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We are talking all about finding our strengths today with my friend, Laura Cootsona, an accomplished coach, consultant, and non-profit executive. She walks us through StrengthsFinder, a tool that helps you identify and lean into your strengths and uncover the strengths of others. Research shows that leaning into your strengths at work and in life is absolutely life-changing.
Here's what we cover:
1. How to identify strengths to unleash your potential
2. The link between strengths and enjoying your work
3. Understanding the downside of your strong points
4. How to team up with other strengths
5. How to build a strength-based family
Do you have questions for Dr. Alison? Leave them here.
Want to receive free bonus content? Sign up for my free weekly email here.
Resources
- My Favorite Psychology Tools Youtube Playlist
- Strengthsfinder test by The Gallup Organization
- More about The Jesus Center
- Good Well Consulting
- What Color Is Your Parachute by Richard N. Bolles
- Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton
- 1 Corinthians 12:12-31
- Resources for support
Related Episodes:
- Episode 49: Personality, the Big Five Traits, and Why Are We So Obsessed With Personality Types?
- Episode 50: 9 Types of Intelligence, the Trap of Comparison, and How to Connect More Authentically with God
- Episode 51: The 12 Common Thinking Traps, Mind Reading, Mental Filters, and How To Stop Taking Things Personally
- Episode 52: The Enneagram—9 Ways to Uncover the Best (and Worst) of Who You Are, Get Honest With Yourself, & Improve Your Relationships
Thanks to our sponsors:
- This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/BESTOFYOU and get on your way to being your best self.
- Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
- Visit hiyahealth.com/BESTOFYOU and get your kids the full-body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults.
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 am so glad you're here. This is the last episode in our series called My Favorite Psychology Tools. I'm sad to see this one go. I have loved every single one of these, and maybe we'll revisit a part two of this in the future, and I'll see if you guys have some ideas about what you want me to talk about.
But today we're going to end with StrengthsFinder. This is one of my favorite psychology tools, that has helped me so much in my life. And to talk about it, I've invited my dear friend Laura Cootsona onto the podcast. Laura and I met several years ago when we were co-leading retreats with my co-author Kimberly Miller, called Leading Wholeheartedly. We led these retreats together and Laura was both the coordinator of the retreat, as well, as she led us through Strength Finders exercises at every retreat and I learned so much from her.
She has worked with nonprofit organizations for 37 years. She built a consulting practice that focuses on fundraising, marketing, CEO coaching, strategic planning, and board development. She recently served as the executive director of the Jesus Center, which is a social service nonprofit in Chico, California. That was focused on reducing the impact of homelessness.
She's also been deeply involved in Campfire Collaborative, which has been a huge part of the long-term recovery process from the terrible fires in Paradise, California. And more, recently, she has formed a collaborative consulting firm called Good Well Consulting, where she focuses on personal, team, organizational, and community health, and capacity building. She lives in Chico, California, with her husband and has two grown daughters.
Welcome to The Best of You, podcast, Laura. I am so glad to have you here today. We've known each other for a long time, and it's really fun to get to bring your expertise to this podcast. So thanks for being here.
Laura: Yes, thank you, Alison, for inviting me. This is such a fun privilege.
Alison: So, Laura, I learned about StrengthsFinder from you. We used to run these retreats together, these Leading Wholeheartedly retreats. And one of the things that you would bring to the table was you led us all through StrengthsFinder, and I found it to be so powerful. And I've gone on to use it in my own life. I've used it in my marriage. I'll tell a little bit about how we approach it, which has been really fun. But just tell us a little bit about how you discovered StrengthsFinder, what it meant to you, and how you've used it in your work?
Laura: So I was, actually, having to go back a little bit, in the history books, to make sure I had the chronology correct. But I want to go back a little further, which I used to say I was one of those nerds that would read the self-help books and do all the exercises. And, so, I really think my pre-work towards StrengthsFinder was in a book that was published over and over, and I think it's still being published called What Color Is Your Parachute?
Alison: Yes.
Laura: And I still remember, circa 1986-ish, seven-ish, going through every exercise. And it was a little bit more of a blunt instrument, but it, basically, divided people into three categories. People who wanted to work with people. People who were really connected to place, and people who were connected to information.
So I had this big insight at 22, 23, that I liked to work with people. So I think that was, honestly, I'm belittling it, but it was really a big insight, at that point. And, so, fast-forward 15 years, I was in New York City.
My husband and I, were living in Manhattan, and as it related to his work, we met a woman who was working for the Gallup Organization. And I still remember her handing us this book called Now Discover Your Strengths. Which was, essentially, the first run at introducing the strengths philosophy into the mass market. That Gallup had done millions of interviews around worker satisfaction, and discovered the low ratings of worker satisfaction. And they started to dig, and built this all to figure out what was going to be the key to shifting worker satisfaction.
And, so, in the early 2000s, they put together what's called StrengthsFinder. And then in 2007 they published The StrengthsFinder 2.0, which is the assessment that is being used now. But throughout they kept refining it,
and what's super great about it now is it's much more personalized. Because we could have the same strengths, but it'll show up really differently based on combination, personality, context, a bunch of other things. So now when you get a report, it's much more personalized, which makes it really fun.
But I discovered it really after that New York season. In the early 2000, and it just really resonated because of its particular nature and its positivity.
Alison: So tell us a little bit about what it is. It's a strength-based approach?
Laura: Yes, and that's really critical, it's all based on positive psychology. So the idea that you would try to figure out where you're weak and build up those areas is the opposite of what the StrengthsFinder is. So the words are perfectly apt; Finding your strengths. Identifying, articulating, connecting with how you show up in the world and, essentially, it's a little formula.
They call the first element of the formula talent, but you could call it gifting, or natural abilities, God-given characteristics, however you want to talk about. What just is in you, it's like the raw material. And, then, the second part of the equation is experiences, skill development, training, education, all the pieces that can add value and depth, and excellence, within your naturally born talents, and that equals a strength.
Alison: Oh, interesting. So it's a combination of nature and nurture, in a way.
Laura: Yes, exactly.
Alison: So strength is something you probably have a little bit of naturally, and it also probably was nurtured in you?
Laura: Exactly. And what's fun about it is you can go back. I mean, I've done autobiographical exercises where you go back and you search for the early signs of that strength showing up. And, for me, they show up in childhood.
Alison: Yes.
Laura: Some of them are, incredibly, absent in my childhood and because of some small t traumas, but changes were in the way I navigated the world, they appeared later. But some of them are really they're there.
Alison: Is it possible that somebody could have an innate strength, that didn't get reinforced or maybe was even seen as a deficit early on. And then later they could begin to nurture that and develop a strength that they thought they didn't have? How does that work?
Laura: I think you can. I mean, again, in some ways, it's like the clay, there is a certain set of raw material. And what's fun about this assessment is there's enough complexity to it that you can do a lot with it. So, again, part of how it works is you take this online assessment, and there are 34 possible strengths. The basic assessment puts out five of those strengths that are your top five. But the assessment, if you want to spring for the full 34, will rank the entire set for you, and it's equally as fascinating.
Alison: I do, too.
Laura: But the top five, and really your top ten, really, are your key elements from which you can draw all abilities to interact with your work, your contacts, your relationships. So it just gives you, for me, again, going back to that early assessment, I'm good with people. But in what way am I good with people, and what is my role? And the strengths give me more particularity to where I fit in the people world, if you will, there's a lot of people professions.
Alison: Yes, and, so, as I understood it, as I learned it from you, of the 34 strengths they exist within, essentially, four different categories. I don't think we're going to go through all the strengths, although, let's, definitely, touch on them. But what are the four categories?
Laura: Yes, so they call them domains, and the strengths fall neatly into these four domains. And, so, the first is executing, which is pretty obvious, it's getting stuff done. It's all those strengths that get you to move balls forward.
Alison: What are some examples of those executing strengths?
Laura: Yes, so the executing strengths, one of the ones I love that's in executing is called arranger. It happens to be one of my strengths. But it's the ability to, essentially, move things around. I'll read some of the key characteristics because it's better their words than mine. "You are a conductor." And I love that image of being a conductor. "When faced with a complex situation involving many factors. You enjoy managing all of the variables, aligning and realigning them until you are sure they are arranged in a productive configuration."
Alison: Interesting.
Laura: I consider it like running audibles, sometimes as an arranger. So you have your plan, but you also are the one that can make in-the-minute decisions like, "Oh, that's not working, let's shift this way just slightly. Why don't you go over there and you go over here, or let's do this first, and then we'll come to that." That's the arranger, classic example of an executing character.
Alison: Which would make sense because as I got to know you, you were the retreats' coordinator. So you were holding all of the pieces, and you were that person that if something had to change, you could rearrange everything to make it work with the change.
Laura: Yes, you pull the team back together, like, "Okay, I'm reading the room. The room is saying, I'm exhausted, we're going to take a break." I mean, something that simple to, "Okay, that exercise has gone too long. Let's move to this other one, and skip that one we had planned." That's an arranger role.
Alison: So that's executor. What are some of the other common, maybe, strengths that people might be familiar with if they're in that more executor category?
Laura: One of my favorites is responsibility, and this one's so fun because the people who show up in this are the people, I mean, think about the person who has responsibility is the person you rely upon. Because the language is so good that they've put together, "Your responsibility theme forces you to take psychological ownership." So that's deep stuff.
For anything you commit to, and whether large or small and you feel emotionally bound to follow it through to completion, your good name depends on it. And if for some reason you cannot deliver you, automatically, start to look for ways to make it up to the other person and so on and so on.
We all know people with that characteristic and know that that is real.
Alison: And they're going to get the job done. Again in that executive space, they're going to execute because of that high value on responsibility, interesting.
Laura: So if you have someone with responsibility, looking at it in the context of teams, those are the people who are going to just be tenacious about making sure it gets completed. And, sometimes, honestly, and this goes back to your whole theme is sometimes at great expense to themselves.
Alison: Exactly, those strengths, we'll get there, but those strengths can definitely also become our Achilles' heel if we don't know. I have a high responsible in my family and I just have to shepherd her through, "It is okay, we can let this ball drop." And it is excruciating for her to do that.
Laura: It's like a moral failure.
Alison: It's a moral failure, yes, I can already see the ties here. We did the Enneagram last week.So the ties to the Enneagram One.
Laura: Totally, yes.
< Music >
Alison: What's this next category?
Laura: The next one is relationship building. And relationship building, again, I ran a social service agency. You'll find most staffing in a social service arena, I'm sure in the counseling arena are high on relationship building. Your strengths end up a lot in relationship building.
Again, like a classic profile given a lot of your roles, and you have a couple that I think you could speak to. One you have is empathy, another is positivity. Some of the strengths, I'll just be honest, I think, some of the words are harder to just intuitively understand. Empathy and positivity are what you think they are.
Alison: Yes, that was a big one for me, empathy was my number one as I tested out. Well, I was a little surprised that it was number one, and it was actually helpful to me. Because like that high responsible, and I talk about this a lot, empathy has been with me, as you said, Laura, I can go back to childhood and I remember the kids in my class that were hurting from first grade. I knew who they were, I remember their names. It still breaks my heart that I didn't know what to do.
It was with me early on. It was also affirmed in me, of course, then I would go on to be a therapist. And as I talk about it, it can also become a little bit of a trap. Gosh, I feel the empathy, and also I have only so much bandwidth. And, so, these strengths, they're very real, and we have to learn to steward them and, then, the positivity is another one of mine.
And, so, that's interesting. The empathy, you bleed for other people, and then positivity, as I understand it, correct me if I'm wrong, it's like you can see the positive in anything.
You can look for the positive. And, so, you're believing in people constantly. You're believing in the best of what can happen. Which is great in my field but, also, you have to learn how to temper that a little bit because sometimes the best-case scenario doesn't always happen.
Laura: Reality interrupts that. It is, you also have maximizer, which is in this category, and that is also a unique strength, as you do particularly personal. I don't think you have individualization, but individualization and maximizer are really ones that you see that people are becoming their best version of themselves.
So, again, I think, positivity can lead to that. But, obviously, our trauma-informed approach to things is also staying with them in the grief, and the pain, long enough to give valid affirmation and empathy to it. So, again, they are inherent in you. But that doesn't mean we don't have control over how they're implemented or engaged in our day-to-day. And as we get more fluent in the particularities of our strengths, we have more control over how we bring them into the world. And, sometimes, for different reasons, we need to temper some of them.
Alison: Yes, I love that. I love just to pause here, for a second, the strengths approach, what it does is it help you, and you touched on this at the beginning. When I looked at those five strengths, I'm like, "Yes, this is really a picture of who I am at my best. "I certainly have to learn to temper it. And it doesn't mean I discount those bottom five, because I have looked a lot at my bottom five, and that's actually been very helpful to me.
Because it's not that I'm not responsible for those. But I think, correct me if I'm wrong, the strength-based approach suggests that leaning into your strengths and learning how to really steward the strengths is more productive than trying to become those bottom five things that are the hardest things for you to ever become.
It doesn't mean you don't have some responsibility for them. But if you're trying to fit yourself into a role that requires those strengths that are literally at the bottom of your list. Sometimes, I talk about you want to work with the grain of who you are. You don't want to be working against yourself. And if you're in a position, or a role, or a job, or a relationship where you are required to constantly show up at those bottom five of your strengths. You're working against the grain of yourself, and it's really hard.
Laura: Absolutely, again, if you go back to one of the motivators for developing this was around job satisfaction. And if you start to move from the individual analysis to how you operate, particularly, in your work or with your team. The evidence is just in the realm of miraculous about what it feels like and the satisfaction level that happens, when your role in your work is aligned with your strengths, this whole thing just breaks open.
We've heard the work on flow, we've heard the work on geniuses. When we are aligned with the things that give us energy, it just keeps giving you energy. I agree that we need to know, I would call them maybe our blind spots, the things we just don't naturally pay attention to rather than calling them weaknesses.
One of mine is context, and as far as I understand context, often it shows up in people who really hold to the past and the historical connections. I don't have a very good memory and I'm just on to the next thing. And in the Enneagram I'm that type, I'm just going forward and, obviously, sometimes, it gets me into serious trouble. So, again, a blind spot is-
And, then, when I'm working with groups, and just to fast-forward, one of the contexts that I work in is in disaster recovery. And in disaster recovery, most people are actually very connected to place and past. And when you lose everything, you can be all positive about the future, but they have not released whatever it is that binds them to the past.
And, so, I have to be ultra-sensitive to giving room for that. Even though, "My family home is gone, I don't care. It was bulldozed 30 years ago, I don't care." But I'm weird that way. That's an anomalous characteristic for most humans, they're very connected to place.
Alison: Yes, I love how you're talking about it as a blind spot. Because now that you're aware of the blind spot. You're aware, "Oh, that makes sense. It's not in my primary line of focus, but I can be aware. I can be more sensitive to it, knowing that it's there, knowing that it's not going to be in my primary line of focus."
Laura: Right, which leads me to the next domain, which is strategic thinking. And, although, I have a lot of strategic strengths, again, back to the Enneagram, I'm a gut type. So I'm always going to push into moving things forward. And strategic thinking says, "Stop for a minute, imagine that you might actually be answering or solving the wrong problem. Let's collect more information, ask more questions."
I always think about, my husband and I call it going to the ground floor. He loves going to the ground floor, which means dismantle everything and start again. And I'm like, "Oh, my gosh, we're doing this, again."
But, man, if you're just a fraction off the right angle, as you're going to solve a problem, by the time you get there, you're so missed the mark. So we need to push into folks with strategic thinking. Or if we have strengths in strategic thinking, we need to bring them forward before we start executing.
Alison: Yes, so true, wait, so you're more of an executor and your husband is more strategic?
Laura: Yes, he's totally strategic, and, actually, mine is influencing. So not only am I executing, but in the fourth domain, I'm rallying the troops to move forward. I'm getting everyone excited. I'm the cheerleader and I've got the megaphone, and I'm like, "Okay, everybody, let's move to the right side of the room."
Alison: I'm laughing because I hear you on that strategic one.
Laura: Yes, well, it's so funny because when I started doing StrengthsFinder in the retreats that we did with Christians in the Visual Arts, and then I'm Leading Wholeheartedly.
So the Christians in the Visual Arts, the retreats were called Doing Good Well. And we brought together young female artists of faith, and with the premise that a lot of their voices were getting lost in the mix.
Whether it was in the church or in the secular context. That we wanted to give them a space to, again, give them some vocabulary and some claim over their unique contributions. That was the StrengthsFinder piece. We worked with Internal Family Systems to help them understand their internal psychological piece. And then we built some real practical skills on how they can, then, show up in their context. And, so, we would start with StrengthsFinder, and artists just are, notoriously, in the strategic thinking domain, I mean, just predominantly.
Alison: Interesting.
Laura: So the first thing they do when they get their results is they question two things. They question the entire assessment; they question their results. And, so, I figured this out after doing it a couple of times and I'm like, "All right, you people, I understand that, so question away. Just bring me all your, 'No, I don't like this, and this isn't working, and I don't think this is'"
And the way I would understand it is talking to my husband, who I adore, but he immediately goes into finding, he's an academic, strategic thinker. That's what you do, it's his craft. And it taught me to appreciate that, whereas before it felt very, I want to be honest, a bit annoying.
