentially mean your ability to recover from setbacks or adversity. Whether you're facing some adversity or some setback in your life right now, or whether you've faced a lot of setbacks in your life, including from your childhood, whatever they may be, resilience is your ability to recover and not necessarily let that setback take you out.
And then secondly, you're recovering from setbacks or adversity, and also you're adapting to it and even thriving in the face of challenges. Resilience is this ability to bounce back from negative events and even adapt as a result of negative events so that you can move forward with greater strength.
It requires a lot of mental and emotional strength when we're dealing with setbacks, when we're dealing with adversity. It's hard. It pulls out our fears. It pulls out our vulnerabilities. And so there's a skill here. There's a muscle to facing hard challenges with resilience, where we're not just muscling our way through.
We're pausing long enough to equip ourselves to face this challenge, to gain the new skills that we might need to overcome this challenge, but overall, it means figuring out how to do what we need to do to move forward in strength, claiming the life God has for us.
Resilience isn't the absence of hard things. We are all going to face hard things in our lives. It's just part of life. What do we do in the face of hard things? What do we do when those hard things happen, when those challenges arise?
It might be a challenge at work. You might lose a job. You might be struggling in a job, you, it might be a relational challenge. You might've lost a relationship. You might be struggling in a relationship. You might be dissatisfied in your relationships. It might be a parenting challenge.
Maybe one of your children is struggling with a really hard setback and it's pulling on all of your vulnerabilities and maybe you're feeling ill equipped and you want to equip yourself and become resilient so that you can be there for a child or for a family member or for a loved one who's struggling. There are all sorts of opportunities in life to develop resilience.
Something hard has happened. And what do we do? In that moment, how do you find the mental and emotional strength, both to process what's happening that's hard to come to terms with it accurately, not deny it, not bypass it, not minimize it, not pretend it's not there, but to face what's hard while simultaneously not letting it take us out?
How do we not let it get the best of us when we become so overwhelmed by the reality of what's hard that we actually can't gather up that internal strength that's going to be required for us to work our way through it? This is resilience.
It's a skill that we need. And so many of us were not taught it. Hard things just happened and we figured out how to survive. And then here we are as adults, just still trying to survive. Resilience is something a little bit deeper than survival. Although sometimes we do simply just need to survive. We've got to just gut things out.
But resilience is this deeper sense of, I see what's hard. I'm aware of it. I'm being honest about it. I'm taking inventory of what is mine to face and what is mine to control in this situation. I'm going to equip myself, I'm going to get the support I need so that I can move through this hard thing with tenacity, with perseverance in a sustainable way.
One of the metaphors that for me is the most helpful when I think about this skill of resilience is thinking about facing a mountain. And probably the reason that I love this metaphor the most is I grew up at the base of a mountain, a big mountain. I spend a lot of time hiking in the mountains. It's one of the things my family loves to do to this day. And it's one of the things early on as a young child, I would do.
My parents would take us on these backpacks into the wilderness. I must've been six or seven when I went on my first wilderness backpack. We would gather up our tent and our sleeping bags and our food and maybe a change of clothes, put everything on these backpacks on our backs. We'd get dropped off at the bottom of a trail.
We'd hike into a mountain we'd usually do about three days, maybe two or three overnights. We'd camp out, we'd cook our food, and then we'd find our way back out. We were in the wilderness where there were no phones. There were no people. It was just us and the wild animals. And we would do this every summer for quite a few summers growing up.
And I now do this to this day. If you look at my Instagram stories from time to time, I'll post photos of these treks that I'll take into the wilderness. But as a little six year old kid, you're on this path and you've got this pack on your back and it's hard. You're hiking sometimes uphill.
Sometimes we were gaining a thousand feet in elevation. You're going uphill. You're tired. It's not that fun, and I remember my mom just always saying from behind, you gotta just put one foot in front of the other. And if you keep putting one foot in front of the other, you are going to get to a better place.
And so she didn't in that moment dismiss what was hard or deny what was hard. She was saying, listen, we're prepared, we're equipped, we're on a path. We've got the food and the supplies we need for a really fun campfire when we arrive at our destination. All you've got to do is put one foot in front of the other.
And I grew a little bit of resilience on those backpacks. I learned a skill. Here's the thing. We were equipped for those backpacks. We weren't just wandering aimlessly in the wilderness. We had done the work, we had done the prep work. We had looked at the maps. We had found the trails. We'd gathered the amount of food that we needed.
We didn't just rush into the mountain without thinking about the trail that we needed to take. We were wise about it. And so I want you to think about the challenge that you face as a mountain you've got to climb. And if you're at the base of that mountain, you've got to take a moment to pause and think about what tools you’re going to need to find your way to the top of that mountain, because this is going to be a hard journey.
It would be foolish for me to just try to sprint up that mountain because I'm going to run out of food. I'm going to run out of supplies. I'm going to lose the trail if I don't spend some time figuring out where the trail is. I'm going to get lost.
I have to stop and equip myself realistically for the journey that's ahead. And the journey that's ahead is going to be hard. I'm going to have to take it one step at a time, but I'm going to do a lot better on that journey if I know that I've done the preparation that I need to do, that I'm not alone, that I've got the supplies that I need, that I know exactly how far I need to get.
Each day, I'm going to be able to tolerate the difficulty of this trek. We've got to equip ourselves. Resilience isn't just heading out on the journey, it's all of the prep work involved that once you head out, you're prepared, you know where you're going and you've mapped out a trail.
Here's the thing. When you become aware, whether you're a backpacker or not, maybe you're listening to me going, I would never willingly put myself on a mountain trail into the wilderness. And I get that. But think about the challenges that come into your life like that mountain.
You're at the base of a mountain and you have no choice. You've got to figure out how to get over that mountain. And again, whether it's a work challenge, a relational challenge, whatever it is, you're looking at it going, this is too hard. I can't do this. I certainly can't do it by myself. I certainly can't do it with the skills that I've got.
I'm going to need to get support. That is a great step to resilience. It's becoming aware of what you need and what you don't have and being realistic about the challenge that is ahead of you.
But what happens when we get to the bottom of the mountain and we recognize, oh, this is going to be tough. I'm not sure what I'm doing here. This relationship mess is hard. Like I'm too broken or the relationship is too broken and I don't know how to fix it. Or I've just made a mess of things or this has just gotten too hard. I'm in over my head. Or I'm too unhappy. I can't fix this.
What happens is we're vulnerable in those moments. We get overwhelmed and instead of doing the work of saying this is where I need to develop resilience. I'm going to have to name what's hard, get really realistic about it, and then equip myself for the journey. We instead tend to do a couple of different things that don't actually help us face that mountain.
And there are two types of messages that aren't helpful to us that I think were particularly vulnerable to when we're sitting at the bottom of the mountain.
One is that we don't wanna deal with the mountain, and so we just try to minimize it or gloss over it. And there are a couple of ways that we do this. Sometimes we just pretend like the mountain's not there and we just keep doing what we've been doing even though it's not working. Sometimes we blame our circumstances–we just look at the mountain and go, it's so and so's fault, or it's the circumstance’s fault. And so I'm just going to sit here and not really equip myself and just blame everything around me for the fact that I've got to hike this mountain.
And it doesn't actually help us get over the mountain. We're just looking around, laying blame at all the reasons we've landed in this predicament. Now, I want to be clear. There is a place for very realistically taking inventory for some of the things that have caused you to wind up at the bottom of your mountain.
And oftentimes it may well be somebody else's toxicity or somebody else's poor behavior. It may well be that you're sitting at the bottom of the mountain and it's by no fault of your own. Let me be clear. I am not saying that every mountain that we face is always a result of our own doing.
Sometimes we find ourselves at the bottom of a mountain, and we were not responsible for that problem. And also, we still have to, at the bottom of the mountain, while we name the reality of the circumstances that got there, at the end of the day, we have to dig deep inside of ourselves to get ourselves over that mountain.
We can't just live in the area of blaming others or pretending like that problem doesn't exist. It doesn't help us get over the mountain. Eventually, we're gonna have to face the reality that there's something in our lives that's hard and we've got to find our way through it. One thing that we're vulnerable to when we're at the bottom of a mountain is some form of self-deception.
Either we're trying to minimize the mountain, we're trying to pretend like it's not really there, or we're just going to spend all of our time essentially blaming everybody else as if that is going to get us to a solution. It's not. Neither of those strategies is going to get us to a solution, but here's the thing–there's another extreme that I often see us go to. And sometimes I do this too.
We spiral into self-blame, into self-shame, into “I'll never find my way through this. What's wrong with me? Why did I get myself into this yet again?” Usually we've got some narrative about our own failings and missteps.
It's all my fault. That is also not helpful when you're sitting at the bottom of the mountain. When you move into self shame and self blame and self defeat, it's hopeless. I can't do it. I always get myself into situations like this. That kind of self-talk is also not helpful. Neither of those strategies is at the heart of resilience.
Remember, resilience is facing what's hard, honestly. It's taking an honest inventory of all the variables that led us to this place, including the things that weren't our fault, the things that may have been because of someone else mishandling us or mishandling a situation. And the things we've done to contribute to getting there, even if part of what we did that was wrong was trusting somebody we shouldn't have trusted again. We don't want to shame ourselves for that, but we do want to name that.
Honestly, because you fooled me once. Okay. Yeah. Shame on me. But fool me twice, shame on you, meaning now that I have the information that I need, I'm going to pivot and I'm going to course correct and I'm going to get myself out of this situation.
Here's the thing about resilience. It means getting really honest with ourselves without shame and without blame. I'm going to say that again. It means getting really honest with ourselves about our circumstances, about the problem that we face without shame and without blame. We're going to start naming without shame and without blame the things that are hard.
I want to give you an example, and I'm going to use an example from high school. And the reason I'm going to do that is I think so many of us did not develop the resilience we needed at younger ages. And so a lot of the work of developing resilience is going back to these younger parts of us that never learned how to face a challenge with resilience.
I'm going to ask you to put on your best adult parenting hat and look at this young 15 year old illustration that I'm going to paint for you right now, and think about how you would be with a young adolescent, young teenage child who's facing this.
What kind of parenting does this young one need? Because almost always it's the same kind of parenting you will need when you're facing your own mountain. Okay, so imagine you've got this sophomore in high school who has a huge project that's due for school. There's a deadline coming. It's a group project.
This is your child who actually works really hard. Who's put in her best. She really is trying. There's been some issues on her team. She hasn't known what to do with that. People aren't pulling their weight and this project is not coming together and the deadline is looming and she's looking at this going, this is going to fail and it's going to blow out my GPA and I'm not someone that wants to fail.
I've actually tried on this. I don't know what to do. It's due this week. I don't really have time to fix it and it's not coming together. Let's think about it. This is her mountain. What is she going to do in this moment where she's facing the reality that this project isn't coming together and it's due this week?
The stakes are fairly high. There's a grade resting on this. There are a couple of things she can do. She can minimize it. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. I'll just turn it in. It'll be fine.
And it's really not.
She can be angry and mad. She can blame her group. It's their fault it's this way. They didn't show up. And even if that's true, it's not going to help her solve that problem. She can blame herself. She can eviscerate herself. Oh, shame on me. How did I let this happen?
Often our young ones, if you imagine a young part of you, were in predicaments like this, whether it was with a project for school or a relationship that you found yourself stuck in. A relationship that you were aware of that wasn't working. I'm not being treated right here, but I don't know what to do.
And I'm mad at the other person, but I'm mad at myself and I'm going between those two things. In the meantime, I'm not actually getting the help I need to solve the problem. How many times were we in situations like that as kids without the parenting that we needed to come alongside of us and say, listen, let's stop for a second?
Let's figure out what happened so that we can develop a different strategy to actually solve the problem. That's where resilience comes in.
Your 15 year old daughter comes to you and she says, I don't know what to do. The first thing we're going to do is we're not going to shame her. We're not going to join with her and blame everybody else. Because that's also not going to help. We're going to take a deep breath. We're going to calm ourselves and say, all right, let's look at the truth.
What really happened here? You've got a project. You're not gonna get it done in time. Yes, some people let you down. That's hard. We're gonna deal with that. Yes, maybe you feel like you let yourself down. That's hard. We're gonna deal with that. The first thing we got to do is to ask for an extension. Oh, I know that's hard. I know. I know that's hard to do. It's hard to ask for help and you were so brave. You came to me and asked for help and I'm gonna help you.
The best way I can help you is I'm going to equip you to go screw up your courage and ask your teacher for an extension. And you're not going to blame everybody else at this point. You're not going to blame yourself. You're going to let her know, listen, a couple of things went wrong.
And I'm coming to you saying, I can get you a good project, but I'm not going to be able to get it to you by the deadline. Can I get an extension? And we're going to do a brave thing. That's the first thing we're going to do. We're going to name what's hard without blame, without shame. We're going to ask for help.
And then we're going to deal with what went wrong. We're going to come up with a new strategy. If the group isn't pulling through, we're going to figure out how to deal with that. If it's something inside of you that you didn't understand the instructions, we're going to go get better instructions.
If we need to pull the teacher in and say, hey, the group is dysfunctional. It's not working. We're going to do that. I'm going to help you figure out how to solve this problem. We may not be able to save the grade. I can't promise you that. It may end up in a grade that you don't like, and that's a bummer, but you are going to learn how to approach a mountain with resilience, with inner strength, with wisdom, with honesty, with integrity.
Without shaming or blaming while still being really honest about what went wrong in this situation. This is so often the muscle that so many of us didn't develop because we weren't parented through hard things.
Another example, you've got a child who's an athlete. And I think about this a lot in my own life. I was a tennis player. And I really tried hard at tennis. I practiced really hard. I was pretty good. I had a good forehand. I had a great backhand. And it was really hard because you train and you prepare. And then sometimes you get into a key match and you lose and someone else outplays you.
And these are moments of resilience. How are you with yourself, with your child, when they've worked really hard for something and it doesn't pan out? Maybe they don't win the match. Maybe they don't win the game. Maybe the relationship doesn't pan out. Someone breaks up with them. Someone doesn't respond to their bid for connection. Left out.
How do you parent your child when they go through those hard things? Do you try to rescue them out of it? Oh, it was their fault. Those other people, it's, they're the problem, not you. You're perfect. Do you shame your child? What's wrong with you? Why didn't you do better? Why didn't you figure out how to win that match? Why didn't you figure out how to get that relationship?
Neither of those is healthy. Neither of those extremes helps your child gain the skills that they need to deal with adversity, because what they need in that moment is resilience. Number one, validation. Yeah. This is hard. It's a bummer when you lose a match. When you lose a game. It's a bummer when you don't get the grade that you worked really hard to get. It's a bummer when the relationship falls through and you don't get invited to the big event. You really wanted to be included in, first of all, it's hard.
Let's just honor that and then let's look together at what happened, what went awry. What was your part in that? Let's look at that. Honestly, without shame, where could you have improved? What was in your control to improve? What wasn't in your control?
How do we grieve what you didn't have control over? How do we own what you could change going forward? These are the kinds of conversations you have to have with your child.
How do you encourage your kid to go shake the other person's hand that beat them and say congratulations, even as they also honor their own disappointment that they didn't win the match? It's a complicated process, resilience. of facing what's hard, honestly, understanding that sometimes things don't go our way, and also gathering the tools that we need to do better next time, because we really do want to improve in this area. Because we really do believe in ourselves to work through this and come out in a better place.
How do you deal with failure? How do you deal with reality when something doesn't go your way? What messages creep in? Do you tend to want to blame everybody around you?
Do you tend to blame only yourself to the point of shame? There's no shame in noticing. I do tend to blame others or wow, I am hard on myself. Those are coping strategies that you learned in the absence of somebody coming alongside of you and teaching you how to develop those muscles of naming what's hard, facing the reality and pivoting so that you can find a better way over that mountain.
Think about how you deal with challenges, what you feel like when you feel like a failure, when you feel like nothing has gone your way, when you're sitting at the bottom of that mountain. And how do you talk to yourself? This is where you're so vulnerable.
We're not that vulnerable when we're at the top of the mountain, when everything's working, when our relationships are working, our work is working, our kids are great, everybody's healthy, we're happy. We're not that vulnerable to our self-talk.
But when you're at the bottom of the mountain looking up, you get really clear really fast at the types of messages you tell yourself. And you're in need of truth. In these moments, we don't need someone to just come alongside us and tell us what we want to hear if it's not true, but we also don't need shame.
We need the actual truth, the truth that frees us, that surgical wisdom that comes in and says, I see you, I see where you are, yes, this is hard. You might have even made some mistakes. I see that with you. Let's just pause there. Can we name those mistakes that we've made without shame?
I also see that other people have let you down. That's also true. Some people didn't come through for you. Some people didn't do what you had hoped they'd do. That's hard too. That's also true. We can name that and honor that without blame. We can name and honor the hard without shame and without blame.
I'm with you right here in the debris, as we look at the mountain and we see the debris scattered all around us of what didn't work, what's my responsibility and what didn't work, what's other people's responsibility and what didn't work.
I get it. I'm here with you. We're going to be okay. I can't promise you that I'm going to fix this exact set of circumstances. I don't know if I can rescue you out of this relationship. I don't know that I can rescue the vestiges of this work situation, but what I know is that I'm going to sit with you in this moment and help you face what's hard.
Honestly, that's what we need. We need this from ourselves. We need to be that wise parent that comes and sits with the young, scared parts of ourselves and says, I'm here. I get it. I'm not going to dupe you. I'm not going to gaslight you. I'm not going to pretend like it's not what it is.
I see you. I'm here with you. Let's name what's hard and I'm going to sit here with you long enough until we pull in the support and the strategies and the tools that we need to climb this mountain together.
Now, here's where our spiritual resources come in. And I like to think about this as co-parenting, the younger parts of us that are terrified of this mountain and are terrified of the mess that we feel like we've made or that other people have contributed to helping us make.
We've got that wise inner parent, that Spirit-led self, as we talk about in Boundaries for Your Soul, that can help us reparent ourselves and sit with us in something that's really hard without shame and without blame. And then we have another parent and that is the God who loves us.
Who similarly comes and sits with us in the mess as we face that mountain and says, I may not pick you up out of this and just catapult you over the mountain, but I will sit here with you in what's hard. I will sit here with you while you cry. I will sit here with you while you get to the bottom of what happened, what went wrong.
And when you're ready, you crawl up into my lap. I'm going to hold you tight. I'm going to help repair you. I'm going to help you pick up the pieces. And then I'm going to take you by one hand and we're going to find a trail through this. And as we find that trail through this, you're going to grow a whole new set of skills that are going to lead you to a better place that you would never have gotten to before if you hadn't bumped into this mountain.
I believe when we face what's hard, we want God to rescue us out of it. But instead, God comes alongside us in the face of what's hard and he helps us face the truth. Honestly, he doesn't try to talk us out of what we feel. He says, yeah, this is hard. I get it. Yeah, it is a mess. You're right.
I'm not scared of this mess, but I'm with you in it and I'm helping you look at it. I love you and you're precious and your mess isn't too much for me and I'm going to walk with you into all the details of your mess. And I don't know that we're going to save this particular situation, but I will promise you this: as we together face what's hard and start to get up together, you will not be alone.
As I walk you up to the foot of that mountain and set you on your way down a brand new path, telling yourself the truth when you partner with the God who loves you means telling yourself the whole truth about what's hard about what's not working and about what's messy and about what's scary.
And also the whole truth about the hope that you have that nothing is wasted, that with God's help, you can pick up all these pieces and assemble a whole new path where the truth about what's hard exists side by side with the hope of the new future that's going to be even better than the one you didn't get.
That's the essence of resilience. It's holding hands with what's hard, realistically on one side and holding hands with the God of all hope on the other and walking forward down the new path, one brave step at a time.
We all feel defeated by the challenges we face from time to time. I have talked with so many people recently who are facing what feels like impossible mountains to climb. I recorded today's episode as a result of these conversations-I wanted to encourage you personally as you face what's hard in front of you.
Here's what we cover:
1. The phrase I lean on for resilience
2. The 2 pitfalls that tempt us when we face challenges
3. Scripts for parenting yourself through a hard time
4. How to develop mental & emotional strength
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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
- Grit, The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth.
- A trek into the wilderness (from my Instagram Stories)
- Boundaries for Your Soul by Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller
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'm so glad you keep coming back for these conversations. I love showing up each week. Knowing we have this appointment with each other, where we're going to connect in this way.
And actually I have a little bit of a spoiler alert. For next week's episode, I have a very special guest who actually, in his own way, puts his neurobiological understanding on what is actually happening as I'm talking here on this podcast and you as you're listening.
And it was a really beautiful moment. I cannot wait to share it with you. I. think about you whether you're driving in your car or cooking a meal or taking a walk, or maybe you're at work and you just need some background noise to get yourself into a different headspace.
I think about what I want to share and It meant so much to me, again, to understand that there's actually something really cool happening between us as we connect together for this podcast. And I bring that up because today's episode is all about belonging,
What does it mean to belong to each other? And this is a word I've struggled with a lot my whole life. I can fairly easily find a home within myself. I can find a way to be with myself. I don't mind being alone and I really enjoy being a safe place for other people, but it's been very hard for me most of my life to feel a sense of belonging to a group.
And I'll talk about that a little bit more personally today. I'll give you some examples, both from my life and from different authors that have helped me understand this. But before we get into that, I want to just talk about what is belonging, what does the word mean, and then move into how I understand it metaphorically and some examples of how we can grow in this feeling.
And I really believe a lot of belonging is a feeling of being connected to other people. It's really rooted in an emotional state. People can tell us all day long, no, you belong, you're part of the group. But if we don't experience that at a felt level, we can feel really isolated. Like we're not part of the group and that's a painful place to be.
It's a place I've been acquainted with for a lot of my life. And so I'm just really thrilled that you're here with me today to talk about this. Here in this place where we belong to each other, we show up each week with each other and there is a form of belonging in that. So I'm just delighted to have this conversation with you here.
Belonging is this word that gets at how we experience ourselves in relationship to others. Do we feel connected to others? Do we feel valued by others? Do we feel esteemed by others?
Do we feel included? Do we feel accepted? Do we feel embraced by others? And I'm using that word feel for a reason. There's an emotional connotation to belonging because a lot of it is how we experience being part of a group. Do we genuinely feel like we belong in our families?
These are my people. This is my friend group. I belong here. When I show up here, I am valued. I know that these are my people.
And that gets into the second component of belonging. It's related to these groups of people, our families, our communities. It could be an organization. Do you feel a sense of belonging with the company you work for or the school that you attend or the school that you perhaps teach at or the hospital where you work?
Do you feel a sense of connection to that place? Like you're a part of something bigger than yourself? It could apply to your church community. Do you feel a sense of belonging there that you matter, that you have a role that you contribute and that you're working together towards something bigger than just what we can do by ourselves?
And the thing about belonging that's so tricky is that it requires us to show up as we really are. This is a lot of what I talk about in The Best of You.
It requires us to show up authentically as we are on one hand, while being accepted for who we are and valued for who we are on the other. So you can be really good at being true to yourself to such a degree that you are just going to be completely yourself. You don't care what anybody else thinks, and you can end up alone.
You can not have an experience of belonging, but gosh, you were true to yourself. And sometimes we can see that extreme in our culture today that we're so into being our individual selves, my truth, what's true for me has to exist above anything else. We sacrifice a little bit of this belonging. To some degree, in order to belong with other people, we have to be able to flex and adapt to the needs of the group.
It requires some of that emotional intelligence. We talked about how it requires some of that resilience. In order to belong to a group of people, whether it's a family or a friend group or a church group, we're not going to always perfectly understand each other.
Sometimes people are even going to hurt us or offend us or not fully understand or irritate us. If you've been part of a family, you get it even in the best of families, there's friction, there's conflict at times.
We don't want to so mute our individual selfhood, our sense of who I am in order to fit in so that we lose ourselves. That's not healthy either. That's not belonging. Belonging isn't: I'll just turn myself inside out and leave half of myself at the door so that I can fit into this group of people.
That's not belonging. And either of those extremes is problematic. So belonging is tricky.
I say it this way in The Best of You: it's a dance of togetherness and apartness, of dependence and autonomy. It's a movement. It's a rhythm. It's a dance. Belonging isn't static.
If you think about those wonderful Jane Austen movies like Pride and Prejudice or Little Women, they dance in community with other people and there's a flow to it. They're always connecting to each other, even as they're interacting as a group.
And we don't have a lot of models for that in our modern society. You can think of a sports team where there's a group of individuals who each have to play a role in order for the team to get the job done. I think that's a really helpful metaphor.
You can think of an orchestra. Where every unique individual person has to play their instrument, has to play their part. And when they all are playing their part together, it creates a beautiful harmony. The group creates something much more beautiful than. Any one individual could create but each individual within that group, within that orchestra has to play their unique part.
And so these are some metaphors for belonging. When you belong to that orchestra, your part matters. You need to show up and play it, but you have to play it in harmony with the rest of that group. And if at any point you try to take over, you're going to actually cause problems for the melody. But if you don't show up at all, the melody isn't going to be complete.
So this leads me to the first point I want to make about belonging today. And this is from Brené Brown. She talks about this so beautifully in her book, it's called Braving the Wilderness, which is really a book about belonging,
One of the things that she talks about is the difference between belonging and fitting in. And I think this is so important to understand, and here's what she says: sometimes we will take fitting in as a substitute for belonging. Fitting in says “Be like them to be accepted”. Belonging says, “This is who I am. I want you to accept me but this is who I am. I can't not be who I am. And if I show up as I am, will you accept me?”
And what happens to so many of us is early on, if we go back to childhood, because that's where this all gets formed in our bodies, in our minds, in our nervous systems, somewhere along the line. Maybe it was early on in our families. Maybe it was at school with other kids. We showed up as ourselves. And we didn't get accepted. We didn't get received.
Maybe we were overlooked. Maybe we were bullied. Maybe we were just ignored. And that hurts, when you show up in the fullness of who you are and other people look at you funny or don't accept you, or maybe even make fun of you.
It hurts, especially at a young age. And so we learn how to hide. We learn how to camouflage ourselves. We learn how to put on that cloak of invisibility because we don't want to hurt. And so we decide early on, it's just easier to fit in, to just play along. Because then I won't have to have the hurt of being different, of being ostracized, of feeling othered, of feeling isolated, of feeling alienated.
And in our young minds at that age, we see only two options. We look at it as social survival. The stakes are high. We've either got to fit in or we're alone. And that aloneness is just too hard. And so we work to fit in. And so many of us, every single one of us, is walking around with wounds from those formative periods of time,
Whether you had wonderful parents or whether you didn't, we all pick up wounds around belonging very early on in childhood, where what we really want is to be received by our peers. And we just didn't know how to maneuver that dance of being part of a group where we honor others and also are being true to ourselves. It's really a sophisticated skill that most of us just simply didn't learn.
And then we carry those wounds with us into adulthood.
And I tell this story, it's an illustration in The Best of You, imagine yourself as a young girl in middle school, and imagine there's a school dance, and actually this is based on my own experience because I was always terrified of most of the social functions that were happening in middle school.
I didn't want to go. They weren't appealing to me, but I felt this inner angst of “everybody's doing it”. All my friends are doing it. Everyone's excited about it. What am I going to do? Sit home? And I didn't have the internal strength to just own it.
And in this story that I tell, this girl is wrestling with herself. What do I do? Because this is just not something that's appealing to me. I love my friends. I want to hang out with them on Saturday, but I really don't want to go to this school dance. And so imagine a wise parent, a wise adult sits down with her in that moment and helps her understand herself.
Do you need to go? Are you not going because you're afraid? And maybe you need to push yourself to go. Is it really just not your thing? No, thank you. Maybe I'll go to a dance in high school. Maybe not. Is it really genuine that you would just rather be outside, or you would just rather be doing anything else and this just isn't your thing?
Giving her the courage to be true to herself while simultaneously honoring her friends. And can you imagine if as she steps out and says, you know what guys, I don't want to go, I think it's cool that you want to go, I want to hear all about it tomorrow, but I'm going to sit this one out because I just rather do other things on this Friday night.
Imagine if she had the courage to do that and then her friends said, that's awesome. Good for you. We're bummed. We wish you would come, but we can't wait to tell you about it on Saturday. Imagine the basis that these young women would be forming for a healthy sense of belonging going into adulthood.
I'm true to myself. I speak up for what I need and what I want, and sometimes that deviates from the group. And so I try to communicate that really clearly and also the group that I'm a part of honors my differences, even as they move forward with what matters to them.
And yes, sometimes we have a little bit of conflict or have a little bit of friction and we have to negotiate and we have to work that through. But as we do that, we are part of something bigger than ourselves. We become part of something beautiful, something that will last, something that doesn't require us to betray ourselves, something that doesn't demand that other people validate every single thing about me.
It doesn't demand that everybody else prop up everything I do. You can disagree with me. We can have different opinions and simultaneously be part of something bigger than ourselves because we need each other. And the fact that I'm a little bit different from you, and maybe I disappoint you in this moment, ‘cause I'm not going to go do that thing you want me to do, but guess what? That means I'm going to have some perspective that you may not have when you actually need me to be a little bit different from you because I can see your situation a little bit more clearly.
Our differences are what helps us gain perspective. Our differences are what help us see each other more clearly. And so if we're exactly the same and we're all just trying to perfectly fit in with each other, we're not actually seeing each other. It takes a little bit of divergence in order for there to be connection. If I'm over here living my life, climbing my mountains, working out the path in front of me, I have a much better perspective to look over at you in your life and say, hey, here's what I see. Let me come alongside you for a minute.
I've got a vantage point that you can't see on your path. So if I'm busy over here, tending to my own life I'm going to be a better help to you in your path. And yes, there are times when we're not always together, when you've got to go down a curvy road in your path and I can't necessarily go down that with you because I'm trying to keep myself on my own path over here. But I see you.
I cannot wait to meet with you when our paths converge again in a day and two weeks, whatever the interval is for our relationship, that's how we belong to each other. We don’t have to try to live somebody else's life or be somebody that we're not, or pretend that we're all the same.
You have your own mountain to climb. I have my mountain to climb. Your mountain is not mine. My mountain is not yours. I can't climb your mountain for you at the end of the day. I've got to climb mine. I can't go climb my child's mountain for them. I can't climb my spouse's mountain for them, and they can't climb mine.
At the end of the day, when I look up to that peak where I've got to go, I'm the only one that can completely and 100 percent take that path to the top of that mountain. But here's the thing, what we can do together is I can head over to your mountain and walk with you for a part of the path. I can go join you.
You can come over to mine and say, Hey, I need some help. Can you help me down this leg of the path? ‘Cause I'm scared. This one's scary. You can come and walk with me for a part of mine. Sometimes I'll see your path more clearly. It's not as scary because I don't have all the baggage that you're carrying as you have to go down that leg of your path. That leg of your path isn't as scary to me.
I'm like, I can do that. I can come over there and walk that leg with you because you know what? I haven't dealt with some of the things you've dealt with. So this is okay for me and you can come over and walk a part of mine. But at the end of the day, we are each on our own paths. We can help each other.
Sometimes our paths intersect and it's beautiful and we're walking a season of life together. And those are beautiful moments where our paths are really joined for a period of time. Whether our kids are the same age, or whether we're in a work project together where our paths are really intimately connected and it's really cool, and then sometimes our paths veer apart again. This is the dance of belonging.
When we are both clear about the path that only I can take and also deeply invested in each other getting to where they need to be. That's when we are part of belonging. And so I want to ask you today, who are the people whose paths are intertwined with your path, who maybe you need to pull in a little bit closer.
Who are the people who support you? Who are the people who see and honor that you're on your own path?
You've got your own challenges. You've got your own dreams. You've got your own desires. And they've got theirs, but you see each other. You can see their path pretty clearly and they can see yours. And therefore you become really helpful conversation partners to each other. You become people you can turn to for illuminating parts of the path when the path gets dark.
This is belonging.
It's belonging deeply to yourself and to God, while simultaneously understanding that you are part of a bigger journey. You are part of a bigger series of mountain peaks, right where everybody eventually is finding their way through to this beautiful vista where together we will look back and go, oh my gosh, together we did that.
We summited this mountain and here we are, we made it and we couldn't have done it without each other. And also, sometimes during that hike, we were walking on our own because no one else could exactly do that leg of the journey for us.
Now I spend a lot of time in nature, as you can tell from these metaphors. And for me, the learning curve was, I don't have to hike the path alone. I can sometimes look over and see a fellow traveler and say, Hey, could we walk this path together for a little while? And that is the muscle I have to work to develop. It's a muscle that's hard for me. To join forces with folks on the path.
You may be different. You may be somebody who has worked so hard to join forces with other people that sometimes it's hard for you to go out on your own for a moment and say, you know what? I got to leave the pack for just a minute because I'm losing myself just a little bit.
And it might be the pack of your family. You love your kids, you love your spouse but you're losing yourself. Just a little bit. You've given too much over to the group and you actually need to say to your family, to the people you love, you know what, I got to go out on my own for just a minute.
I got to explore some of my own interests. I got to explore some new friendships. I got to explore some new ideas. And maybe your family won't like that. They may not know what to do with that, but when there's health there, you can gently name that and say, I love you. I'm going to come back.
I'm going to be a better mom. I'm going to be a better spouse. I'm going to be a better parent. I'm going to be a better friend. If I can go out and learn this thing about myself and pursue this desire and pursue this interest or get this healing, it's only going to be better for the group, because if I'm not my whole self, if I'm not my full self, I'm actually depriving the group a little bit.
So some of you, that's your call right now. You're aware: I've given a lot of myself to this group, whatever this group may be. I've given a lot of myself and I've lost just a little bit of myself and that's okay, I'm not going to blame them, but I do need to course correct.
I do need to go out on my own and explore a little bit of a different path. And I'm going to bring the goodness that I find back into this group. And you know what? Maybe this group, while I'm away exploring a little bit, maybe they're going to learn some new coping skills that actually won't be bad for them either. Maybe it'll actually be healthy for them to learn what it's like to journey a little bit without me nearby. Maybe they'll be okay.
And so that may be your invitation. And if that's you and if you're listening and you're like, yeah, that's me, I want to just encourage you to consider that tap on your heart, that nudge from the Holy Spirit, that longing to pursue an interest or a dream or a healing path that is a little different and you're a little worried.
You're like, I don't know what they're going to think of me. I don't know what these people in my life that I love are going to think of that. I would just encourage you to name that, to not let that fall by the wayside.
Because there's an invitation in that nudge that's not only for you, but I guarantee you that it will also be for the good of that group. You gotta go out and get a little more tuning for your instrument so that you can come back and play just a little bit more vibrantly with the whole.
Okay, so whatever that is, whatever that longing is, I want you to pay attention to that. This is part of belonging. Remember, belonging isn't just being part of a group, it's being yourself in a group.
And so if you've skewed too far toward prioritizing the group, take some brave steps toward cultivating this part of you that needs your attention that's a little bit different. Maybe you're going to expand into a new group, and you can have both groups, and that's even better. You don't have to just have one group. Maybe you find another group and you have elements of yourself that are present in both groups.
On the other hand, if you're someone who has been such a lone ranger, who does things all on your own, and it's really hard for you to make yourself vulnerable to a group, you've also got an invitation to belonging.
What are you afraid of when it comes to considering belonging to a group of people? Maybe you've been hurt. Maybe people have betrayed your trust and there's a good reason you don't trust anybody and you don't open up to a group. You've learned that the hard way. And listen, I relate to you in many ways. I relate to that, but there's an invitation before you that the people who have hurt you in the past do not necessarily represent the people who will love you in the future.
Who will honor you, who won't shame you, who won't ostracize you, who won't hurt you. Who will say, tell me more about you. We like that quirky thing about you. We think you're cool. We want you to be more of you. Those people are out there. I promise you, you haven't found them yet. You've been hurt. Do not stop searching for them. They are out there.
These are the people who, even if they don't understand you initially or disappoint you initially, will continue to work for your trust. They exist. Please keep looking for them. There are good people out there who want to know you, who believe in you, who understand the complexity of you and who want to invite you in, not to take you over or to squash you or to force you to be someone you are not, but who want to bring you into love you as you are.
Those people are out there. As my friend Ginny Anne said back in episode 61, where I had my sister and my two childhood friends on, she said, do not rest until you find those people who will honor who you are while inviting you to be a part of their lives as they are. That's reciprocity, that's mutuality, that's belonging, and those people are out there and you are worth being found.
When it comes to belonging, whatever your invitation, whether it's to find a little more of yourself or whether it's to find the people who will accept you as you are, I want to give you some practical steps you can take because to be honest, the steps are the same regardless of which invitation is yours.
So here are three things I want you to do this week. Number one, I want you to notice something you actually love, and I want you to do it publicly. Now, here's what I mean by that: I want you to think of something you love doing, a preference you have, an opinion you hold, a conviction, anything that really means a lot to you that you're a little bit nervous about doing publicly.
What do I mean by publicly? It could be with your family. It could be with a friend group. It could be a church group. It could be on social media. It could be on social media. Where you just take a risk and do something, post something publicly there. If you do tag me, I'm not on there that often, but if I see you, I'll notice it.
But I really mean this. I want you to think of something you love, something that makes you feel a little bit vulnerable, a little bit even silly inside. And I want you to do it.
I want you to take just a small step toward that. Just a small step. Maybe go for the low hanging fruit. Maybe when no one's around, just look up a class or look up a practical thing you could do to pursue that desire or that longing and then take a step and then gather up your courage and maybe name it to the folks in your group, again, whether it's your family, whether it's a friend group, whether it's a church group.
I'm going to do this thing. Notice how they respond. Do they support you in that? Do they get curious? And if they don't, that doesn't mean that what you're doing is wrong. It might mean that you're going to have to do some harder work of weaning them a little bit.
Maybe they have an expectation of you that you're going to have to shift. You're going to have to train them to see you a little bit differently because you need to expand. You need to broaden and it doesn't mean you want to hurt them. It means you want to add more to yourself so that you can add more to them.
How does the group respond if they get toxic? Groups will get toxic if you want to deviate from the group norms. And if that happens, pay attention because why do you want to be with people when you have to turn yourself inside out to make them happy, that they can't support you in doing something that's good for you, that will ultimately bring more vitality to the group?
So I want you to notice any fear around stepping out to pursue something that's different from the group, test it a little bit, see how they respond, and then take some more brave steps. You're trying to be a little bit more true to yourself while simultaneously being in community with other people. So there's no shame in this. You're practicing a muscle.
Number two, I want you to notice who around you evokes a feeling of connection or belonging inside of you. Now, here's the trick about this one. I want you to think outside the box. I want you to notice it where you least expect it.
Who's someone that you're like, you know what? It doesn't make any sense, but whenever I'm with that person, I feel safe. I feel like I can really be myself. Isn't that interesting? I want you to notice, where do you experience that where you don't expect it?
And this was a big one for me because early on, mostly in college, was when I realized that the groups that I often wanted to belong in, I felt like I should belong in these groups, but they left me feeling cold. I don't feel accepted and then I feel down on myself and that's not pleasant, so I'd rather be by myself.
I dealt with a lot of that in college, and so I began to pay attention to where I felt acceptance and belonging. It's not in these groups where I feel like I am supposed to feel it, so where do I feel it? And almost always I noticed it in the most surprising places. And I'll give you some examples from my life.
I have a lot of friends who do not share my faith. One of my closest friends is an atheist, and I noticed this back in college. I love having conversations, open dialogue, intellectual conversations with anybody who is curious about big deep topics. I don't care what they believe. It is a place where I find belonging.
And the thing is, I found those people in places that were unexpected. Now in college, it's a little easier because we're all interacting. It was a secular school. I was a church girl. And so people would be curious about that, who weren't of my faith background.
And I remember two people in particular, one was a guy, his name was Caesar. We had nothing in common, absolutely nothing. We could not have been more different. He was from the heart of New York City. I was from rural Wyoming. I am a Jesus loving Christian. He was a, marijuana smoking fraternity guy. We had nothing in common.
And we loved to talk about faith together. And I didn't have an agenda with him. We just talked because we were curious and interested in those topics. And there were so many others. I can begin to count: Danielle and Jennifer and David and Brian. And, all of a sudden, all of these people started to surface that I didn't have a lot in common with on the surface. And that I loved having these intellectual conversations about deep topics.
I began to experience belonging. Now we weren't a group. We weren't friends with the same people. I didn't know who their friends were and they didn't know who my friends were. But each one of those interactions helped me glimpse a little bit of belonging.
To this day, I don't tend to experience belonging as a part of a visible group. And what I mean by that is a part of an identified group where 10 people all have the same best friends. I have a collection of treasures and the treasures that I have in my life often don't even know each other, but I experienced belonging with each one of them and they experienced belonging with me.
And that became my form of belonging. I tell you that because I want you to know that belonging shows up in a lot of different ways. If your family was not a place where you experienced belonging, you can create a collection of treasures, a collection of family members who become your place of belonging.
And it might be really random. It might be a work colleague, it might be someone that you enjoy hiking with that you really have nothing else in common with. It might be a teacher who works with your kids and you just notice there's a rapport and a connection and a sense of belonging and you hadn't really thought about it before because maybe they're not someone you would expect yourself to hang out with, and I really am drilling down on this because it's been one of the most profound things in my own life when I feel cut off from groups or I feel like I'm not connecting.
I always go back to where I feel belonging in the most unexpected place and I start there. It could be the clerk in the grocery checkout line where you just notice this is a kind person. This is someone who I enjoy seeing when I come to the grocery store every week and I feel seen in this interaction, in this exchange.
That's a glimpse of belonging. Build on that glimpse. Where do you find a glimpse of connection, a feeling seen, a feeling like yourself and a feeling like you want to see the other person and move toward that?
And finally, the third one, this one is a little more abstract. I want you to imagine the people you want to be around you in heaven. Okay? That's what I mean by when we get to that peak and we look around and we see ourselves with these people, these fellow travelers, who are those people for you?
Maybe they're authors that you've never even met. Maybe they're people from the past that you've never even met because it's heaven. It can be anyone. But what I want you to do is open up your imagination to see if you could sit down and have dinner in heaven with anyone, who are the people you would want to have around you?
If they're people who are living, but you can't be close to them. Who are those people where you just would be like, man, I just want to talk about how we got here, about who you are. I want you to know who I am. And again, these are glimpses. These are glimmers of where you feel alive. That's where you feel belonging.
And then backtrack from there. Read those books, find those authors, find those podcasts, and then think to yourself, what are the qualities about those people that I enjoy, where I feel seen, and begin to focus your attention on that. And I promise you, as you go about your day to day life, you'll begin to bump into people who bring that out in you because you're thinking about it.
Where your attention goes, so go your actions. Suddenly you'll start to become aware of, wait a minute. I might find people like that. If I go to these types of situations, I might find people like that. If I spend more time fishing in these ponds, maybe I could find some people where I would find this sense of belonging
So three things this week. Notice what you actually love doing and do it publicly, do it in a group, do it with the people that you love and just see what happens. Take a risk.
Number two, notice who or what evokes that feeling of connection or belonging inside of you that's surprising, that's off your radar that you're like, gosh, that is weird. I do connect with that person. And move toward that.
Number three, use your imagination and imagine yourself in heaven. When this is all said and done, who are the people you want to be connecting with? The people you want to be around you and then backtrack from there, reverse engineer and think about where you might find people like that in your life, where you can be the fullness of who you are while being with other people.
Today, we're talking allll about therapy. I've gathered up the big questions people ask and we're tackling them head-on. Remember, therapy isn't just for crises-it's for clarity, growth, and understanding. So if you're curious about the process or wondered how in the world to get started, this episode is for you.
Here's what we cover:
1. The most important predictor of success in therapy (18:36)
2. Different types of therapy (29:33)
3. How to find a therapist (12:35)
4. Breaking up with a therapist (42:42)
5. My top tips for finding affordable therapy (12:59)
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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
- DrAlisonCook.com/podcast
- dralisoncook.com/resources
- Psychologytoday.com
- Adverse Childhood Experiences Test
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'm so glad you're tuning in for this series, these foundational building blocks of psychology. And today's episode is probably the topic I get asked about the most.
It's “what kind of therapist do I need and how do I find a good one”? Honestly, I get asked this question multiple times a day. Every single day. back in episode 63, I promised you an episode all about therapy. And this is that episode I've gathered together the top 10 most asked questions. These are the questions I get asked the most about therapy, about how to find a therapist, about how to find a good fit, about all the things,
And we're answering all of them in this episode. This is an episode to save and to share with your friends and loved ones. Now there's a lot of information in this episode, a lot of practical information, and websites.
To make it easier for you to get the information you need out of this episode, as well as every episode we're going to do a couple of things. Number one, every episode is transcribed completely and it has its own webpage. Go to DrAlisonCook.com/podcast and on that page you will see a list of every single episode we've recorded.
If you click on the episode you're interested in, it will take you to that episode's webpage. You will find a list of all the resources. From that episode and at the bottom of that page, if you scroll down, you will see a button that says view transcript, click on that transcript, and you will see this whole episode transcribed.
That's an easy way to scroll through and get information that you might have missed while you're listening. Secondly, starting with last week's episode 70, that was a dense episode. There was a lot in it, including a lot of practical exercises for managing emotions. Starting with that episode we're going to add a timestamp feature so that you can easily find the portion of the episode you most want to pull out to share with somebody.
Look for that timestamp feature to return to the part of the episode you really want to go back to, to grab that information. I'm trying to make it easy for you to get the resources you need and to share those resources with your friends. All right. Without further ado, we're going to dive into the top 10 questions I get about therapy.
Question number one, when should I go to a therapist? I want to start off with some stats. First of all, a recent study found that around 20 percent of Americans in any given year are seeing a therapist. Now that doesn't account for the people who saw a therapist last year, who aren't currently seeing a therapist right now.
That's folks who are currently seeing a therapist. And the number is only increasing, especially since the pandemic, the number is only going up. Bottom line, a lot of people are turning to therapy for support. And of those people who are turning to therapy, over 75 percent find it to be beneficial. I want to normalize if you're thinking about seeing a therapist, if you've seen a therapist, it's really normal, no longer is there a stigma attached to it. Most people are going to see a therapist at some point in their life.
There are a lot of different reasons that people see a therapist; some people have been diagnosed with an ongoing mental health issue, such as a mood disorder or an anxiety disorder. There are numerous types of anxiety issues that people deal with on a regular basis. Many people are seeking therapy as a part of their wellness regime as a way to grow, as a way to become a more whole person, mind, emotion, body, and soul.
It's simply another tool in the toolkit to help you improve different areas of your life. There are a lot of reasons that people go to see a therapist. You think about the medical model–most people see a doctor in their life. Hopefully you're seeing a doctor at least once a year to check in on your health. In many ways, this new mental health model is more of a health model versus a mental illness model. This idea that we are all dealing with something at some point in our lives would suggest that at some point you're going to want to enlist the support of a therapist to help you out. It's normal.
In many ways, most of us at some point in our life will have a mental health issue that we need to resolve. Here are some reasons that you might want to seek therapy. Number one, if you're dealing with overwhelming emotions–maybe you notice a disproportionate response to things. This could be new or this could be something you've noticed for a while.
For example, if you notice that you get disproportionately angry when someone does something annoying. Let's say your kids or your spouse or a friend does something that may be annoying, but you have a big response. You go right into fight mode, you go right into anger. And then later you're aware, oh man, I overreacted. I had a big emotion. Or if you get really big sad emotions. Again, there's no shame in this, but that might be a cue that there's some pain in your life or there might be a wound in your life that needs some healing.
It's a cue that you might need some attention and you might want to enlist the support of a therapist. Another reason people seek therapy is during significant life changes. What we call adjustment periods. It could be anything from adjusting to having.
A new baby or adjusting to your children, leaving home, or an empty nest. It could be adjusting to marital life. It could be adjusting to single life, adjusting after a divorce. It could be adjusting after the loss of a loved one. These are normal season-of-life changes, but they stir up a lot of emotions inside of us, and it can be so helpful to have someone walk you through that life change. A third reason, probably the biggest reason that people seek therapy, is for ongoing anxiety or depression that isn't self resolving.
It's one thing to feel anxiety, and then to have that anxiety resolve over the period of a couple of days. But if you're dealing with anxiety regularly, for example, if you go back to episode 54, where I talked with Curtis Chang about his anxiety and how persistent it was, that's the time to see a therapist who can help you. Or if you deal with chronic feelings of sadness or depression, that's the time to see a therapist.
Another reason is if you're aware of traumatic events from the past. Maybe you dealt with emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, and you're aware of that, and you've never really processed it. It's so helpful to have a trained therapist. Someone who is trauma-informed to help you heal some of those wounds.
Maybe you're doing as best you can. Maybe you're even doing really well, but you have this awareness of, I've never really talked about that thing that happened. This is so common and it's so wise to say, you know what, I'm going to enlist the support of someone who's trained to help me work through that and help me gain a deeper layer of healing,
I like to think of it this way: if you had a twisted ankle and it was hurting you and it wasn't self resolving, maybe you're walking pretty well, you can even go on hikes, but you're always dealing with a form of pain. Why wouldn't you go to a physical therapist to help you heal that pain, to help you restore that part of you to its proper function?
That's what a therapist does. If you're noticing that you walk with a little bit of a limp as a result of a trauma, or an injury that maybe even happened years ago, a therapist can help you heal that and restore that part of you to the way that it's designed to function. Another reason people seek therapy is relational issues.
It might be that you're dealing with a relational problem in a marriage as a parent, as a friend, or maybe you're dealing with persistent loneliness. It's hard for you to establish healthy relationships, or you feel unsatisfied with the quality of your relationships. Great time to seek the support of a therapist.
We have all different ways of getting support. We go to church communities for spiritual support. We go to medical doctors for physical support.
At some point in our life, we all need to look back because there's not one of us that arrived where we are right now without a wound or two. Every single one of us has something in our past that's worth taking a look at. We all need to look at where we are right now and see how we are doing mentally.
How are we doing emotionally? How are we doing spiritually? How are we doing physically? And who is attending to me in each of those categories? Again, it doesn't have to be a therapist, but a therapist is a great resource to help you, especially in that mental and emotional domain.
And then where do I want to be? How am I doing toward pursuing the goals that I have for myself, am I the parent I wanna be? Am I the friend I wanna be? Do I have the types of relationships I wanna have? Am I growing? A therapist can help you in all of those ways.
When is it time to get a therapist? When you've talked with friends, when you've maxed out your community, or if you don't have a lot of friends or community to talk with, and you're struggling in any of these ways, a therapist can help.
And what I like to say to people is don't wait until you're in crisis to find a therapist because it's really hard to find a good fit when you needed one yesterday.
I encourage people to proactively locate a therapist that you like, that you build a rapport with. You can meet for a few sessions and they are there for when you need a therapist. When that crisis comes, whether it's for a family member, a loved one or something in your own life, you know who that person is that you're going to call.
I think it's wise. Just like how you usually have a medical doctor on file, you know who you'll call when you need to see a physician. Similarly, I think it's wise to have identified a local therapist or someone virtually that you can turn to when you're going to need mental or emotional support.
Number two, (12:35) how do I find a therapist? I get asked this question every single day. I'm going to run you through some really practical ways to find a therapist. Ask people you trust. Referrals are a great way to do it. If someone you love and trust liked working with a particular therapist, there's a good chance you might like that therapist.
Ask people you can trust. (12:59) You can contact local churches, local seminaries, local universities. Many of them have counseling centers and most of those counseling centers have referral lists also. Ask them for lists of people who provide discounted counseling services.
If you have local counseling programs, local seminaries, or local universities who are training counselors, oftentimes those institutions offer discounted counseling for people who are working with their counselors and training. That's a way to get low cost counseling.
Also ask your primary care physician. Most physicians offices have counseling referral lists for people in your region. On my resources page, dralisoncook.com/resources, there are several links to different online platforms. There's a growing number of virtual counseling platforms that tend to be a little bit more affordable and a little bit more easy to come by for those of you who live in places where there are not a lot of counselors practicing in your local zip code.
Lastly, there's a huge database called psychologytoday.com. I linked to that on that same website. It's a huge database of licensed therapists of all different types in all different regions. And I'm going to walk you through how to search for a therapist using that database. When people reach out to me and say, hey, can you help me find a therapist in Nevada, and I don't know any therapists in Nevada at this moment in time, this is exactly what I do to help that person find a therapist.
I'm going to walk you through how to do that for yourself right now. Go to that timestamp or go to that transcript and share this with friends who are trying to figure out, how in the world do I find a therapist? Number one, you go to psychologytoday.com and the first thing you'll see is this big search bar, “find a therapist”, and it wants your city or zip code. You put in your zip code and it's going to pull up a list of all the therapists who are licensed and registered with the Psychology Today database, which is one of the biggest databases there is.
Now underneath you're going to see these filters and it's amazing–you can filter by the issue that you're dealing with, whether it's anxiety, addiction or maybe it's an issue with one of your children, depression, an eating disorder, grief. You're gonna see a whole list so you can filter by the specific issue.
You're going to see an insurance filter. You can filter by the therapist that takes your specific type of insurance. You can filter by the gender of the therapist if you prefer to see a male or female therapist. You can filter by the type of therapy. We're going to get into these different types of therapy, but if you're thinking, I want an IFS therapist, I want an EMDR therapist, I want a Christian therapist, whatever it is, you can filter by that.
You can filter by the therapist's age if you're aware that you want to see someone older or younger. You can filter by their price range. You can filter by their faith. If people have identified, I am someone who works with Christians or I am someone who works with Jewish clients. You can really get specific about what you're looking for. And it really helps narrow down the field.
Question number three that I get is how do I know if a therapist is qualified? And right there on that database on psychology today, you're going to see the therapist license. You can also go to any therapist website. You can go to state licensing databases to look up a therapist's license. But what you're looking for is someone who is a licensed psychologist, a licensed professional counselor, an LPC, a licensed mental health counselor, an LMHC, a licensed marriage and family therapist, an LMFT, a licensed social worker, an LICSW.