Like, "Why do you have to poke all these holes in it? Let's just go. Why are you getting in my way?" But now I see, oh, again, blind spot, I don't do that long enough, and I don't do it carefully enough. And, so, I'm learning to say, "Bring that and I'll hold myself down and don't do something, yet."
Well, I want to get through these four categories. But this is just such a fun conversation, we're getting to the strength-based approach and everything in this series, and I love that we're having on this. It's not just about this individual, "This is who I am. This is the way it's going to be. These are my strengths; it's my way or the highway." They actually help us live better in community, and that's what you're saying. It's like if we're only looking at our own gifts and "Everybody should be just like me, and if you're not just like me, you're annoying, or that's bad."
It's, no, actually, we start to appreciate what happens when we come together and we look at things from that larger perspective. We get to play our role. But my role is going to shine even more brightly when it's brought into partnership with someone that's going to help me pause, see the big picture. Make sure we're building on the right foundation, and then let all that empathy, and that maximizing, and that positivity shine.
Laura: Yes, so the fourth domain, just to finish that structure, is influencing. And you have a couple of your top strengths in there, and I have three of my top that is really my domain. And, again, back to my lovely artist friends, to use an old phrase, they think outside the box. Which is exactly what we want our artists to do, and they create, amazingly, beautiful things.
So they often will be able to execute at that level. But where they really have blind spots is around what we might just call marketing. Or telling their story to another outside world, and getting people, essentially, to follow them.
And they need influencers to be their town criers, to be their bringers of others along. I always say to people, "If you want something that you'd love to get out into the world, tell me. If I like it, I will tell everyone I know." And I don't do that because it's my job. I do it, I now call it hobby. I love sharing cool things or connecting cool people to cool people, who are doing cool projects.
Which I think one of the fun strengths under influencing is what they call WOO, which is a tricky strength. You and I both have it, and it stands for this is unusual in the strengths vocabulary, but it stands for Winning Others Over. So the best scenario to describe WOO is you go into a party, in fact, I just did this. I flew to L.A., on Sunday, for a party of a really dear friend of mine, and I knew no one.
I knew one person at the gathering. And someone with WOO walks into a situation like that, and I just started with the husband of the one person I knew. Then I talked to the one other person I knew. And by the end, we're all sitting around a big table as if we were all friends, since high school like they all were, and making connections between one person and another. So in its best version WOO connects people. It makes people feel comfortable.
I mean, nothing makes me happier, at my own parties, then you come in the door and I'm like, "Oh, Alison, I really want you to meet Joe." And then you guys get in a conversation and then I go on to the next thing, that just makes me excited. Obviously, the downside of WOO is it's a little flitty and it can be seen as a bit like you work the room and that starts to put humans in categories that aren't superhuman, more transactional. So I don't like that part of WOO, but, again, I think that's a good example of what influencing looks like in the strengths.
Alison: So we have this idea of influencer, today. We think about social media influencers, people influencing, there is a sense in which it's influencing others. But in this context, what I like about what you're saying about it. What I relate more to with it is there's an ability to win people over in the sense of earn trust. There's ability to inspire. What are some of the other qualities under influencer? It seems like there's an ability to inspire, to encourage, to bring in, to gather, to connect, to earn trust.
Laura: Yes, I mean, I have three of influence. So I have activator, communication, and WOO. And the more I sit with those, I see how they all work together. So communication is my top strength, which doesn't mean I'm a great preacher. It's not about production, it's about an incessant attempt to communicate, to make ideas clear. And to, in this sense, for the purpose of change behaviors, change thoughts, moving people together, moving people in a direction.
I love teaching, I love training. I'm obsessed with that because I believe that people can, actually, move and change. So an activator, again, is somewhat like arranger, but it's really more of a catalytic role, is another way of looking at that. But with activator and, then, I have arranger.
Alison: Meaning you can make things happen. You can make things happen, then you can rearrange them and you communicate. So you're in what's your zone? What's your zone of work where you're, interpersonally, just thriving?
Laura: Yes, again, last night, I was with 30 people, training them on fundraising and identifying who their best prospects were. So I'm using communication. I'm giving them tools, and I'm giving them a tool. Someone will ask a question like, "Should you ask for a specific dollar amount, or range, or just open ended?"
And I say "Yes." And that's how the arranger goes because you're in a certain context, it's relational. You have a particular sense, you know your project, and here's the advantages of each way. So I'm able to say, "Yes, these are your choices."
And, so, that's that fluidity. It's not like, "Okay, this is how you do fundraising." No, it's relationally bound, so your relationship dictates your path not transactional in that sense. So that draws on my perspective, which is adaptable, responsive. Although, I don't show up in my top five a lot, in relationship building. I'm very keenly aware of how we don't use people, we empower people, we give them agency, we're equal footing. There's dignity. Those principles of life run through how, most of the good days, I show up.
Alison: Yes, I love that. I love how you get a picture of and for everybody listening, you can go take this test? You can purchase it online?
Laura: Yes, you can just go on the Gallup website.
Alison: And you get those strengths, I have everybody do it. Our daughter, right before college, she and her friend, I had them taking it just to get a sense of-
Laura: Yes, gave it as graduation gift-
Alison: That's cool because you do. For me, when I started doing this podcast, I was really surprised at it brought together my strengths because I have a maximizing strengths. I have that WOO strength, which for me is I love a lot of different ideas, a lot of different topics, and this podcast allows me to go broad. I can go deep and I can go broad. It allowed some components of who I am, some strengths that I have that I couldn't bring out in other places, and it was really neat. Just like you said, it's like you're going with the grain of who you are.
The maximizing of ideas, gosh, I can get these ideas out into the world in a much more efficient, more maximized, way than only seeing one person at a time. I still love to do that, too, but it's a process of learning. We don't all, immediately, magically, fall into the right line of work. I think about, Laura, and I'm curious about this, with how this all applies into our families, into our relationships, into our parenting, into our marriages.
Because that's another area where my husband and I, one of the exercises we did was we looked at each other's top five and then we looked at each other's bottom five. And that helps with some of even division of household labor.
If we are looking at me to be the structured, organizational, in our household, we are all just going to be frustrated, and it doesn't mean I don't try. But I'm not one of those people that the forks are always in the exact correct fork drawer. That was the household I grew up in. And, so, we got to work with that. We got to work with that, and here are the strengths.
And, so, we have a lot of conversations about this in our family and it's all play to our strengths. We all have to be sensitive to each other. How about you? How has this also shown up as a mom, in your family, and in your friendships? How has this helped you?
Laura: Yes, absolutely, I think, clarity of who we are and how we show up in a space. Which I've discovered, as I get older, is harder for me to understand how I show up than I think. I show up with a lot of power and influence based on my strengths. But I have my internal persona is gentle and kind, but sometimes I'm not perceived that way.
So now that my daughters are full, functioning adults. I really find that I'm asking them more, and my husband, too, how I'm showing up and, particularly, when I have an impact on them that I can see as negative. I'm like, "What exactly just happened there?" Sometimes I'm really aware of how... I always joke I'm like a lion, I jump in. I'm also a Leo, if that has anything significance for your people. But I jump in, and then, oops, the claws came out, they're really pads. And in my perception they're pads that the nails come out sometimes. But for some, it's like, "Wow, she just shows up."
Alison: Are you an Enneagram Eight?
Laura: Yes, totally, an Eight. And some days I just wish, so badly, that I wasn't an Eight. Again, because I actually do care about humans, so I don't want to just stomp on anybody. But I'm just incredibly passionate, particularly, when it comes to justice issues and when something's right or wrong, I just can't help myself.
Yes, so it's helped me just try to get more clarity around myself. And then, definitely, in terms of understanding how my immediate family shows up as a unit. I mean, we're using lots of tools as we try to navigate this new, completely, adult version of our family. Things that maybe we suffered through, we're done suffering through, and we're saying those things out loud.
So one of my daughters has just incredible empathy. I mean, she shows up super high empathy, but in that like, maybe you can relate to this, so sensitive. And not in the sense of she reacts to all that, but she internalizes it all, and it's just not fair. So we dump on her in the sense of all that emotion that we all have in our big selves. It just hides out in her cellular level and, at 25, she's figuring out that. You were telling about that in terms of the body keeps the score. We got to be really careful that we don't store those things.
And, so, she's learning all sorts of new techniques to work with that and, then, just affirming that. Affirming that she brings that and that's a gift, but at her own personal cost, it's not okay. And both my daughter and my husband are very much on the strategic thinking. My daughter, who is the sensitive one, is more like I am in terms of how she shows up in the world. The other two are very cerebral and very strategic in their thinking.
So it's very common, in conversation, for them to say, "No, I don't agree with that."
Or "It's this or that." And I have strong opinions too, and I'm like, "Whoa, wow." So we're navigating that, and in some ways, in a completely new way and we're all learning. But one of the fun things that we declared a couple of years ago was we're all after the same outcome, which is to build close, authentic, relationship.
And, so, we're going to navigate some of these things, that hurt or we've pained each other, in a way that's always pro relationship. And that's really helped, and I think having that outcome-centered approach really lends itself to working with strengths. Because you can move from a point of personal sense of who you are into vulnerability when you know that the outcome is that you're going to stay together.
Alison: I love that. That's beautiful, and it provides a language, this strength-based approach. When you know, you have a sense of your different kids' strengths, your spouse's strengths, your strengths. And, so, when things go awry and it happens, I can imagine. You're in a heated conversation and it's tempting to go to "You're always judging me."
Or "You're always disagreeing with me." Or some of those irritants that surface in the best of relationships. And we can back up and go, "Oh, this is you being strategic."
"Oh, this is you being an influencer."
"Oh, this is you being high empathy." It helps to just destigmatize everything. It gives a name for things and we can start to name again. It doesn't mean we don't still have to work it out, and we still don't have to learn how to navigate each other.
But it is, I think, it's Adam Grant who talks about giving people, what does he say? He talks about giving people a roadmap to how to treat you. The strength-based approach really does help with that. It's like, "Here's a little glimpse, here's a little picture of who I am. This is how I'm going to be. This is the strengths I'm going to bring to the table."
Again, if I'm really high on strategy and analysis, I'm going to analyze every single thing. And that's going to be great sometimes and sometimes that's going to be hard. It gives us all this destigmatizing language.
< Music >
Laura: I think this really plays out in the workplace. Whether it's in those of you who work in a particular office setting, like a cohort that just stays together, or those of us who are in lots of different contexts, or doing community organizing. I think we can understand what each of us brings and a little bit of our default settings.
Again, I don't think that gives a carte blanche to always show up like that, but it gives us some, again, shared language. That's why I always do it with boards of directors, teams of organizations. I've used StrengthsFinder in a cohort model of leaders who are being trained in a nonprofit setting.
Again, it helps us make affirmation more particular. It helps us invite other strengths to join our strengths, because it turns out, actually, we're not autonomous beings. We co-depend all the time, we're interconnected.
So if I need the strategics in my world to show up. I'm like, "Hey, we're having a strategic whiteboard session, can you all join me? Because I need you to poke holes in what I'm thinking." We share those strengths like they're assets. Like, "Alison, I need your empathy to show up. I'm, obviously, missing this situation, tell me what I'm not feeling, seeing, or sensing."
Alison: You're so true all the time at work, we need all the different strengths. And when we have a category and we have a way of naming them, we invite people to shine, and what a gift. And, I think, that as a team leader or I was an executive director of a nonprofit, to know everyone's strengths.
And to be able to say, in a moment, in a staff meeting, to say, "Okay, we've definitely been camping out in this realm. I'm interested in what those of you with the other set of strengths might be that we're missing. I need us to stop talking, and I want you all to show up." And as the leader, I also have to lever down. I often look at it as a mixing board, and especially, as I get older. I got to pull my brilliances, as I call it, down in the mix so that others can bring theirs up. And I'm almost 60, and part of that is making sure that in a group setting.
If there are, particularly, young professionals coming up, that we give them all the room in the world to answer the question, just like those of us who have been doing this for 40 years. And that's a discipline for someone,
like me, who has something to say about everything, is to stop talking. Communication being my number one go-to, I just will always default to talking some more or activating some more. Sometimes we don't need to activate anything, we can just sit.
Alison: Yes, there's so much humility in what you're saying. Again, I think, about that h-factor quality, the honesty and humility. And, again, the honesty of I'm imagining now in a work situation where you have all strategists, and know people who are executing. And you bring the executors in the room and they're like, "We can't execute this." Well, then, we got a problem.
And, so, the humility to know whatever your strength is. Same with me, with the empathy, it is such an important gift. And there are times when I need to hear other voices say, "Yes, what that person has been through is really hard."
And, also, "There is a couple of other lenses through which we need to look here." Which is the value of consultation, when you're in my field. It's bringing other people, and I've learned how to invite people in next to me who have different strengths than I do. Because I need that, I need all of the different voices.
Tell me a little bit, Laura, you're also really knowledgeable about spiritual formation. Tell me a little bit about how this model, how knowing our strengths, correlates with our spiritual formation, and our relationship with God?
Laura: Yes, obviously, the whole model is, I think, so closely associated with the idea of the gifting of the spirit. And you did that lovely reading from, The Message, the other day, on your podcast and just that sense of how silly it is that there would just be an eye by itself. I love how Eugene Peterson does his version of that, and it's just a perfect corollary to the strength, none of these exist unto themselves. And, I think, that is one aspect of understanding how God has gifted us; accepting that, celebrating that, owning that.
Again, I think, this false humility, I have learned to celebrate and name my unique contribution. Because turns out that's the asset that I steward as a child of God and if I don't name it, I can't utilize it to its greatest ability. I know that, and having, again, been in enough context where I'm pretty sure had I not been there with my unique blend, we wouldn't be where we are, and I love that. That's just how God works. And that doesn't mean there's nobody else who's important. But I had the opportunity of running this nonprofit for six years, that wasn't the plan.
Working with those experiencing homelessness, and I'm watching the fruit of a lot of what I invested now that I've gone. And just yesterday I got this big pat on the back about how I had built credibility in the organization, and a donor made $100,000 gift. And he said, "You know, ultimately, I did it because of the credibility you invested in that organization." And I thought my unique blend of WOO, and activation, and communication.
It started with the strengths, so it's the first thing we did was to understand my staff, to affirm my staff. And working in that context, what I feel most proud about is I also took this to the folks who we were serving. And when you look at a person on the street, who so many people walk by and say "He or she is worth nothing."
The things people say about folks living on the street, it's so appalling to me and so tragic. And instead saying, "No, you are a princess who follows a king. And we know that in the midst of all of that we see with our eyes, that God sees you with a completely different lens." And that is a God-centered positivity. That's a God-centered maximizer.
And that dignity is these are words we can find to help people recover who they are. Because the most tragic thing about trauma, mental illness, and all the things that folks experiencing homelessness are experiencing, is the loss of sense of self. They need to be restored. God does that, and God does it through us, and I can preach a sermon here about it.
Alison: I love that. You just bring tears to my eyes because I so share that with you. And what are the inherent strengths in those person? I mean, my husband and I, as well, have been deeply involved in some addiction recovery centers. Serving folks who have been on the streets for years, and just finding the strengths there, we love it. And naming them, and calling them out, and restoring that sense of dignity. Because we all are made in the image of God, and we all bear some beautiful.
I love that, Laura, and I love what you're saying. I love that you brought your strength. What I love about what you're saying is you brought your strengths to bring in money, to bring awareness. To, literally, build a program that served folks. And, also, you brought your strengths, literally, into the dignity, in every single one of those human interactions. Including, in terms of with the people that you served, I just love that, you're an amazing woman.
Laura: I think the piece that I am most pleased about is I believe this so strongly about how to use our strengths. That I also recognized when I was done making my unique contribution in that setting. And, I mean, again, from the beginning to invest in the staff around me. That was just, again, we were stewarding their lives, however long they stayed with us. But one of the leaders that was there when I got there is now the executive director. And a few years into my tenure, she said, "I think one day I'd like to be an executive director."
And I said, "All right, let's get busy." And working with her strengths, working with her blindsides, we prepared her for that role. And, so, when I sit and see her on the front page of the paper getting awards from the city and all these things, and getting that $100,000 gift yesterday, I just smile. Because she grew as part of that journey, and she is getting to make her contribution. And it doesn't take anything away from mine, nothing. In fact, I get a little extra little pat in the back, even for that, and it just feels like this is the body of Christ.
Alison: Preach, this is it. When we are leaning into our strengths, and I love even the claiming of the strengths. I love what you're saying, "These are my strengths, I'm going to steward them. It's better for everybody." Laura, you are amazing. Tell everybody who's listening how they could find you? How they could work with you, what you offer? I'd love to hear more.
Laura: Yes, so my business name is Good Well Consulting. And I renamed my business about eight or nine years ago. Because that word combo, Good Well, is really the crux of what I care about. I love working with people who are interested in making a contribution in the world, doing a good, whatever that purpose is.
But I'm also, because of my executing strengths, I really care that we do that well. For some, like when I work with nonprofits, a lot of that's capacity building, leadership development, infrastructure development. Thinking how the long-term is going to need a certain set of baselines so it can flourish. So not building a locomotive on a toy train track, trying to square that up.