You also might see that MDs, licensed psychiatrists, sometimes do therapy. Licensed psychiatrists, MDs, are the only type of therapist who can prescribe medication. If you're looking for someone who can prescribe medication, you're looking for that MD.
Here's the thing to remember for therapists and counselors and social workers and marriage and family therapists: these are broad terms for professionals who are simply trained in talk therapy. They come from a variety of educational backgrounds. Baseline, you want to look for someone who has an advanced degree and who is licensed by their state licensing board.
Beyond that, whether it's a PhD, or whether it's a social worker, or whether it's a marriage and family therapist, what matters most is the relationship, and we're going to get to that. You also might look for specialty certification. If you're looking to work with someone who is IFS trained or EMDR trained or DBT trained, you want to make sure they've been certified or trained in that modality. This is something you can ask a therapist as well.
Question number four: how much does therapy cost? There's a huge range. It varies based on geography, based on their qualifications. That's one of the things about those different degrees. Typically, the more advanced the degree, the more the therapist is going to charge and that doesn't necessarily mean it's a better fit.
You always want to ask, do you offer a sliding scale fee? Ask about insurance and check with your insurance. More and more insurance companies are offering a certain number of sessions every year to people as part of their coverage because it simply works. It improves your health. Always check with your insurance provider to understand the coverage before you go out and enlist the support of a therapist.
(18:36) Number five, how do I know if a therapist is a good fit for me? And I love that people are asking this question. It means that you are thinking about therapy as a collaborative process. And I want you to think about therapy in that way. I don't want you to think about picking up the phone and calling an expert who has all the answers.
Because there are a lot of therapists who are not going to be able to give you the help that you need. You need to be thinking about finding a fit, finding someone who is good for you. The number one predictor of success in therapy, the number one predictor, is the relationship between you and your therapist. There's no such thing as a perfect therapist. There's no such thing as a guru who will have all the answers that are proven for you. What matters to the effectiveness of therapy is the nature of that relationship that you develop with your therapist.
The relationship is what heals. The relationship is the most important predictor of a therapeutic outcome. Is it based on mutual respect? Is it collaborative? Are you together moving toward goals? Is it a safe environment where you feel understood? Where you trust this person to be honest with you in a way that you can manage? Is this someone who will repair with you?
A therapeutic relationship is a relationship. This person is not a guru. This person is someone you are bringing into your inner circle as a trusted advisor. Yes, they are trained. Yes, they are an expert in things that you are not. They know about certain aspects of psychology that you don't know. It is also a relationship where you get to go to that person and say, hey, I didn't like it when you said this, I didn't understand it and it didn't sit right. Can we talk about it?
And that therapist needs to honor that. And they need to say, tell me more. This is a collaborative relationship. We've talked a lot on this podcast about the ways we can get hurt by pastors or ministry leaders or parents. Therapists also are in that mix where there's a certain power differential. A therapist is not perfect. They are not going to be perfect.
And, they absolutely need to be someone that you can go to honestly and say, hey, I didn't understand when you said that, or this isn't working for me. Can we shift gears or I want to bring something new to the table? It's up to the therapist to be an adult and say, I love that you're asking me this. I want to help you. That's not in my area of specialty, so I can't help you with that, but I would love to help you find someone who can.
Can they be a real person with you and listen to an honor what you need out of the therapeutic process? You are unique and healing is relational. You are unique. Your situation is unique and healing is relational. That relationship that you form is really important. It's more important in my opinion than years of experience or therapeutic modality. It's, can I trust this person?
Much of therapy is providing a reparative experience for those early childhood wounds. My guest Cindy Gao talked about the importance of those corrective emotional experiences with safe adults in Episode 67. And a therapist is trained to do that, to provide that corrective emotional experience.
Now here's the thing. They're not perfect, but that's part of the beauty of a therapeutic relationship. They're going to be ahead of you on the journey. They're going to be trained in ways you're not trained. They're going to have an expertise that you don't have. They are there for you. And can you also go to that person and bring your own needs, your own desires, even sometimes your own feelings of, I didn't understand that. Can you help me understand? A good therapist is going to earn your trust and join you there.
How do you know it's a good fit? Here's what I tell everyone. This takes a little bit of work, and this is why I encourage you to do this work before you're in crisis. Call or visit two or three therapists in your area. And do an interview. Many therapists will do a short 20 minute phone interview for fit. Take them up on that, or schedule an appointment and say, listen, I want to have this one session to get a sense of who you are and for you to get a sense of who I am and see if there's a good fit.
If a therapist doesn't like that, you might not want to work with them because that's a really normal and healthy thing to ask for. And you might do that with two or three and see who is a good fit. You're going in, you're inviting this person into your inner circle.
Take some time to vet the person and get to know them. You can also, after a couple of sessions, reevaluate. You can break up with a therapist. It's okay. If you're in a few sessions and are like, this is not working for me, you can let them know. Hey, you know what? I'm going to move on.
I want to empower you to know that a good therapist will honor that. They won't gaslight you in that. They won't second guess you in that. They'll honor that. They'll ask you helpful questions and they'll help honor your needs.
Here are some questions I want you to think about before you call that therapist so that you can ask them questions strategically. Do you prefer a structured approach where you want homework and you want exercises and you want goals at the end of each therapy session? Or do you lean toward a more open conversation? You want to go in and explore and talk and get insight. Think about that and then ask the person you're interviewing how they work.
Not every therapist gives homework at the end of every session. If that's something you want, let your therapist know that before you sign up to work with him or her.
Do you want a therapist who is more directive, meaning they're going to use techniques, they're going to use interventions, they're going to give you guidance, or do you want someone who's more reflective, who's listening, who's more reflecting back what they hear? People want different things and your therapist doesn't necessarily know that. You have to ask them what their style is based on what you think is going to be most helpful for you.
Do you want a therapist who remains neutral and you don't really get to know them, or do you prefer someone who shares a little bit more of themselves, who's a little bit more relational in their approach? Are you looking for someone to build a long term relationship over time, are you looking for someone who's solution focused?
You're like, here's the problem that I have. I want to get in. I want to get out. Are you willing to work with me on that? I want to be more goal-oriented. These are all valid types of therapy, but these are questions to ask yourself before you make those phone calls.
And then think about certain characteristics like gender. Do you prefer working with a man or woman? Age: do you want someone older or younger? Cultural background: do you prefer to work with someone who can understand your unique cultural experiences? Faith: we're going to get to that's our next question, but these are things to consider. They're really valid. It's okay to give yourself permission to seek out the type of therapist you think is going to feel safest to you.
All right, the next question, number six, should I work with a Christian or not? My answer to this is, will the therapist respect your beliefs in your worldview? That's what's most important to me. Now, there are some people who would say, if you have a Christian background, you should only work with a Christian therapist.
I'm not going to say that. The reason I'm not going to say that is that I know some exceptional therapists who are not coming from a Christian background and they can be really helpful to you and they will honor your faith.
Just because someone is a Christian therapist doesn't mean they're a good therapist or doesn't mean they're the right therapist for you. For me, the answer to that question is, will they respect your faith system or will they try to change it, stigmatize it, or criticize it? The number one thing to ask someone, if they are not from your same faith background is to say, listen, I need you to know up front, this is important to me. And can you respect it and honor it?
Conversely, if you go to somebody who's a Christian counselor, you might want to ask them, listen, this is what's important to me, but if you start doing this, it's going to be harmful to me. I need to know how you work.
Whether the therapist has a faith background or not, will they respect your value system, your belief system and work within it without necessarily trying to impose their values or their beliefs on you? It takes time to build up trust with the therapist. You really want to discern, is this person going to meet me where I am?
(29:33) Number seven. What's their approach? What's their modality? Which school of thought are they working with? Now, this is one of those filters. When you go to psychologytoday.com there's a lot of information. You've heard about a lot of different types of therapy. You might be interested in a specific type.
The main ones you might consider are:
- Couples therapy: You go to a couples therapist if you want the couple to be the center of the therapeutic invention. It's not so much about your individual needs.
- Family therapy: A family therapist is going to meet with the whole family and look at the family and try to create harmony in the family system. Also not so much about individual needs
- CBT/Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: this is one of the most well researched types of therapy. It's going to focus on thoughts and beliefs and how those thoughts and beliefs influence your emotion and your behaviors. We talked in episode 51 about those thinking traps and how to change them. This is right out of CBT.
- Psychodynamic therapy. These are therapies that delve into the past more. They're looking at unconscious processes, things underneath the surface that you may not be consciously aware of that are driving your present behavior.
- DBT/dialectical behavior therapy, which is a form of CBT, which brings in mindfulness strategies.
Now you also might consider somatic therapies. Those other forms that I was talking about, CBT, DBT, psychodynamic approaches, these are what we call top down therapies. They start with your thoughts, with your emotions, with memories, beliefs, and then they move down into the way you experience the world, your embodied presence in the world.
These are more insight driven therapies, these top down approaches. In contrast, bottom up therapies begin at the body or the sensory level and work their way up to influence emotions and thoughts. And a lot of these therapies were developed specifically with regard to trauma because so much of trauma is stored in the body.
They're going to start by helping you pay attention to what you're feeling in your body, where you're carrying tension, where you're carrying heaviness. You're going to start with grounding techniques to keep you in the present moment to help you contain big emotions.
Instead of going after the emotions, we're going to learn to pace ourselves in these bottom up in these somatic approaches. We're going to learn how to be in the present moment. I went through a couple of grounding in last week's episode 70. You might start with that, and as you become more aware of how to ground yourself in your body, then you might begin to link to different emotions.
That's something to think about. Am I wanting something more insight driven? Do I want a top down approach where I'm going to tackle my thoughts or painful memories from the past? I've done talk therapy and what I really need is one of these bottom up approaches where I'm learning how to be in my body and ground myself so that emotions don't overtake me, where I can really regulate myself in any given moment.
And finally a note about trauma-informed approaches. Trauma-informed approaches are not necessarily relegated to one particular type of therapy. There are some therapeutic approaches like EMDR, like somatic therapies, like certain types of CBT therapy that are explicitly designed to address trauma.
But a trauma-informed approach can, and I believe, should be integrated into almost any therapeutic approach. A trauma-informed therapist is going to really prioritize the trust and transparency of that therapeutic relationship that we talked about. They understand and are trained to understand how deeply important that corrective emotional experience is in the therapeutic process. They're going to work really hard to build trust, to ensure safety, to ensure the pacing of the process doesn't outpace where you are and what your body can tolerate.
They're going to work collaboratively and mutually with you so that the process of therapy does not in any way, shape or form provide further injury because that can happen. And I hate it that it does, but it can. You can go to a therapist, and if they're not using the right technique and if you're not getting contained in the proper way, more emotion can come out than you are ready to manage. And a trauma-informed therapist understands that, and they're going to work with the pace of your body.
They're going to look at these adverse childhood experiences, these ACEs that we talked about. This is a study I will link to in the show notes where they're going to look at these experiences from the past that so many of us have these big T traumas, these little T traumas that are still living in our body. And they're going to incorporate that understanding of trauma into the therapeutic process.
For example, EMDR, which was developed in the 1980s. It's a technique used specifically to treat traumatic memories and PTSD. And it's a really beautiful protocol that can be so helpful with trauma.
Many IFS therapists are trained with a trauma informed approach. IFS is the topic of a whole six week series starting with episode 39, Boundaries for Your Soul, How to Navigate Your Overwhelming Thoughts and Feelings. That whole six week series is based on my book with Kimberly Miller. It's a Christ-centered adaptation of the Internal Family Systems model, but there's a lot of pacing in that model.
We don't go after those buried emotions without permission from the protective parts of your system in IFS. If you're an IFS certified therapist, you understand that people have coping strategies for a reason. And we've got to work slowly and delicately to replace certain coping strategies over time, while honoring the needs of the system. You may have coping strategies that you need to have in place before we go ripping those coping strategies away.
If you are aware that you've got big T, little T traumas in your past, look for somebody who is putting themselves out there as a trauma-informed therapist and is trained in some sort of somatic therapy, EMDR, IFS, maybe this very specific trauma informed version of CBT so that you know that they're going to be honoring the pacing that your whole system needs as you heal.
Question number eight. Where do I start? You start with what you're dealing with right now. A good therapist, as I went through, will know how to pace you, will know how to take you where you need to go. Your job is to focus on what's the thing right now that's getting the best of me.
What's the relationship, whether it's a friendship, whether it's a parenting relationship, whether it's your spouse, whether it's one of your own parents, it's getting the best of me. It's making me crazy and I need help. Start there. Just start there. It might be thoughts that you can't shake. Self-defeating thoughts. You can't stop comparing yourself with others. You can't stop shaming yourself. You can't stop beating yourself up.
Start there. It might be overwhelming emotions. Start there. A good therapist will know how to help you start where you are, ground yourself, pace yourself so that you can get to where you want to go. Start with the thing that is bothering you and a good therapist is going to help you get to the root of that problem and help you develop a plan to get where you want to go.
Number nine, how often should I go to therapy? This is something you're going to develop in partnership with your therapist, but I want to give you the different categories that you might consider. Increasingly, they're more and more intensive. These are where you can go somewhere for a week or two weeks to get intensive therapy. If you've been dealing with something for a long time, intensives can be super effective. They're very effective for couples therapy, where you get away from everything and you get right to the heart of the matter.
In that one week, two weeks, you might even go to a month long recovery center. Those are what we call intensives. And I want to mention that because a lot of people don't realize that those are increasingly popular and increasingly accessible.
They tend to be more expensive. Obviously, they tend to take more time, but they can be really effective. And then we go to the more traditional model of weekly therapy. Most therapeutic modalities suggest a weekly starting point or possibly a bi-weekly, every other week. If you've done some therapy in the past but you still want some regular support, you might consider a bi-weekly option.
Also, it's a great option if your finances are limited and you can't afford weekly therapy. Going to a therapist every other week is really helpful. A lot of clients maintain monthly therapy. This is when you're doing pretty well. It's called maintenance therapy, where you're not really diving into the deep end of your problems.
You've done some therapy, you've gained some success, but you want to have that monthly check in to make sure someone is continuing to check in on you each month. And a lot of therapists will offer this. And then finally there's that “as needed” category, and this is what I was saying at the beginning when you've identified someone in your local community.
This is a therapist that I can turn to when I need support. I've developed a relationship, but I don't really need to be in therapy right now. You talk to that therapist and you say, I think I'm finished with this leg of the journey with this particular need, but can I call you again on an as needed basis? Can I call you when a need surfaces? That gives you that option to return if a specific issue arises or for a periodic check in.
Finally, last question. How do I know when it's time to end therapy? And I love this question. It really depends, again, that relationship with your therapist. And that's why I've tried to equip you with all of this information. Because maybe you could go to maintenance, monthly therapy. Maybe you could go to an “as needed” basis. That might help you think about how to end therapy.
Ending therapy can be really hard. It's a loss in many ways. A lot of people might continue on because they're afraid of losing that support. And if you're feeling that way, talk about it with your therapist. Let them know, this has been really helpful for me. I also want to move out of therapy.
Can we start to talk about that? A good therapist will help you navigate ending therapy. It can be really important to come to closure with a therapeutic relationship. In fact, that in and of itself can be a really reparative experience. I actually went through an experience like that a year ago.
I had started to see a therapist after my stroke. It was a new trauma. I'd never dealt with it. I formed a relationship with a woman. She was super helpful to me. But there came a point where it was important to me to end that relationship. And I'm terrible with closure in general, in my real life. It's hard for me.
I decided to use that as an experience to practice. And I went to her and I said, I think I'm doing okay. But it's hard for me to say goodbye. Could we talk about that? And we had a couple of sessions, beautiful couple of sessions, where we navigated saying goodbye, where we honored the validity of a healthy closure.
And it's one of the most meaningful experiences and it was the right thing to do. I said goodbye to her, but it became a positive experience of closure. I want you to think about that when you go into a therapeutic relationship.
Listen, it's okay if you simply can't afford it anymore or it's not working for you and you need to ghost a therapist. It's okay. We're trained. We can take it. It's okay. Sometimes that's what you have to do. And especially if that person really isn't helping you and you feel like they're going to twist it, you can fire your therapist.
Just do it in whatever way you have to do. But if you've built a really beautiful relationship with that therapist and the thing that's keeping you from leaving the relationship is simply that fear of loss, that fear of letting go, talk to your therapist about that. Talk about a healthy closure.
Even if you move to an as needed basis, it's a really beautiful experience to get to say goodbye to somebody in a healthy way. And a lot of us haven't had that experience. I encourage you actually to consider that as you consider the process of therapy. With that being said, I'm going to close this episode out by saying, if you're thinking about working with a therapist, ask yourself, what if this is a gift I could give myself for a specific period of time?
Dr. Alison's equipped me, I feel empowered, I can dictate some terms. Maybe I'll try it for two months. Maybe I'll try it for a certain length of time. I can say goodbye when I need to say goodbye. I can move to a rhythm that works for me. I can look for what I need and give it a try.
You are worthy of healing. You are worthy of wholeness. You are worthy of repairing those painful experiences from your past. I hope for you to have a beautiful therapeutic relationship at some time in your life. I don't wish for you the pain that led you to it, but I am so happy in advance for you the joy of a healthy, positive, healing, therapeutic relationship.
Get ready to level up your emotional intelligence! In this week's episode, we're diving deep into the heart of emotional intelligence, revealing why it's an absolute game-changer. We'll break it all down:
1. Fascinating research on emotional intelligence
2. 3 powerful strategies for mastering your emotions
3. 5 ways to express your emotions effectively
4. My all-time favorite technique for nurturing empathy
5. 2 unexpected gems of emotional intelligence in the Bible
6. A powerful real-life story of emotional intelligence in the fiery furnace of marriage
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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
- Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
- Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Graves
- Ephesians 4:26-27
- Matthew 22:37-39
- John 8:31-32
- Boundaries for Your Soul by Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller
- Strong Like Water by Aundi Kolber
- John 8:1-11
- Matthew 21:12-13, Mark 11:15-18
- The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller with Kathy Keller
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. We are in a new series this fall. I'm calling it Psych 101, but it's really a masterclass for adults who've been adulting in the trenches for a while.
This series is designed to teach you the skills you need to take control of the one thing you actually have control over, which is yourself, the way you think, the way you respond, the messages you tell yourself, even your emotions to some degree, you can shape how you respond as a result of your emotions.
These are the skills you need to take command of yourself so that you can show up more effectively with others. Research shows that when we develop agency, that is when we develop the ability to take charge of ourselves and guide and shape the way we show up in any relationship, in any situation, in any interaction with someone else.
We feel a higher level of satisfaction in ourselves. We feel that good pride of “I just did that thing that is so hard for me to do in that moment”. We feel more positive emotions. We have that feeling of what psychologists call self-efficacy, that I can do it. I have the capacity to change my behaviors, which produces a different outcome.
It's an amazing feeling. It's the opposite of feeling crazy. When you think about that colloquial definition of crazy, which is it's doing the same thing and producing the same result time and time again, it's like continuing to beat your head against a brick wall. Nothing changes, but we're not changing the thing that we are doing to potentially produce a different outcome.
Self-efficacy is the opposite. You make a positive change. You take charge of yourself in a situation, resulting in a different outcome, and it boosts all of these positive feelings inside. It's a feeling of confidence, of empowerment, of I can affect change in my life. And it starts by changing myself.
It always starts with something that we have control over. We can never change another human. We can change ourselves, but as we change ourselves, whether it be an emotional pattern, a thought pattern, a behavioral pattern, we will begin to produce different results in the environment around us.
That's the big picture goal here.
We're trying to grow in self efficacy, this capacity to make the small and big changes we need to make in our own lives that produce different and more positive outcomes in our lives and in our relationships and in our day to day. And it feels so good. That feeling of I did it. I did it.
And I think about this even before God. I feel like God lights up with delight when we make a change and we exert some influence over the environment around us in a positive way. We feel fantastic and God delights over that moment.
With all that being said, we're going to start with emotional intelligence. Now, emotional intelligence is a big concept and I'm going to break it down for you today and give you some practical examples of what it looks like to apply emotional intelligence, but it's something we all need to be working to develop like a muscle.
When you think about going to the gym, you're going to work on different muscle groups. Emotional intelligence is that large group of muscles, so to speak, that have to do with regulating our emotions.
The term emotional intelligence was first popularized by psychologist and author Daniel Goleman in a 1995 book called Emotional Intelligence, and then there's a second book called Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry that expands on the topic.
Essentially what Goleman hypothesized is that EQ or emotional intelligence is as important, if not more important than IQ.
We all were pretty good about this idea of what's IQ. It's how intelligent everybody is, but what does that really mean? It's usually a measure of our verbal skills or our mathematics skills. We talked about this in episode 50, nine types of intelligence where increasingly we are aware that there are many types of intelligence and the ability to do math or to be verbally intelligent, it's one type of intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is one of these types of intelligence that Daniel Goleman hypothesized was super important and sure enough, it turns out to be as important, if not more important, especially in our work and professional lives.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to do five different things as they relate to your emotions.
Number one, to recognize. your emotions. That's one part of emotional intelligence is simply the ability to notice and name an emotion. I'm scared. I'm sad. I'm worried. I'm angry. That's the first step of emotional intelligence is that ability to be able to notice, recognize, and name an emotion. Okay. This is what we try to teach our kids, but so many of us as adults never learned how to slow ourselves down enough to simply recognize and label an emotion.
Number two, emotional intelligence is the ability to understand your emotions. To process them. That might mean I can first recognize that I'm sad and that I can secondly understand why. I might be sad. What's the context for the sadness? What happened that evoked the sadness? Is the sadness from the past? Is the sadness from something that happened in my immediate sphere of awareness? Is it about a memory? Was it triggered by a thought, or was it triggered by a behavior that I witnessed happening in front of me?
Understanding our emotions is a whole separate step from simply being able to label them. It's really important that you begin to process that emotion correctly, because we often misattribute emotions.
We might say, I'm really angry when your spouse says something to you, when in fact they didn't say anything that should have evoked anger, they tripped over a trigger that might have been from somebody else from 10 years ago. Emotional intelligence is tricky. It's both being aware of our emotions and understanding them in their proper context effectively.
And then number three, next level, we have to be able to manage them. This is what I'm feeling in this moment. This is why I'm feeling what I'm feeling in this moment. I understand it. And now I have to regulate the feeling. I don't want to act out of the feeling. I don't want to “sin”.
If you think about the scripture that says in your anger, do not sin. It doesn't say don't be angry. It does not say that it says when you're angry, don't sin. That's part of emotional management or what we call emotional regulation. I'm aware that I'm angry. I understand why I'm angry and I'm not going to act out of my anger in an inappropriate way.
I'm also not going to sideline my anger, managing an emotion or regulating your emotions doesn't mean we stuff them. It means we honor them by considering how our behaviors can reflect those genuine emotions in constructive ways.
And this leads to the next part of emotional intelligence. According to Goleman, there's recognizing, understanding, managing, and then effectively expressing your emotions. That's exactly what happens now if we're doing this really well. And again, listen, if you've become really good at emotional intelligence, this'll feel like a muscle memory. You've got it in your muscle memory. You go in and you know what to do.
But for so many of us, different steps along the way are still really hard. We have to really slow ourselves down to be able to even label and recognize the emotion, let alone to regulate it, to give ourselves a pause, to give ourselves a timeout before we get to effectively expressing it.
It's not expressing it, it's effectively expressing it. I'm angry. I need to let you know that. Here's why. It takes a calm nervous system. We can't be in that fight-flight state–when we're emotionally activated, we rush in for the fight. We rush into the conflict with a tone. We're angry. We're yelling.
That's not an effective expression of emotions, but nor is flight an effective expression where we run away as fast as we can, because we don't trust ourselves to not go DEFCON 2 on somebody and blow up, so we avoid it. We run away.
That flight mode isn't effectively expressing emotions either. It is to some degree managing them. And if you're new to this and you really struggle with that fight flight, going into flight mode for a moment might be a step forward for you to manage it so that you don't hurt someone else. But the goal is that calm nervous system, that homeostasis, where we're aware of the emotion, we're understanding it, we're regulating it.
We're not lashing out of it, nor are we suppressing it. Instead, we're aware of the emotion. I'm angry. I don't like feeling this way, but I do. This is how I feel. I'm journaling about it. I'm taking a walk. I'm taking some deep breaths to let that emotion flow through me so that it's not quite so intense.
This is all part of that management. And it's for the goal of this last step, which is, and then I'm going to need to express it. I'm going to need to express it in my journal. I'm going to need to express it to God. I'm going to need to express it with a safe friend, or I may well need to express this emotion with the person who evoked it.
And I want to do that effectively. This is all part of emotional intelligence. Each one of these steps could probably warrant their own podcast episode.
Now, there's actually a fifth component to emotional intelligence, and that is the ability to recognize, understand, and influence the emotions of others.
It's not about me and my emotions when it comes to emotional intelligence. It's also about having an emotional intelligence about your emotions. Now, here's the thing. Again, if you go back to episode 50 on the nine types of intelligence, there's intrapersonal intelligence, where you're very gifted at understanding your own inner states.
You're aware of your own emotions. You're aware of your own experiences internally. if you're naturally high on that intrapersonal awareness, that intrapersonal intelligence, for you, those first five steps might come fairly easily.
You're really readily able to identify what you're feeling, to understand it, to manage it and to express it effectively. But then we go to that other type of intelligence, interpersonal intelligence. How well do you read others? How well do you attune to the needs of others and respond to the needs of others in an intelligent way?
That's getting at this fifth part of emotional intelligence. It involves the ability to recognize, understand, and even influence the emotions of others.
Let me give you an example of what emotional intelligence might look like. Imagine you've been invited to a party. Maybe it's a neighborhood event. You haven't seen these people in a while. You're a little bit anxious.
You're excited, but you're also where, wow, I'm going to walk into this room full of people. I don't know a lot of people here. I haven't seen a lot of people here. A lot has changed in my life. I'm aware that I'm going to feel anxious. You've prepped yourself for that. You're going to be a little bit anxious.
You understand that it makes sense. You don't feel ashamed about it. Of course, I'll feel a little bit anxious. That makes sense. When you walk into a big group full of people you haven't seen in a while you've thought about how you're going to manage those emotions.
You've prepared some scripts. You've thought about how I'll smile. I'll look for this person that I know really well, who I really enjoy. I've envisioned myself walking into the room and what that will feel like when I see the different people.
I've normalized the anxiety. I've talked myself through it so that when I feel it, when I walk into that room, I can take a deep breath and smile and see what happens. I've done some of that prep work and then I might even say when I'm at the party, I might even say to my friend who I see, say, Oh gosh, this is so fun. And I also feel a little bit anxious. I haven't seen these people in a while.
And then my friend says, Oh yeah, me too. I was also a little bit anxious about this party and suddenly we're connecting and we're laughing and all those good chemicals are being released. That's an emotionally intelligent way to go about the simple activity of having some anxiety.
For going into a neighborhood party, you've recognized the emotions. You've understood them without shame. You figured out ways to manage them. It's normal. I'm going to take a deep breath. I'm going to look for a couple of safe people, and then I'm going to express to those safe people what I'm feeling in that moment, which alleviates the pressure of the emotions. I have a connection and all of a sudden there's good chemicals coming in. I'm starting to have a good time.
That seems like a simple example, but imagine what happens when none of those steps of emotional intelligence are in place.
And I see this honestly happen all the time where we've suppressed that emotional awareness. We don't want to deal with it. Instead, we are feeling anxious, but we're pretending like we're not. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm not going to think about it. I'm going to go in. We rush into the party.
We might work overtime to make sure everybody else feels okay. We might get busy, roll up our sleeves and start doing all the dishes. We have all these coping tactics for emotions. We don't end up having a good time because we spent the whole party either taking care of everybody else and ignoring our own emotions with all that heightened anxiety still in our body that we're not aware of, but we're overcompensating.
We don't have a good time. We're super stressed out afterwards. No wonder we don't like going to parties. We never make a meaningful connection with someone else because we're too busy trying to cope with our own feelings of anxiety that we haven't actually named, understood, managed, and expressed in a healthy way.
We leave the party, we end up beating ourselves up because we feel like we were too intense, or we feel like we didn't really connect with anybody. We have all this negativity in our minds because we weren't present to the reality of what we were actually feeling, and then it goes on and on.
Over the course of that next week, you bump into a neighbor. Wasn't that party great? Oh, it was fantastic. We smile. Even though we actually had a terrible time because the whole time we were anxious, we didn't know what to do with our anxiety. And now we're cycling through more and more disingenuous connections. We're never actually stating what's true.
“That party was hard for me. I get really anxious about parties, and I realized I just talked too much because I was so anxious. I tried too hard and now I'm feeling shame.”
We're never really connecting in a meaningful way. Why go through the motions? If the goal of being with other people, of gathering with other people, being in a room with one other person, with five other people, with twenty other people is connection, why go to all that bother if we're not actually connecting?
And how do we connect authentically if we don't exercise some of this skill called emotional intelligence? If we're not aware of what we're feeling in the moment, in the first place, this is the baseline for human connection.
How can I connect with you if I'm denying or suppressing or covering over or coping such that my genuine feelings in the moment aren't even allowed to come to the surface in a meaningful, effective, healthy way? Why are we doing this? Why are we going through all of these motions together if we're not really connecting,
We do this in our intimate relationships. We do this in our family relationships. We do this in our social relationships. We do this in our church communities. Why bother going through the motions of all the work it takes to be with other humans if we are not actually showing up in a meaningful way, both in terms of understanding our own internal lives, what's happening with me in this moment, and in terms of being connected to what's genuinely going on with you?
What a beautiful moment of connection when I can say to my loved one, to a friend at a family dinner, I'm hurting today. Yeah, I'm okay. I don't need group therapy, but I wanted you to know that's how I'm feeling right now. How about you? What's going on with you? Oh, you're having a great day. I'm so glad to hear it. Tell me more. I'd love to hear more.
And suddenly we're connecting authentically because each person is doing the work of recognizing and labeling their own emotional state of understanding that there's no shame there. This is what's true. This is what's happening, each person is regulating their own emotions. I'm not bleeding all over you.
Even if I say something true, even if I say, yeah, it's been a rough day. I don't need you to take care of me. I've done the work. I'm managing my own emotions and. What's also true is I'm still hurting a little bit. And I can sense that you're with me. And you're saying, Oh, I get it. I'm so glad you were honest with me.
Here's how I'm doing. And there's suddenly this moment of connection. It's real, I'm being real, you're being real. We're not taking care of each other. I'm not trying to cope by avoiding myself and jumping into your problem. I'm not asking you to fix my problem. I'm being real. You're being real. We're together. We're connecting. What a beautiful moment. This is emotional intelligence.
What does research show about the benefits of emotional intelligence? I've gone through it in the picture that I painted, but essentially emotional intelligence paves the way for deeper, more fulfilling relationships with other people.
It helps us to connect on gauzy words, but that's what it means when we're actually being real in a moment with another person. We feel seen, we feel understood, we feel known. And that exchange in and of itself brings deep satisfaction and relief.
Number two, emotional intelligence produces more resilience. Instead of getting bogged down by our emotions or bogged down by challenges, we are able to approach them with balance. We can honor complex emotions, different emotions–I have a job that I really value. And sometimes it's really hard for me. That's emotional intelligence. When we can really honor the complexity of the challenges we're facing.
Maybe it's a parenting issue. Maybe it's a marriage, maybe it's a friendship. A lot of things can be true in this moment and I can honor all of those things, which allows me to develop this emotional tolerance or resilience where I don't need things to be perfect to thrive, I can tolerate some ambiguity in a moment.
This helps us manage stress better because we're more prepared. We start to prepare our bodies. We start to prepare our minds. We start to prepare our nervous systems to cope with things that are hard because we've named them. We've understood them. We're not deceiving ourselves.
We're not pretending anymore, which allows us to equip ourselves to face the challenging situations that we face. And then lastly, it leads to an approved self concept, an approved sense of satisfaction in yourself, a better sense of well being.
It feels good to go, man, I faced that. I can do it. I have a sense of confidence in myself. I can show up for this hard situation and it won't take me out. And that feels good to our system. There's a lot of benefits to emotional intelligence.
Here's the good news about emotional intelligence. It's not a trait. It's not something you're born with. It's a skill we develop over time. The same as any muscle that you develop in your body. You start to work on it a little bit each day. You start to develop the muscles that lead to emotional intelligence. It's never too late to develop the skill of emotional intelligence.
Number one, we're going to start with the basics of self-awareness. This is a buzzy psychology word, self awareness. What does it really mean? It's actually really important. And if you think about Jesus, love God, love others as self, you think about self awareness in each of those three points of the triangle, we need to be aware of God's movements, aware of God's spirit.
We need to be aware of others, aware of their emotional states, aware of where they might be hurting. And we need to be aware of ourselves, of when I'm hurting, of when I'm fearful, of when I'm activated or angry. All three types of awareness are essential to healthy relationships.
And again, you may be listening to me going, oh, I'm pretty good at God-awareness. I'm pretty good at other-awareness. I'm terrible at self-awareness. Or you might be someone who's really aware of yourself and you have a really hard time reading other people.
Just start there, that self-awareness right there. That awareness of, oh, this is hard for me. I need some work here. This is a muscle I need to work to develop a little bit more. That is the essence of self awareness. Self-awareness is being really honest, radically honest with yourself.
There's no shame in self-awareness, it's simply noticing what's true. Right now, I feel insecure. I wish I didn't. Right now, I feel overwhelmed. This feels overwhelming to me. I can't process this. That's self-awareness. If you're feeling that right now, that's awesome. Give yourself a pat on the back.
Listening to Dr. Alison right now is making me feel overwhelmed. I don't think I can do this. If you're feeling that right now, I want you to pause and go, oh my gosh, that's self-awareness. This is overwhelming to me.
Or if you're listening to me right now thinking this is elementary, I know this, why doesn't she move past it? Pause right there. You're aware of something in yourself. I already know how to do this. That's excellent self-awareness.
It's simply noticing right now what's happening inside of me. What am I aware of? Am I riveted on what Dr. Alison is saying? This is fascinating to me. That's self awareness. There's no right or wrong with self awareness. It's what is happening right now. It starts with this self reflection. Tuning in and recognizing and naming what you notice.
To take a step towards self-awareness, journaling is a fantastic research based way to begin to become more aware of what you're thinking and feeling. There's something about picking up a pen and starting to write out on the page and externalizing the things you're thinking and feeling that helps you see it more clearly. Oh my gosh, that's how I really feel right now. And so you might consider a journaling practice. Start with 10 to 15 minutes every day and ask yourself, what am I feeling? Why am I feeling this way? And start to journal about it. I'm feeling sad today. Why am I feeling sad? I don't know. And you start to follow the rabbit trails of noticing what's happening inside your mind.
And when the timer ends, stop. You don't want to get overwhelmed by it, but give yourself 10 to 15 minutes a day. Don't censor yourself. There's no right or wrong. It's just, this is what's true. There's no bad or good in this space. This is what is, and you can turn it to God.
You can say, God, this is what I'm feeling right now. It's what is, I want to be honest with you. The truth sets us free. There's no bad, no good, these are not binaries. This is what. It is in the moment, you're not acting on it, you're simply acknowledging and you're beginning to reflect.
These are those first two steps of emotional intelligence, recognizing the emotions and understanding them. You might ask yourself, what happened right before I started feeling this way? What was it that I did? Did I open up a social media app? Did I scroll past and see something? And again, there's no judgment here, no matter how silly it may seem to you.
Oh, why did that post create such a havoc of emotion inside of me? But honor it, own it. You got some information about yourself. That's good data. That's helpful to understand yourself. That's all you're trying to do. Getting curious is another way to put it. We talk about all the time in Boundaries for Your Soul when you're beginning to look at yourself.
You're taking a You-turn. You're getting curious. curious about what you notice. No shame. Sometimes when you're working through these first couple of steps of recognizing and understanding, locating what you're feeling in your physical body can be helpful. You might do a body scan where you notice from head to toe where you're carrying tension in different parts of your body.
Some people tend to be more attuned to their physical body. They might notice that I have tension in my neck or I have a headache or, whatever it is, notice that as a form of self awareness , and then you can begin to ask yourself, I wonder where that tension is coming from. What emotion might be behind that tension that I'm noticing in my neck or shoulders?
Self-awareness starts with simply beginning to pay attention to your emotional states, to physical tension in your body and journaling is a great way to start taking 10 to 15 minutes to notice what you're aware of each day.
And then we're going to move into self-regulation. Now, sometimes the reason we're a little bit afraid to become aware of an emotion is we feel like the emotion will take us over and that's really understandable, especially if you have a history of trauma, if you've never done this work, if you have a lot of pain.
I don't want to become aware of all that pain because it'll overwhelm me. It's a really normal fear. And again, that's great self-awareness. That's a really beautiful first step of honesty. I'm a little bit afraid of my emotions because I don't know what to do with them.
And if you're feeling that way, it's a great opportunity to meet with a therapist to work through that. Say, “emotions are a little bit scary for me. And so I want to work through them in a safe, guided setting where I can learn to pace myself as I unpack those emotions”.
You can think about a couple of different exercises. Breath is one of the most well researched ways to slow down emotional responses. if you notice an emotion to take a deep breath, practice breathing in and holding for a count of four. And then slowly releasing that breath. It's a physiological simple intervention that slows down the firing of the nervous system and allows you to calm yourself in that moment.
Another way to regulate emotions, especially if you have a lot of big emotions, is a grounding technique called the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, technique. Aundi Kolber writes about this technique in her book, Strong Like Water. I found it to be very helpful to me. It brings you into the present moment in a really manageable way.
What you do is you look in the room around you and you identify five things you can see. Four things you can actually touch with your hands, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one that you can taste. And this diverts your attention, bringing you into the present moment and out of big emotions.
Again, there's some people who need to bring their emotions into their conscious awareness. They need to try to understand them more. They tend to sideline their emotions. Other folks have big emotions and they need to learn how to make the emotions less big in the moment.
As you breathe, you might notice emotions, but you're also noticing them in a contained way without the rapid firing of your nervous system. When you're having a big emotion, start to ground yourself, five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear. Take some deep breaths. Two things you can smell. One thing you can taste and your emotions start to get a little smaller.
Now, another thing you can do to help regulate an emotion in IFS, we talk about emotions being attached to parts. And as you connect to that emotion, you can use the power of your imagination to imagine that emotion behind a glass wall where it's with you, but not overtaking you.
Anger is here with me. It is not all of me. Sadness is here with me. It is not all of me, a part of me is sad, a part of me is angry. That's getting at that intra psychic differentiation where you allow an emotion to be with you, even as you have a little bit of healthy distance.
Those are some different techniques. You can use your breath. That's sometimes the easiest place to start and the quickest way to slow the firing of the nervous system. You can use a grounding technique to keep you really grounded in your physical surroundings. You can use that imagination imagining the part of you as separate from you, maybe behind a glass window or a glass wall.
You name the emotion and you also very clearly remind yourself it's not all of who you are. You can get a healthy distance from it. This is all part of emotional regulation. As you start to practice self awareness, you start to notice emotions. Now, these are some things that you can do to help you manage them. Remember, we're recognizing, we're understanding our emotions, and then we're managing them.
Managing doesn't mean making them go away. It means keeping them at a healthy distance. Not too big, not too small. Just right, here's the emotion, it's here, it's not taking me over. I'm not desperate to get away from it. And that's when we begin to move into the next step of expressing ourselves effectively, where we speak on behalf of an emotion or we care for ourselves through the experience of an emotion.
It doesn't always mean we have to go tell somebody, although that's a wonderful way to express on behalf of an emotion, whether you're telling the person directly or whether you're seeking support from a friend, but you can also do it through taking a walk.
You can express an emotion through music that helps you metabolize that emotion. You can do it through movement. There are a lot of ways to express emotion. You can get anger out through beating a pillow. These are all ways that we begin to express the emotion, get it out of our bodies in a healthy way.
I want to touch on this other awareness, this interpersonal intelligence becoming aware of other people's emotional states in an emotionally intelligent way it has to do with empathy. And you can cultivate empathy, you can cultivate the ability to step inside someone else's shoes if it doesn't come naturally to you. And my favorite technique is to simply ask yourself, I wonder what this other person is thinking and feeling. And imagine going through their day, the two hours preceding when you had an interaction with them.
And the best example of this is when you and your spouse both show up at the dinner table after a long, hard day. I am so aware of the day I've had, I am so aware of what's going on inside of me, but take a minute consciously. This is a decision. It's a muscle you're developing to think about what's going on in my spouse.
At this moment, what happened the two hours preceding them showing up at the dinner table or my child, or my friend, what happened in their life, the two hours preceding this interaction, they were maybe sitting in traffic, stuck, maybe they had a bad day at work, maybe they had a bad day at school, maybe they had a bad conversation with someone else.
Imagine what that other person has gone through those two or three hours preceding them coming into your immediate sphere. You are each bringing into that moment of contact a whole world of stressors, a whole world of thoughts, a whole world of feelings.
And the more you will become aware of your own. And can simultaneously imagine, oh my gosh, that other person, this other being in front of me is showing up to this moment with a whole world of their own stressors, their own hard conversations, their own traffic jams, whatever the things are, and you can begin to remind yourself of that you're going to dramatically improve your ability to connect in that moment.
Now, remember, it's not sidelining yourself. Some of us sideline ourselves and we're so empathetic. We know that this other person is struggling so much when they show up at the moment with us. It's not taking yourself out of the equation.
It's both. Here's what I'm coming to the table with today. All the things that have been hard in my day, all the things I've been worried about, all the things I'm ragged about, and oh my gosh, this person sitting in front of me, same thing. They're coming to this moment in front of me with all the things that are hard for them.
All those conversations that went sideways, all the ways they're beating themselves. We are both right here with all of that. Let's start getting real. This is emotional intelligence. This is spiritual maturity. This is what it means to become more like Christ. I am so aware of everything I'm bringing to this moment with you guys.
It's here. It's with me, and I'm going to honor you by. Regulating myself. I'm not going to dump all of this on you because that's not fair to you. I'm also not going to sideline it because that's not fair to me. And guess what? If you are simultaneously doing that same work, you're coming to me aware of everything that's going on inside of you and all that's hard about it.
And you're also going to be mindful. You're not going to dump that on me. You're also aware that I'm coming to the table with my own stuff. Oh my gosh. Can we have together a beautiful moment of genuine connection? It starts so simply. How are you? Oh man. It's been a day. How about you? Oh, it's been a day.
Yeah, I see you. Me too. Me too. And you're right there with almost not that many words. You are so present to each other. Yeah I'm pretty overwhelmed. Yeah, I'm overwhelmed too. All right. Good to know. How can we be tender with each other in this moment?
Or maybe one person is actually doing. Great. I'm in a good place, which frees you to say, I'm struggling. Would you have the capacity to walk with me through some of my struggles as I process them? It allows us to each take responsibility for our own responses and it leads to these beautiful relationships that God designed us to have.
Now, in closing today, I want to share with you a couple of illustrations of emotional intelligence from the Bible, and then one from real life that I think is a really great example. The first one that we see is when Jesus confronts those who are about to stone the woman who's caught in the act of adultery. And if you think about this, let's go through the steps of emotional intelligence.
When the religious leaders ask him, they're trying to test him. And they're like, don't you think we should stone this woman? She's been caught in adultery, right there. They're trying to set a trap for him. And Jesus is pretty calm.
He doesn't race to an answer. He doesn't get impulsive. He takes a moment and bends down. He grounds himself in that moment. He puts his finger in the sand, he grounds himself, maybe he's even counting to 10, taking deep breaths, calming himself. There's that self awareness and that emotional regulation in that moment that we see in Jesus.
He's gathering himself. He's aware of whatever it is that he feels inside, a combination of anger, maybe some compassion for the woman. He's also reading the cues from the woman. My guess is that the woman was hurting. She was in pain. She probably felt shame. She probably felt demoralized.
Jesus is picking all of that up. He's aware. He's empathetic to her. He's aware of what's going on in himself. He takes a minute to regulate, and then he communicates effectively, and it's brilliant. “Hey, whoever among you has never sinned, has never found yourself in a position like this woman is in right now, why don't you go ahead and throw that first stone?”
That's a brilliant, emotionally intelligent response. He is turning it on them. Hey, you look inside yourselves for a minute. Really? Really? You've never done anything? And then he turns to the woman with empathy. He reads her emotions. He's reading the whole room. He's reading himself and and he's reading the woman with empathy saying, you go in peace, I don't condemn you. You're free.
He sets her free of her shame. He knows this woman. He knows what she needs. He's reading her accurately, perfectly. Now we're not going to be Jesus. We're not going to be able to perfectly read a situation, but that story shows all three elements of his self-awareness. His ability to regulate his own emotions, to ground himself, his ability to read the other people around him, both folks who are trying to trap him, whom he calls out and folks who need his compassion. He's reading all of that beautifully.
Now, there's another example where we see emotional intelligence in Jesus, and that's when he turns the tables over in the temple. We see emotional intelligence there. Emotional intelligence doesn't mean we don't have emotions. When Jesus walks into that temple and he sees it being used as a marketplace where people are exchanging money and selling animals for sacrifices.
This distortion of his father's house–he doesn't like it. He's aware of the anger. He regulates himself. That act of overturning the tables is not impulsive. In my estimation, in my view, there's no indication that he's out of control.
It's a strategic move to show and express the depth of his anger. He doesn't hurt anybody. He's not motivated out of cruelty. He's not trying to harm people. He's not beating people up. He's showing the depth of what he feels about that situation. There's self-awareness, there's self-regulation, there's understanding and there's appropriate expression. There's genius in that moment.
And there's an example that I want to close with. It's from a book by Tim Keller with Kathy Keller called The Meaning of Marriage. He tells a story in the book about something Kathy does that reminds me of that emotional intelligence of Jesus when he turned those tables over in the temple.
I want to close with this story because I want to paint a picture for you of emotional intelligence. It's not being a doormat. It's not always being kind. It's a little bit like what we talked about in episode 57 about should I turn the other cheek? This is not being a doormat. This is shrewdness. This is being strategic. This is knowing the power of your emotion, the power of what you feel, aligning the power of what you feel with.
The truth of what is good and right in the universe and effectively expressing on behalf of those emotions to impact other people. There's a lot of power in emotional intelligence. And in this story that Tim Keller tells, he and his wife, Kathy have negotiated during his early work as a pastor, he's going to be working crazy hours for about three years. That's what it takes. And she's agreed to that. They've gone in, eyes wide open. He's going to be working all the time for three years to try to build this church.
And she's, she said, okay, that's going to be hard, but I share this vision with you. Okay. Three years pass and he is still constantly working overtime. He's not making good on his end of the bargain. He's not scaling back and she sees this.
Essentially he keeps wanting more. Oh, I need more time. Just a little more time. And she's done. She says I gave you the three years, you're building the church and I see what's going to happen. You're going to become a workaholic. I am never going to see you. And 20 years from now, we're not going to have a marriage.
This is going to destroy our marriage. I gave you three years. I'm done. You need to scale it back. You need to put your marriage first. (This is my take on the story. I'm imagining this is what's going on.)
And in the story, she’s smashing plates and he's freaked out. What is she doing? And she is saying to him with laser focus, you are destroying our marriage. What I am doing to our wedding china, I am showing you. What it is that you are going to do to our marriage if you don't reign your workaholism in and she's destroying these China saucers that were a wedding gift to them and he talks about how he thought she had lost her mind, but oh my goodness did she have his attention and later come to find out, she planned it.
She was angry. She was aware of being angry. She understood her anger. He had betrayed her and he was getting set to betray her for a lifetime and she was not okay with it. She regulated her emotions. She got her anger down to enough of a degree that she could manage them.
She didn't lash out. She didn't yell at him. She didn't throw the dishes at him. She was not motivated by hurting him. She was in command of her anger. And then she expressed effectively on behalf of that anger. And she knew there was the only way words hadn't worked. The only way to get his attention was this very physical metaphor for what he was doing.
She even told him later that she had chosen the saucers for teacups that are already broken. The saucers that she chose to smash strategically were actually ones that were actually ones that didn't have a match anyway. That's how strategic she was. She was not taken over by her emotions in that moment.
She was strategic with her emotions. She was making a point. This is what you're doing to our marriage. And she smashed the saucers so that he could see it. And he got the message. She also knew her husband, she knew what would speak to him.
This is not a lesson that I would prescribe to you or to my therapy clients. This is a lesson rooted in emotional intelligence. The moral of this story isn't to break wedding dishes to get your spouse's attention. That is not what this story is about. This is a story about emotional intelligence.
She was in command of her emotions. She understood them and she harnessed their power to express effectively in a way that she knew this man that she loved and knew very well could hear. The moral of this story is emotional intelligence.
What are you facing, whether as a parent, whether as a spouse, whether as a friend that is igniting some emotion inside of you, you're aware of it, you understand it, you're regulating it, and then you begin to think to yourself, what is the best way to express what I need to express in this situation in a strategic way?
That's emotional intelligence. It's a skill we all need to develop to become the fullest, truest version of our God made selves.
We are all creating the future version of ourselves every single day. We're either moving toward wholeness-or we're moving toward fragmentation. In this brand-new September series, I'm walking you through the most important steps you can take to cultivate resilience, embrace authenticity, and nurture intimacy.
Today's episode kicks us off with an overview of the key challenges we all face throughout the course of our lives. Here's what you'll learn:
1. The 8 challenges we face from childhood to old age
2. The #1 challenge most of us are still working to resolve
3. Why identity precedes intimacy
4. A proven exercise to help you become your ideal self
Thanks to our sponsors:
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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
- The Best of You Paperback Edition
- More on the stages of psychosocial development, according to Erik Erickson
- Genesis 2:23-25
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 can't believe it's September. We're in the fall officially. I guess not officially, but it feels as if it's official.
The kids are back in school and the summer feels like it's for the most part over. This week, we're going to launch a new series. I'm so excited about it. It's one of my favorite things to do. It's called Psych 101, and we're going to go through all of these basics of what it means to become a whole person who can function as an individual, who can function in relationships, who knows how to set healthy boundaries, who knows how to assess and understand misbehaviors and incongruencies in the people around you, someone who has healthy communication skills.
We're going to go through all the things–this is the stuff I love. This is the teacher in me. It's going to be so much more fun than your old, boring textbooks. I'm going to use real life examples and practical applications so that this becomes your go to guide for everything you need to become a whole healed person. I want to equip you to engage this life God has given you with as many resources as I can.
So we're going to kick things off this week with an annotated excerpt from chapter four of the best of you. Now there's a couple of reasons for this. Number one, big announcement: The Best of You is out in paperback this week. So if you've been waiting to get your copy until the price goes down or until the paperback version comes out, this is your week, and so to celebrate that and to celebrate this new series, I'm going to turn to chapter four this week, where I talk about the eight stages of development.
Now, I promise you, this is such rich, good stuff that is going to help you navigate your life better. It's going to help you understand your childhood and what you did or didn't get. It's going to help you understand how to parent your own children. It's going to help you understand how to reparent yourself. It's going to help you understand the whole context of your life.
Now, here's the thing I love the most. You're also going to be able to identify the current stage of life you're in. Each of these stages of life, according to Eric Erickson, who came up with these stages of development has a crisis that you need to resolve.
Now it doesn't have to be a literal crisis. It's more of a milestone. It's a way of naming the particular season you're in and the different milestones you want to achieve in each of those seasons.
I love this framework. I think it's super helpful. So without further ado, let's dive into these eight markers of maturity. These eight milestones that help you understand where you are in your own life journey and how to take charge of your own growth.
Inevitably, when a client comes into my office, they bring me a problem. Usually it's a problem with another person or sometimes it's a problem with their own emotions or the way they're seeing themselves or the world. Regardless, that problem lies within the context of your whole story, the story of your life. The problem that you face today is rooted in a whole grand narrative of the person you've taken yourself to be for your whole life.
This applies to little problems, and this applies to big problems. If you're having a problem with a child or the way that you're parenting, almost always there's something going on. Inside of you that has a long tail all the way back to the way that you were treated, a message you picked up, a value you've latched onto that may or may not be relevant to the current situation with your child, or if you're having trouble with a parent or with a friend or with a spouse, the first thing we've got to do is get a bigger picture about your journey, about your story.
And if you imagine your life as a path with a beginning, a middle, and an end, in order to understand where you are now, we've got to look back to where you've been. We've got to look forward to where you want to go. And we've got to locate where you are now. So we're going to start by looking back.
Now this is an excerpt, which I'm going to annotate from chapter four of The Best of You.
Most people aren't born with a deep sense of confidence and clarity about who they are. Instead, children need a healthy environment and guidance at key junctures to develop. In fact, renowned psychologist, Eric Erickson, identified eight stages of identity development. These are the eight stages we're going to go through today.
Each one represents a milestone you must overcome. And these eight stages highlight that becoming your true self, becoming this whole person, this person that's equipped to face whatever challenges that you face is a process that spans an entire lifetime. It's never one and done. Always in process.
Here are the eight steps. Number one is infancy. This is really in your first year of life and the milestone you're resolving during these years is trust versus mistrust. That means the central issue that you're going to face in that first year of life that any child is going to face during that first year of life is whether they can develop a sense of safety, a sense of trust in the world and in the people around him or her. Or a sense of mistrust, a sense that the world is not safe.
The second stage is early childhood, the first two to three years of life. And the milestone that you have to resolve is autonomy versus shame and doubt. Now, autonomy is this idea of your individuality, your independence, that you have a being, a you ness That's separate from other people. So there's a little bit of individuation that starts to happen when you think of toddlers in those first few years.