It shows up in individual coaching. Where I'm looking to help people who are trying to find their voice, their contribution in the world, or maybe they're coming into a new role. I work with a lot of executives who are stepping into the role for the first time. They're not really sure how to navigate those waters. And then I have a third part, which is what I call the academy, and I'm putting courses online and I do live training as well.
I just launched a course on how to be an effective board member. A lot of your listeners, I know, are either on boards of directors for nonprofits, or they're contemplating making a contribution in that way, stewarding their strengths in that way.
But what I find when I get in boardroom after boardroom, that assembling a group of individuals who are cool does not a team make. So, again, how do we use the strengths? How do we use other personal work to show up in a team, in a productive way, serving the organization's good? So that's a fun thing, you can find that all on my website goodwellconsulting.com.
Alison: Do you ever work with churches, church leadership boards?
Laura: I do work with churches.
Alison: I could imagine that'd be a ripe, just helping the leadership teams.
Laura: Lots of faith-based organizations, churches, missionaries, teams, I've done a lot of work with all sorts. At this point, and 30 years in, I've worked with a lot of groups.
Alison: You're the best, Laura. Laura, you're the real deal. I love everything you do. What is bringing out the best of you, right now?
Laura: Because I live in the corner of the planet that has had some really severe disasters. We are rebuilding a county that we had the largest, most destructive, fire in California, in 2018. And because of where I was in the county, at the time of the disaster, running this nonprofit, and because of my strengths, I've been very prominent in the bringing together of people from each of the corners of nonprofits, local government, state government, and then just humans who are in recovery.
So I'm really pushing into opportunities to build up the capacity, the health and well-being of our area, and then also looking for opportunities nationwide to work in disaster recovery. I think I'm really passionate about that because it really speaks into the vulnerability that is just beneath the surface for so many humans, in our country.
Alison: And that's bringing out the absolute best in you, I have no doubt.
Laura: Oh, yes, it's super fun.
Alison: Thanks so much for being here, Laura, thanks for taking the time. We'll link to everything that we talked about in the Show Notes, today, including if you want to take that StrengthsFinder test, reach out to Laura. Do you do individual coaching?
Laura: Absolutely, and that's on my website as well. If you need to sign up, it's right there.
Alison: All right, thank you, Laura.
Laura: Thanks, Alison.
< Outro >
Alison: Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you'd take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts and click the Plus or Follow button. That will ensure you don't miss an episode and it helps get the word out to others. While you're there, I'd love it if you'd leave your five-star review. I look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.
What a rich conversation with Enneacast podcast hosts Jesse Eubanks and Lindsey Lewis about the 9 different types of the Enneagram. We talk everything from mistyping women to Jesus, Kevin Hart, and the Apostle Paul. This is a great episode to share with your family, small group, or friends-it's an opportunity for honest conversations about your areas of brilliance. . .and the blind spots we all have.
Here's what we cover:
1. The 9 different types
2. Your Enneagram number as one part of who you are
3. The Enneagram and narcissism
4. Why celebration is a discipline we all need to practice
5. How to love types that trigger us
6. The difference between comfort and shalom
7. What type was Jesus? Paul? Peter? Tom Brady?
Do you have questions for Dr. Alison? Leave them here.
Want to receive free bonus content? Sign up for my free weekly email here.
Resources
- The Enneacast Podcast with Jesse Eubanks and Lindsey Lewis
- More about Love Thy Neighborhood
- Dr. Alison's episode with The Enneacast
- relatebetter.com
- How We Relate by Jesse Eubanks
- Enneagram Workshops
- When Narcissism Comes to Church by Chuck DeGroat
- "Idolatry happens when we take good things and make them ultimate." -Tim Keller
- Resources for support
Related Episodes:
- Episode 49: Personality, the Big Five Traits, and Why Are We So Obsessed With Personality Types?
- Episode 50: 9 Types of Intelligence, the Trap of Comparison, and How to Connect More Authentically with God
- Episode 51: The 12 Common Thinking Traps, Mind Reading, Mental Filters, and How To Stop Taking Things Personally
- Boundaries for Your Soul Series
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- Please visit christianapp.org/mentalhealthtsf to donate today!
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Music by Andy Luiten
Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
Transcript
Alison: Hey everyone, and welcome back to today's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I'm so glad you're here. So I have mentioned the Enneagram, on this podcast, numerous times and, almost, always one of you writes to me and says, "Can you please tell us more about the Enneagram?" And it is certainly one of my favorite and most well-loved psychology tool. So I thought it would be fitting to include it in this series.
And, so, I invited my new friends, Lindsey and Jesse, on to tell us all about it. They are the co-hosts of an amazing podcast called The EnneaCast. It's put out by their organization called Love Thy Neighborhood, which I'm really excited to learn more about from them today. Its mission is to disciple Christians to serve their neighbors, cultivate healthy relationships, and follow Jesus in their culture and context. You can check out The EnneaCast. It's a biweekly show that explores personality and the Enneagram, through the lens of the gospel.
I had a blast recording an episode for their podcast with them. I discovered a couple of kindred spirits on this journey of bringing spiritual formation and the Bible together, with all things becoming the best version of ourselves. And I am so excited to have Lindsay and Jesse on The Best of You podcast, today, to walk us through the Enneagram. Thanks for being here, guys.
Jesse: Our pleasure. Yes, we had such a good time, we're just bringing the party over to your podcast
Lindsey: Yes, just another chance to connect.
Alison: You guys really have an amazing blend of just fun, and humor, and playfulness, and depth, a lot of depth, in what you're doing. It's a really neat synergy, so thank you.
Jesse: Yes, it's touching, it's something that we really revere. People come on and they share deeply personal things with us, so there's a lot of tears shed. But also we will act like idiots and have a ton of fun. And, so, we really are trying to do this space where we're holding joy and sorrow together, both those things can co-exist.
Alison: Exactly, and you're also both just so real. So you model, you provide the way for us to just become ourselves and share what we're really feeling, so, thank you.
Jesse: Well, we're aiming, we're trying. We're doing the work, I mean, we're trying.
Alison: I was thinking to myself, I was like, "Jamming the Enneagram into one-hour episode is going to be tough." But I do want to hear a little bit about how you each discovered the Enneagram and what it meant to you personally.
Lindsey: Well, for me, I had heard about the Enneagram for a couple of years. I had actually taken a test many years before, with a counselor, and not followed up with the information. So then it became really popular while I was living overseas. And I was really resistant to it because I had taken many personality tests with our mission's organization. And I was like, "Don't we all have more to do with our lives than continue to naval gaze?"
But, then, we unexpectedly found our self-state side, and somebody gave me a book, and I just thought, "Okay, let's just look into it." And within two chapters of the book, I was seeing the world in a completely different way, and it was something I really needed. It was how we always joke, "Why doesn't life come with a guidebook?" To me, it felt like the guidebook. I all of a sudden saw people in a new way, and had an understanding for how to navigate my relationships with them.
Jesse: Yes, and then my story is one that might be familiar with some of your listeners. Which is I was on staff at a ministry and we'd spend all our time telling everybody about how Jesus loves them, and how you should become a part of the family of God, and we all just wanted to choke the life out of each other.
We were not getting along. We were super dysfunctional. We second-guessed each other. We bickered, we undermined each other's efforts. So we're presenting this picture of relational health, the beauty of the gospel, and the truth is that we were like airplane salesmen, and we hoped you didn't ask us if we knew how to fly. We just had no ability to actually do the work.
So some guys came in, two retired pastors and one of the tools they brought to help us with their mediation was this thing called The Enneagram. And it freaked me out, the first time that I took it, because it gave me such profound insights into myself that I had not been able to see before. Things that I was unwilling to take a look at.
But it also gave me the ability to, suddenly understand why the people around me were acting the way that they were, and that it wasn't just to drive me crazy. And it wasn't just because they were immoral, and it wasn't just because it was from these much deeper places. And really the fundamental reality is none of us see the world the same. We're all approaching life different, and the Enneagram gave language for us to be able to talk about those things in ways that brought unity to us instead of driving us further apart.
Alison: That's beautiful. So tell us, what is the Enneagram and why do you think it's so different from other tools that people may be more accustomed to?
Lindsey: I'll give the short answer and then you can give the long answer.
Jesse: Yes, deal.
Lindsey: Usually it's the opposite. He's got the wordsmith and I'm like "Here's five pages of an answer." But I really just look at the Enneagram, it's a personality tool that talks about the nine archetypes that we see in humanity. And it can be more useful than other tools because of its flexibility and movement. So it's not just telling you, "This is your type, okay, goodbye."
It's actually asking you to be curious about your life story. What's brought you here? What are those triggers that are activating you in your daily life, that you're completely unaware of? Like Jesse said, we're wearing these lenses that we don't even know we have on and we don't realize other people have different ones on, and that it's changing the way we behave and the way we relate.
And, so, I love that the Enneagram gives you movement and tools for this is an area where you could grow. This is an area where you could move out of your ego response and find a truer way, to take your white knuckles off the steering wheel a little bit.
Jesse: Yes, the way that I often say it is that the Enneagram, it's a theory of personality that explores the patterns in the ways that we perceive process and present to the world. And that all of us have particular fixations, and the Enneagram really attempts to unearth what those fixations are, in part, so that it can invite us to begin to confront those trances and fixations that we focus so much on.
"Okay, this is how I'm going to get my security, my safety, my value." And begin to invite us into a broader way of seeing. And as Christians, when we apply the gospel to that, it's the invitation into what does the abundant life look like?
Well, at some level, that is definitely going to include that my way of seeing is not quite as narrow. That there's a broader way and that Jesus reveals that in the gospels, in His own character, and His own way of being, and that He's inviting us into that as well.
Lindsey: Mm-hmm.
Alison: Yes, I like how you guys are describing it as there's movement, there's flexibility, and that was, for me, it's so different. We've talked in this series about different traits that have been researched in psychology that are fixed, and different types of intelligence. But with the Enneagram, there's so much richness and so much depth to it, as you guys are getting at, in that it reveals both strengths and the weaknesses. That are the very things that fuel us and that become our strengths.
The gifts we have to offer the world can be the very things that are our Achilles' heel. That's the stunning part of it because we all know that about ourselves. And that's why when you look into it, you're like, "Oh, it's actually showing me, this thing I pride myself on. But then there's the dark side of that that I try to hide." They're both right there in the Enneagram.
Jesse: Yes, it makes me think of there was this TV show, on Netflix, called Kevin Hart Can't Stop. And, of course, Kevin Hart is the famous comedian, and he's insanely successful. He's got hundreds of people that are employed by him. And the same thing that makes him so charismatic, and funny, and entertaining, and such a great, successful business person. It's also the thing that, in the show is revealed, it's also destroying his life.
And, to your point, Alison, the Enneagram helps us understand what thing is my strength. But what thing am I expecting to do something it is incapable of doing for me, but I continuously expect it to be able to do those things.
Alison: That's a great example, that's so interesting. I want to spend some time going through the nine types. So as best you can give us an overview, let's just go ahead and run it.
Lindsey: Okay, well, we will start with Type One. So Type One we call The Reformer, and these people are driven by this desire to be good, morally right, people of integrity. And what that looks like is they're honest, they're hardworking, they're ethical, they're conscientious, they're reliable.
But the unresourceful side, like you said, the other side of that same coin is that they can become judgmental. There's a good way and a bad way. They have very black and white thinking. They're rigid, even in their physical bodies, their shoulders are up. They're so diligently working; they're trying so hard. They become resentful because no one else is trying to be good in the way they are and demanding, critical of others. And the big thing for the one is that they have this inner critic that's just constantly driving them. Like, "Here's a problem."
"This is wrong."
"You're not doing it good enough."
"You're bad."
"You need to try harder." But then that comes out as also a judgment of others. And, so, people think, "Well, they can dish it, they can take it." And actually, they can't, they're very sensitive because they already have that megaphone going on in their minds.
Alison: That's such a good description. I have so many ones, very very close to me in my life, and that angst. And there's another way of putting it, the perfectionist, is that fair to say? That angst stuff, I don't think people realize that inner critic is just as loud as any criticism that is flowing out toward anybody else.
So it's a really beautiful and, again, as we've been talking about, fraught, there is the beauty in it. They bring so much goodness, so much of that loyalty. These are folks who are just doing it, and then that dark side of that resentment or that anger, that criticism, that can really trip somebody up. You put that so well, it just filled my heart with love for those ones that...
Lindsey: Yes, me, too.
Jesse: Yes, and, Alison, it's probably worth mentioning this, is that our working philosophy is that all human beings have all nine of these, that we're about to describe, as ingredients in our personality to greater or lesser degrees.
So as we say this regardless of whether we come across one you're like, "That sounds like me, verbatim." There's probably going to be a lot of other elements. You'll hear that and go, "Well, that also sounds a lot like me." And, to Lindsay's point earlier, that's one of the beauties of the Enneagram is this fluidity. This ability to go, "I'm a complicated person."
Alison: I love that you said that, Jesse. We just did a series on the podcast on Internal Family Systems, which is the topic of my first book. And, so, we did a six weeks deep dive into this idea that we all are made up of parts. And one of the things that has helped me the most with the Enneagram is to think about my primary Enneagram number as the part of me that's closest.
But then I really do have relationships to all the different parts. Some are further out, some I need to bring a little bit more in and, ultimately, and probably you guys have arrived at this, too. I assume that Jesus is the ultimate representation of all nine parts. Is that the whole of all?
Jesse: Yes.
Lindsey: Yes.
Jesse: Which is why He's unpredictable when you read the Gospels. Unlike every other character in Scripture or any story, there's an extent to which we can guess how the character is going to behave. But Jesus is totally unpredictable, He acts this way in this moment, this way in the next moment, and it's because He is much more wholly integrated than any of us are. And, so, yes, we say He's the fullness of all nine types, in their full expression.
Alison: That's so cool, I love that.
Jesse: Okay, so back to your question, you asked about Type Two. So Type Two, we call these folks The Helper. Some people like to call them The Be Friender, these are like nurses. I feel like these people live with scrubs on all the time, they just take care of people. So these folks are generous, they are supportive, they're encouraging, they're thoughtful, caregiving,
they're compassionate, and they are sacrificial. They will give you the shirt off their backs. They will clear their calendar. These folks love to give themselves to others that are in need.
However, when they're unhealthy they, actually, become intrusive. I mean, if you think of the mother on Everybody Loves Raymond, who lived across the street, in all her goodness just wanted to help, she just didn't have any boundaries. They become possessive. They can become co-dependent, where they seek out people with high needs so that they always feel needed themselves, to fill the emptiness inside.
They can become people pleasers. They need to be needed, and it can really shock people. They can be so warm, but if they feel underappreciated, they can become, quickly, very angry. And the number one struggle that folks that are Type Twos struggle with is just the issue of boundaries. Boundaries are just going to be an ongoing, lifelong, journey for folks to figure out where they end and other people begin.
Alison: That's so well put, just so many of those. I think there are also a lot of Twos in the therapy world.
Lindsey: Yes, and, I think, a lot of women, depending on if you're below the Mason-Dixon line, and especially, if you were raised evangelical, that a lot of us have this as one of the characters inside of us. It's we were told, "This is who you're supposed to be." So you're either struggling against, "That's not who I am." Or you're over-emphasizing that part of you to some extent.
Alison: And we talked about this a little bit when I came on your podcast, but a couple of thoughts on that. One is almost every woman, as a Christian counselor, as my clients would go through and take the Enneagram, they almost always test out a Twos, initially. Because we're so supposed to look like Twos, as Christian women. I write about this in The Best of You. I tested out as a two. I thought I was a two for a very long time, only to realize I wasn't.
And, so, I do think that's important for women who are listening. A couple of people have asked me about gender and the Enneagram and it's something I wanted to touch on, with you guys. And it doesn't just relate to the Two, I'm sure that men are socialized to be certain types of numbers as well. But just to always keep that open mind of what is that mask, in a way, that we feel like we're supposed to wear. That isn't really reflective of the true inner workings of our hearts. So I love that you said that.
Lindsey: That's good. All right, we'll go to the Three, this is our achiever. So these are people with a lot of energy, with drive, they're very efficient, they're goal-oriented, they're motivated, and they're also motivating. People are just drawn to them, and they're competent, and they're very adaptable.
They can go from this group of people to that group of people, and alter their personality to really make those people feel comfortable. I think you're the one who says, Jesse, that they're always creating the shortest distance between the other person and themselves. So it's like, "Whatever I have to do to make this a short bridge, I can become that."
Alison: That's well put.
Lindsey: Mh-hmm, good job, Jesse.
Jesse: Thank you.
Alison: I resonate with that.
Lindsey: Yes, but the flip side of that is they're very chameleon-like. They're very image conscious, like what are they projecting out there? They can be out of touch with their inner authentic self because they're always morphing into these different personalities. And they can be inauthentic, addicted to positive attention and manipulative, they can use their powers for good or their powers for not so good.