They start to explore away from the caregiver. They start to have a sense of their own autonomy when this milestone is not resolved. A child might develop a sense of shame or a sense of self doubt deeply at his or her core. Where there's this sense of, I can't make it on my own.
And that child might want to stay blended or merged with the primary caregiver. Now, paradoxically, when this milestone is not resolved, it's typically because there's an. Insecure attachment. So this gets back to attachment. The more secure the attachment with that primary caregiver, the more the child is able to individuate and explore the world around her.
But when there's an insecure attachment, that child tends to cling, that child tends to want that security. So they stay closer in an unhealthy way to that primary caregiver. All right. Number three, this is the preschool years, ages four to five, roughly. And the milestone is initiative versus guilt.
During this stage, children began to understand their power in the world. They can take initiative. They might initiate social interactions with other kids. They might initiate work. You might start to notice what they like, what they don't like. When they resolve this milestone, they gain a sense of purpose. They gain a sense of agency, a sense of, I can affect change in my world. I can ask a friend to play and they say, sure, I'd love to play with you. And that feels good inside my body, as a little young child.
So they begin to develop that sense of purpose. On the other hand, if they don't resolve this milestone, they might develop a core sense of guilt, a sense of being bad or not good enough or not being valuable or having purpose with other people or in the world around them.
Number four is during the early school years. And the milestone is industry versus inferiority. Now, again, these aren't necessarily always sequential, but you can think about this when you think about your own kids, that they're walking themselves through these developmental stages.
And during those early school years, roughly ages six to 11 or 12, children start to cope with new social environments. They start to cope with new academic demands. They begin to develop a sense of competence. They believe in their own power to achieve their self efficacy.
Which is industry. Or if they don't resolve this milestone successfully, they might develop a sense of inferiority, a feeling of being less than. Other people, this is a big age during which we begin to compare ourselves to others. So often when I work with clients and we're dealing with comparison or inferiority or feeling less than a lot of the memories that surface go back to this age, this fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade, when you start to take inventory of yourself as you compare yourself against other people. That's age appropriate at that age.
When we get stuck in this stage of development, we bring a lot of that into our adult years. Again, there's no shame in any of this. I'm trying to describe the process of what development looks like.
Okay. Number five happens more during adolescence, during the teen years. This is identity versus role confusion. If you think about your teenagers, your young adults, they're working on finding their identity. They're trying to understand themselves. Who am I? What do I like? Where do I fit into this pecking order? That's what they're trying to resolve, a strong sense of self, a strong sense of this is who I am.
This is where I fit in. This is how I belong. I'm not like everybody else. I am who I am. This is where, when it's resolved in a healthy way, you start to have a sense of wanting to be true or faithful to your own self. Now I know right here, is where a lot of us are like, no, that didn't happen to me. And this is a lot of what my book, The Best of You is all about. It's repairing the wound at that core sense of self, that core sense of identity where we didn't really. Arriving at that strong sense of this is who I am. I am who I am.
I can assess myself. I have a healthy self concept. I know who I am. I can reflect on myself. I know how I'm different from other people. I've accepted myself. This doesn't often get resolved in those teenage years, especially for those of us who were parented in earlier decades.
We talked about this in episode 66 with Sissy Goff, where Sissy and I were talking about how we were raised in the 70s and 80s versus how kids are raised now and how in many ways a lot of us are over parenting to correct some of the deficits in the parenting we got because so many of us didn't find this sense of Agency, this sense of self confidence, this sense of identity that is so critical for children to find in these early tween and teen years.
So it's great that we're working to help our kids develop this core sense of self. It's also important that we do the work in our own lives. It's also important for us to continue to do that work in our own lives.
So now we move into the adult years. Now, Erickson hypothesized that this next stage, intimacy versus isolation, could last anywhere from age 19 to 40 years, and I actually like it that there's such a broad span on that, especially in our modern era where research shows that are young adult children are taking longer to leave the nest in many ways they're marrying later.
They're staying closer to family longer. And so many of them are still reconciling with this intimacy versus isolation well into their twenties versus at the age of 19.
That's not to say it doesn't happen, but the idea in this stage, intimacy versus isolation is that young adults need to begin to form intimate, loving relationships with other people, and they'll begin to experience love, the seedbed for creating a partnership, for creating a family for beginning to create a legacy of their own.
The Bible talks about this process of development where we leave our own family of origin, our own parents and cleave to someone else. This is a natural part of psychological development. We grow up, we leave the nest, we find someone of our own, we set up a life. And the cycle of life continues, it's beautiful.
But there can be disruptions in this stage of life where perhaps you reach adulthood and you're able to work and you're doing all sorts of great things, but you really struggle with intimacy.
You really struggle with forging a deep, meaningful, intimate partnership with another person. Again, there's no shame in this. In fact, in many ways, this was part of my story. It took me years into adulthood to learn how to develop intimacy. I had good work, I had great friends, but dating was a challenge for me.
I struggled in this area and I work with a lot of people who do, whether you're married and struggled to form a healthy, mutually beneficial relationship with your partner, or whether you stay single and struggle to develop an intimate relationship, that is the milestone of this young adult season from the age of roughly 19 to 40.
Next, number seven, the stage is generativity versus stagnation. Erickson hypothesized this was the milestone of middle adulthood from roughly age 40 to 65. Again, those numbers change a little bit as people are retiring later, as people are working longer, But the theme really holds true.
This stage is characterized by learning to create good work, by learning to understand your legacy, your generativity, your contribution to this world. It might be through raising your kids. It might be through the work that you do. It might be through ministry or through service, but during this season, you're really cultivating that lasting impact you're having.
And it results in a sense of stewardship, a sense of care. When you navigate this milestone, and oftentimes if you're a mom who's been raising kids, you might go through a couple of phases with this.
You might have a first phase of really pouring into your kids, and then as your kids get a little older, you might go through another phase of figuring out another way that you want to contribute. You see this also with people who have different careers.
The first leg of their life is building their career. And then as they get into their forties and fifties, they think more about how do I want to help others? How do I want to take some of the success I've gained and poured into the next generation? Now, again, these steps are. iterative. They're not necessarily always sequential. You might have been doing some of this in your twenties and thirties, but in general,
This is a helpful guideline to think about the different stage of life you're in. And then finally, I love this. I love that Erickson goes through the whole life. We look at number eight, integrity versus despair. Erickson estimated this roughly late adulthood after 65.
Again, in our modern era where we're living longer, this might be coming at 70, 75, even 80, depending on your health and your relationship to work and family. But in this stage, this older age, the milestone is this sense of integrity, this sense of a life well lived, this sense of looking back over your life and feeling good about the choices you've made and making peace with the choices you wish you hadn't made.
That's what we mean by integrity. There's a sense of wisdom. Of bringing things together before God, of reflecting and finding peace and integrity in the wholeness of your life. And then if this milestone or the preceding milestones that led up to it, don't get resolved, it can lead to despair.
It can lead to a really hard relationship with aging. And I see this too. I see folks who haven't done the work and they're hanging on to old ways and they're hanging onto old grudges and they're hanging on to old resentments and they're hanging on to old shame. And it only gets worse as they age.
You're moving in one of two directions throughout your life. You're moving toward growth, you're moving toward wholeness or. You're moving toward the opposite. You're moving toward fragmentation. You're moving toward disintegration, which ultimately leads to shame and despair.
These are the consequences of the choices we make in life. Here's the good news. It is never too late to begin to tackle the milestones of whatever season of life that you're facing.
Now I go through this whole process of forming an identity, forming your sense of you-ness, as I like to say, your sense of selfhood, wherever you are. That is the topic of The Best of You. The whole book takes you through that whole process of becoming a whole person, a whole you and all of those spokes that come out of it.
It's not about you. It's so that you can contribute to a legacy. It's so that you can live a life of purpose. It's so that you can live a life of integrity. It's so that you can live a life that's characterized by intimacy and meaningful relationships. That's the purpose of developing a strong sense of self.
And I think it's so important to understand in this world where we can focus so much on love, we can focus so much on finding that one right person, we can focus so much on finding that one right friend, when the best way to do that so often is to first focus on the work of becoming true to your own God given self.
Here's what I call I before we, here's what is critical to understand when it comes to establishing relationships as an adult, identity is necessary for intimacy. This means that a healthy sense of self is vital to creating healthy relationships with other people.
Now, listen, this is true in marriage. This is true with friends. This is true with your kids. This is true with your parents. It's not true for you. It's also true for the other person. If you have a strong sense of self and the other person has a strong sense of self, you're going to be able to forge a great relationship.
But if you have a strong sense of self and the other person is stuck and not growing, it's going to be really hard to forge a healthy relationship with that person.
In fact, in Erickson's framework, a stable sense of self grows out of years of cultivating deep roots as you seek to understand your purpose, your challenges, the gifts you have to bring, and it's out of this strong sense of self that you learn the meaning of what Erickson calls fidelity or faithfulness.
This is a fruit of the spirit. Which I define in the psychological sense as the ability to commit yourself to other people and to the world around you with integrity.
It's really hard to demonstrate faithfulness to others in a wise way, in a healthy way, if you don't first know how to be faithful to yourself. Furthermore, faithfulness to yourself, I would argue, shows faithfulness to the God who made you.
Faithfulness to God involves faithfulness to self. Faithfulness to self involves faithfulness to God, the two go hand in hand. Faithfulness to yourself involves understanding what you need to thrive. It means prioritizing the care of your mind, your heart, your body, your soul. , it involves honoring the unique gifts God has given you.
Faithfulness to someone else involves understanding what they need to thrive, prioritizing the care of their mind, heart, body, and soul, and honoring the unique gifts God has given them. Do you see how both matter? I'm faithful to myself. And I'm faithful to you as I'm faithful to you and I honor you. I'm also simultaneously needing to be faithful to myself.
Both matter. One cannot exist without the other. It's difficult to show up faithfully for someone else if you don't also know how to show up faithfully for yourself. But most people don't arrive at adulthood with a strong sense of self and to complicate the situation Most people enter into their most important relationships with other people before healing Their own sense of self
Instead of seeking to heal ourselves first we jump right into relationships as a cure for all that hurts as you think about your relationships. Did you jump into a relationship before you really understood yourself? Now that doesn't mean that you jumped into an unhealthy relationship.
It's possible that the relationship you jumped into has helped you nurture a strong sense of self. That's great. It also might mean you jumped into a relationship where you have to backtrack a bit. Doesn't mean the relationship is bad. Doesn't mean you need to throw the relationship away. It does mean you might need to pause for a minute right where you are and do some work to catch up to yourself. To catch up to the wholeness of who you are so that you can bring more of your full self into. Your relationship.
Think about your own experience.
Did you have that strong sense of fidelity to your God given self as you entered into adulthood? Think about that younger you. For a moment. What was she like? What was she looking for? Did she stumble into a relationship that actually in many ways has become that safe crucible in which she can grow and develop and become more of her true self?
Or did she stumble into a relationship that became a source of pain, a source of anguish, a source of taking her away. That's okay. Whatever it is, notice and take comfort in the fact that you're not alone. There's not one path to wholeness. Whichever path you chose, it's never too late to course correct.
Here's what I know to be true. If you're willing to face yourself, honestly, including what's hard, you can heal your core sense of self. You can heal it within the context of your relationship. You can also heal it in yourself.
The beauty of this work yields incredible results. As you heal yourself, you will start to create the relationships you crave. Now, listen, I'm not saying every relationship will magically fall into place, but I am saying this, as you heal yourself, you'll start to discover the kind of people that you truly want and need to bring into your life.
And you start to honor what I call the I inside of you. Becoming your true self is not a destination you arrive at. It's not a process of trying to make all your relationships perfect.
Instead it's the work so often of going back to those very formative first four building blocks where you learn to regain a sense of safety, a sense of trust, if you didn't get it early on. It's the work of developing that sense of safety in yourself and with God.
It's the work of developing that sense of autonomy, of identifying what you think and what you feel. It doesn't mean you always act on what you think and what you feel, but you can identify it, you can name it, you can honor your own autonomy.
It means going back to those early stages of when you first tried to show initiative and correcting painful experiences. It might be learning how to reframe messages of guilt or self doubt in your mind, going back to those painful wounds where someone made fun of you, where someone didn't guide you through the jungle of social survival early on.
It's learning how to reparent yourself as you bravely take a step to reach out to new friends at this stage of your life. It's the work of going back to that place of industry versus inferiority, where maybe you struggled in school or you struggled with a task and you started comparing yourself negatively to other people.
It's the work of going back and naming that and healing that wound and then updating yourself that you no longer live in that place. You can now take brave steps to develop a sense of agency in your life. It might mean taking a step to pursue a dream, write a blog, take a job, learn a skill.
And instead of shaming or guilting yourself, reframing those messages. This has been hard. No one taught me how I wasn't guided through a process of learning how to develop my purpose, but I can do it now. I can walk myself through it with kindness, with gentleness. I can bring people around me who encourage me instead of knocking me down.
You can go back to those first four roots and develop a sense inside of what it means to feel safe, to feel seen, to have purpose and to understand without a doubt that you are irreplaceable and that no one can take your place on this earth. This is the work of wholeness. The work of healing.
As I read through those eight stages and gave you a little snapshot of each one, I want you to think about which one stood out to you the most: which one you feel like you might still be needing to resolve.
And then I want you to ask yourself some of the following questions. Number one, when have you felt safe with someone?
Who or what made you feel seen?
When did you last feel a sense of purpose?
What do you like about yourself and what is your sense of how God sees you?
And notice what comes up as you consider those questions.
Here's what I love about these eight milestones of development. It's not about looking back. It's also about looking forward. It's about envisioning where you want to get. And so to close, I'm going to read to you this benediction I wrote for the best of you about envisioning your future self. Take a moment to envision your future.
Think about those milestones we talked about, that integrity you want to have as you look back over your life, that generativity, that feeling of having contributed what you feel you could contribute. And as you envision that future self, however many years from now, imagine her free of the weight of your current pain, a future version of yourself who has moved through the darkness and found an even better place. She knows who she is. She knows how to experience deep intimacy. She knows what she has to give and she has a sense of integrity.
Envision her in detail. What does she look like? What is she doing? Where? Who is with her?
And as you envision that future version of you, that future version of what you want to feel like, of what you want to experience as you look back at yourself right now,
Ask yourself, how would this future version of you understand the current situation you're facing? The current decision you might need to make the current struggle that you have. Maybe it's your self-doubt, maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's confusion. Whatever it is, imagine that best version of yourself, that person you long to become in your future and ask yourself how would she respond in this situation? What qualities does that future version of you have readily available to her? Is it wisdom?
Is it confidence? Is it strength to know that this is hard, but it really is going to work out? Imagining that future version of yourself, that place you want to get. What Erickson calls integrity, can help you shape the decisions you make right now.
So as you move today, consider who you want to be in the future. That person you want to be in the future and then take a look at where you are right now and take one brave step toward becoming a truer version of yourself.
I absolutely loved this conversation with Alli Worthington. We get so real about the toxic traps all around and how to stay sane as a parent. From "parenting book trauma" to bad advice about friendships, we've got you covered. You'll learn practical tips & fascinating research from Alli's new book, Remaining You While Raising Them. Alli's a business owner, podcast host, and the mom of 6 kids.
Here's what we cover:
1. The #1 source of mom guilt
2. The most important question to ask yourself each day
3. How parenting failures actually help kids
4. The surprising research on which relationships are happiest
5. Which friends to keep, and which ones to release
Resources
- Remaining You While Raising Them by Alli Worthington (click here for Audible version)
- AlliWorthington.com
- Listen to The Alli Worthington Show
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- This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/BESTOFYOU and get on your way to being your best self.
- Go to www.simplemodern.com/bestofyou and by sharing your email you'll get a unique discount code just for you or bundle and save for back to school. This should be your go to brand for your family.
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
Alison: Hey, everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of the best of you podcast where we are rounding out and closing out this little series on back to school where we're talking all about parenting and kids and how to just be present and attuned to the different things that the young ones in our lives are struggling with and how to bring our best selves into those conversations and into those roles, whether it's as a mom, a big sister, a grandma, an aunt, a godparent, whatever the role is that you have in front of you, maybe you're just someone who is fairly young yourself and just feels like some of this relates to you.
And how do you begin to learn? Whatever role in whatever capacity that you are, where you are trying to, and you'll whatever role you're in this whole series, if you've noticed a theme, the theme is the more we become whole ourselves, the more we become The people that God wants us to be healthy, emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually.
The more we're tending to our own heart, souls, mind, emotion, becoming clear, capable, confident, courageous in our own lives. The better we're going to be for the people who we love, especially our kids. And that's why I'm so excited to round this out with a conversation with a new friend of mine, Alli Worthington.
And Alli has a new book out and the title just really speaks for itself. The title of this book is Remaining You While Raising Them.
And I just, I love the idea behind everything Alli is doing, which is the more we are ourselves, the more we are caring for and attuning to and healing and becoming more and more clear about the people that God made us to be, the more we're going to be able to show up for our kids in an effective way.
It's really hard to shepherd, to lead others. It's really hard to lead. Others through the challenges that they face if we haven't done our own work, right? If we haven't navigated, if we haven't blazed those trails first. And so in today's conversation, I'm so excited. I'm so thrilled to introduce you to today's conversation.
Today's conversation is for every mom who's felt overwhelmed or frankly, a little bit overwrought by all of the information that's out there for parents. Alli just has a great way. You'll hear it in today's episode of just applying practical tips to everyday life. And she's come by her wisdom the hard way. She will tell a little bit about her story in the episode, but she really had to go back to work after a financial crisis in her own family while parenting five boys and a stepdaughter.
So she has lived what she talks to us about every single day. Alli Worthington lives outside Nashville with her husband, Mark, their five sons, and their five sons, she with their, with her husband, Mark, and their five sons. She's a popular Christian woman speaker who travels the country sharing practical advice and encouragement.
She hosts. It's a weekly podcast called the Alli Worthington show. And she's a sought after coach and consultant who has worked with individuals, small business owners and fortune 500 companies. She built her business in 2008 after her family went bankrupt with 42 in the bank and here she is. And she had to do all of that while taking care of these precious babies all around her.
I am so thrilled for this conversation today on how to remain yourself while raising them with Alli Worthington.
*Music*
Alison: Thank you so much, Alli, for being here today. I'm just super excited about this new book and I love the title: Remaining You While Raising Them. You have five boys and a stepdaughter. Is that right, Alli?
Alli: Yep. A lot of children.
Alison: Yes. So I would love to start there. Actually you tell a story in the book about early on in parenting when a teacher reprimanded you a little bit for not having looked in the proper folder for one of your And you had, you talk in the story about how you had gone back to work, you and your husband had lost a home, you'd had a financial crisis, you had, I don't know how many kids you had at this point of this story and you'd started working and I love the picture that you paint.
You had literally set up a business kind of in the middle of your home and I'm just imagining all the chaos around it and you'd really struggled with beating yourself up. And I'd love to just start there for a moment. What were some myths that you still believed as a mom at that point in your early parenting ?
Alli: Yeah. Such a great question. So all five boys were here on earth at this point. This was my middle son. He's in preschool and in preschool they give you a folder full of nonsense and it's, what time did they go to potty, and some scribble that they did and who knows what else, right?
It's not nuclear codes that they're sending home every day as my husband reminded me. The teacher took it very seriously as you want a preschool teacher to do, but I'm coming in, I have all these children. I have a newborn on my arm. I have a business that I have that I'm working on my computer in my living room because I can't even get to my home office, because I'm always with the kids. And this sweet teacher says, I know you don't look in the yellow folder, but there's something really important for you to look at today.
She didn't just say it to me. She said it with all the other moms around. So I just have this weight of mom guilt that my work that I'm doing, my job, the company I'm building, it is ruining my children. I am a terrible mom. My children are suffering. And what stopped me from quitting is we didn't have the financial privilege for me to quit. As you mentioned, I was a stay home mom, and was very happy in the stay home mom role in 2008.
My husband lost his job. We ended up losing our home. We lost almost everything except what fit into two storage units. And I knew after that it was going to take my husband's job plus me starting my company to make sure that we were okay. But had I not had the financial pressure, I think I would have quit.
And I think I wouldn't have followed my calling to build what I built through the years. Now I can look back now and go, he was fine. There weren't any nuclear codes in the folder. It was just to make sure he wore a certain color of socks the next day. But we as moms are so hard on ourselves. And we sometimes think that every little decision we make and every little thing we do is make or break for our children's lives.
Alison: Yeah, I just love the benefit of hindsight, right? You can look back and go, it was a yellow folder. It was a pair of socks, but it doesn't feel that way in the moment. And I think the more you're juggling in a way, the more pressure you can put on yourself. You say in the book, you say, thank God I didn't have the financial privilege to quit.
And I thought that was such a provocative statement that in the moment, and you might have had that been an option for you, but with hindsight, what is it about juggling both the work that you ended up doing in the parenting that you're grateful for looking back, even though perhaps at the moment you felt like the guilt of it's taking me away from my kids, or it's taking me away from the yellow folder.
Alli: I can look back now that I have most of my children at adulthood or beyond. I have two that are still in high school, a freshman in high school and a junior. And I can look back on my work through the years. And no, for sure it didn't harm them. But I was convinced at the time I was harming them. My youngest used to come up to me in the living room when they were all playing and smack my MacBook closed and say, no more work, mommy. And I would go, oh, I'm damaging him forever.
He's just fine. So the stories that I told myself of, I'm hurting my children, my attention is divided, I'm going to have so much in therapy bills just because I was building this company when they were little. None of that happened.
That it is for us to be great moms. We need to model emotional health. We need to take care of ourselves as we're taking care of them. Being a great mom doesn't mean I sat around on the floor and braided everyone's hair and taught them Latin and we knitted socks for the poor. Now, if some moms have the time to do that, that's great.
But sometimes we think that we have to go over and above to be good moms. There are moms who grow their own organic wheat in the backyard and make fresh sandwiches every day. And if it makes them happy, that's great, but it's not what every mom has to do.
Alison: That's right. And you're making such a good point here that if you're doing that because it lights up your own heart, that will spill over to the kids as well, right? Because the kids will pick up, are you doing this because this is just what brings you joy, therefore vicariously it brings all of us joy, whether it's whatever the work is, or are you doing this out of some guilt?
You talk about as a little girl watching, and this really stood out to me because I related to it, watching the women in your family, the older women in your family, just killing themselves to put on these lavish holiday meals and being bitter and resentful.
And you do a great job of implying they didn't feel as if they could give themselves permission not to do it, but there were a lot of ways in which they were doing that not because it lit up their own hearts. They were doing that because they felt like they had to. Tell me a little bit more about that.
Alli: Yeah, I'll never forget. I was eight years old. The first time I noticed it and it was my great aunt, Shirley. She had everyone over for a Christmas celebration, and she's loving, and she's kind, and she's nice, and she's doing everything right, and she had cooked for days. And she told everyone she cooked for days, often.
And I couldn't tell at eight because she was smiling and her words were coming out sweet, but I knew something was wrong. And I knew whatever was going on, I did not want to be a part of. So even though this Christmas celebration with amazing food and presents, even though it was a “happy time”, I wasn't happy being there because I could feel the tension.
It wasn't until I got older and after she passed away, some family members said, oh, she hated cooking all that time. She hated hosting. But she did not feel like she could say anything because she felt like the way for her to be a quote unquote good mom, good family member, was to do all this.
When she felt like she had permission, she could have raised her hand and said, hey, everybody bring a dish. Or I'll do it this year, you guys do it next year. But she felt like that was her role. And as much as she tried to be loving, the resentment and the bitterness came out. And so we can quote unquote, do all the right things. But if it doesn't light our soul on fire, everybody's going to know it.
Alison: Yeah. They'll pick that up. When did you start throughout this journey of parenting, when did you start to arrive at some of these conclusions that you're walking us through in the book –taking good care of yourself, being your most healthy version of you and who God made you to be? When did you begin to really lean into that as a mom and how did you come to that?
Alli: I think it was slow, a lot of it did have to do with watching the women in my family. I grew up with a family who is relatively poor. And I remember when I was getting ready to have my first child, making the decision that for as much as I could, I didn't want to be a mom that didn't take care of herself.
I didn't want to be a mom who had holes in her shoes and her kids didn't. Not that I wanted to force everybody, but I saw how the women in my family had struggled financially, and I knew that I wanted to do everything I could to not just take care of my children, but to make sure that I, as a mom, was taken care of too.
That I didn't have to be a martyr as a mother, and that's just a from a practical sense of growing up in poverty and that slowly just through reading a lot of books and a lot of therapy that I had, they ended up getting through the years turned into I not only need to make sure that I'm okay physically, I need to make sure that I'm okay emotionally because everybody has an Aunt Shirley in their family that feels like she can't speak up for her needs and she's bitter about it.
I didn't want to turn into Aunt Shirley in whatever way that happened because it happens to women really dangerously easily. And I wanted to protect myself from that.
Alison: Yeah. That's interesting. So you had a template in your mind that you very consciously were trying to counter in your own life and which led you to just continually work against that guilt tripping voice in your head. You had it initially, the guilt tripping voice, but you were able to counter it along the way.
Tell us a little bit about these myths. These guilting myths that so many moms, your friends, people in your life, people you work with, that you see time and again.
Alli: Two of the biggest ones are that if we are good moms, our children should be well behaved. That one is huge. And the second one is that we should get it all right. We should essentially be super moms. And the super mom one is so interesting. I'm a huge fan of the Wonder Woman movies. Love them. Love the gold cuffs. Love her whole vibe.
But I was thinking about how if Wonder Woman were a mother, she would completely ruin her child's ability to deal with anybody in the real world because she'd be perfect. She wouldn't struggle. She wouldn't mess up. She wouldn't have to go to her kids and apologize for losing her temper. She wouldn't have to repair a relationship because she does everything right. So her kids go out in the world and they have no ability to deal with real people.
And so that changed my perspective to a mom who does work to be healthy in the sense that yes, we're going to lose our temper and we're going to apologize. We're going to repair a relationship. We are going to verbalize when we have needs. We're going to be able to have boundaries and let our children watch us grow.
We're setting our kids up to be able to be in real healthy relationships when they're older. And if we did everything perfect, we wouldn't. If we did everything perfect, they would go away to college and just be a mess because they couldn't deal with the fallibility of humans.
Alison: I love that. I never thought about it that way, but I often say to people, in the therapy world, sometimes I feel like we put a number on parents because we talk a lot about the importance of parents, that we are the first secure attachment. We are the first place where our kids experience presence.
In fact, a lot of research in the psychology of religion talks about how we are the first glimpse of how kids conceptualize God, right? Because we're that first safe figure. That can put a lot of pressure on parents, but I love what you're saying. Cause in a way, what you're saying is we're also their first glimpse of what a human is.
And how to deal with a human. And so both things can be true. We're incredibly important in providing that first glimpse of safety, that first glimpse of love and presence and unconditional regard. And we're also that first opportunity to work out things that are hard, to see when someone messes up, what they do with it. I love that perspective.
Alli: Yeah, and you can really think about it in terms of when a child is very small, that's when we're always there to comfort and we're building that secure attachment. But as a child gets bigger between years, teen years, especially even elementary years, your child needs to slowly see you as more and more of a human because you are setting that child up for successful relationships in the future. And if we have this mask of perfection, it's not going to help them deal with people in the real world.
Alison: You're right that especially as they age and especially as they develop, we're coming alongside them, another set of eyeballs on the realities of life and a lot of modeling. And again, which gets to the topic of your book, which is the more we've done the work of becoming healthy, the more we've done the work of making peace with the things about ourselves that we don't like with other people, with challenges, with complexities, the more we're going to be able to lead them through their own challenges and frustrations.
Alli: Yeah. And it's been so interesting as people are reading the book, I've heard a couple of different things that have been very surprising. One is that I don't want to negate the importance of the word trauma, but I've nicknamed it parenting book trauma. So many women who've said, oh, I read this parenting book and I couldn't finish it. I wish I never read it. I felt ashamed because I couldn't live up to these standards.
So even talking about motherhood brings up a lot of really triggering feelings for women. And then another thing that I've heard often is, oh, I wish I would've had this book when my kids were young, but really this book is as much for women who have teens and tweens and adult children because for me, what my what my husband and I discovered having adult children is we can't really guilt them into coming to see us.
We have to make sure we're the best versions of us possible to woo them to us, so it’s interesting, just the conversations of all of the terrible experiences that women have had reading parenting books in the past, but also the fact that for some women, we really put ourselves on the shelf and don't work on ourselves in terms of our motherhood after the first year of having our babies.
Alison: Paradoxically, it's not only harmful for us, it does a disservice to our kids. We actually aren't servicing them. I love what you're saying about being the parent of adult children. I found that to be true in my life. And I say this a lot that one of the things you want to do to have a healthy relationship with your kids all the way into your old age as they become adults is frankly, to be so okay with yourself that you're right there when they come back with you to tell you the things that you didn't do quite right,
Alli: –Right.
Alison: –because the more they grow and the more they change and the more they get a little bit of their own perspective on life, they're going to come back and say, wait, why did you do that thing? Or what was that? Or this is what, and the more we've done the work and we can go, yeah.
And we're not triggered by that and we just sit with them and let them process that with us. That's where that connection stays alive. It's not through trying to be perfect or trying to avoid that conversation, right? That's where intimacy comes in. That's the good stuff in any relationship. It's not that we never have the rupture. It's that we really know how to lean into that repair.
Alli: Oh, yeah, or at least we can pretend we aren't too triggered and then we can go deal with it later.
Alison: We can do our deep breathing
Alli: Yep.
Alison: Tell us about, you talk a little bit in the book about different types of moms. Tell me a little bit about that.
Alli: I think that for most of us, we have this idea in our head of what a quote unquote good mom is. And we've all picked that up. Maybe we saw something in childhood or it's just from the awful social media messaging that we're getting all the time. But it is not as if our children are in our lives accidentally.
We are placed together in families by divine design, whether adoption or by birth. And once we look at ourselves and go, what are my strengths? What kind of mom am I? What am I leaning into? Once we can do that, we can stop beating ourselves up for the strengths we don't have. Like me, I'm not outdoorsy.
My cousin, she's an outdoorsy mom. They're always hiking or kayaking. I only want to be outdoors if I'm at an amusement park. Or I'm at Disney World or something luxurious. That's my outdoors, and that's my thing. I like to ride roller coasters with kids, and I like to do fun things like that. My cousin would never do that in a million years.
She wants to be in a kayak. There are moms who love crafts. There are moms who have an organic garden, and they're teaching kids about growing your own food and homesteading. And once we look at how we go about life, what our strengths are, what our passions are, and then go, this is who I am. And this is actually good for my kids.
Because my kids are placed with me by divine design. It's not like us leaning into the fullness of who we are is going to hurt our children unless the fullness of who we are is to be an assassin. But my guess is no one listening right now is gosh, my, the fullness of my life is an assassin, but we really look at our personalities and go, this is my design. My kids will benefit from this. I don't need to mother in any way that isn't natural for me. I think that's really powerful for women.
Alison: It's almost like a strength based approach to parenting. You think about the strengthsfinder, we've talked about that here, where you identify what I have to bring and you do better if you lean into your strengths versus beating yourself up for the things that are not your natural strengths, a great way to look at it.
And I think it's interesting, you've got the parenting book trauma that you described. And also, if you add on to that, the social media comparison trap. Because that's where you're seeing all of that, right? You're seeing all the pictures of all the things you're not doing.
Alli: Oh, yeah. I think social media is such a driver of mom guilt. I did a survey of over a thousand women before I wrote this book to find out what's the biggest trigger of mom guilt. How often do you have it? What's the trigger? It's not us. It's not our spouses. It's not our friends. The number one individual trigger is social media, where you feel like you're doing okay, life is okay, and then all of a sudden you open it up and there's this beautiful video of someone growing organic wheat and you're like darn it.
Alison: Yeah.
Alli: Look at that. I'm not growing organic wheat. I guess I'm a terrible mom after all or whatever it is. We know that social media is a highlight reel, but there is something that happens in our brain. Our brain doesn't know because if we look at family pictures where everyone's dressed in matching clothes and the dog is smiling, and then you look around your house and your teenager's mad or your toddler's having a tantrum and your dog's throwing up in the carpet, something happens in our brain and we can't help but compare.
It's just what happens.
Alison: Yeah. It's that negative voice, right? That cannot see, in that moment, all they see is the perfection in that image and cannot see all those moments, right? That no matter how glamorous or unglamorous they were, that you as a mom were with your child in a moment of need that didn't get captured.
And it's such an important thing that you're naming there to really know and lean into your own strengths. This is not being arrogant. This is healthy pride. Take pride in your own work, take pride in what you're doing. Make a list of it every single day. Write it on your mirror, especially when you're in the weeds of parenting.
Alli: Oh, yeah. And also, I think it is important for us to have conversations like this about the danger of social media. Now, I love social media. I built my company on it. However, if we don't know someone personally and we are following accounts with images and videos of perfection. I am of the belief they should be unfollowed.
Especially because we now have an influencer culture and I'm never going to say, hey, you shouldn't make money however you want to make money. But there are huge accounts out there with images and videos of perfection. And it is all a business. It is not real. If people are selling or people are saying like, here's my outfit and here's a 20% off code, it is a business. It's not natural. And we can't compare our real life to someone else's business model.
Alison: That's a good word. It's a good word. I agree with you. It is just the data on it. The research on it is just unequivocal that it's just not healthy. It's not healthy for our kids to see all the comparison traps. It's not healthy for us. You talk a lot in the book about different habits. What are some things in your own life that have helped you just, again, you've got these five boys, you're running this business, you're in the weeds. What are some of the most helpful tips that have just kept you balanced in those moments?
Alli: That's a great question. One of them, I put in that back section of the book about habits to help us thrive. And it's a simple question that I've learned to ask myself a few times a day. I have pop up reminders that come up on my phone and I ask myself, what do you need right now? Because that question, what do I need?
Most of us go, I have no idea, I haven't thought about myself in so long, but just changing it to what do I need right now has been a game changer for me because sometimes I need a glass of water. Sometimes I need to make lunch plans with a girlfriend because research shows healthy friendships are so important for moms so we don't get taken out by loneliness.
Sometimes I need a housekeeper. Sometimes I need to plan a trip, sometimes I need a snack, it can be big, it can be little, but it keeps me checking in with myself so I don't run myself ragged as a mom and as a business owner. And it lets me check in with myself and also it models for my children that I'm worthy of care.
They are worthy of care and one day they are going to marry women. And we want them to know their wives are worthy of care. They, as their husbands, are worthy of care. We should all be checking in with ourselves every day and going, What do I need right now? What do I need? And give ourselves permission. It's the permission that Aunt Shirley didn't have. And it's the permission that most of us, at different parts in our life, don't feel like we have.
Alison: Yeah, I was just thinking that. Can you imagine if Aunt Shirley had been able to say, what do I need right now? I need someone to get in the kitchen and help me, or whatever it might have been?
The other thing that came to my mind as you were talking was that isn't that what we're trying to teach our children? Learn to ask for what you need, learn to use your words. And so if we're not doing that for ourselves, as they say, more is caught than taught, with kids. So if they don't see us saying, hey, here's what I need right now, how do they learn that's what they need to do?
Alli: Yeah, I could think about so many times in my life I have wanted to play the perfect mom role and I've just sacrificed and then finally I just lose my mind and blow up because I'm so angry because I've just been stuffing my needs for too long. You play nice and you play nice and you play nice and finally you explode and if we can make sure every woman has permission to go, hey, what do I need right now, so we don't have to just play nice.
So we can just continually take care of ourselves, so we don't have to explode. That's the game changer.
Alison: What does it look like for you when you've lost it in a moment with one of your boys? How do you go about the process? This is one of the things women often ask me, how do I apologize to my child? How do I make it right? What do you do when you have had a moment with your kids that you need to go back and repair?
Alli: Oh, it's “I'm so sorry that I did that. I was a jerk in that moment. This is what was going on inside of me”. So I can explain it had nothing to do with them. But it's just, you were unlucky in that moment. And you were part of that moment with me. But I was just like a ticking bomb. And I ask for forgiveness, but just own it.
Alison: Yeah, I love that. I love the modeling for kids when we get it wrong and we go back and let them know because they're going to get it wrong too.
Alli: Oh, yeah. Every day they get it wrong.
Alison: Yeah. And so they're learning. Oh, that's what you do. When you mess up, you just go back and you say, hey, you take responsibility again.
It's not that we're after perfection. It's that we're after that awareness or, again, when you think about that question, what do I need? What do I need right now? I might need a timeout from my kids so I don't explode on them in that moment. And you can say that too to your kids, right now what I need is to just take a little timeout. I'll be back.
Alli: When they were little, I used to do this thing where I would start at 10 and just start counting back to one and they all knew, oh that's mom trying to get ahold of herself and we should scatter or we should be real quiet. Because I was either going to yell at them or I was going to count from ten to one.
And sometimes I counted from ten to one very aggressively. And I didn't understand at the time that it was me regulating my emotions. So I didn't lose it. So I was regulating myself, but it was also a warning to them, hey, we're out of control. Let's give her a moment.
Alison: That's another spin on the counting, the counting to 10. Usually, we're giving kids the time to behave, but we're really giving ourselves the opportunity to stay calm so that when we do enter in, it will not be from that activated place. I love that. What are some other habits? What are some other tips that you found to be particularly helpful in your own parenting?
Alli: Investing in friendships was surprisingly powerful research. I found research that showed that friendships are the happiest relationships, and that our families give us joy and great meaning. But friendships are just happiest because we choose friends because we like them, not because we have to be around them.
And for a friend of mine, author Eric Barker said 30s is where your 30s is where friendship goes to die. And for so many of us, it's true–between our careers and families and so much going on. So I use the concept of bundling friend-time when I'm very busy with my real life and can't get together with friends, that I will find things that I have to do and I'll include friend time with that.
Whether it's talking to a friend on the phone on a commute. I have two friends who make dinner together every Tuesday night in their own homes. So they set up an iPad and AirPods and they talk to each other Tuesday night from five to six while they make dinner. Their families know that's their time.
So it's something they already have to do and it's boring, but they use that to bundle friend time. So for me, I bundle friend time into all sorts of things. I have a business with a friend of mine and we have taken our strategy weekends to Disney. So we're having friend time and work time so I'm always looking at all the things that I have to do. How can I include friends and how can I make it more fun?
Alison: Yeah, I love that bundling friend time. That's great, just being smart so that you don't lose touch with your friends. You build them into your life as best you can. I love that. That's a great tip. I often talk about structuring it, right? So for me, sometimes I'll put it on the calendar so at least it's there on the calendar, like another date, like something I have to do, but I love the idea of bundling it into something else you're already doing. That's great.
Alli: Yeah, I have one friend who loves to organize and she will come over sometimes and go, let's visit but let me work on your closet. And I don't enjoy that at all. So it's fun letting our hair down and finding friends. The key is finding friends who are helping our lives in a positive way.
And that's not necessarily the friend, I use air quotes around friends, that is sitting next to you at PTO or even sitting next to you at church or your neighbor, but really identifying the friends who get you, who you can be your real self with, who you feel better after you interact with them than before.
Investing in those friendships because I hear a lot of advice about friendship lately and it's basically, whoever you're next to is who you should be friends with and I feel like that's a really dangerous concept for women. We need to be selective and thoughtful about who we let into our inner friendship circles.
Alison: I agree with you. I love that litmus test of, do you feel better about yourself after you've spent time with them? Because you can fall into the comparison trap with friends and you can start pursuing a life that isn't a life you actually want. And it comes back to those gifts as you're saying, like I've noticed.
In my own life, I'm not really a great home decorator. It's not something I enjoy. It's a patchwork quilt. I love it, but I used to feel really bad about it. And you know what I've discovered, Alli, to your point is, friends of mine that are really great at it or good at it.
If someone's really into it, it's all about the attitude. If that's really what they care about, I will feel it the second they leave my home.
Alli: Yep.
Alison: And that's just, it's okay, that I don't want to have to feel that way. That's not going to work. On the other hand, I have friends who are also really into it. And I don't feel that at all because they fully accept me. I fully accept them.
And I think that's really wise, especially when you're in the weeds of parenting and when we're so vulnerable to feeling we're not maybe as good as because we're all gonna feel that we're all so vulnerable in parenting.
Alli: Yeah, we've all had friends who make the little comments and they sting and after we're around those friends, we go, oh, that was awful. Those are the people you need to spend less time with.
Alison: Yeah, it's a really good point about our kids, about anything because it's just it's tender. If you think about this idea of these vulnerable parts of us, boy, being a parent brings out that vulnerability like nothing else. And it is the time you don't want to be erred toward loneliness, of course, but gosh, sometimes really befriending your own company is healthier than exposing yourself to folks who are going to make you feel constantly judged and criticized.
Alli: Absolutely.
Alison: Tell us a little bit before we close here, Alli. What would you want the younger you to know about parenting that you know now if you could go back and spend just a few minutes with her.
Alli: Oh gosh, that is an amazing question. I would tell myself that what mattered was the emotional climate of the home. That having my children feel safe and secure and fully loved is what matters most. And I would have myself dive into a lot of the genetic research about children. That children are really coded in their DNA to be who they're going to be.
And as long as we provide them a healthy home, and nothing horrible happens to get things off track, they're going to be who they're going to be. You can look at twin studies of twins, divided, separated at birth, and they grow up to be pretty similar. And it is fascinating. I think that I fell into some early parenting advice when I was a young mom, religious parenting advice, especially, that almost tricked me accidentally into believing that I was God to my children, that every little thing I did mattered and if I didn't do everything right, their whole future was gone.
But the truth is God and I am their mother and I'm there to love them and discipline them and disciple them and give them something great that I'm modeling. But I don't have the power in one little mistake to ruin their lives. And there's a lot of pressure that's put on moms unnecessarily. That's what I would tell myself.
Alison: I love that. Yeah, we are not God.
Alli: How about you? What would you tell a younger you?
Alison: Oh gosh. I think I would tell myself kind of along the lines of what you're saying about strength, that who I am is exactly what they need. Who I am is exactly what they need. No more and no less. And be that. Because that's what they need. And it's not everything, but thankfully they don't only need me.
They do need me to be fully me. And so who I am is what they need. And I think that's where trying to make up for things in myself that I feel like I didn't have could sometimes trip me up. I had to really work hard on Inhabiting who I am.
I think also, and again, what we've touched on is just the incredible value of modeling–more is caught than taught. The more I show what you do. I love what you said, what you do when you make a mistake, the more you show your own ability to course correct, the more you show when you get it wrong, you name it. You don't blame someone else.
Those kinds of things really are what kids pick up. They're just smart. They see through your words. They see our actions. They see how we're living. They just pick up what's real. Which is incredible, really. It's very freeing in many ways.
Alli: Because all the parenting books that say you have to do these 10 things to be a good parent. No, to be a good parent you work on yourself and the natural overflow of that is a happier healthier household and happier healthier kids. That's what just hasn't been taught to mothers yet, until now.
Alison: Yeah. Thanks. And on that note, tell everybody how they can find your book, your work and all that you're putting into the world.
Alli: Oh thank you. I'm Alli Worthington everywhere. Alli Worthington dot com. Alli Worthington show. The book, Remaining You While Raising Them. It's great in paperback, but I will say, we threw in an audible bonus about the mental load, which I call the mother load. And we even threw in some scripts for how to ask for what you need, how to identify and ask for what you need, whether it's your spouse or other people in your life.
So it's just a fun little bonus in the audible version.
Alison: Oh, that's great. It's a great book. I'm so glad you're saying all these wise things for so many women to benefit from. I have one last question for you, which I ask all my guests, which is what is bringing out the best of you right now?
Alli: I love that question. In my 40s, I decided to prioritize fun. So I'm 47 right now. And I love taking vacations. I have a business coach with business clients. I've been doing retreats for them. I'm taking my team on trips.
I will probably be in Orlando at a theme park six times this year. I was just riding roller coasters a couple of days ago in Orlando, so anytime I get a chance, I'm prioritizing fun, whether it's with my kids or with clients or people on my team. I'm going all out in my 40s.
Alison: I love that. So you're being very literal. You like amusement parks.
Alli: Oh, yeah. So sometimes I take my kids, but sometimes I take my team. Yeah, we're having a blast.
Alison: That's great. I love that. Thank you so much, Alli, for joining us and just sharing your wisdom with us. It's great to have you.
Alli: Thank you so much. It's been great to join you.
Today's episode is straight up fire! I got to know Cindy Gao last year, when she reached out to me about an internship. As a student at Harvard College, she experienced a crisis of meaning and found her way to faith and emotional healing. I have loved getting to know Cindy, and I know you are going to love her too.
This episode is raw and inspiring. It's packed with insight into faith, mental health, and Gen Z.
Here's what we cover:
1. The phrase Cindy Googled in a moment of desperation & what she found
2. What to do (and not do) when a young person expresses interest in faith
3. Why emotional healing & faith cannot be separated
4. The core belief that almost kept Cindy from faith
5. The challenges & longings of Gen Z
Thanks to our sponsors:
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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
- Ecclesiastes
- Boundaries For Your Soul by Dr. Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller
- Try Softer by Aundi Kolber
- Matthew Mark Luke John
- Psalm 34:8
- "We all are born into the world looking for someone looking for us, and that we remain in this mode of searching for the rest of our lives." -Curt Thompson
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. Oh my goodness do we have a treat for you today! I've been looking forward to having this conversation all summer, and I am so excited for you to hear it.
Today we are going to talk with my assistant and media coordinator, Cindy Gao, about her incredible story of a search for meaning and coming to faith in a really dark place. She is part of Gen Z and I know that so many of my listeners, you have either kids who are headed off to college or you're reading the news there's just a lot of buzz around this generation—what they're dealing with and what they're thinking about and Cindy just has such a unique ability to articulate her own experience with clarity and honesty and sincerity.
I am just so grateful that she was willing to share all of that hard earned wisdom with us as we seek to understand the young ones in our lives, whether they're your own kids, whether they're your grandkids, whether they're just the kids that you care about in your life.
You first heard from Cindy on Episode 62, where she and I discuss your questions about friendship. It's a great episode. I love the wisdom that she brings to it. So you can check out that episode. And she also helped me out in the Best of You Facebook Book Club. So if you were a part of that this past January, Cindy will be a familiar voice to you.
I first met Cindy last November, almost a year ago. She reached out to me via email. She was looking for part-time work. I was in need of assistance. She came on as an intern and she's been helping me out ever since. She's just been such a gift to me. And when I first heard her story, it just stayed with me. It's just such an incredible story and a beautiful example of how God works through Google, God works through the pandemic, through even the isolation that was so awful. God met Cindy in such a powerful way through all of those terrible circumstances and he wants to do that for all of us and all of our kiddos to find us, to restore us and to heal every single part of us.
I love this story and I'm so thrilled that Cindy shared it with us today. Cindy Gao graduated from Harvard College in 2022 with a major in economics and a minor in psychology. She is married and she's starting her master's degree in counseling at Denver Seminary this fall. She was on the Canadian national fencing team for five years and was a six time national champion fencer. You'll hear a little bit more about that in today's episode. She's just a great woman. I'm thrilled to have gotten the chance to get to know her. There's just so much wisdom here for all of us as we work together to help each other become more whole.
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Alison: I'm so glad that you're here with me today, Cindy, we meet every week, but this week is really special that we get to know more about your story. So thank you so much for being here today.
Cindy: Yeah, I'm so excited to be on again.
Alison: That's right. Yes. This time we're putting the spotlight on you. All right. So you reached out to me via email about a year ago, maybe a little less than a year ago, just letting me know a little bit about your story, of coming to faith partway into your career as a student at Harvard. One of the things that was really important to you on your spiritual journey that we're going to learn more about today was bringing together this mental health piece with theology and with your faith journey.
I'd love to start a little bit backtracking to the beginning. Tell us a little bit about your background. What were you raised to believe about faith, about the nature of reality, about the purpose of life? Tell us a little bit. Set the stage for us about what Young Cindy was thinking heading off to college. What's your idea about the world and about faith and things like that?
Cindy: Yeah. I grew up in a suburb close to Toronto in Canada. I was raised by an immigrant mom, and both my parents are from China. So my mom raised me and my brother on her own, really, while my dad worked in China. He visited a few times a year, but from a very young age, I knew how hard it was for my mom to be raising me and my brother.
Also since we were immigrants, I felt a lot of pressure to assimilate to North American culture in order to belong and feel safe and really for my mom, she believed that this path towards safety was through prestige and success and having other people's approval. So really, ever since I can remember, I spent every waking second trying to achieve and perform and be recognized and seek my safety through that sort of stuff, through the high regard that other people would have of me.
Yeah, I got pretty much straight A's since kindergarten. I made sure I was always very positive and bubbly, so people would like me socially, and then I was also a really high level athlete, starting from fifth grade. I started fencing, and then I started competing on an international circuit from my first year of high school up until my last year of college.
So I guess to paint the picture, essentially, on the outside, I'm this really confident, bubbly, high achieving, really decorated, scholar, athlete, popular kid. But, what's really going on in my heart is that I'm being driven by really deep fear and insecurity. And I just think about whenever I got my good grades, or won a competition, or was elected a student body position, I never felt proud of myself, really or confident in those moments.
I felt relieved. Relief for avoiding the alternative situation that felt really dangerous.
Alison: Which would have been what?
Cindy: Not winning. Not winning and losing felt like it wasn't an option for my survival. Saying that out loud, I understand that I would have been able to survive if I didn't win, but in those moments it really felt like life or death.
I was so stressed out. I tried so hard for everything. And for most of my childhood I would say it worked out like I did win a lot of things. But yeah, to answer your question about reality and what I believed about my purpose, I'm just going to get pretty raw and honest here, I believed that I had to make up for how bad of a person I thought I was.
I saw how hard I made my mom's life. Growing up, my mom tried her best, but an experience that really impacted me deeply was when I was in kindergarten, I was afraid of the dark and I couldn't sleep at night, and I would knock on my mom's door and she would just be so upset with me.
But I couldn't control my fear. I was just scared. But that kind of made me just believe that this unchangeable part of me was just causing my mom to suffer. And that's basically this core belief that I had of myself was that I was just bad and I needed to spend my whole life working to offset that.
Alison: Yeah, children pick up these burdens. It makes sense that a part of you picks up a burden. That mom's stress, even if that's not literally being communicated, that you see her stress, you see the pain she's in and you tell yourself, a part of you tells yourself, it's my fault. I am responsible. And so then you're working overtime to make up for that.
So that's that life or death, the stakes. And what I hear in everything you're saying, Cindy, is a really activated nervous system. You're in a state of fight flight, most of your growing up years to try to Get that hit of, I can't bring, I, I can't lose, I can't let this drop because it's not just, and it's not rational, I understand that, but there's this sense of it will, this will bring more pain to my mom and I will be responsible for it if I don't get this just right.
Cindy: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Alison: Yeah. So tell me a little bit about Cindy, were you raised with any kind of particular religious worldview or faith background? Did you guys go to church or anything like that?
Cindy: No, well, I remember when I was in first grade going to church a few times, but something happened at church. There might have been some church drama, and my mom was hurt by a family in church, and then we never went again.
But I would say I grew up very agnostic and I grew up in an environment where it was even a little bit hostile towards Christianity, painted this picture of Christians as just people who weren't very rational, just believed in crazy miracles and didn't think too much about what they believed and also judged other people for not believing what they did.
Yeah, I'd say that was the environment I grew up in.
Alison: Yeah. And then, so what, tell us what happened. So when you reached out to me, the extent of the story that I know is you told me a little bit about how you were, what year were you at Harvard when you
Cindy: I was a junior when COVID hit.
Alison: Okay. You told me that there was a point at which you started Googling meaning
And through that Google search, that's what ultimately led you to an experience of faith in Jesus. So tell us what led to, so everything you've said up till now, you're super successful. You are, I would assume up until you go to Harvard, I don't know, but you're not happy, but this is just the only way you know, and it's working in a sense.
Cindy: Yeah.
Alison: The exterior, it's working, people like you, you've got those accomplishments, you're now getting into Harvard. So what happens in those first two years of Harvard that leads you to that moment of Googling meaning?
Cindy: When I first got to Harvard, I was still trying to achieve, trying to make my mom proud of me, and to see her happy.
And I remember very distinctly sophomore year I was working so hard, I was sprinting on a treadmill every day. And my mom fell into the deepest depression I've ever seen her in. And I just felt so helpless. And I soon followed suit, because I knew I was pushing myself to my limit. I couldn't try harder physically than I was, but it still wasn't enough.
Externally I seemed to be thriving, but I knew, some part of me deep inside knew that something wasn't right. I felt really empty inside, and every time I tried to bring it up with my mom or my friends, I was met with, “Oh your life is so good, Cindy just don't think about that”.
And, that was really hard for me because I knew something was wrong, but whenever I tried to talk about it was, “Look at your life. You're so lucky. Look at all these things you have”.
Alison: Yeah, you started to become aware of cracks between the external you and the inner you that's not feeling very great, but I hear what you're saying you went to the people around you who were caught up in that same mindset going, “You have everything”.
And so you're not getting that validation of someone saying, “Tell me more–what's going on”. So you're probably feeling even more isolated to some degree.
Cindy: And that's what led me to really question the meaning of life. If this is what people are telling me, and what I have always thought is supposed to be the meaning and purpose of life is to get these achievements and have all these things that I have. But why do I feel so empty and so devoid of meaning and purpose?
And yeah, that just stopped me in my tracks and I fell into a pretty deep depression starting in sophomore year. And then COVID hit my junior year and I really had to stop living my fast paced life when COVID hit because everything just shut down and slowed down. And that's when I really started having all this time to be alone with my own thoughts and my own anxiety and had to face all this internal angst that had been building up for a while
Alison: Your old coping tactics of just running, pursuing, achieving, producing were stripped away during that time. Oh, wow. And were you also isolated, literally? You had to be alone in a dorm room, probably?