Jesse: Mh-hmm, they get lost in between the public role that they're portraying, at that moment. Whether that is, "I'm a competent, nonprofit leader." Or whether that is "I'm a business person." Whatever it is, but they get confused between what it means to portray success and then who they actually are. And, so, a lot of Threes have got to really do the work of coming home to themselves, and beginning to go, "Who am I?" And the big catch for Threes is that they become addicted to adoration.
So the applause of other people have a very intoxicating effect on the Three, that it doesn't hold on other types. But for the Three, there's almost like they can get drunk off of it. It just feels like love. And, so, the three has to do the work of separating out the admiration of others, with genuine, actual, love from the people in their life that it matters.
Lindsey: I've been doing a lot of reflecting. I have really high Three, but when I initially tested, I, actually, on the test only had 20%, I just found my original results. Because my achieving was so much the one, so much being the good girl, doing it all right, following the rules, very rigid, all that. But I was reflecting on my life story and things, over the last year, and I just realized all these times in my life where I had that, whatever the image was.
So I was a cheerleader and that was who I was. At school, I was like, "I am a cheerleader, this is what I do. I have this role." And it was very attention-receiving. And then my faith didn't really jive with how that was going. So I left cheerleading, and then it was I have to create a new identity for who I am at school, and I did that.
And then when we moved to Louisville, I really wanted to be on the worship team. Because I really love to sing, it's passion, it's one way that I could lead as a woman in the church. And I worked really hard at that, and I became part of this core team. And then when we went overseas I had this moment, this day, a memory that I have where I was rehearsing for Sunday and, all of a sudden, it hit me, I think, it was my last Sunday. And I thought, "I'm not going to be a worship leader anymore. That's no longer my title and I wept.
I was so sad that I made a place for myself in that spot, but then I became a missionary. And, so, then I was a missionary, and that's a great title, and I was a little embarrassed by that one because I never felt like I fully lived into it. I never really achieved it. And then, unexpectedly, we had to come back stateside, and then I was no longer a missionary.
And, I think, all of the ones, I was in my mid-30s, it was the right time for a midlife crisis. And it was, all of a sudden, it was enough. You can't pick one thing that's going to be you are this, that's not who you are.
But it is, I mean, it's been seven years since then and I'm still cultivating what are those deeper, authentic, pieces of myself that remain, and I've found a few. But it's so automatic to be like, "Well, now I am this."
"Well, now I am Lindsey, the co-host of The EnneaCast."
"Now I am a mother to these children, am I doing that in a great way." And now that's my identity. And then you have a bad day mothering and now you're no longer that identity. And, so, it can be really tricky because some of those things we just naturally have things we do.
Alison: They're good things, even, and we can make an identity. And this is true of the Three, it's turning that identity into the thing that gives me worth, that makes me a success. "I am the best mom."
"I am the best worship leader." And it's subtle because some of them are really good things.
Lindsey: Yes.
Alison: But I love what you're saying, there's so much self-awareness in that. That realizing you were just trading one identity for another. And at the end of it, it's like, "Wait a minute, can I just be enough as me and what does that really look like? What does that really mean?" It doesn't mean I won't be a great mom; it doesn't mean I won't be a great worship... but that thing isn't the thing that I'm striving for.
I think a lot about athletes, I don't want to go down too much of a tangent here. But I think about Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, I don't know, there's so much of that identity and it can propel this excellence. I think of the word excellence, that it isn't bad. Excellence is a good thing in and of itself, however, at what cost and what happens when that goes away. Do you crumble, to your Kevin Hart example, what's underneath that, at what cost? And I love Lindsay that you're painting that picture, that it's really easy to fall into.
Lindsey: Yes, absolutely.
Jesse: And, I think, we're getting into, Tim Keller uses the phrase, "When good things become ultimate things." And I think that the Enneagram gives us a pathway to begin to go, "What good gifts from God are present in my life, but in what ways have I made them ultimate? In what ways have I made them emotionally salvific?" I want them to be the things that define me as a person and God, in His mercy, often has to come and tear it all down.
Lindsey: Yes.
Jesse: Because it's a reminder to us that we have been bestowed with value that has nothing to do with our performance. But often God has to let us suffer loss, let us suffer failure. He has to break the illusion, and that's a painful journey, but it's also the only way forward.
Lindsey: Mm-hmm.
Alison: Yes, thank you for sharing that. That is so powerful and so resonant. Even the good roles, I love that. I can be the best friend, I can be the best mom, whatever it is can become, I love that phrasing, can become emotionally salvific. When in fact it's not the thing, at the end of the day, that's incredible.
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Jesse: Well, let's talk about Type Four. So these folks are called The Originalist and they're driven by a really deep desire for authenticity. A desire to really live into the truth of who they are. They have a strong resistance towards just playing the part for the sake of fitting in, for the sake of whatever. But they want to be true to the truth of whatever's going on inside of them and who they are, so driven by authenticity.
When these folks are healthy, that comes out in a lot of amazing ways. These folks are super creative, highly expressive, they are deep. So if you're hanging out with a Four, you know you're about to have some good conversation, you're going to go deep. They're authentic. They are intense, so when they show up you can just feel it coming off of them.
They have a heightened sense of beauty. So they walk into a space and they are paying attention to the aesthetics and the beauty of that place. And they are emotionally intuitive, they give language to other people, "It seems like you're experiencing X, Y, Z?" Fours are very gifted at understanding the emotional experiences of others.
Now when it turns dark, when it turns on its head and becomes toxic. When it goes the wrong direction, they become over-reactive. So something happens and they, emotionally, backfill that situation until it goes off like a bomb. So they overreact to a situation. They become temperamental, they become dramatic, they become snobbish. So I say that they become like the cool police, "Oh, that's cool. Oh, that's lame."
"That's cool, that's lame." Stop pointing at me, Lindsey Lewis. They become dissatisfied and feel misunderstood, and one of the benchmarks of the Four is that they become addicted to differentiation. Whatever others are experiencing, whatever the common thing is in the room. They can't accept it as part of themselves because it feels like a threat to their identity.
"The only way forward, for me, is to be fully authentic, which means I can't be replicated. I've got to be entirely my own person." And they fixate on it, to the point that they can end up really turning a blind eye towards beautiful things in their life. Because there's lots of common things that are deeply beautiful.
Lindsey: They're like the pendulum from the Three. They're like, "We're going to go the opposite way."
Jesse: Yes, they're like the fail-safe for the Three.
Alison: Well, it's so interesting listening to you because they do sound like opposites. And, yet, both could be susceptible to that cult of identity in this for different reasons, and that's the whole thing with the Enneagram. It's just the motivation is different.
So the Three is trying to get that identity that makes them the best, or gives them success, or gives them recognition. Whereas the Four is trying to get that identity to make them unique, make them special. But there's still a falseness, whatever the motivation is, there's a falseness to the pursuit if we're not careful about it, so interesting.
Lindsey: Yes.
Jesse: Yes, and we didn't talk about this here, so we're not going to go too far down this. But it's worth saying that Types Two, Type Three, and Type Four are in a thing called The Heart Triad, and they are fundamentally searching for identity. There's a layer in which somewhere in the mystery of nature and nurture, they feel as though they lost an identity, and that they now need to go create one in order to have value and love among their community. So those folks are oriented around, "Who am I?"
"What is my identity as a person?"
Lindsey: Well, number Five, that is the beginning of our Head Triad, speaking of the triad. So this is going to have a much different feel. These people are looking for security and safety, more so than identity.
So for the Five, we call them The Investigators. These are our epic head types. They are driven by desire to be competent, knowledgeable, they want to know all about how things work. They want to know the intricate details. And when they're resourceful, they're scholarly, they're wise, they're very objective, they're not ruled by emotions. They're intelligent, they're very reflective, and they can be very witty, that dry sense of humor.
Jesse: There are a few places that are more enjoyable than sitting next to a Type Five, in a meeting. Because they will make incredible jokes and it's a one-time performance, and you need to be sitting right next to them when it happens, it's great.
Lindsey: Yes, they're just going to, kind of, say it under their breath.
Jesse: Yes.
Lindsey: When they're not resourceful, though, they can become reclusive, antisocial. They're in their study on YouTube or Google, doing their thing. They don't really feel the need for relationships and they can act superior because they're so knowledgeable about things. And they become relationally detached, cold, and they have a scarcity mindset. Like "I need to protect my resources. As in my physical, my energy, but then also maybe my money, or my talents, or my time." It's very much a scarcity mindset.
Jesse: Yes, so there's a relational stinginess, that can really overtake their life. And the lie that the Five, often, believes is that they're just being prudent. "I'm just not being emotionally over-reactive." And what happens, over time, is that they train themselves, subconsciously, they don't mean to into a space in which they try to turn their emotions off. They try to withdraw from as many relationships as possible. And they even try to get to where they, themselves, don't want to have needs. So they begin to neglect their own needs as well because everything is about resources.
Lindsey: Yes.
Jesse: And it's like, "Anytime I interact with you, you're using my relational fuel."
"Anytime that I have a personal desire for something, now I've got to go figure out how I'm going to take care." So their fixation is just around resources.
Lindsey: Yes.
Alison: So interesting because we've been talking, again, in this series, about some of these like introversion. Some of these traits that are more, genetically by. Not that every Five is an introvert because I don't know that that's, necessarily, true, although, I'm hearing some components of that.
Lindsey: Mm-hmm.
Alison: And then we've been talking a little bit about different sacred pathways, different forms of intelligence, and how I'm just listening to you, I'm thinking of the Fives I love. There are a lot of ways in which some forms of, especially, evangelical churches aren't super tailored toward a Five, in some ways. Where there's a quiet, there's a contemplation, there's a need to be a little bit cynical, not in an unhealthy way. That there's such a need for us to consider all different types and not sideline folks.
My spouse doesn't want to go to all these social events and it's like, "Well, that isn't the benchmark of what makes one a good Christian." Someone who is more inclined toward being a Five may need to think, "What does that look like in corporate worship?" It might look a little different for a Five than it's going to look for a Two.
Lindsey: Yes, I think Fives are naturally more contemplative than some of the rest of us, especially, The Heart Triad. They might never get to a place where they're going to be super expressive in worship. That there are spiritual disciplines that when they're really trying to get in touch with their heart, with their soul, and relationship with God. They can be contemplative masters while the rest of us are just barely eking out silence and solitude. Some of us, two minutes is too long and for them they can really go to that deep place within themselves.
Alison: I love that. That's what I love about my Fives, they just keep it real, what matters not what's for show.
Jesse: Yes, so type Six are commonly referred to as The Loyalist. And, so, these folks are driven by a really deep desire for security. So we talk about the whole triad Ones. Six is one like times two, it just is a very pronounced in what drives them as people. When that comes out in a healthy way, I say that they represent the covenant of God. These are covenant people. When they say "Yes", they hold to that yes. When they say "No", it means no.
But they will make deep sacrifices for the sake of the community. They're faithful people, they're committed people, highly responsible. The original Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America, they are ready for whatever comes. They are dependable, they're systematic, they are honorable people. They don't tend to have a lot of deception in them, and they're committed to security. They want our communities to be places of safety.
So when we live in a country right now where there's unexpected violence, Sixes tend to be a lot of the personality type that are going, "What protocols can we put in place to keep our children safe?" So Sixes are proactive thinkers. But as we all know, when we are anticipating things that have not yet happened, it can really spin out of control.
And, so, for Sixes, they can become catastrophic thinkers. So they just think all the worst-case scenarios because they need to plan for all the worst-case scenarios. And then, over time, what happens is that that becomes their go-to way of thinking, where they almost become allergic to hope. Allergic to the possibility that there could be good days ahead. They become skeptical of other people. So their disposition, initially, is always to stand back and observe and the other people have to prove their loyalty.
They are anxious, they're self-doubters, they can be uptight, rigid, wary, and reluctant. And the thing is that with all of our types, perception is reality. And the big thing that the Sixes, their ongoing battle in life is just because it might be true it doesn't determine that it is true. And just because inside of who you are, as a person, you think the other person might have this other motivation. It doesn't actually decide that they do have that motivation.
So projection is just an ongoing struggle for Sixes that they always have to be mindful of, and really ask themselves, "How much am I thrusting another person into a role, when actually there's no evidence that that person is that way." And, so, they have to wrestle through that.
Alison: Yes, minding your mind, and we just did a whole series on this really minding what conclusions you're jumping to, that's so good.
Jesse: Yes, I'll tell you this, though, my wife is a Six and if you got kids, having a Six spouse is pretty awesome when you go to the doctor. Because about nine times out of 10, my wife knows more than the doctor because they are researchers, they study, they check things out. They do not just let the paperwork decide things. They are going to make sure everyone has been, adequately, cared for, and they're not just going to get lost in just pushing that paper down the line.
Lindsey: I'm guessing you don't run out of toilet paper, and Kleenexes, and all those things as well.
Jesse: Very rarely.
Lindsey: They're stocked and prepared.
Jesse: Yes, I did, actually, a few years back I was like "We look the Beverly Hillbillies when we go on vacation. We really got to dial this back. So we have a little too much protocol going on vacation with us."
Lindsey: That's hilarious, especially, when they're little, oh, you got a lot of protocol.
Jesse: Yes, and in my wife's case she's got a Seven Wing, we'll talk about the Seven, in a second, but I say that there's regular Lindsay, so my wife's name is Lindsay. So there's regular Lindsay and then there's vacation Lindsay because she learns how to let it go.
Lindsey: Oh, that's good.
Jesse: So not this Lindsey, this Lindsey is married to Drew. I'm married to my wife, Lindsay.
Lindsey: Yes, well, speaking of the Sevens, the Sevens are our Enthusiasts. I say the Sevens are Peter Pan. If you think about all the perks of Peter Pan and all the pitfalls of Peter Pan, that is your Seven. So they are driven by a desire to enjoy life and to experience all that life has to offer. Whether that's reading every book or going to every resort, it's different for each seven, but they love that endless possibilities.
So when they're resourceful, they are so joyful, they're optimistic, they're very child-like energetic. They're optimistic about what you can accomplish, and what I can accomplish, and what we can accomplish together. They're imaginative, they're very quick thinking because they're just ready to go.
But the flip side of that is they can become unreliable and scattered. They want to wait for the best possible situation before they're going to commit. So they are like, "Well, I might come to your party on Friday, but if something better comes along I'm going to go do that, instead."
They are indulgent, they can come across as very juvenile. Like that Peter Pan like "I won't grow up, I refuse. I don't want to go to school." And they're irresponsible, and then they can become demanding because they do not want others to infringe upon their freedom. To have all the joy and all the excess that life has to offer.
Jesse: Yes, earlier, I just talked about Kevin Hart, but just in thinking about comedians, in general. Comedians, in general, probably, the highest type among them would be Type Seven. Now, the other thing that's common among comedians is addiction. There's a lot of overdoses that happen within the comedic community, and it's because the number one struggle for Sevens, they are the most sensitive to pain.
And, in fact, a lot of Sevens, and this is true, we will get complaints from Type Sevens, about our show, because they say "You're so negative about us." And we'll go back and we'll check the minutes, we'll check the notes, and it's, verbatim, the exact same as we've done for everybody else. It's that they feel it with a much greater intensity. They are terrified at an existential level of being trapped in pain, and that's why there's a tendency to over-indulge.
So too much of a good thing is almost enough for the Seven. It's a journey for them to learn how to live in reality. Without running off to the next exciting adventure in their mind by distracting themselves or distracting the people around them. So a lot of times if we do workshops we get to this, and Sevens, it's hard for them to not make jokes, to lighten the mood, because to them it feels cruel what we're doing.
Lindsey: Yes, I've heard a lot of teachers say, too, that as children or young people, that the Fours and the Sevens can often look really similar. Because they're these people with the big emotions, the big highs and the big lows. And somewhere, like you said, nature and nurture, we don't really know, it's like the forest land in the deep end of the pool
and they decide "This is where I'm going to stay. I'm really comfortable with pain." Anything that's not dark is inauthentic. And then the Seven say no, "We're going to completely put that away, we refuse to look at it."
Jesse: They're on the end with the water slides, and the squirt guns, and the pool floaties.
Lindsey: So those two can have a hard time with each other. A Four and a Seven, together, trying to work through something, but really they are what each other needs, to achieve balance
Jesse: Because one brings the gift of lament and we need that gift, and the other one brings the gift of celebration. And a lot of times what we see Christian radio is all about the Seven energy, it's celebration all the time. And Four is bringing energy that challenges some of that, but we also know we should not just sit, perpetually, in grief.
Lindsey: Yes.
Jesse: We need to learn the discipline, this sounds strange to say, but the discipline of celebration, and Sevens bring that into the room and say, "We need to feast because good things are happening."
Alison: That's right, and sometimes we need to take a break. We need healthy escapes, I always say, we need healthy pleasure, we need healthy comfort. They can bring that to us, that's beautiful. You guys are amazing, it's super helpful.
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Jesse: Well, we're going to round things out with the last two. So this is actually going into what I refer to as the body triad, some people call it the gut triad. These folks interpret the world through bodily gut instincts, street smarts, and it's at an instinctual level. And these folks are searching for freedom, autonomy, the ability to make their own decisions and live by their own convictions is really key for these folks. So these are types Eight, Nine, and One.