Cindy: Yeah, we got kicked out of school. That was actually a pretty scary moment for me because my parents were both in China at the time and so I was actually completely alone, just me, in Canada In a house all by myself. So that was really scary. I thought it would be temporary, but it wasn't.
Alison: Yeah, okay.
Cindy: That's pretty much the backdrop of when I started Googling, “Why does everything feel meaningless”? And it was a pretty desperate move at that point. I never thought about doing anything to actively end my life but I was definitely in a state of suffering. It was a pretty desperate move by me to Google that.
But yeah, when I googled that I was scrolling through all sorts of different web pages and resources and I found the book of Ecclesiastes. And this is a book in the Bible that starts out with, “Everything is meaningless”.
And I got sucked in. I just kept reading it and so much of it just resonated so deeply with me. The author talks about how he's achieved all this wealth and done all these things that people seem to care so much about. And he's like, “It's just the blowing of the wind!”
And I was like, “Oh my gosh! That's exactly how I feel”! That was the beginning of this journey for me to explore more deeply what meaning and purpose is.
Alison: It's like you found someone finally who validated your and mirrored your experience versus what you're getting from your friends. He's saying, it was Solomon who wrote Ecclesiastes, he's I got everything and it feels empty. And you're like, “Oh my gosh, I'm not alone”.
Cindy: Yeah. That connection and validation I felt was so life-giving. So life-giving. And I really needed that because, as I said before, whenever I tried to bid for connection in my relationships, I was shut down with “Get over yourself, like your life is really good”.
But here I was reading this book that validated what I was experiencing and I just wanted to go deeper. So that's how I got sucked into reading more of the Bible and connecting with Christians.
Alison: So what happened from there? So you're at a really desperate moment. You start connecting with Ecclesiastes. You start reading more of the Bible. What, where do you go from there? What, tell us what happens next.
Cindy: I really wanted to talk to people who read Ecclesiastes and I wanted to understand how they found meaning and purpose. So I, and everything at this point was shut down, we were still in the pandemic, in the initial stages of it. But I reached out via email to a Christian campus group at Harvard, and it's the Cru Campus Group.
And I just said that I'm curious to talk to some Christians, that I didn't want to be Christian, I didn't really want anything to do with Christianity, but I just had some intellectual questions. And they connected me with a small group called Big Questions, and it was so amazing. I remember meeting every Friday, and I'm so excited every Friday for those two hours that we met through Zoom.
It was a place where we really explored deep existential questions. And I met Christians and non-Christians alike who were really engaging in these questions. And I also met Christians who actually had really intriguing reasons for God.
They weren't just Christian because their families were. They weren't just saying “oh, I just believe in this stuff because it's true”. They had put a lot of thought into their faith and there were such rich conversations about the nature of reality and historical evidence for Jesus's resurrection and I didn't believe all of it right away, but it was so interesting these conversations.
And it helped me rethink a lot of the assumptions I had made about Christians from growing up.
So during this time, I was also reading the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, telling the story of Jesus. Ecclesiastes was what I was really in for, but I then also wanted to read the other parts of the Bible, and, the Bible is centered around Jesus and the Gospels tell his story, so I went there next.
And the stories of Jesus just hit me like a train. I was reading about His life and seeing how he acted and how he really did not people-please. He did not live for the approval or praise of other people.
He went against his own family sometimes, to live out who He's meant to be and I saw that and it was so inspiring. I saw in the life of Jesus what I needed. This strength that I saw in him to be able to do that? I was like, I need that. Where is that strength coming from?
And there's other parts of the Gospels where Jesus talks about the Pharisees, and he's criticizing them for judging people who aren't following the rules. And this whole time I thought that Christians were just supposed to be like that. But then when you read the Gospels and Jesus is criticizing people who are like that, you really have to be like, “Oh, this isn't what Christianity is about”.
Christianity is not about just judging people and imposing all these rules on people's lives. It's so much more than that. It's so much deeper. And so I would say all of those things just drew me further in.
And one last thing I'd add that was really important for me was that I met safe adult Christians. They were the first people I felt safe sharing all this pent up pain and anxious thoughts with. I had never shared those things with anyone before. And I shared it with them and I experienced the healing that happens when you share hard things, and there are compassionate people present with you.
And all of those things just changed my life. And I didn't need any more convincing after that. I was like, this is the way to life. There's no other way towards life. This is it.
Alison: It's like your nervous system had that healing reparative experience from those first of what it feels like to feel seen and soothed and loved and safe. And it's almost I hear you saying there's a bunch of different things, but that was one factor for you of, when the psalmist says, I've, or I don't know who says this in the Bible, but “I've tasted the goodness of God”.
You experienced it. It was intellectual, but you also experienced it–Oh this is what I've been needing is this kind of acceptance and unconditional love.
I want to ask you, and we'll circle back to this because I, there were some key ingredients that when we circle back to talking about Gen Z and more general issues here for folks who are listening, because there were some really neat things that Christian groups on your campus did right.
I'm thinking about that big questions group. I get the sense it wasn't high pressure. There wasn't an agenda. There was a lot of authenticity. People were just allowed to show up with their questions and ask them. Because my sense of you is you would have seen right through. A hard sell. That's what brought you in is genuine interest, not someone trying to proselytize you.
Cindy: Yeah. And I do have to say, if someone tried to just tell me what the gospel was and ask me to ask Jesus into my life, at that point, I would've run away. I would've been like, Nope, I'm outta here. That's not what I'm looking for right now.
I just want to have some conversations, and I don't want to feel pressure to not be in the place that I am now. I want people to be with me where I'm at, and not to push me in the direction they want me to go.
Alison: That's right. Yeah. You'd known enough of the pressure system. Your whole face just lit up when you talked about those Friday evening zooms where you could just ask the questions that were actually on your mind and show up. As that part of you that had been so buried deeply inside that was really hurting.
Yeah. Oh man, it's just such a powerful story. So you've talked Cindy a little bit to me here and there about how it seems as if fairly shortly thereafter you did take an interest, I don't know if it was through books or if you saw somebody in faith based therapy. Tell me a little bit about that.
You're in this journey of thinking about Jesus, of reading the Gospels, of getting to know other Christians. Your nervous system is having this whole different experience of a way of being. So there's a lot going on at some point in here, you come to a whole body experience.
People can have an intellectual belief and never have really tasted the good, and hearing you, it's like mind, body, soul, emotion, every part of you is like something here is true. This is a whole body experience. And so this is happening. And then somewhere in there, you also started to be drawn to some Christian mental health resources. And I'm just curious how that played into your journey.
Cindy: Yeah I would say it's inextricable, the mental health and emotional healing and my faith, those two things had to come together for me. A big barrier for me to accepting the gospel was this core negative belief I had about myself, that I was bad and unworthy.
And I had lived experiences that shaped those beliefs for me. I had experienced things growing up that I interpreted to mean these things about myself. And, for someone like me, hearing the gospel that there's a God that loves me, that I'm worthy, that I'm good, that's gonna trigger a lot of cognitive dissonance in me.
That does not align with what is true. And I'm not gonna be able to just latch on to that story when I have so many experiences that back up what I believe to be true. And it was always very intuitive to me that I would need this deeper unpacking of what has shaped me to believe these things about myself.
And no amount of theology was going to help me just bypass that pain and believe this new story. You could tell me all these facts, quote all of this scripture to me, and it would do nothing. I would just be like, ah. I understand that's what's written in the Bible, but I physically do not feel that to be true, sorry but I don’t exactly know what’s wrong with me.
I had to choose a different approach, and in the psychology/therapy field, we learn about corrective emotional experiences. And that's this idea that your healing doesn't come from insight alone. It's experiential.
I needed corrective emotional experiences with safe adults, like therapists that I found, like the Cru staff in my life, who showed me that when I share my emotions, that doesn't make me a bad person.
Like, maybe it's possible that there are people who care about me enough to want to know how I'm doing, and they care about my suffering. I thought that these adults were gonna respond in a way that's gonna shut me down and all those things, because I had those experiences in the past.
But when they didn't, I started to be like, oh maybe it's possible that I am not a bad person, I'm not just complaining. Could it be possible that I deserve better? Could it be possible that I'm worthy of being treated this way? Could it be possible that there is a God who loves me?
That's how it went for me. And without those sort of experiences I just would not have been open to the gospel.
Alison: Yeah. There's something so powerful in what you're saying about this. You can have all the world's best theology, but there's that lived experience where the parts of your soul, your nervous system, whatever, whatever words you want to put on it. You are experiencing the truth, the whole body, the lived truth of the words.
Otherwise it's just words. And you can want to believe it and you can even intellectually believe it. But yeah, I just hear you saying it was through and you knew something in you. There was something in you that knew. You gave yourself permission to almost expose yourself to a different way of someone being with you and someone experiencing you. I would imagine that was pretty intense.
Cindy: Yeah, it was. Honestly, Alison, reading your book Boundaries for Your Soul, and I also read Aundi Kolber's book, Try Softer, and reading about these psychology/mental health/therapy fields, ‘cause you guys are in that intersection between faith and mental health and therapy–it gave me insight and helped me understand that I needed to form this basis of safety and allow my pain to be seen.
The insights that you guys drew from your field of study and how you integrated that with faith, it made a lot of sense to me. And it helped me to take that risk, because it is a risk to expose yourself again. But yeah, I knew I needed to do that in order for my pain to be seen, to make room for hope. I had to, that's just how the process goes.
Alison: It's so interesting listening to you because I could see it so easily. You could have the intellectual, you could have the joy of wanting to believe this. And if you had bypassed the pain, it would have come out at some point, but I love that you, and this is the work and now you're going in to do this work, which is so beautiful.
I love that you almost instantly were like, I got to go deeper. I got to do that. The healing work as part of this whole thing, it's not. optional. It's not a la carte, it's part of it. It's intertwined. That deeper healing work is intertwined with really absorbing and metabolizing the truth, which isn't just intellectual.
Again, it's the true experiential truth of a God who is ultimately this safe place for us, but when we've never had an experience of safety, how in the world do we understand that? That's just abstract until other people show us what that experience of a presence, a loving presence, is.
Cindy: Yeah. And even just reading the Bible, that is the sense that you get of what God wants for us. He does not want us to just know all these scripture verses and be able to quote them off. He wants us to experience His love. He wants us to feel the safety and strength that comes from truly believing that He loves us. Unconditionally.
He loves us so much that he would send his son to die for us. What kind of people do we become when we let that truly sink into our souls? That's it changes who you are on a very deep level. And that's what God wants for us. It's not just this behavior change that he's looking for.
Alison: Head knowledge, behavior change. Yeah, we really short sell it. I don't want to ask you to speak for all of Gen Z. That would not be fair. But I do think some of what you're saying speaks to the cry of a heart of the generation that wants more of what you're saying.
Before we get there, I want to touch on one other point, which is that you told me at some point that speaks to this whole body transformation that was going on. Mind you, you're still at Harvard. You're still like, doing classes. I'm assuming this is most of that junior year where you were remote, but you told me that at some point, maybe this is when you return to campus, that your nervous system had undergone such a shift in how you experience things that it would be hard for you to be around the anxiety, the fight flight kind of crowd, the achieving producing crowd, your prior friends.
And I, these are my words, but it was almost as if you were saying, ‘cause your nervous system had experienced a different way of being in the world, I don't have to just move through life in a constant state of stress and fight flight that it was hard for you for a while too. You had to almost extract yourself during that season a little bit. Can you tell me a little bit about that? And are you comfortable talking about this?
Cindy: Yeah, I can try. That was a really hard thing to navigate. I took a gap year right after my junior year and that's where a lot of what we've talked about really happened for me. All these insights and seeking healing and beginning to open up to people that all happened during my gap year. And then, I was really scared to go back to Harvard to finish up my senior year because I didn't want to fall back into the same patterns I had when I was there last.
Alison: Totally. Yeah.
Cindy: And I mean, I look back and I don't think I necessarily did everything perfectly. It was so hard, but yeah, I did have to learn to give myself permission to say no to a lot of things my first three years of college, I partied a lot.
I lived such a fast paced life ‘cause I didn't want to ever be alone with my own thoughts, but I knew I needed to embrace a slower lifestyle. I needed to say no to a lot of parties and things that were going on and that was really hard. And I had to navigate changes in my friendships.
That was really hard, because my friends also had to adjust. It was like I was a new person and not the same person that they knew from before. And so navigating all of that was really difficult. We talked in that Q&A episode about friendships about the guilt that comes up when you change as a person and how that can affect your friendships. You feel guilty because you're like, Oh, my friend is actually uncomfortable because I've changed.
And it's not because they're a horrible person, but it's just, it's different. So it's uncomfortable. And, is that my fault? Oh no, I don't want to make people uncomfortable but I can't go back to how I was. And so really, learning to sit through that, and be okay with disappointing other people because And that's what Jesus did, he disappointed so many people because he just needed to be who he was. And he wasn't gonna change himself for other people, so I remember always reminding myself that my senior year of I, this is really hard, but this is the path to life. I need to be who I am.
Alison: And Cindy, what I love, the fruit of the spirit is so evident in what you're saying. It's the humility of it's, I don't want to hurt anybody. I love these people. I'm not trying to send a message. It's just, this is what I have to do for my health and wholeness. This is what I have to do to be more like the person God wants me to be.
And I love the humility in that, but when there's that humility, there's also sometimes more of that sensitivity. to, it's almost easier to put on the mask of starting to judge other people, which is why sometimes Christians it's, we don't have to then face the pain of that feeling of separation.
There's such a genuineness in what you're saying. I just needed to save my own soul. I needed to mind my own heart, mind, and soul in these old ways, whatever they were, whether it was overperforming, whether it was trying to distract myself by staying busy all the time, I have to make different choices.
And I do think about Jesus a lot, he had to stay true. It is the narrow way. It's not an easy way. It is the way of life though. So I love that. I'd love it if just here at the end, if you would share with us a little bit again, not asking you to speak for your generation, but what do you think?
So as you, as about your story and about listeners who are sending their kids back to college or are preparing their kids for college or , I just am curious, some of your thoughts about what do you think other folks in your generation are needing or longing for or seeking as it relates to faith and wholeness.
How can we be more mindful and more attuned to those needs as adults as those safe, hopefully moving toward those healthy adults. What would you say about that?
Cindy: Yeah. Mental health is something my generation talks a lot about. A lot of us are struggling with anxiety and depression and, a whole host of things that are, that we're struggling with internally. And it's really interesting because Gen Z, we have enjoyed so much progress in terms of all these technological advances, advances in medical care, and we just have access to so much more stuff than ever before.
And it looks like it's so much easier for us to navigate life, technically. But, I would actually say it's been extremely hard for my generation to navigate life emotionally and psychologically. We grew up with cell phones and the internet and, you're like 13 and you're reading about all the tragedies that are happening around the world on your phone.
And you're scrolling through them one by one. And, our brains are developing, we're so overwhelmed, there's so much going on, there's, we're also exposed to, cyberbullying, or, all the social pressures that you feel when you're in person at school growing up, we had to feel that also online, you don't get a break from that when you leave school and go home, you're wanting to belong and wanting to fit in. You can't only care about, Do I fit in, do I belong at school?
You also have to care about your online ever present persona. And a lot of us just grew up so overwhelmed and constantly alert and emotionally burdened. We have access to so much technology, but how do we navigate that? I don't think we necessarily know. Having opportunities doesn't guarantee that we have the wisdom to navigate those opportunities.
So we need people to guide us and lead us to resilience and emotional intelligence and these sorts of skills that we can't learn just from the internet. We need the presence of other people in our lives, teachers, parents, safe adults who we can talk to about our feelings.
We have so many feelings. And we really need safe places to talk about that. We need unconditional love.
Alison: It really makes a lot of sense. In last week's episode I talked with Sissy Goff, who is a therapist, and she talks about anxiety, but one of the things she talks about is how, it underscores what you're saying, which is it's really on the adults, it's on the parents. We can't, as adults, sit around and bemoan the state of, it's no, we have to be a safe place.
We have to figure it out and walk in there with you and hold that calm space with you so that your nervous system has a chance to release some of all some of that cortisol and some of that toxic stress that you're carrying around. We have to do. our jobs, if it means we have to get off line, if we have to do what we have to do to regulate so that you have someone to help you find those reparative emotional experiences with. It's really interesting what you're saying. Yeah, it's pretty profound.
Cindy: And I would add, people in my generation, we're all trying to fit in, to be accepted, to belong, to be cool, maybe. And, what would be great for parents to be able to provide to their kids, or just adults to be able to provide to people that they're leading:
As adults, you have all sorts of fears and desires for these kids, in your lives. But the big blessing for those kids would be, in the situation that the kid ends up doing something that you didn't want them to do or they didn't do something that you wanted them to…Do you think you can still be that safe person for them to talk to about it to walk with them through that?
Because as kids, we are sometimes maybe even pushing those buttons like hey, is there a point where we will no longer be accepted by you? Where we will have to hide from you? And we want to push that sometimes. And having that safe experience with an adult, it's like a lived experience of what God's love is for us.
God has high standards for his children. And those standards don't change if the children don't want to fulfill those standards, but God continues to pursue our hearts and continues to be our refuge and our sanctuary when we fall short and when we do the things that break his heart.
And that's a very lofty thing to ask of parents, but it will give your kid a lived experience of God's love. And that will change your kid's life.
Alison: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good word. Preach that. It reminds me of what Curt Thompson says, something along the lines of “we're all born into the world looking to be found”.
And when you're describing whatever the kid is doing, even if it's to push you away, they're trying to be found. They're trying to say, will you come find me? Will you come after me? I love that. Is there anything else before that you want to add or answer? You've done such a great job. Oh my gosh, you're so articulate.
Cindy: I've really enjoyed this conversation. We could probably talk for hours about just all the stuff.
Alison: I know Cindy, you are just you're so articulate. I appreciate just your perspective and you're sharing your perspective. And I find myself as I listen to your story thinking I'm, when you paint that picture of being all alone during the pandemic and facing the existential realities as painful as that was. If there's a severe mercy in it to use that, is it forced to the surface? But I just think of how many kids are probably feeling that. And I just so appreciate your, you're sharing it with us. What would you want? Your younger self? I don't know, maybe back to 13. What would you want her, or whatever age.
What age feels good to you?
Cindy: Maybe four?
Alison: Four. Yeah. What would you want your four year old self to know that you know now?
Cindy: This is interesting. I'm still currently pretty deep in the process of grieving my younger self and when I think about some of the ways that I interpreted the world and messages about myself, it just brings tears to my eyes and I feel my body tense up as I remember how unsafe I felt and how deeply troubled I was always feeling.
My heart just breaks for her, but my younger self can sense that, and she knows that I feel that way about her, and that's really healing. Yeah, I guess I wish that she would know that she's a gift, and that she's not a burden. I wish that she would know that she's good. But, yeah, I don't even know if current Cindy is fully there yet. I guess that's also my wish for my current self.
Alison: Yeah. Yeah, I love what you're saying. There's a paradox of grief, of having to revisit and the pacing of it too, the pacing of revisiting and knowing that we have a whole lifetime really to do the work of it. Re parenting those younger parts of us and helping them to understand what we know.
But I love that you're getting little glimpses and that she's getting little glimpses from you and from other people around you. So it's beautiful what you're, all the work you're doing to give her what she deserves, which is just that. One of the things I love about IFS work is when we invite these young parts of us to unburden, they almost always want to dance and play.
It's always really light, and I just think about that for you, when about your little four year old girl, that's what I'm like, ‘cause I, I picture this hard working and I'm like, Oh man, I just hope she gets to have a ball. And I know you've been having, you've been doing a good job of helping her out. And what is bringing out the best of you right now?
Cindy: Yeah, what you mentioned, allowing that younger part of myself to play and be silly. I have spent the past two months this summer in a really small town in Illinois. It's called Dietrich. It's where my husband and his family live. There are 800 people in the whole town, and it's been really good for me.
From my story of just always chasing prestige and feeling a lot of pressure to always get the best job or like the most prestigious whatever it is, in this town, I feel none of that. It's so much easier for me to give myself permission to do less here, to slow things down, to just have fun and relax.
And that's been so good to me.
Alison: Every time we would get on the Zoom to talk this summer, you'd be like, I was at a carnival,
Cindy: Yeah!
Alison: –or I was at a fair. It's funny listening, in the context of this conversation, there was a sort of wonder about you, just like that childlike wonder oh, she went to a fair.
And it was just so cool to see you just enjoying it. That's cool. I love it. Let's see here. I cannot wait to hear more from you as you enter into this new chapter of your journey at my alma mater, at Denver Seminary, where you're going to be studying counseling. One thing I love about you, Cindy, is you are very clear about not putting that pressure back on yourself.
You're doing it because you love it. You're doing it because you want to learn, you want to grow and you're really good about just being very clear about your intentions. And so I would love to, I cannot wait. I'm so excited to vicariously hear what you're learning about and what's bringing you life as you go through this journey.
But we just thank you so much for just sharing your wisdom with us. You're just a gem and just such a gift. You've been such a gift to me. It brings tears to my eyes. I remember when I got that email from you and there was just something about it, the way you wrote it was so authentic.
And I was really on this journey of needing help and not knowing how to get help. And we just started talking and both of us had very different seasons of life, but committing to being very true in the moment with each other about what we needed and our different growth curves and just effortlessly figuring out how to work together.
And it's been such a gift to me. So I'm just so grateful for you and grateful for you sharing this wisdom with us today.
Cindy: Oh, it's been a really big blessing for me to be able to work with you too.
Alison: Yeah. It's fun.
Alison: Thank you for being here and we'll I'm sure we'll hear more from you down the road.
Cindy: Hopefully!
I am thrilled to be back this week, diving into an incredible conversation with beloved therapist, Sissy Goff! We're tackling the topic of anxiety and its ripple effect on our kids and on our parenting styles. With 30 years of experience guiding kids and parents, Sissy brings a wealth of knowledge to the table. Plus, she's sharing tips from her latest book, The Worry Free Parent.
We cover so much in this episode, including:
1. A parent's most important job
2. Why we are seeing more anxiety in kids (and parents)
3. 5 parenting traps
4. A parent's surprising superpower
5. Sissy's moment of hope in the Covenant School shooting aftermath
Do you have questions about friendship for Dr. Alison? Leave them here.
Resources:
- Connect with Sissy on Instagram or at raisingboysandgirls.com
- Pre-order The Worry Free Parent by Sissy Goff and get a free bonus chapter
- Dopamine Nation by Dr. Anna LembkeRelated Podcast Episodes
Related Episodes:
- Episode 65: Vulnerability, Parenting, and Letting Go of Control—Inside A Guy’s Perspective With Our Friends From Dadville
- Episode 6: Do I Really Have an Inner Child? What It Means to Reparent Yourself
- Episode 54: Can I Pray My Anxiety Away? A Surprising Approach to the Anxiety Pandemic & How to Walk Yourself & Your Kids Through It
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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.
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 missed you guys last week. I took a mini break during the middle of the summer, and I’m so happy to be back today with you with a brand new Back to School series. This series is about parenting and kids and culture. This will apply to you if you’re a parent, but even if you’re not a parent, we’ve got some really great topics on anxiety and the culture in general and how to stay healthy as an adult human which is what all of us need, not only for our own kids, but for every kid and all the people in our lives.
You’ll see a theme through all of these episodes. The more we do our own work to become healthy, to become whole, to become centered, to learn what it means to honor those C words, those C words we talk about in Boundaries for Your Soul, and also back in Episodes 39 and 40 on the podcast: Calm. Confident. Clear. Creative. Curious. Courageous. Compassionate. Connected. Right? These grounding words where we know we are leading from that Spirit-led place inside, from a calm nervous system, where we’re leading ourselves, and we’re leading our emotions not the other way around. Right? When we’re in that place, we’re going to be the best parents we can be. We’re also going to be the best neighbors, the best aunts, the best uncles, the best siblings, the best godparents, the best grandparents. . . all those roles we step into with greater clarity and with greater courage, when we’re calm and doing the work ourselves. So, these episodes are really for all of us who are trying to show up effectively in the lives of the people we love.
So in today’s episode, I’m talking with a fellow therapist, Sissy Goff. Sissy’s amazing, and we really get into today why it’s so important for us to not parent out of worry, out of anxiety and what holds us back from that. Why is it so hard not to let our worry and our anxiety take us over, especially when we’re parenting, but really in any challenging situation. And some of the even really well-intentioned coping tactics we all have that actually get in the way of allowing our kids to grow and develop and thrive and develop their own coping strategies as they deal with worry and anxiety. So this is complicated to tease out, right? We’re trying to parent our kiddos through worry and anxiety, meanwhile we have to deal with our own worry and anxiety in order to do that.
So if you’re looking for more resources as you’re listening to this episode, first, please check out Sissy’s brand new book, called The Worry Free Parent: Finding the Confidence You Need so Your Kids Can Too. And that’s exactly what this book is about. It’s a real deep dive with a ton of practical content to help you figure out how to major in the majors, what’s important, what matters, let go of what you can’t control, let go of what’s not yours to control, so that you can show up in the way that your kids need.
And another resource you might consider, are Episodes 39, 40, and 41, or my book with Kim Miller, Boundaries for Your Soul, which is all about differentiating from parts of us. And particularly, in this case, you’d be differentiating from an anxious part of you as it comes out in your parenting; from a worry part of you as it comes out in this world—and learning to take charge of that part of you so again you’re leading from that calm, clear place inside, where you’re showing leadership. So you’re majoring in what’s major and letting go of the rest, and you’re seeing clearly to help guide your kids through the challenges that they face.
So with all that being said, I’m so thrilled to bring you today, my conversation with Sissy Goff. Sissy is the Executive Director of Daystar Counseling Ministries in Nashville, Tennessee. Since 1993, she has been helping young kids and their parents find confidence in who they are and hope in who God is making them to be. Sissy is a sought-after speaker for parenting events across the country and is a frequent guest on media outlets including CNN, Good Morning America, Inside Edition, NBC, and Christianity Today. She is the bestselling author of 13 books including her brand new book, which we talk about today: The Worry-Free Parent: Finding the Confidence You Need So Your Kids Can, Too. It’s such a great resource. Sissy’s a gem, and I’m so thrilled to bring you today’s conversation.
Music
Alison: Thank you so much for being here, Sissy. All of my work is with adults, primarily women, and I don't work much with children. I did a little bit during my internships, but I was so thrilled that you have this book coming out and have so many questions for you and and really excited to have you on the podcast today. So thank you for being with us.
Sissy: I'm so honored to get to be, I've long been an admirer of yours and it's fun to get to connect and be kind of in person as much as we can be.
Alison: I know. Thanks to technology. There's so much more we can do this way. I kind of want to dive right in. Sissy. I mean, you've been working with kids for 30 years. Is that right? And I'm curious, what, what got you started? Why kids? Why did you start out specializing, working with kids?
Sissy: I wonder how many counselors would say this very same answer. But I became the person I wish I'd had in my life growing up. I grew up in a family where we didn't talk a lot about emotions or what was going on. I mean back in the 70s nobody was really talking about that a lot.
No one was passing feelings charts around the dinner table to talk about that. And I was the kind of kid who smiled all the time, no matter what was going on. And I had a lot of really amazing mentors in my life. But I would have loved to have had someone who had said,
“Hey, Sissy, no one smiles all the time. There's got to be more going on inside of you”.
And I didn't. When did you start doing this work?
Alison: Oh, it's been about 25 years ago, myself. Yeah.
Sissy: So similar. And I didn't even, I did not know a person who was in counseling. I didn't know people talking about counseling. And the only person I ever heard of doing something like this, you're going to laugh because we're probably, I'm older than you probably, but we're close to the same age, was Marlena from Days of Our Lives.
And she was a child psychologist. And I thought, well, that sounds cool.
Alison: Wait, was she really? I forget.
Sissy: I think so.
Alison: I wasn’t allowed to quote unquote, to watch Days of Our Lives, but I would sneak it because, and frankly, part of it was similar to what you're saying, because in the eighties, when I grew up, we still weren't really talking about feelings. And so some of the only ways you could get that was through television.
You'd hear people having these dramatic conversations or whatever. So that is so interesting that Marlena was a child psychologist,
Sissy: Can I ask you how you got started?
Alison: As a therapist? Yeah, I love this. We can definitely go back and forth because I love talking to other therapists so much. For me, it was very much, it was, I didn't yet know when I started to become a therapist. It was less about thinking–I still thought I had a perfect family. Although through the process of becoming a therapist, you kind of realize all the ways in which all of our families, even the best of our families, don't get it right.
And I love in your book that you talk about the fact that yes, in many ways we are learning now how to focus on mental health. And we talk about our feelings with our kids more, but we're all still in progress. We're all still learning. for me, it really was, my specialty is in faith and psychology, my PhD is in religion and psychology.
So for me, I had this really deep faith in Jesus. I had a really strong faith, but I had no clue who I was. I didn't know myself and I didn't even know that it was okay to think about myself, to look at myself, to understand myself. I thought that was selfish. So everything I've done is all about really focusing on, wait a minute, it's not selfish to look at your own feelings, to understand your own needs, to think about your own nervous system.
Psychology was coming alongside my faith–it's great to know a lot about God. We need that. And also we need to know about ourselves. That's part of becoming a human, a healthy, whole human.
And I love that you're taking that to parenting. The best gift we have to give to our children is to become our whole selves, which means we've got to deal with our own anxieties. We've got to deal with our own fears.
Sissy: Yes. Yes. That's a beautiful way to put that, to become our whole selves. And we get to reflect more of Jesus the more we know of ourselves because we're able to be more authentically the parts of him that he's placed inside of us. So cool. Thank you for sharing that with me. I love hearing that.
Alison: Yeah. Well, I love that you became that person that you had wanted to have been there for you. You became that safe attachment figure for other children, which is really what we're doing as therapists. We're becoming that reparative experience.
Sissy: Yes, exactly.
Alison: I love that. So as I read the Worry Free Parent, one of the things–I don't want to project onto you, but as I was thinking about what you were doing through my therapist lens is I could imagine you've worked with kids for 30 years. And through that, you're also working with parents. And I imagine, because it's really a book to parents, and in such a gentle, beautiful way, I hear you coming alongside parents saying, you guys are really the solution here.
You're the solution to your kid's anxiety. Tell me what, what led you to want to write this book, especially to parents?
Sissy: Yes. Exactly that. I mean, I can think of a parent I met with not long ago who came in and she was very concerned about her daughter and her level of anxiety. And the longer I sat with this mom in my time with her, you know how it is when someone's really anxious. It's like it wafts over to you.
You can't help but absorb it. And I was feeling it as I sat there with her and tried to be really gracious and say, “Have you ever thought about going to see somebody yourself? Tell me about your family history, all of that”. And she said, which I so appreciate, she said, “I have a very limited amount of funds and I have a very limited amount of time. And so I've got to prioritize getting my daughter in”.
A lot of parents feel that way. And that feels like good parenting. I mean, I'm going to take care of my child first. And with this mom, it was evident that what her daughter really needed was for her mom to do the work herself first.
Everything we know about family systems tells us the cogs are dependent upon each other and they're keeping each other turning. And so if the daughter had gotten help and not the mother, then nothing would really get better. And so I wanted this mom to get help herself because it's a trickle down.
I mean, it's contagious. And her daughter was young enough. I really did feel like the source was the mom and in her most well intentioned loving heart, she was missing it.
Alison: Yeah. Exactly. I love that. That in our most well-intentioned moments, we can still miss the very thing our kids need, which is for us to take that time, maybe even a little bit away from them, in order to become healthier so that the time that we're with them is more constructive, is of a higher quality, has more of that non anxious presence.
I know so many of the moms I work with, they think that more, more, more, more, more is better. And I'm always saying, actually, what's better is quality. If you can give those kids some quality moments of that non-anxious presence. You say in the book, and I thought this was such a powerful quote, you say, “A parent's job is to be the calmest person in the room”.
Sissy: That's a direct quote from a parent I was meeting with. I mean, it was a beautiful statement by this dad and this couple that I work with who are doing an amazing job with their kids.
They don't have parents that have modeled neither one of them anything that they want to do as parents and so we do parent consults at Daystar where parents are coming in to talk about their parenting and things they could tweak and that's what we were doing.
And he was talking about how they both get angry with their daughter more than they want to, which I feel like you and I could talk about that. I'm hearing that from parents more than I've ever heard it before.
And he said, I was yelling at her and all of a sudden I heard this voice that I had recently heard at a conference I went to who said, “I'm the CEO of my company. A CEO's job is to be the calmest person in the room”. And he said, “ my job as a parent is to be the calmest person in the room and I am blowing it”.
Alison: You're bringing up such a good point. Why are we all so on high alert right now? There's so much going on in our world.
You see all the things parents are dealing with. There's so much that we are dealing with, let alone our kids. And to myself, sometimes probably our collective nervous systems are activated. There's lots of research on all the reasons why, I don't know if there's any way to quantify that over history, but we certainly know this isn't a calm period of our history,
I guess what I first want to ask you is, you've been doing this for 30 years–are you seeing more anxiety? The stats are telling us kids are more anxious. I'm sure parents are more anxious. Do you actually see that in your practice?
Sometimes I look at the stats and that there's truth in them. And I also wonder, we're also diagnosing more. Right? We have more names to put on these things than maybe we did 30 years ago. So tell me, you've had a bird's eye view with kids. What do you think about that?
Sissy: Oh, I love that you're saying that. I'm so glad we're friends now because we think very similarly. Yes, we're diagnosing more than we've ever diagnosed before and we're over diagnosing so many things today and at the same time, yes, I am seeing more anxious kids and more anxious parents than I ever have before.
Especially for children the average age of onset used to be eight, it's dropped to six. And I would say for elementary school age kids, I'm seeing it more than I ever have. And then there is this significant uptick around puberty.
Alison: Mm hmm.
Sissy: So in those two time periods, I'm seeing it. I mean, among adolescents too, but especially those ages.
Alison: Do you have any sense of the why?
Sissy: Like you said, there's so many things we can talk about. I have never felt like there was as much pressure in as many areas of a child's life. And I don't think it's pressure that parents are putting on kids. It's cultural pressure that kids are supposed to be excelling academically in ways that I don't think it would have even occurred to us that we could do as well as kids are putting pressure on themselves to do.
They're supposed to be excelling athletically, artistically, and be doing five different activities at all times and in leadership positions. Honestly, there are times that , “How do I become a lobbyist and go to the government and say, we've got to do something academically”?
It's too much for kids. And I really do believe that. There's so much pressure. We could talk about technology. that parents are over-parenting right now. When you're talking about how things have changed and asking why I got into this, when you think about the 70s and 80s, especially in the 70s, the only parenting book was Dr. Spock. And all that I know he said was “smile a lot at your kids”, because that's the only thing my mom took from it.
And she smiled a lot and my sister and I, ironically, that's the compliment we hear the most–is that we smile a lot. Here, you and I are speaking to parents and adults from a mental health standpoint, but there's so many people giving input into all the things that parents and all of us are supposed to be doing.
And that is lending itself to parents feeling more like failures than ever before. I mean, there's so many things that are factoring in. You could speak to this, more than I could even. I'm seeing parents who are overcompensating for what they felt like they didn't get.
And so they're over-identifying emotionally with their kids and they're hearing them and attuning to them, but they're not giving 'em coping strategies to work through it.
Alison: Yeah. We're being really candid here, listeners. So here are two therapists giving their thoughts on, I sometimes think of it as the pendulum. I was probably on the back end of the, “children should be seen and not heard parenting approach, which is, you don't talk about your feelings. All the focus is on behavior.
Especially when you bring the Christian overlay into it, which was part of my experience. And I do see what you're seeing. There's so much attunement and obviously we need attunement. We know that attachment is so important and also, children need boundaries. We know that children need resilience. We know that children need to learn to cope. We know that children need to be able to survive hard situations.
And so I do think you're right. I do think that the pendulum can swing so far the other way to put so much pressure on parents, but it's also not so good for our kiddos who sometimes need to learn a little bit the hard way.
Again, it's that healthy balance of that book Dopamine Nation. Have you read that book? The author talks about the pleasure pain principle and how we need a little bit of hard things because that actually regulates in the brain the pleasure. We need the balance of both. We have to learn how to deal with challenging things in order to have that proper balance. So what you're saying makes a lot of sense to me.
So in your book you talk about different parenting traps, one being the helicopter parent. What are some of the other ways that you see parents out of really good intentions, but not quite getting it right?
Sissy: Yes, and I'm glad you said that and that's what I mean as we're being candid, that's what I would want to take it back to again if you're doing any of these things it's because you're a really good parent and you're trying so hard to love your kids. You want the best for them and out of that wanting the best, helicopter parenting is definitely one.
I kind of made these up based on what I'm seeing the most and one of them would be snowplow parenting, that idea of we're going to clear the path ahead of them so they don't have to deal with hard things. We can make the bump smooth and make it really easy on them.
Backhoe parenting, where I'm going to clean up their failure because I don't want them to have to deal with the repercussions of their failure. It is too much.
Sidecar parenting, which I feel like we both see a lot. This is what I went through when I was growing up. A parent thinking, “She's like me. So I'm going to step in because I assume that she's feeling exactly what I felt. And so she's going to be in the sidecar zooming around with me”.
And then parade float parenting, where I'm going to make this as fun as it possibly can. And we're going to entertain ourselves along the way. So you won't feel any sadness or anything hard.
Alison: How do you encourage parents who are listening, how do you mitigate? How do you begin, because all of this is driven by anxiety. To bring this back. I was thinking about how there's all these headlines screaming about anxiety. Our kids are anxious, it's such an anxious world.
The news is half of what's feeding all of the anxiety and the response to all that is more anxiety. We start to clench. Our nervous system goes into that fight, flight, stay. We start to get more anxious and we double down on the anxious parenting, which is the exact opposite of what it means to be the calmest parent in the room.
When we read all the headlines, when we see all the anxiety, when we see all the landmines and the pitfalls that our kids might be even headed toward, the response is not to double down on one of those styles that you listed. It's actually to take a step back and do the work of calming ourselves.
So how do we do that? Right? The first step I would think is to begin to understand, gosh, this is the voice of anxiety. This is the voice of anxiety. I've got to take a U-turn and do my own work to work through my own anxiety. So how do you talk parents through that?
Sissy: Yes. And I wonder if you experienced this too. There's something that happens with the amygdala. That's the part that's taking over, as we know, that it's almost like when you lived in a dorm or a sorority house and one person would start their period and then everyone's on their period.
I feel like one amygdala gets activated and everyone is in that place where everyone's screaming, panicking, going down in the spiral together. I don't know that that's scientific, but it feels like it's what happens so much of the time.
So, okay, so what to do? The first thing I would say is, and again, I feel like I'm preaching to the choir. We probably have the same ideas, but I want every family to have a code word. And a humorous code word is even better, so it could make you all laugh when you say it, but anybody in the family has the authority to say, “Watermelon” or whatever it is.
And when that is said, we're going to stop. Because like you said, if we're functioning out of our amygdala, we're not going to get to a rational place. There's going to be no productivity in conversation. There's going to be no healing, no reparations, nor restoration.. I can't even get to the words, you know what I mean. So, nothing good is going to come, like you said. And so, we need a pause. A word that makes us pause. And we each go to our separate spaces.
And I will say to parents, “It is fine if you need to go to the bathroom and lock the door, it is absolutely fine to get away from them at that moment”.
And then it was funny when you were talking earlier, Alison, I was thinking, I would bet you're an amazing therapist, because even the way that you talk as you're engaging with someone, you talk slowly and I can hear your breath. My breathing is being regulated as I'm hearing you talk and breathe.
That's where we need to start. We've got to slow down with parents and we've got to get their bodies calmed back down so their blood vessels can dilate, the blood flow can shift back to the cortex, all the things that we know.
Because it's easy for people to feel like mindfulness is really hokey pokey and there's nothing to it. Instead, it changes the chemistry of our brains in those moments and we can come back and have that healing conversation.
Alison: That's so true. And no matter what, you have seen it all. You are truly working with parents who have seen the worst of the worst. And no matter what, I want people to hear it, going back to that breath of, I am here in the moment. I have what my kids need in the moment. They have my love.
I always think, Sissy, that is how God loves us. God doesn't always fix it. God doesn't always make it better. God doesn't always clear the path ahead of us, but God is always with us. And that's what we're modeling for our kids. We may not be able to fix it for them. We may not be able to make it better. But you know what? We're going to be with them through it and that's what they need.
We have to find that in ourselves. And I love that you'd go through such practical mindfulness, grounding, breath work with parents. That really works to keep you in the moment with those kids. And that's what they need.
Sissy: And anxiety pulls us right out of it. We are not there with them in those moments.
Alison: The other thing I love that you talk about in your book, Sissy, is another fantastic quote, “If you don't learn to stop criticizing yourself, that very same criticism will spill over onto your kids”. Tell us a little bit about that. What's the danger of our own criticisms for our kiddos?
Sissy: well, I would say I am one who has a lot of critical self talk and somebody said that to me. A good friend said that to me years ago. She said, “you cannot hate yourself that much without some of that hate spilling over onto the people closest to you”. And it had never occurred to me up until that point that that's what happened.
Are you an Enneagram person? Okay, I'm a One. What are you on the enneagram?
Alison: Three wing Two. I always tell Beth McCord I'm a two and a half. I ask her if that's the real thing. 2.5.
Sissy: 2.5, that's good. That's a great combo. Yes, so you do too then with some three. I mean, I'm seeing parents do this more than ever, where I feel like they're being so hard on themselves and so critical of themselves, and there's no way to stop that voice from spilling out onto them, because we have such high expectations of ourselves, and we're not meeting them, and inevitably, we end up putting the same high expectations on them, and maybe it's not academically, but in terms of their character.
Our work, as you said before, our work is always going to ripple over onto them. And so when we're learning to have a kinder, gentler voice with ourselves, we're going to have a kinder, gentler voice with them. And like you said, it doesn't mean we don't have boundaries. It doesn't mean we don't give them consequences. But at the same time, we're compounding the problem if we're all in this shame spiral together.
Alison: Yeah. There's such a difference when you're in a calm place yourself. When you say to your child, “I love you and we're not going to do this now”. And it actually carries more authority and more weight when we are calm than when we're activated and yelling or trying to extinguish a behavior versus entering into it with that.
Again, we're humans. We're fallible. We make lots of mistakes. I love in the book that you say “we get 50% of it”.
Sissy: Dan Allender. Well, and what you're saying Alison, one of the things I've seen happens is all the trends we could talk about. Kids are struggling with self-regulation more than ever before. Part of what I'm watching happen in counseling is kids, rather than learning to use coping strategies, are using their parents as coping strategies.
And so I'm a child and I've gotten all in my amygdala and I'm reactionary at this moment and upset. If I can draw you into that battle with me, then I'm going to have an emotional release and I'm going to feel better because I got all that out. Which we know is a terrible pattern to be learning for the rest of our lives, if that becomes how we process our emotions–by drawing someone else into a fight.
Alison: Wow, that's so interesting. It's sort of like, it's almost like co-regulation, but the unhealthy version of it. Instead of co-regulating them in the sense that we become that calm presence, which allows them to regulate themselves, we get drawn into it with them.
Sissy: Yes, I never thought about it like that. That's exactly what it is.
Alison: That's so interesting. I love that you talk about this in your book toward the end about trusting your gut. And it goes back to something you said about, there's so much information out there. This information highway can kind of freak any parent out.
There's so much, it's almost the opposite of what we had right when we were little. There was almost no information. Now there's too much. It's saturation. And so I love that in the middle of that, you're saying at the end of the day, you are their parent. You know what they need.
Talk to us a little bit about that. It's good to read books. It's good to learn about these things. We need to educate ourselves. But at the end of the day, we are the parent. We are the ones God has put in our child's life.
So what's that balance? How do we know when to kind of let the noise fade away and be in that moment with our kids? How do we know how to do that?
Sissy: Well, we've got to do our own work. I mean, that's the biggest piece of it because the danger of anxiety with kids is being like the worry monster. With teenagers, I talk about it being the worry whisper, but we all have that voice in our heads.
And with a kid, with a fifth grader, it is really easy to say, “You are not sick. There's no way you're going to throw up at this moment”. There’s worry spiraling you around that. What you and I would both know is that we could track development and know what kids are going to get stuck on in terms of the worried loop of thoughts based on their development because it's the worst thing they can imagine at that age.
For parents, the worst thing that you can imagine is something happening to your kids. But instead of being able to say, I'm not sick, I'm not going to throw up. It feels real. Anything that you start to perseverate on as a parent can feel like this is my intuition and I've got to take care of my kids in this rather than “I'm in a worried loop and I'm stuck”.
And so like you said, teasing that voice out, learning to recognize that that’s anxiety. That's not my gut. That's not my intuition. That's not the Holy Spirit speaking through my gut. And then learning to trust. Pray and trust that that's God's voice and that's certainly what I do as a therapist more than anything.
I pray that my gut is in line with the Holy Spirit and that's what I've learned to trust the most in a conversation with somebody as to where to go next. As to the question to ask. And for parents, intuition is a superpower and the more they use it, the more they lean into it, the more they'll trust it.
Alison: Yeah. I love how in the book, you go after anxiety. It's a tool of the enemy because paradoxically, it actually takes us away from that God-given intuition, that God-given-Holy-Spirit-led gut. And so I love what you're saying. I kind of want to slow this down here for the listeners.
Number one, learn to identify the voice of anxiety. In the book, you say, give anxiety a name. It's a part of you. It's a part that needs you to learn to differentiate from it. When you name something, you're saying this is not all of who I am. I'm putting it out here. I'm separating out from it.
You give some great names, and you do it with kids where they can really learn to identify, this is the worry voice. This is the worry monster. But that's what we do as parents too. We have to start to go, this is my anxious voice.
So number one is identifying that. I would suggest for those of you listening, if your heart rate is up, if your pulse is high, if you're in that state of fight flight, if you're tense, if you're feeling panicky,
Sissy: –with the same thought circling back around and around,
Alison: –all of those things are a good cue. It's your worry. And then you've got to do those other exercises: you go through the grounding, the mindfulness, the calming, so that you're not making decisions out of that anxious place. And that's what taps you back into that gut.
the big part of it is first identifying when we're in the anxious mind.
Sissy: Yes, exactly. And again, it's hard to do because the issue feels more valid than any other topic that our anxiety is going to attack.
Alison: What do you see as the most common things that anxiety is going after? In one section of the book, you gave a list–you did a poll on social media, and you sort of created a list of the kinds of things anxiety is saying, the ways that it's speaking. Can you share some of those with us?
Sissy: Two that stand out to me right now, off the top of my head: One is attaching future meaning to present problems. I remember a mom who said to me, “We were on a trip and my daughter threw her trash at the trash can and she did not put it in and she left it there for the cleaning people to pick up. She is not going to learn how to function as a human!”
I get that that was disrespectful and unaware. And we're making this a little bigger, maybe, than the situation warrants, but that same version of the story I have heard thousands of times. Something my child's missing right now means that they're not going to be able to drive, they're not going to be able to have healthy relationships, they're not going to be able to xyz. We project and project and project and project. And so that would be one.
The other, and when I did that social media poll, in some ways it may have kind of birthed this book more than anything, but I was so disheartened for parents about their own sense of failure. That's what I felt like they were circling around the most. The thought of, “I'm not doing it right. I'm not doing enough. I don't know how. I'm not the right parent”.
All the things, all the places we go in our heads when we're not our healthiest selves.
Alison: And that voice, whether it's the anxious voice or a critical voice, when we're leaning out of that, that's what then is actually bleeding out to our kids. It's what's leaking out to them. They're picking up on that. It can feel righteous in a weird sort of way–that's not the right word–to beat yourself up. I'm a terrible parent.
But it's not helpful. It's not helpful to us and it's not helpful to our kids. So what's a way to reframe that? How do we reframe that voice in our heads as we begin to notice it?
Sissy: Well, it's part of that code word of wanting parents to back up in the moment and do the breathing. And I want parents to think about why am I anxious in this moment? Because as much as parents feel like failures, as much as they're getting angry, it's typically because what they're wanting for their kids in that moment is really good.
E.g. I'm angry as we're trying to get out of the door for school, really, because I know my child's already had five tardies this semester, and if they get another one, they're going to have to go to Saturday school, and then they're going to miss the birthday party that they really wanted to go to.
So it's all of these good things I want for my kids, but the delivery is off, and I'm getting angry instead of stopping myself and saying, I'm wanting more for them in this moment than they do.
I'm more invested than they are. I've got to stop and let them deal with the consequences. But that reframing idea of, I feel anxious because I care about my kids, I'm trying to be the best parent I can be, it enables us to have a kinder, gentler voice towards ourselves.
Alison: Yeah, I love that. I had a friend years ago and sometimes this comes back to me, but she would say the phrase, “sometimes you have to let the ceiling fall”.
And when you were describing that moment. like even in my own life, still something will happen–I'll get sick, I had COVID recently and I had to cancel some things and it can feel like the world's going to end.
And it's such a good reminder that the world doesn't end. It actually keeps going. It's okay. And the more we pause to really notice those things, there's a gentleness to that even in those parenting moments.
I love what you're saying. Like, I don't want my kid to get another tardy and the world won't end. We're gonna be okay. We're here really that changing that self talk inside of us and sort of showing up with that with our kiddos.
Sissy: Yes. And if that parent could think, not only is the ceiling not gonna fall, but I know that suffering produces perseverance. And perseverance, character and character, hope. And so what my child is learning in this moment is hope, which is so much more valuable than the fact that they're gonna get another tardy
Alison: Mm hmm. That's good. Oh, that's so good. Sissy, as we kind of wind down here, tell us a little bit about what's bringing you hope as you work with kids, as you work with families, as you work with parents. What's bringing you hope?
Sissy: I'm going to go to a really dark time before I come back to that, if that's okay. We have a little summer retreat program for the kids during counseling. So I have been there this summer and I've been in worship every night and really rich teaching and all of those things this summer.
But when you ask that question, where I went to was I have been very involved in the Covenant School. A friend of Catherine Koontz, the head of school and I have spoken over there a lot of times and we have a lot of Daystar families that are there and so I was at the reunification center that day and walking closely through that with the school and the families and you know, it's one of the worst things that is imaginable in our world, certainly as a parent, as a therapist.
I mean, it's unspeakable. Because I'd been there anyway, I ended up being on some news programs talking about it because of being local and all of that. And one of them was CNN and I had gotten a call to go down early in the morning to be on this live CNN broadcast and I get really nervous on things like that and I certainly don't want to but I certainly do and I was nervous about going and I was so emotional and exhausted and depleted.
This was the very morning after it happened and I was supposed to be there, I can't remember, 5:30 in the morning and I went down, and I had not thought about the fact that it's cold in Nashville in March in the mornings. and I thought we were going to be inside some kind of trailer. And I go down, and we're outside, and I'm a nervous wreck.
And I'm standing there. I didn't even know what it was going to look like. And it was like across from the White House. you see all the people lined up, and all the people are lined up on the street. And, I'm waiting to go on camera on live TV, and when I get cold, my kneecaps shake.
That's such a silly thing, but I don't know why they do it, but my kneecaps were shaking. I don't know if it was more cold or nerves. And I turned around and the street we were standing on was directly opposite the Covenant School. And this was late March. And so here was the sign for Covenant.
And that means you're entering onto their property. And I was, you know it's the darkest day I've ever experienced living in Nashville. And then next to that sign was the sign for the Easter services. And I thought, that's it. Like, there is nothing else we can say on our darkest day that I remember other than, he is risen. And this is the reason we even have Easter.That hope, that reminder of hope has really carried me. Every time I go back to that, every time that has spoken to me more powerfully than anything.
Alison: That even in the midst of this darkest hour, he has risen.
Sissy: Yeah.
Alison: That is, that's it. That's the basis of our hope. And I love that. I mean, against the backdrop of everything you're trying to communicate through what you do and through this book, that's why we have to do this work of staying calm and staying in a place of hope.
That's it. While we are still living, while we are still on this side of heaven, we have reason to hope and we have reason to give that hope to our kids. Yeah, that's beautiful. Thank you so much for the work that you do.
Sissy: Right back at you, Alison, you are delightful to talk with.
Alison: Oh my gosh. I imagine you among all of these kids and I'm so, so grateful. And I know it's not easy. I know you see really hard things and such good work that you're putting into the world. So thank you for that. Tell people how they can find you, how they can find your work and this beautiful book that's coming out into the world.
Sissy: You're so kind. Raisingboysand girls.com is our website and it connects you to all things related to us. And we get to be a part of the same family, the same podcast family, which is so fun. So we're podcast cousins. We could call ourselves that at TSF and you can find that at Raisingboysandgirls.com and then I try to be as active as I can on social media helping parents as much as possible.
So @SissyGoff on Instagram and then David Thomas who's my male counterpart. He and I both are doing things on raisingboysandgirls.com.
Alison: Great. I love it. Well, please get yourself a copy of Sissy’s book. It's so practical. So wise. So gentle. I mean, you really struck a balance of giving some real truths in a really gentle, encouraging, beautiful way. So, check it out and, I have one last question I ask all my guests, which is what is bringing out the best of you right now?
Sissy: That's a great question. I would say I have a senior dog. She is almost 15 and she doesn't sleep as much as she gets older. And so she has gotten into the habit in the last year of waking me up at 6 or 6:15 every morning. I didn't used to wake up that early and it is bringing out the best of me. It has taught me to have margin in a way that I wasn't having before and I love it.
Alison: I love that. Well, thank you so much for being here, Sissy.
Sissy: Alison, thank you for having me. Thank you for your voice in the world and the difference you're making.
Alison: Thank you.
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