So Type Eight, these folks are called The Protector. These folks are driven by a deep desire to be able to protect themselves from injustice and to protect other people from injustice. They have a strong orientation around distribution of power and power dynamics, in a relationship. And when they are healthy and using this in healthy ways, these folks are strong. The rest of us are running on 1/10, they run on 2/20.
They need less sleep, they can go longer, they can do more. They're freaks of nature in that regard, they can just do so much. They are natural leaders because of their disposition. Their bodily chemistry, they tend to be broad-shouldered. They just stand their ground more, when they're there you know they're there. They're commanding, they're prophetic, they're assertive, they're self-confident, they're intense, tons of energy.
When they're healthy, and this is always an interesting one, when they're really healthy, a lot of type Eights become therapists. And when they're healthy, they are the exact opposite of the stereotypes of the Eight.
Alison: I heard Dan Allender say he's an Eight.
Jesse: He is an Eight. We had him on the show, and he's a great example of when an Eight really takes on empathy and joins in another person's pain and suffering. They learn how to harness their own strength. Instead of running from their own pain, they begin to make peace with it. And, so, strength doesn't become the solution to everything.
So when they become unhealthy, these folks become aggressive, they become domineering. They become bulls in a China shop. There's no reverence for other people's tenderness and there's no reverence for their own. Because tenderness is anti-strength, and strength is what will win the day.
So they don't do a good job when they feel slighted or attacked by others, they become vengeful. And because Eights are often very good at asserting themselves, it turns into an arm wrestling match and they do usually win. There's a pleasure in fighting. There's a pleasure in arguments. They can take it on, almost, recreationally. And the biggest thing is this, if someone has told you this over and over again, in your life, consider how much Eight you have. And here it is, "I don't feel heard by you."
"You don't listen to me." When an unhealthy Eight gets going, their energy is so blinding to them that it's impossible. It's Mount Everest for them to think that the other person's point of view has any validity, and that the other person isn't just whining and complaining. So the Eight has got to learn how to harness their strength. And my pastor always says, "Meekness is not weakness, it's controlled strength." And that's the journey for the Eights.
Alison: It's so interesting because, to me, what I hear in some of the unhealthy is classic features of narcissism. But I would recommend, there's a wonderful book When Narcissism Comes to Church by Chuck DeGroat a wonderful friend of mine. And he actually talks about narcissism, the faces of it because the Eight is the stereotypical, I think the Threes in the Eights. But he says, "Mm, actually, it shows up in just subtler forms in other types." It's just the most stereotypical form in the unhealthy Eight. Is that fair to say? Would you agree with that?
Jesse: Yes, it tends to be that Eight and Seven energy, both. Because the Seven, when they're really unhealthy, they have a narcissistic view, that's about, "Well, how does this affect me?" And, so, when it merges with that Eight's appetite, Eights just have this big appetite for intensity, especially, like "Let's go skydiving, and go whitewater rafting, and go run the meeting, and start a new business."
Lindsey: Eat a whole cake.
Jesse: It just their appetite is just so massive. And, so, the big journey for the Eight really is in childhood they often had to be bigger than they actually were. Something happened where they weren't big enough to handle the problem but they had to become. So sometimes people had severe illness, they were hospitalized a lot as children, sometimes, they grew up in families where there was a lot of fighting.
And, so, what happened is that, that child ate, had to sacrifice their own childhood innocence to be bigger than they were. And what happened is that the byproducts of innocence are things like tenderness, things like vulnerability, things like gentleness, those are the things that come out. And because the Eight sacrifices in their childhood, those things tend to be underdeveloped.
So the journey for the Eight is to go back. When you see an Eight around a baby, or you see an Eight around a puppy, or you see an Eight around some situation where they perceive innocence in the other. You see that come out in the Eight, but the Eight has to also learn they deserve that as well. That same kindness and tenderness, and then out of that a sweetness can begin to emerge that is such a gift to everybody.
Alison: Beautiful.
Lindsey: Like I told you at the beginning, my original story with the Enneagram was learning that people had these other lenses. And the hardest number for me, at that time, were these type Eights. That I was so focused on being appropriate in every situation. Always being the good girl, being very restrained, keeping my anger in. And then here are these people just living life without a seatbelt.
And I really thought, "Oh, those people are, literally, just choosing to be quote-unquote "Bad people". And when I read about The Eight, in an Enneagram book, I cried because I just understood. And a lot of people struggle with that, with The Eight, if they don't have an aggressive energy about them. That it feels like "Well, why do you get to come in here and suck out all the oxygen in the room?"
"Why do you get to always be at the head of the table when the rest of us are waiting for someone to give us something." And to understand where the Eights are coming from really helps me appreciate, and then want to dig deep and find some of that Eight within myself.
Maybe there are times where you could take initiative, you could be more assertive. You could care more about justice and speak up, that we can learn so much.
Jesse: And we need to be mad about some things. There are things in this world that deserve our anger, and it is a holy, and good, and appropriate thing to be mad about those things.
Alison: Isn't it hypothesized that Martin Luther King Jr., was probably an Eight?
Lindsey: I've heard Eight and I've heard One.
Jesse: Yes, I've heard both of those, too, yes.
Alison: And then I wonder, just listening, I wonder if Paul, the Apostle Paul, who knows, I mean, that's just speculative.
Jesse: Paul is long-winded, I'm going One.
Lindsey: I also give him the One, yes, because he's all about "Don't do this. Don't do this. This is the way." Follower."
Jesse: Eights tend to be pretty to the point and sometimes I'm like "You know Paul, I know the Word of God." I understand, but come on man.
Lindsey: I could see Peter. I could see Peter being an Eight. You know like cut off the ear.
Alison: That's a good point.
Lindsey: "I'm just going to speak my mind."
And Jesus is like, "Whoa, no, that's not it."
Or "Yes, that is it." He was very impulsive. Okay, well, we've talked about the pendulum swing between the Three and the Four, even though they're in the heart triad. Well, I think this is an equal pendulum swing in the gut triad between the Eight and the Nine.
So you have someone who's constantly stirring the waters, and then we come to The Nine and these are The Peacemakers. They want the waters to not have a single ripple internally or externally. These people are driven by a desire for peace within themselves and within the world. A wholeness that comes from a harmony of humanity.
So when these people are healthy, they are seeing all sides. They can listen to an argument and say, "Oh, that makes sense." And then they hear the other side and they're like, "And that makes sense, too." And the two people arguing are like "Wait, what? You can't agree with both of us."
And they're like, "No, I can." And they're easygoing, they're friendly. These people are flexible and calm. They're very receptive, they're great listeners. But the flip side is, is they can be passive to a fault. Listening without ever, actually, saying what they think or knowing what they think. They're stubborn, but it's a silent stubbornness, often, of digging in of heels.
They are conflict-averse, so even when there needs to be some of that healthy conflict, they will resist and they'll procrastinate. Partly because they have a hard time prioritizing because they see the value of all the things that need to be done.
And, so, it's hard to choose what I'm going to do in this moment, and then they can become lazy. That it's like, "Well, I don't know what to do so I'm going to just do a quick social media check, or I'm going to play game on my phone or take a quick little nap." And they can be really indecisive about deep things. About "What are my desires? Where do I want my life to go?" And indecisive for the people around them as well, about their goals and where things are going.
Jesse: Or even, "Hey, where do you want to go to dinner?" And if you've ever immigrated to a new country, it takes less time to do that than it does for a Nine to decide what the dinner plans are.
Lindsey: It's true, they can end up really sleepwalking through their entire life, and that's not good.
Alison: And so pleasant to be around.
Lindsey: They're so wonderful to be around, yes.
Alison: And when you love a Nine, just to be really mindful of not taking advantage of that illusion. I think this is true of the Twos, too, not taking advantage of their helpful nature. But learning to love a Nine and a Two in a different way. But trying to learn to, actually, invite them to speak their mind, to be a little bit walking into conflict. Because it's so easy, they're so nice to be around, you can just take advantage of that, almost, and subtly reinforce what they actually need to work through.
Lindsey: Yes, I always say if you, I actually learned this the hard way because my husband is a Nine. And when I was pregnant with our secondborn, I had lots of cravings. I always have cravings. I'm always like, "I know exactly what I want to eat. I know where I want to go." But I'll be nice and say, "Oh, well, where do you want to go?"
Jesse: Which you don't really mean?
Lindsey: No, but for the majority of our marriage, he doesn't care, I get to go wherever I want. But we were on this Enneagram journey, so he's trying to cultivate some desires and starting with the easiest, the lighter things. And, so, I really wanted pizza and I gave him three options because that's a great way with Nines. Like "Do you want this, this, or this?"
"Does any of these sound good or not good?"
And he was like, "Not pizza." And it took so much, because I was pregnant so I deserve to have my pizza. But I was like, "No." The one thing that you can do, if you're loving a Nine in your life, is when they do speak up a preference, you give it to them."
Alison: Yes.
Lindsey: You don't have to make a big deal about it. But you just do it because they need the practice.
Alison: That's right.
Lindsey: And they really don't mind. If I had said, "Oh, I really wanted pizza."
He'd be like, "Oh, yes, that's fine, I like pizza, it's good." But that would've been a step backward, in him trying to cultivate an assertiveness to his own needs and desires.
Jesse: And I always say there's two sides to this. So for those that are not Nines, but in a relationship with a Nine, understand they need a long runway. They need a longer runway than most people because it takes them a while to figure out where are we going. What are the words I'm looking for? There's a meandering, kind of, style that they have. Don't cut off the runway.
You got to give them the runway, and that means the rest of us have got to hold back our energy to give them the space they need to get there. And, also, to the Nines, it is wrong to make other people live your life for you. And that's the thing that so many Nines end up settling for is, "Well, I'll let everybody else make all the decisions." And that's a huge burden to put on others.
And the fundamental belief of the Nine is, "I don't have what it takes. Everybody else has it, I don't have it. It doesn't matter, I can't change outcomes, I can't influence where things go. I don't have the energy, the strength, the clarity." And all of that is not true.
Lindsey: Yes.
Jesse: Nines are such a gift, but it does require the Nine to exert themselves. And that will require the Nine to wake up out of the trance, that so many of them are in. The cheap version that Nine settles for is comfort. The real thing they want is Shalom, and Shalom often requires a struggle towards ultimate peace.
And so many of us just settle for this synthetic, junkie, version that is we wake up one day and we went, "Oh, my gosh, I literally just wasted away these different days that were so important." So to all the Nines listening, your presence matters. Aim for Shalom, don't just aim for comfort.
Alison: I love that. You guys are amazing. This is so rich and I hope, I know my listeners are just going to be wanting more, and I can just hear the wheels churning. "Well, what does this mean?"
"What if I live with this type?"
"What if my kid is this type?" So how do people find out more? Tell us where we can find you, and learn more about how to use this in our lives.
Jesse: Well, so there are a few options. So the first thing is this is that Lindsay and I do co-host, together, a podcast called The EnneaCast. And, so, wherever you get your podcasts you can go and check that one out. And, so, it's Ennea, like Enneagram, and then cast. And then the other thing is this is that, literally, this week we are actually in a process of launching a brand new website called relatebetter.com.
And that is going to have a bunch of different tools with the ultimate goal being this, our conviction is that the purpose of life is relationships. Jesus says "Love God, love other people as you love yourselves." Which is to say everything in the totality of our life comes back to that. That's what we're going to care about on our deathbeds, it's what we care about when we go to sleep every night.
And, so, our new website is going to slowly add increasing amounts of tools to help people, hopefully, experience better relationships. So we'll kick things off with a whole bunch of Enneagram stuff and wave one of those tools. And then we've got some life mapping stuff that's coming down the pipeline, and we got some surprises coming. So whether you're a therapist or whether you're somebody that is just, "I just want to learn how to have more relational intelligence." We want to help you with that, so go to relatebetter.com.
And, then, if you want to know about our parent organization, it's called Love Thy Neighborhood, and we say we're like the Peace Corps with Bibles. And, so, you can go to lovethyneighborhood.org. We also have a podcast also called Love Thy Neighborhood, and if you're baptized NPR that's our show. And, also, I do have a book called How We Relate: Understanding God, Yourself, and Others Through the Enneagram.
So if you're looking for an approach to the Enneagram, that is deeply infused into the character of Jesus, into the heart of the gospel, that is this book. It's the book I wish I had when I first came across the Enneagram. So you will definitely encounter the gospel, in addition to Enneagram theory.
Alison: You were both referring to that a little bit and I was like, "Oh, I need to take a look at whatever you guys are looking at." It was your book Jesse?
Jesse: Yes, and I wrote it for all folks. So a lot of Enneagram stuff, sometimes, is pretty high brow and you've got to have a certain acumen. This is a book, literally, written for blue-collar folks all the way up to people that are trained psychologists. It is a very accessible book on purpose.
Alison: What about our teenagers; young adult and kids?
Lindsey: Mine is reading it right now.
Alison: Oh, cool.
Lindsey: Yes, she read a little, tiny, primer and wanted more. And, so, I gave her Jesse's book and she's 13, she's almost 14, I guess. No, she's 13. She loves it, it has a lot of graphics in it, images, and she can really understand it. The language is accessible to her. She's really loving it and I'm loving it because I've been restraining myself from telling her, her number for all these years. She goes, "I think I might be a four."
And I was like, "Oh, really? You think that, maybe?"
Alison: Oh, I do the same. I just, I cannot keep stuff back from typing everybody in my family.
Lindsey: I know.
Alison: That's great, well, that's a great resource, thank you so much. And is there anything else?
Jesse: Lindsay and I also lead workshops and, so, we lead workshops everywhere from you can come to our office and we have public workshops that we do. We also do things for church communities and we also do things for corporations. So we, actually, do work with a Fortune 500 company, and we modify our workshops in those contexts to be appropriate for a diverse audience.
But we offer a free one-hour study, at the end, for anyone that wants to stay where we talk about the character of Jesus and what He does with all these giant existential questions. So, yes, you can learn more about our workshops as well also by going to relatebetter.com.
Alison: Cool, so you'll go into churches and do workshops on this?
Jesse: Yes.
Lindsey: Mm-hmm.
Alison: Very cool, awesome. You guys, it's just so rich, I can't say more. First of all, I just think that Enneagram is so rich, and then when you bring it together with a Christ-centered approach and make it a tool of spiritual formation, as you guys are doing, in such a deep, and nuanced, and life-giving way, it just brings real change.
Not only, again, to your life, it's not just naval gazing, to your relationships, and I love that you guys are doing this. Thank you so much for taking the time. This is one of our longer episodes, but it's just so rich. Everything you say, all the words you're saying, I'm just hanging on. You have such a great way with this. Thank you for taking the time to be here.
Lindsey: Thank you.
Jesse: Well, it's our pleasure, thank you so much.
< Outro >
Alison: Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you'd take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts and click the Plus or Follow button, that will ensure you don't miss an episode and it helps get the word out to others.
While you're there, I'd love it if you leave your five-star review. I look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.
Do you struggle with taking compliments? Are you a mind reader? A minimizer? Or do you tend to take things personally? If you answered yes to any of these, you do not want to miss today's episode. We're discussing 12 common thinking traps, what psychologists call cognitive distortions. These are ways of thinking that trip up every single one of us. The messages you tell yourself have a direct impact on the health of your relationships, so this is a great one to share with your family or friends.
Here's what we cover:
1. 12 common thinking traps
2. How to avoid toxic shame spirals
3. The problem with mind reading
4. How to stop taking things personally
5. Why we all need to learn how to take a compliment
Do you have questions for Dr. Alison? Leave them here.
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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 on Youtube
- 2 Corinthians 10:5
- The Best of You (Chapter 4, Chapter 6)
- More about Dr. Aaron Beck
- Episode 39: Boundaries for Your Soul—How to Navigate Your Overwhelming Thoughts & Feelings
- Episode 50: 9 Types of Intelligence, the Trap of Comparison, and How to Connect More Authentically with God
- Episode 49: Personality, the Big Five Traits, and Why Are We So Obsessed With Personality Types?
- Resources for support
Transcript
Alison: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You podcast. I am so glad you're here. We are in a new series on my Favorite Psychology Tools, and I've loved hearing from you about what this series has meant to you. That you've been sharing it with friends. With even your kids, with your spouse, as a way of having conversations about your differences in a healthy way, and I love that. I love that this podcast can be a way for you to spark conversations about some of these topics, with the people that you love.
So before we dive in, today, I want to remind you that I send out a short email, every Thursday, with bonus content related to each episode. Almost, always, I think of something I missed or want to expand on, and I include that in that weekly email. It's free and you can subscribe to it on my website, dralisandcook.com. You'll see a free newsletter button right there, or you can check the link in the episode show Notes.
So in this series, so far, we've been talking a lot about our differences. Differences in our personalities, and different types of intelligence. Different ways of using our minds and our personalities, to connect with God in our spiritual practices. And if there's one theme that I hope you are really grasping, so far, in these episodes, is that you develop a posture of curiosity about yourself and the way God made you, which is such a fun adventure.
Such a great way to look at life and get curious about the ways that God made other people, and the ways that they're simply different from you, and beginning to take some of this strength-based approach.
This is an approach, in psychology, that's often referred to as positive psychology. Where instead of focusing on diagnoses and mental illness, we begin to focus on different personality traits, differences between us that are just simply part of who we are. And while it's important to talk about diagnostic categories and where people are stuck in pathology or stuck in problematic ways.
It's also helpful to focus on our strengths and where we're simply looking at differences among us. Both are important, both matter and, in particular, when we start to focus on these personality differences, differences in gifting, et cetera. We begin to move from shaming ourselves or comparing ourselves to other people, and instead, we start to focus on becoming the person God wants me to become.
That comparison trap is just so awful and so terrible. We wind up shaming ourselves or criticizing and picking apart other people, and it just leads to nowhere good. It's so freeing, as you begin to understand yourself. You're able to compare yourself less to others. You stop worrying about what they're doing better than you, what they're like, what you're not doing, and you start focusing on how to grow into and build on your own strengths.
You start to appreciate and value what makes you unique, which is a healthy form of taking pride in who God made you to be. So in order to do all of that, it requires a certain amount of cognitive health. In order to avoid so many traps such as comparisons, shame spills, and toxic messages. We have to mind what we're telling ourselves.
We have to mind our thoughts. We have to think about what we're thinking about, this is called metacognition. That's the fancy term for thinking about what you're thinking about. It's about becoming aware of what you're telling yourself, of what you're saying to yourself, of what you're believing inside, sometimes, beneath conscious awareness. It's about taking "Captive every thought," as Paul said, and making sure that what you're telling yourself aligns with what God wants you to see in yourself.
In The Best of You, in chapter four, I call this "Looking at yourself through the mirror of truth, through God's mirror, and it starts with paying attention to your thoughts. And, so, today, I want to walk you through the most-common thought traps or what in psychology we call cognitive distortions.
These are distorted ways of thinking that keep you stuck. Cognitive distortions, which are really known as thinking errors, are patterns of biased and inaccurate thinking. And these patterns, that's the key word there, it's not just one thought that flashes into your mind and then you discard because you know it's not true. It's a patterned way of thinking, where you really slipped into a way of thinking that is not healthy for you, and it can lead to negative emotions. It can lead to self-doubt, it can lead to self-criticism, it can lead to shame, it can lead to negative behaviors.
You might start showing up in your relationships in certain ways based on lies or based on distorted ways of thinking, that simply are not true. It is tragic when I see this happening. Where people are believing a set of lies that are actually causing them to sabotage what is happening in their relationships. And I'm going to give you some examples of this, we all are susceptible to this.
So this is something that as we, again, look at our mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health. This is minding the mind, minding our thoughts. Really being careful to pay attention to what we're telling ourselves. Cognitive distortions involve errors in the way we perceive and interpret information.
So a classic example is your teenager is sullen, grumpy, they seem like they're in a bad mood, and you tell yourself, "They hate me. They're mad at me because I asked them to clean their room." When really what they're thinking about is something that happened at school that day that had, absolutely, nothing to do with you. But you're convinced, whether consciously or subconsciously, that their mood is completely related to you.
And, so, you change your behaviors based on what is, in fact, not true. And it gets really destructive if we don't catch ourselves and make sure that we are telling ourselves what's true or getting information that we need to investigate the things we're telling ourselves.
Cognitive distortions can lead to distorted or irrational beliefs, attitudes and behaviors, and they're triggered by a lot of factors. They're shaped by our past experiences, where if you've been abused or criticized, over and over, by a caregiver. You may be susceptible to some of these faulty thinking patterns because that criticism gets programmed into your mind. And, so, you filter everything you hear through that critical lens. This is something to become aware of as you start to heal.
These cognitive distortions can be triggered by some beliefs that we hold, even some of our religious beliefs. We can start to filter in ways that aren't quite matching up with reality. They can be triggered by personal biases that we've held and we haven't checked. These subtle biases that step in, where we have these ideas about how people are.
Again, maybe, we inherited these from our family of origin and we haven't really checked them out against reality. We haven't become good scientists who are "Taking every thought captive," as Paul said. And holding them under the lens of objective criteria to test ourselves. "Is that really true?"
I cannot tell you how many times I will ask clients that, let alone myself that "Is that really true?"
"Where did you hear that?"
"Who told you that?"
"Where did you pick up that belief, that idea, that attitude about yourself or about that other person? Let's test it. Let's weigh the evidence, let's unpack it." And, almost, always, especially, these negative beliefs we hold about ourselves. Almost, always, the person will realize they never really investigated the source of a deeply held belief, oftentimes, self-defeating, that they've been telling themselves.
Cognitive distortions were first identified by psychologist Aaron Beck. Who is considered to be the founder of cognitive therapy, and cognitive therapy is one of the most widely researched, most effective, most common forms of therapy out there. It focuses, exactly, on this very work of identifying and changing negative, unhelpful, patterns of thinking. And, especially, identifying how those negative, unhelpful, patterns of thinking are influencing behaviors in harmful ways. So it's pacing apart what's going on in your mind?
What are you telling yourself?
What are you believing?
What are you thinking that is leading to these behaviors that have become destructive? In your relationships, in the way you treat yourself, in your parenting, whatever it may be. So I'm going to walk through twelve common cognitive distortions, that we all deal with from time to time.
And I guarantee you, you are going to see yourself on this list in more ways than one. And if you do, as you're listening, if you are saying, "Oh, my gosh, I do that. Oh, that is me." That is a gift. That gift of awareness is the first step toward meaningful change. We cannot change what we are not aware of.
So my goal, in this episode, is to raise your awareness of some of the ways you might be subconsciously, habitually, without even realizing it, telling yourself things that may not, in fact, be true. And we're not going to be able to root all of them out today.
But to become aware of what you're telling yourself, of the things you think, of the things you believe on a day-to-day basis. Especially as they relate to your primary relationships, is life-changing. And at the end of this episode, I'm going to give you some tips on how you can begin to incorporate this practice into your daily time of self-reflection, of your daily prayer, of your daily mental health practices.
Because minding your mind, and tending to your thoughts, as with anything, takes practice, just like building any muscle. When you start to go to the gym and you start to work on a muscle, it's hard at first, but over time, as you practice, you begin to catch yourself more quickly.
And you might even still do it, you might even still say, "Oh, there I go, I'm completely mind reading right now. I'm completely telling myself that I know what that person's thinking when I have no idea what they're thinking." And you can name it and much more easily stop that from influencing your behaviors in negative ways.
< Music >
Here are twelve, common, thought distortions that we all face. Number one is all-or-nothing thinking, also known as black-and-white thinking, and it means you consider everything in black-and-white terms. From one extreme to another, without considering the shades of gray, the nuances, the middle ground, where so many things, especially, when we're struggling and tempted to all-or-nothing thinking fits.
Usually, when we're in the middle of a struggle, things are very gray and murky, but we don't know how to live there. And, so, we tend to go to one extreme or the other.
And, so. here are some examples.
"I'm either perfect or I'm a complete failure."
"They either love me and think I'm amazing, or they hate me and think I'm the worst person in the world."
"I'm amazing as a mom, as a friend, as a wife, I am on it. I am amazing or I am just the worst." You just go from one extreme to the other, and a lot of this is normal to feel this way. This is that link between the way we feel and what we're thinking, and it's one thing to feel this way. To feel like "I feel like a complete failure." Even as, simultaneously, you know that's not true. That's what we're after.
You may not be able to completely change the feeling, that's present when you're doing all-or-nothing thinking of like "I know it's not true, but I just feel like a miserable failure." But the "I know it's not true" is very important. To say "I have to own the fact that I feel this way." And, simultaneously, "I know it's not true. I know that mistake I just made in parenting does not make me the world's worst parent." And, the hanging on just a little bit to that truth of "I had a bad moment" versus "I am a failure" is all the difference between a shame spiral and a bad moment.
This is so critical because if you really believe, inside, when you make a mistake, "I am a failure." That is a vicious, horrible, way to live. You just start to pile on layers and layers of shame on yourself.
But as you begin to parse through the feeling of, again, I'm using this example of, "I'm a failure." And the belief is just right there, side by side, going "I know I'm not a failure. I know it's just a bad moment. Two things can be true, I can feel like a failure in this moment and, simultaneously, I know every parent has terrible moments. Every spouse has terrible moments. Every colleague has terrible moments, it's okay."
You start to talk yourself back into that balance. Where there's some painful feelings there, but there's also some equilibrium. There's some truth-telling and that's what we are after, as we identify these cognitive distortions. We want to dig them out like weeds buried deep in the soil. We got to get them at the root and pull them out.
So that when there is some hard stuff, those weeds are not crowding us out and telling us lies about what's happened because the stuff is hard enough. The thing that's happened is going to be hard, but what we tell ourselves about it really matters. And if we're telling ourselves lies, if we're telling ourselves a thought distortion, which is that "You are either perfect or you are a failure." It's only going to make it worse. It's only going to pile on the shame.
Number two is overgeneralization, and this is where you draw sweeping, widespread, conclusions based on maybe one or two isolated incidences. It's a really sneaky distortion and we're all susceptible to it. A classic example is that you receive one C on a test. Overall, you've been a pretty good student, you've done pretty well. But you get that one C and you generalize that one incident to "I am terrible at science."
"I am a terrible writer."
"I am terrible at math."
And people do this, we have one bad experience in a class or get one bad grade and just write yourself off in that field for the rest of your life. Or somebody laughed at you once, this happened to me once. Somebody laughed at me once when I sang and I thought, "Well, I'm just a bad singer." And I'm actually not a terrible singer but I just generalized. I was like, "Well, that one incidence must lead to a sweeping truth about who I am."
Another example is you might generalize from a painful situation that happened. "One of my friends betrayed me, therefore, all people will eventually betray me." This is a really tragic byproduct of childhood trauma where if a parent betrays you, it's really easy in that young brain to generalize. To assume all adults are eventually going to betray you. We can even generalize to God, as children, "Well, if these people, who were in authority and were supposed to care for me, treated me this way." Generalize that to God.
This is a really normal way of making sense of complicated things. There's no shame in doing this, but we do want to become aware of it. And, you combat these by testing the data. "Wait a minute, that was one bad grade. Do I like science? Do I like music. Do I like singing? Do I want to write it off forever?"
"Wait a minute, that was one person who was really awful to me."
Let's look at the evidence, "Are there other people?" And you begin to gather data. You begin to embark on a process to find out what's really true. You can look at statistics, sometimes, and we can all sit around and guess what we feel, what might be subjectively true. But let's look at the data. What are the data out there?
Another classic case of this is people are terrified to fly. And then you look at the stats, and you realize it's actually far safer to fly than it is to drives. That's the actual fact. But we generalize based on a fear that we have during one bad flight, that all flying is terrifying, therefore all flying is unsafe. When, in fact, the data tells us a whole different story. So this is, again, minding your mind really paying attention to what you are subtly telling yourself and subtly believing.
Number three and four are two sides of the same coin. Three is mental filtering, and this is when you focus exclusively on the negative aspects of any situation while ignoring the positive. So you've got this mental filter in place where you just filter out the positive and you only see the negative.
So, for example, you might dwell only on the negative comments you receive from a romantic partner, or from a teacher, or from a work colleague, or a boss. Even when there is evidence that they've, actually, also given you affirmation and given you praise, you just can only see the negative.
Now, closely related to mental filtering, discounting the positive, this is number four. These two are very closely related. But disqualifying the positive means you acknowledge the positive. You hear it, it comes in, and then you just reject it. You just throw it away, and you figure out a way to completely pick it apart and disarm it. And if you think about these two categories, if you think about people who it's really hard for them to take a compliment. That would be someone who's really good at discounting the positive.
No matter what you say, they're going to say, "Mm, no, that's not really true."
You say, "Oh, you look so nice today."
"Oh, no I don't, I just woke up."
Or, "You did such a good job of that."
"Oh, no, it was nothing."
"No, really, that other person did all the work."
That person cannot accept positive feedback from you, and it really is a barrier to connection. It's a barrier to authenticity. Because taking in a compliment, taking in praise, or a positive from someone requires us to be vulnerable. There's a humility involved in saying, "Oh, thank you, that really meant a lot. I can receive that from you." Receiving praise from someone is a skill.
And, then, likewise, the person with the mental filter who doesn't even see the positive. That mental filter only sees and takes in the negative. You might think of someone who's really a pessimist. Someone who finds whatever the negative is and just goes there, and some of this is habit. Some of this is a protective mechanism.
There's a way in which this person is getting something by just staying so focused on the negative. That if they were to have to entertain the possibility of something positive. They might have to open up to hope, they might have to open up to change, and it could be really painful. It could break open something inside of them.
So, again, there's no shame. And if you see yourself, in these, or if you see someone you love in these, please tread lightly. Don't go trying to pull off the filter, it will not work. It's likely there for a reason, but gently begin to name it. "That's interesting, I notice you tend to gravitate toward the negative. I wonder what that's about? Tell me about that." And that person may not be able to respond, in that moment, but you're just gently getting curious. "I notice this." Or the person who always discounts the positive, who cannot receive a positive from you.
"I just noticed that I just said something complimentary to you and it seemed like it was hard for you to take that. I'm just curious about that. I wonder what that's about?"
And you can even say that rhetorically without requiring them to answer. Because this is tender stuff, this is vulnerable. These are coping strategies. They're there for a reason. These ways of thinking, these cognitive distortions, we've developed these, over time, for a reason. These are attached to parts of us, to go back to the series that we did on Boundaries for Your Soul. But these parts of us have taken up these ways of filtering out the positive or rejecting every compliment for a reason.
So we don't want to go trying to rip these all to people. What we want to do is get curious, come alongside ourselves, "I wonder why I do that. It's so hard for me when someone tells me something positive, I just want it to go away. I just can't take it." Or it's just like moth to a flame with negative news. "I just want to grab that negativity; I wonder what that's about?" Get curious, don't shame yourself, don't shame others. Get curious, as you consider all of these twelve examples that we're going through today.
This is one of my favorites, number five, mind reading. I pride myself on being a little bit of a mind reader. I know what people are thinking. I know what they're feeling, and this is the flip side of the gift of empathy. Sometimes we do, and sometimes we do have a pretty good sense of what other people are thinking and feeling.
Some of us are pretty good about that. It gets back to that interpersonal, intelligence, we talked about in episode 50. And we pride ourselves that we're pretty good at picking up on subtext and cues from other people. But I promise you, even if you're pretty good at reading other people, you will sometimes be wrong, and you do sometimes have blind spots. So mind reading is making assumptions or interpretations without sufficient evidence.
We jump to conclusions about what's going on, usually in another person, without really knowing what they're thinking or what they're feeling in that moment. Sometimes you might be right, if it's a kid you know really well, a friend, or a spouse, you probably can anticipate what's going through their mind. But you are not always right, and this is why I always say it is so important to just ask.
One of my favorite phrases to say to people is, "I'm imagining that you might be feeling this."
Or "I imagine that you might be thinking this, is that right? Can you tell me more?"
To open up a conversation, giving them a chance to let me know if I'm accurate or not because I'm not always accurate. When we mind read without being consciously aware of it and consciously checking ourselves, with humility, to realize that we are not ultimately mind readers. We can change our behaviors based on things that are not true. This is that example of a teen is grumpy at dinner, and you assume it's because of something you cooked, or something you did, or something you asked.
You might even discipline your teen when really they had a bad day and it has nothing to do with you. And, so, you've got to say, "Hey, I notice, it seems like maybe something's on your mind. Is everything okay?" They might brush you off, they might not answer, but at least you checked it out.
Now, an extreme example of mind reading is when you attribute something to someone that is not based in any form of truth. For example, you're out to dinner with friends, and they offer to pay the bill. And you assume that they did that because they think you're a failure and can't hack it on your own, and you attribute something to their actions that is not, in fact, true.
Closely related to mind reading, another form of jumping to conclusions, number six is fortune telling. This is when you make predictions about the future based on little or no evidence. You predict something and hold it as the truth. You really fixate on it without really doing the work to gather information, to see if you're basing that on actual evidence.
Here's an example of how this can influence your behavior. And, again, these are tricky, these are sneaky. A lot of times these are subconscious. But you'll hear someone say, "I'll never find love." because they've had a couple of really bad relational experiences. Right after something really hard happens, we might feel like "I'm never going to find love."
Or "I'm never going to find a job I love."
Or "I'm never going to find friends." But the reality is, odds are you probably will. If we look at the data, most people tend to find a friend or two. But if you're telling yourself, "I'll never be someone who finds a friend."
Or "I'll never be someone who finds love."
Or "I'll never be someone who finds a job." That becomes a little bit of what we call these self-fulfilling prophecies,where if you believe it strongly enough, you can start to will it into being, and this isn't a magical thing.
This is if you really believe you're someone who can't find friends, your behaviors will start to align with somebody who doesn't know how to be a friend. As opposed to saying, "Wait a minute, I've had a couple of bad experiences. I think I can find friendship; I think I can find belonging. How can I align my actions in ways that allow me more of a possibility, more of a probability for that to become true?"
< Music >
Number seven is emotional reasoning. I've been alluding to this throughout. It's believing that your emotions are accurate reflections of reality. This is a tricky one because emotions are important. They have important information for us. They're important cues, that stuff is happening. But it doesn't mean they always tell us the truth about a situation.
In The Best of You, I talk about this in chapter six, where I talked about facts, faith, and feelings. You have to hold them in balance with each other. Your feelings are not always facts; they are a piece of data that you have to hold in tension with the facts of a situation. Almost all of us have bought into this particular distortion. And it's, essentially, when you say, "I feel it, therefore it must be true."
Now, the subtle nature of this is you feel it, and that is true. It is true that you feel it, but it doesn't mean that what you feel is true. And, so, for example, going back to that all-or-nothing example when you say, "I feel like a failure." I believe you, that you feel like a complete failure in this moment. That doesn't mean you are, in fact, a failure. That's the difference here. The feeling is true in the sense that you feel it, and we need to deal with that because it's important information. But it does not mean that it is, in fact, true.
You might feel suspicious of somebody's motives, and that might be true. It might mean that they have poor motives. It might not be true. There's a leap between that feeling of suspicion and what is, in fact, true. You might feel like someone doesn't like you, and that might be true, or it may well not be true.
Again, this gets at that mind reading. You may feel like you know what they're thinking about you. But you don't actually know what they're thinking about you, until you ask them. Until you gather data. And this is just such an important one, deeply important foundational, in our daily practice of staying aware of what is in our minds.
Our feelings can really overtake us. "I feel this so deeply, it must be true." And just always holding that in tension with, "I feel this so deeply and I'm going to journal about it,
and I'm going to try to unpack it, and I'm going to try to understand it." While, simultaneously, always holding that little part of you that says, "What is true?"
Again, with curiosity, you may not arrive at the solution to this today. And this is the thing about minding our minds, it takes work. It's a discipline. It takes practice.I'm a big journaler. I journal every morning because it takes me a few laps around the track of my feelings, to arrive at what's actually true.
Sometimes it takes me a few days, sometimes it takes me months, and it takes some patience. The Fruit of the Spirit of patience, the Fruit of the Spirit of self-control. To take the time that I need to take about a feeling that I'm having. To bring it into tension with what the facts are, to bring it into tension with what God is saying to me, to arrive at conclusions that dictate my actions.
We are complicated beings, and it takes some work to pay attention to what we're paying attention to. So that the way that we behave in the world is grounded on wisdom, and rationality, and sound practices.
Number eight labeling, I talk about this a lot on here. We don't want to label people. We don't want to slap a sticker on ourselves or other people. We want to name patterns of behavior. Labeling is applying a negative label to yourself, to someone else. Based on a very singular incident, a singular character trait, just an unfair representation of the entirety of that person.
This is really an extreme form of overgeneralization. It's saying "That person didn't come through for me in the moment, therefore, they are unreliable. That's an unreliable person because one time they didn't come through for me."
Now, if that person, continually, over time, never comes through for you, and is always letting you down. Then it might be fair to say that person has shown me unreliable patterns of behavior, I can't count on that person, that's wisdom.
But to make an attribution of that's an unreliable person, that's an irresponsible person, that's a lazy person, that's a critical person, whatever the label is. Without really getting a chance to see the whole of who that person is and, again, we probably more frequently do this to ourselves.
Probably more frequently are we inclined to attribute a negative label to ourselves. "I'm lazy."
"I'm irresponsible."
"I'm stupid."
It's just not true. The whole gestalt, the whole big picture of who we are does not support that unilateral labeling, and it's not helpful. It doesn't actually help us be the person we want to become.
Number nine catastrophizing, another really common one. It's assuming the worst-case scenario is inevitable, in any given moment, when something bad happens. We all have friends like this, some of us are like this. Some of you have kids who are like this. Where no matter what happens, it is the worst thing ever. "My life is going to fall apart because I did not get the grade that I wanted."
"My life is going to fall apart because I didn't get invited to that party."
"My life is going to fall apart because I didn't get that invitation."
"My life is going to fall apart because I didn't make that deadline."
Whatever it is, we extrapolate it to the worst-case scenario. We can even do it to our mental health. "I feel anxious, today. Ah, I am an anxious person. I'm going to feel anxious for the rest of my life."
Number ten is should statements, another really common, unhelpful, thought pattern, and we do this to ourselves so often. Should statements are statements that you make to yourself about what you should do, what you ought to do, what you must do, what you should never do.
We can also do it in the negative. We can apply them to others; "They should not be doing that." There's always a tone of judgment in there. Shoulding is often linked to judgment. "I should really be better at this."
"I should be a better friend."
"I should be a better parent."
"I should never lose my temper."
"I should never get angry."
"I should never feel sad."
"I shouldn't feel this way about this other person."
"I shouldn't feel this way about myself, about God, about church about...." Whatever it is, we should ourselves to death. "I should do this."
"I should do that."
"I should do this." When I started paying attention to my shoulds, this was about ten years ago, I consciously started to pay attention to shoulds based on the help of a spiritual director. I could not believe how life changing it was and how I drove myself with shoulds. Often linked to an inner guilt tripper, "I should do this." And, so, often it was squeezing out the actual better choice, the life-giving choice before God.
When we hang on to should statements about ourselves, we live in the guilt trap that we cannot live up to. And we often don't end up making the wisest decisions. When we cling to should statements about others, we are always going to be disappointed. We're going to risk being judgmental. We're going to risk being critical in ways that are not necessary.
Number eleven is personalization, another common one. I guess all of these are common, that's my conclusion. Because every single time I get to one of these I'm like, "Yes." This is where we take responsibility or blame for events or situations that are beyond our control. Now that sounds abstract, what this really looks like is taking things personally. And this is a tough one that is so important to get on top of, especially, as a parent or in a romantic relationship, where things just have to come to the surface.
Fundamental differences of someone being annoyed that the dishes are in the sink, or someone being annoyed about the way you brush your teeth, or someone being annoyed that you're talking too loudly on the phone, while they're trying to study, and it's not personal. It's not actually about you. It's just something that is outside of the two people that is the cause of irritance, that two people, together, need to work through. And when we take it personally, we make it even harder to work through to a healthy conclusion or a healthy compromise.
And, so, there are a wide spectrum of ways this can come up. From the simple ones, like I said, of just taking it personally when our spouse says, "Hey, could you not leave the cap off the toothpaste."
And we go, "What? You think I'm a bad person? You think I'm unthoughtful?"
No, it was a simple request of, "Hey, could you please put the cap back on the toothpaste?" There's no personal attack in that. There's no personal judgment in that. That's a simple example but it's very real, and these things can drive us crazy in our relationships. To bigger things where you believe that you are the cause of everybody else's feelings. This gets back to the mind reading, but you mind read in such a way that it's always your fault.
So let's say you plan an event and someone didn't have a good time at it. You assume it's your fault. It's your fault that every person there didn't have the time of their lives because you didn't attend to every single detail perfectly. You take it personally when, in fact, maybe that other person didn't have a good time for a million other reasons that have nothing to do with you.
So this is a tough one, because sometimes it is personal. Sometimes it is personal, and a lot of times it's not. Research from psychology would tell us that we do better for ourselves if we assume that it's not. The less we take things personally, the more effective we'll be in our relationships.
And, finally, we've arrived at minimizing. Minimizing is so common, and it's a way of downplaying the importance or significance of an event, a situation, or a behavior. Often to avoid complicated feelings about it. It can often happen when we've been hurt and we minimize it, "Oh, it's nothing, it's fine. I'm fine. Don't worry about me."
When, in fact, there really is a hurt there. There really is something that happened` that hurt, and maybe we don't want to make a big deal about it, but we do need to acknowledge it. And, again, this is a lot of work that happens in the privacy of our own heart, and I do a lot of journaling related to this. Because I'm a big minimizer, and I've learned that it doesn't really serve other people when I minimize things.
But what I've had to learn to do is write it in my journal and be like, "Yes, this hurt me." And, then, really, think through "When, and if, and how I need to say that or raise that to the surface." One of the things I like to do, in my own life for this, is just use a simple phrase, I'll say "Ouch". Which is just an acknowledgment of, "Yes, ouch, that hurt." I don't need to have a big conversation about it, but I'm not lying. I'm not saying, "No, it's fine."
I'm saying "Ouch, that was a bruise."
Some indication that there was a hurt there. Now, the truth is, sometimes, it's wise to minimize in the sense of if we're doing it accurately. If we're saying "No, it's really no big deal." But this gets at the honesty. That H-Factor we talked about in the episode on Personality, episode 49.
The more we're honest with ourselves and the more we say, "No, it's really not a big deal. I really don't mind this." Comes out of knowing and trusting ourselves that we will say, "Actually, that one does bother me."
"I do care about this one."
"I do have a preference on this one."
"I do need to talk about this one." We build trust with ourselves, as we get really clear about when we're minimizing in an unhealthy way. Versus when we're being really honest and having a lot of integrity and saying, "It's really not a big deal." This is an important one for us to work out in the privacy of our own hearts.
Gosh, as we close today, I feel like I could have, probably, done a complete episode on every single one of those. So we will come back to these. They're so important. We're just scratching the surface today. Just begin to pay attention, to become aware. Talk to other people about this. You might share this with a small group, with friends, with a friend circle, with a spouse, in your family.
You can use this episode as a way of saying, "Hey, let's talk about this. I think we're doing this in our family. Let's work on one or two of these."
"In the context of our family, we tend to take things personally, let's work on that. Let's talk about that."
Use this as a springboard for conversations with the people in your life. And, then, also, use this as an opportunity to grow in daily awareness.
I'm a big believer and every morning I take inventory,I think about how I'm doing mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually, it's an important daily habit for me. I understand different seasons of life are different for different people. There have been seasons of life where that's been harder for me.
But I would say that's an ideal place every morning just to take inventory, and I do that simple MEPs exercise. And I start with the M - what am I thinking about?
What am I telling myself?
What am I feeling?
Because sometimes those things are hard to parse out, and I just jot a few sentences about it. Sometimes a word just to grow in awareness, and then you invite God into that. "God, help me, help me notice when I'm deceiving myself. When I'm fooling myself. When I'm shaming myself. When I'm shoulding myself, when I'm susceptible to all-or-nothing thinking. When I'm jumping to conclusions, when I'm mind reading. Just help me pay attention to what I'm telling myself." And if you don't have time to do it in the morning, throughout the day—iIf you're driving around kids, when you're in the carpool pickup lane. When you have a few moments at the traffic, turn off the radio, turn off the podcast, and just check in with what you're thinking about. Where's your mind?
What are you telling yourself?"
When you're in the shower, when you're cooking dinner? Where are moments, regular rhythms, throughout the day, things that you do every day that you can train yourself to say, "This is a time when I turn off the radio, I turn off the podcast, I get off the phone, and I just check in with my own mind." And ask the Lord to be with you in that. To help you pay attention and attune to what you're thinking about, and help you align what you're thinking about with what's really true. Just start there.
You don't have to clean it up overnight, but just start paying attention to what you're thinking about and align yourself with what is good, with what is true, with what is beautiful. So that you can begin to become a better, truer, version of your God-given self.
< Outro >
Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you'd take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you listen to podcasts, and click the plus or Follow button. That will ensure you don't miss an episode and it helps get the word out to others.
While you're there, I'd love it if you'd leave your five-star review. I look forward to seeing you back here, next Thursday, and remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.
This week we're digging into intelligence. And believe me, it's not what you were taught! If you've struggled with comparing yourself to others, feeling inadequate, or unsure of your unique gifts (and that's pretty much all of us), you don't want to miss this episode!
Here's what we cover:
1. What is intelligence?
2. Why it's different than what you were taught
3. 9 different types of intelligence
4. 2 toxic consequences of comparing ourselves to others
5. 9 ways to connect with God
Do you have questions for Dr. Alison? Leave them here.
Want to receive free bonus content? Sign up for my free weekly email here.
Resources
- The Best of You on Youtube
- Episode 3: What Is Self-Love And Should I Really Love Myself?
- More on Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences
- Sacred Pathways by Gary Thomas
- John 20:24-27
- Romans 12:1
- Resources for support
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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 today's episode of The Best of You podcast. I am so glad you're here. We are in a new series on my favorite psychology tools and I like to think of that word, psychology, that prefix psyche. Traditionally, historically, it was always interpreted as soul. So psychology is literally the study of the soul.
Now, in the 20th century, psyche came to be more understood as the mind. But I really like that translation of the soul, where we're talking about all of the elements. The mental, the emotional, the spiritual, and even the physical. Including the nervous system and the body in that study of the psyche, insofar as it helps us understand ourselves.
Now, on this podcast, if you've been around for a while or if you're new, I always bring that study of psychology into partnership with something from the Bible, from theology, from religious studies. Because I believe we don't really know ourselves fully unless we are also, intimately, connected with the One who made us. And, frankly, you could also add into that, insofar as we are also connected to the people around us. There's this trinity of relationships between the self, God, and others, all of which contribute to who we are.
As a psychologist, I tend to emphasize this relationship with the self. Trying to understand who you are, your individual needs, your individual differences, your individual makeup. But, again, we understand that much more fully in the context of understanding the God who made us and understanding other people in our lives.
Now, before we get started, if you have questions for me that you want me to answer. Please locate the question Doc in the episode Show Notes, right here wherever you're listening to your podcast.
Or you can go to the episode web page on my website that's at dralisandcook.com. You'll find the full transcription of every episode, as well as all the links to resources I mention in each podcast episode there. And you will find that Question Doc link and you can leave me questions there, and I'll answer some of them in future episodes.
Finally, you can also listen to this podcast now on YouTube. It's still just audio. I don't have the capacity right now to do video. But if you're someone who doesn't really like apps, you can find The Best of You podcast on YouTube, and just play it and listen to it right there.
Today we're going to talk about intelligence. How it's measured? What it is? How you cultivate it? How you care for your cognitive life? Which is really important because we want to be able to process all the data that is flying at us. We have so much data coming in to us, through nonstop news streaming, and social media, and the Internet. We have so much information coming at us, that we don't often stop to think about how we're thinking about things. How we're arriving at conclusions.
So, today, I'm going to give you more of a bird's eye view of differences in types of intelligence. As well as how those may impact our spiritual life and how we relate to God. And then next week, I'm going to get into cognitive distortions, and ways that our thinking can betray us and start to lead us astray. And how it's actually fairly simple with some intention to restructure and reframe our thought life.
So I want to start off by defining the term cognitive function. Which refers to those mental processes and abilities, that are evolved in processing information. Storing information, which is memory. Focusing on information, decision-making, problem-solving, even creativity.
It's the M in that MEPS. If you go back to episode three, where I talk about self-love. I give you a MEPS exercise, which can be a daily check-in where you check in with your Mental, Emotional, Physical, and Spiritual health. Because we have all of those dimensions operating on any given day. This is a focus on that M. What am I thinking about?
Do I feel clear?
Do I feel foggy?
Do I feel scattered?
Do I feel distracted?
Is it hard for me to make a decision?
And do I have a problem that I can't figure out how to solve?
And these cognitive functions impact our emotions. When we're stuck with a complicated problem, we can feel really frustrated. We can even get depressed or, conversely, if we're feeling depressed, we can have a really hard time accessing our cognitive function.
So our mind and our emotions are, intimately, tied together. They are also, intimately, linked to our nervous system, to our bodies, and to our spiritual lives. So we're trying to parse out, today, that mental piece. The cognitive piece of that holistic self.
Intelligence is a really complex idea. It's all about how you learn and acquire knowledge. It's about understanding new ideas. It's how you reason and problem-solve. How you adapt to new situations. It involves a lot of the brain. It involves memory. It involves an ability to focus. It also incorporates our emotional intelligence. It incorporates our creativity.
So, in the past, intelligence was often measured by IQ tests, and still to this day it is, although, it's not as popular as it once was. And it's also often measured in all of these tests that our kids are given. College entrance exams such as the SAT, the ACT, graduate school entrance exams. All of these standardized aptitude tests. But the truth is, these tests have a lot of limitations.
There is a theory of intelligence that I really like that I'm going to introduce to you, today. That theorizes there are actually nine different forms of intelligence. The idea of multiple intelligences was first proposed by a Harvard psychologist named Howard Gardner, in the 1980s. He suggested that there were multiple types of intelligence, and he tried to broaden the way that we think of intelligence.
So I'm going to go through the nine types of intelligence that he theorized. As you listen, just think about how this resonates for your own life, for your kids, for family members. And how rethinking intelligence is a helpful way of maximizing our individual differences and our individual strengths?
So, number one, he talked about linguistic intelligence. This is the ability to understand and use language, both in written and spoken words. These are folks who like words. They are very verbal. They might be considered highly articulate. This is often measured in the verbal portion of standardized tests. If you have friends who are just really good with words or can write well, you might consider them to be high in this linguistic intelligence.
Number two is what he called logical-mathematical intelligence. As the name implies, it's a type of intelligence that involves the ability to reason logically and to use mathematical or numeric concepts effectively. So if you're strong in this, you are pretty good at analyzing and solving problems using either logic or quantitative methods.
Folks like this might be more linear and sequential in solving problems. They might excel in math, science, engineering, maybe coding, or accounting. They might be really good at strategy or analyzing problems. These are the two traditional types of intelligence. These are the ones that are most commonly measured in standardized tests, such as the SAT. Where we look at verbal and mathematical intelligence, as it relates primarily to school. These two types of intelligence are often highly correlated with how well we do in school.
In the past, often, the discussion of intelligence stopped here. But, again, Gardner expanded beyond just those two categories.
So, third, he talked about spatial intelligence. This is the ability to visualize and manipulate objects in the mind. When you think of someone who's a visual person or a visual thinker.
Maybe you might have someone in your family, or you might be someone who sees in pictures more than words. These are folks who navigate well through physical spaces. This is someone who would be high in spatial intelligence. And, sometimes, if you're high in spatial intelligence you may not perform as well on a traditional vocabulary or mathematics test.
However, it's a really unique skill set where you can manipulate objects in a three-dimensional space, and you might be really good at art, or architecture, or design. You might also be good at interpreting diagrams, or imagining, or seeing, in your mind, how different things fit together. And, so, you're skilled at using different parts of the brain than folks who are high in other types of intelligence.
Fourth, he talked about bodily or kinesthetic intelligence. Now, this is the ability to control one's body movements and handle objects skillfully. And, again, we talk about folks who just have really good eye-hand coordination. Or you think about elite athletes where a lot of it is training and they've learned to control their body, in that way. And there's just a natural ability to know how to move the body.
If you've ever seen a dancer, even when they're not dancing there's a fluidity to their movement. There's a real intelligence about their body, and they just know how to manipulate or move their body in space in a way that is really heightened.
Number five is musical intelligence, the ability to understand and create music. It might include rhythm, an inherent understanding of rhythm. Melody of how to create harmony. And, again, someone who has this type of innate intelligence, has access to a part of the brain in a way that someone else might not. And, again, this may not test out in school or on an aptitude test, but it's a very sophisticated use of a certain part of the brain.
Sixth, is interpersonal intelligence. The ability to understand other people, to relate to other people. To perceive and understand the emotions of another person or even the motivations of another person. If you're high in this, you have a knack for just knowing what to say in a given moment or knowing what someone needs to hear, in a given moment.
You read other people very well and that just comes naturally to you. And if you look back, you have a sense of "This is something that I've just always been pretty good at. Again, it doesn't, necessarily, test out on a standard intelligence test but it is a type of intelligence. It's a way of accessing a part of your brain that allows you to be really smart, as it comes to relating to other people.
Seventh, is intrapersonal intelligence. This is the ability to attend to one's inner life. This is very similar to what psychologists call interoception. It's the ability to pick up on the cues coming from inside of you, to regulate your own emotions. To be aware of your own ah thoughts, your own beliefs, to be cognizant of or conscious of your own behaviors. These are folks who really understand themselves, intuitive, and are really deeply connected to themselves.
Number eight, Gardner talked about naturalistic intelligence. Which relates to your ability to recognize and understand patterns and relationships, in the natural world. For example, with plants, or flowers, or animals. People who are high in this type of intelligence, are able to really observe and classify different aspects of the natural world.
They're really attuned to the natural environment. They might have a deep appreciation for nature. The classic example is you might think of somebody who's really good at gardening. Folks who say, "Well, I just don't have a green thumb." Versus folks who really excel at just being in the garden and knowing how to work, closely, with plants, so that plants thrive.
And, lastly, Gardner talked about existential intelligence. Which is really the ability to grapple with deep philosophical questions, primarily, about meaning, about purpose, about life, about existence. People who are really comfortable and gifted about understanding hard, abstract, topics like death, the meaning of life, even concepts like God.
So, Gardner's theory of intelligence suggests that individuals have different strengths and different weaknesses in each of these areas. That intelligence isn't just one, single, unitary concept. But rather that there are lots of kinds of intelligence, each one using different parts of the brain, and different people are gifted at different types.
< Music >
Alison: There are a lot of implications for understanding the different types of intelligence. The primary being just understanding yourself better. It reduces shame when we understand, "Wait, I'm really good at this thing. My brain just does this naturally, but I'm not as good at this thing."
So we begin, again, as we said in last week's episode on personality, we begin to work with the grain of who we are. We begin to maximize our strengths and also appreciate the differences in other people.
But, today, I also want to talk about how these different types of intelligence influence our spiritual lives. Because as we have preferences, as things come more easily to us, and we're more natural at certain things. It no doubt bleeds into other areas of our life, including our spiritual life. And one of the things I've noticed is that we naturally gravitate to different types of spiritual practices based on our gifts, and based on where we excel, and there's also no shame in that.
I would argue that each of these types of intelligence could be used as an avenue to understand God better. To comprehend God better. To relate to God better. To bring together the way that God made you with who God is. Because, after all, if God made each of these different types of intelligence and gave us these different gifts. Doesn't he want us to use those gifts and honor those gifts in our spiritual practices?
I've long been a student of a lot of different denominations. A lot of different types of worship. A lot of different faith communities. And one of the things I notice, as a psychologist, who's always got that lens on, is how fascinating it is that different people are drawn to God in different ways. And just to name that, and put that out front, not let that be accidental.
Because sometimes what happens is if we're not somebody who fits, especially in America. Where there are certain ways that church is done, that really do cater to just a couple of these types of intelligences versus all of them. We can feel like there's something wrong with us.
If we're going to a church that's really heavy on emotional music or emotional language. And we're somebody who really values logic, or reason, or even numbers and math, and we like things orderly and tidy. We can feel like there's something wrong with us, that we're not appreciating that service. That we're not getting a lot out of that service. Maybe we leave that service, that worship experience, feeling empty or cold.
We can feel like, "What's wrong with me?" Or we could go to the other extreme, which is judging, "What's wrong with these people? Why are they doing it this way?" We can either shame ourselves or judge others. Instead of saying, "Oh, that's so interesting. Here's what they're doing, they're really focusing on that particular form of communicating with God, of using their minds to worship God, and the way that I do it is a little bit different." And there's room for all these differences.
So, toward that end, I'm going to draw heavily on a book by Gary Thomas, who's a Christian author, called Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God. And he actually describes, in this book, nine Sacred Pathways.
Now, they don't map on exactly to these different forms of intelligence, but there certainly are some overlaps. Enough so that it got me thinking that, "Is it possible that some of our inherent giftedness, the way that God wired us to excel? To use our brains in a way that just comes more naturally to us, might map onto a different sacred pathway. A different way of understanding God."
And, so, I want to touch on those nine pathways that Thomas lays out, in his book. And use them as a way of creating examples of how you could use your innate intelligence, your innate giftedness, as a tool for you to connect more, intimately, with God. The very first one that Gary Thomas talks about is the naturalist. And this reminds me of the naturalistic intelligence that Gardner talks about.
These are people who experience God best through nature and through the outdoors. I have a number of these in my own family. Where they would rather be in the mountains, be in the wilderness, be hiking, be fishing, be studying flowers, be with animals. Whatever it is outside than almost anywhere else on this Earth. There is so much appreciation for the beauty in nature, and that can become a sacred pathway, as we begin to name it.
Now, I'm not suggesting we replace a church service with that. But I am suggesting that if you are somebody who says "Being inside, sitting in a stuffy building for two hours just doesn't do it for me. But, man, when I am in the mountains and I see the trees, and the flowers, and the river, and my heart sings with praise to God."
That is a form of worship that you get to name and own before God, and God understands that. And maybe you still go to church because you believe that it's important, and there are other things that you get out of it, and you want to be part of a community and you want to be a contributing member. And, also, please be sure that you continue to honor, and express your gratitude, and your worship for God as you see God's handiwork all around you, in the natural world.
Number two, Thomas talks about sensates. These are people who experience God through their senses, primarily. They might enjoy incense, for example. You might go to a liturgical church where they have incense, where there are the smells, there's beautiful, sacred, music. Maybe the Eucharist is really important because it's this concrete way that you can actually experience the body.
These are folks who are going to really experience God through their senses. Through what they can see, taste, feel, and touch. It reminds me of Doubting Thomas, who wanted to touch Jesus's hands. He needed to actually see the hands and put his fingers on it, and touch it to believe, and Jesus honored that. Jesus allowed him that opportunity.
Number three are traditionalists. These are people who experience God most through rituals, often in a structured church setting. They want this really traditional, they might like the old hymns. The traditional church service with the sermon and the Scripture reading, and there's a way in which the order and the structure of that service really matters.
They might like the liturgy. If you go to a liturgical church, an Anglican church or a Catholic church, everything in that order of service is thought out completely, and that structure is maintained consistent, over time. There are folks for whom this is very comforting. This really helps them connect to some of the logic of the faith. Sometimes I think of logical folks where they want a logic, they want an order to things. Things should be laid out in a certain way.
And then Thomas talks about the ascetic. These are people who experience God more through solitude, through simplicity, through self-discipline. They're going to be engaged in some of the disciplines of fasting. Things are going to be quieter. They might be more intra-personal than interpersonal.
Meaning they like that solitude, that simplicity, that spaciousness, to attune to the contents of their own soul. And that is a form of inviting God in, and that's more intuitive and more natural for them than being around a lot of people. And a lot of American churches and a lot of Western churches are very extroverted in nature. They're very people-centric, where the aesthetic might want to pull apart and spend a lot of time in quiet contemplation.
Then we move really to the opposite of that which is the caregiver. And these are folks who really connect to God through caring for others, being with others, serving others. These are the folks who might be more interpersonally inclined. They pick up on the needs of others. They pick up on the cues of others. If you are someone like this, and you're at a church service or in a room full of people and you're aware of where the needs are and you intuitively know how to meet them.
And, so, you're able to use that intelligence, that form of giftedness, that God has given you, to serve others more easily. Now, that's not to say that the ascetic doesn't also need to serve others but it might look a little bit different. They might get overwhelmed in a large group. They might not know how to pick up on the needs of others, without being taught what those needs are. But it doesn't mean that they don't also have ways to serve others. But it just may look a little bit different.
And then we move to the enthusiasts; these are the people who experience God through emotional, lively, worship. There's a lot of passion in the way that they relate to God. These are folks who might be musical, who want to express their love for God through music. These could be folks who are kinesthetic, who want to express their love of God through dance. Or these could be people who are very visual, and who want to express their love of God through creating beautiful spaces.
Regardless, they are wanting to experience God through an expression of sorts. Whether an expression of voice, of movement, of beauty. And then we move to the contemplatives; these are folks who, Thomas describes, are people who experience God more through quiet. Maybe through prayer, through reflection, through contemplation.
These are folks who are perhaps, again, more intrapersonally focused. They might be more introspective. They might not be as comfortable with the external expressiveness of some church gatherings. They may prefer to be quietly reflective. They may appreciate forms of mindfulness.
Mindfulness is the practice of paying attention to your own thoughts, to your own emotions. It's healthy for everybody. But folks who are more contemplative may excel more at this intrapersonal ability to reflect on the states of their internal lives and they need more quiet in which to do that.
And, lastly, we have what Thomas called intellectual pathways to God. These are people who experience God through their intellect. They enjoy studying, learning, and analyzing spiritual truths. These might be folks who are more inclined toward those logical or even those linguistic types of intelligence. Where they're wanting to read commentaries, dissect Scripture, talk about ideas, even write out ideas to try to make sense of them. And they're using those particular gifts to help them understand God better.
The bottom line is that there are a lot of ways to honor God with the minds He has given us. Whether you are somebody who loves to analyze, and logic, and reason. Or whether you are somebody that prefers an emotional experience, or an embodied experience, or a musical experience. Or maybe you're somebody who really sees the face of God in the people in front of you. Whether it's your own children, a neighbor, a friend, or the people who you minister to.
Whether you're somebody who likes to be alone, for long periods of time, so that you can really deeply attune to your own soul, and that's what brings you into the arms of God. Or whether you're somebody who finds yourself by a lake, or in the mountains, or in a meadow, and you are just brought to your knees in awe of this God who created all of these things.
You might be somebody who's more philosophical. You ask the hard questions, and your pathway to God is to engage in hard questions and seeing lots of different sides of the coin of different Christian beliefs. Whatever it is you honor God as you turn toward what is good, what is beautiful, and what is pleasing to Him. As Paul writes, "In view of God's mercy, offer your minds, your bodies, your souls, as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - This is your spiritual act of worship.
< Outro >
Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you'd take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts and click the Plus or Follow button. That will ensure you don't miss an episode, and it helps get the word out to others.
While you're there, I'd love it if you'd leave your five-star review. I look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.
Exciting News! This week marks the launch of our brand new series, My Favorite Psychology Tools, and we're kicking things off with a deep dive into the fascinating world of personality types. With so many fads and trends out there, it can be hard to know what's actually backed by research. That's why we're here to separate fact from fiction and give you the inside scoop on what personality really is and what the latest research tells us about it.
Here's what we cover:
1. What is personality and why we're so fascinated with it
2. The benefits and pitfalls in personality tests
3. The 5 most researched personality traits
4. The mysterious H Factor and why it's so important
5. How personality traits show up in the Bible
Want to receive free bonus content? Sign up for my free weekly email here
Resources
- Episode 1: What Is Narcissism Really?
- Info on Myers Briggs
- Please Understand Me by David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates
- Think Again by Adam Grant
- Read more about the Big 5 Personality Traits
- O-C-E-A-N
- H-E-X-A-C-O
- Quiet by Susan Cain
- H factor of personality
- 1 Corinthians 12:12-31
- "Understanding is the basis for care." -Dallas Willard
- Resources for support
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.
Transcript
Alison: Hey, everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am so glad you're here. I love preparing these episodes for you and your feedback, and your comments, and your emails mean so much to me. I loved hearing from so many of you about what you are hoping I will cover in this brand-new series, which starts today.
I am so excited about this series because I'm a little bit of a geek when it comes to all of these different assessments, and inventories, and tools, and lists, that we have available to us from the field of psychology. These are the kinds of tools that help us understand ourselves better, and therefore help us understand the people that we love better.
Today we're going to talk about personality. And I'm going to share with you the six most researched personality traits in psychology, and why I think it's helpful to understand these different traits, and what I think the pitfalls can be. We're also going to touch on how they correlate, loosely, and in an unscientific matter, with some of the spiritual gifts that we see described in Scripture.
I remember the very first time I was introduced to a personality test, back in the day, it was when I was in college. I went to the Career Counseling Center, on my college campus at Dartmouth in Hanover, New Hampshire. They had me take a personality test, and this was a long time ago, it was the MBTI, which many of you know as the Myers Brigg.
It's a very popular test to this day, although, it's actually not very reliable as an assessment, as it turns out. So I'm actually not going to cover it today. But it does create some really interesting categories that are helpful for discussing our differences. And, sure enough, in my case, when I took that test, it was like all the lights went on.
I think this was the moment, in time, when I realized I was destined to be a psychologist because I just got so excited about it. I started figuring out how to give it to everybody I knew. If you were a family member, if you were a friend of mine, I was having you take this test or a variation of this test, that's actually in a book called Please Understand Me. You can take a sort of form, it's a little bit different, it's a variation on the MBTI.
But at the time, I was having everybody I know take that test. And, in particular, what really spoke to me from that experience of taking a test, at a college counseling center, probably, I was 20, maybe 21 at the time, long time ago, was that last category. And if you know the MBTI, you'll know what I'm talking about.
But there's a category on it that gets at how we make decisions and it's a J versus P category. Judgers test out to be people who tend to really like planning. They're very decisive, they're very organized, they like structure, they like schedules. They make decisions in advance so they can plan for them. And people who are perceivers tend to be in the moment. They tend to not like too much certainty. They tend to be more flexible and spontaneous in their decision making and lifestyle. They tend to be more in the moment.
For example, a perceiver is someone who will say, "Well, I don't know what to do until I get there." If you're married to a perceiver, if you are a perceiver, you'll understand what I'm saying. If someone says to you, "Well, what do you want to do next Friday night?? You are like, "I won't know until it's next Friday night." That's a perceiver.
Whereas a judger would say, "Here is the plan. Here's what we're going to do Friday, and here are the ten steps we're going to execute to prepare us to do that on Friday." It's a really different way of making decisions. But at this moment, at this particular time in my life, as a young 20 something year old student, I tested out as a perceiver. And when I saw that on the test, what I began to realize is that, oh, my gosh, something I had thought was bad in myself.
Something I had been judging in myself; I'm a procrastinator, I wait till the last minute. Here I was, a fairly high-achieving student. I knew how to get things done, but I did things a little differently than most of the members of my family, than most of my peers. Than most of my friend group, and I'd been shaming myself for that. I'd been judging myself for that.
And when I saw in the test, "Oh, my gosh, I'm just different, I'm not bad." It was this whole new way of looking at the world and looking at myself. Just that simple designation of "Oh, my goodness, there's a category to describe how I am, and therefore I can begin to accept how I am, and build on that to grow. Versus shaming myself, or blaming myself, or even hating myself, for a certain way of being in the world."
It really popped open everything for me. "I'm not bad. I'm just different." And I began to realize there's a lot of flexibility, a lot of spontaneity. There are good qualities, and sometimes some indecisiveness, that can also drive myself and other people crazy.
But I began to be aware of the value in understanding basic human differences, where we're different from each other. And it was my very first glimpse into this idea of what it feels like foundational to everything I do, which is a non-shaming way of naming something that is just simply true. And this illustration is the best of what I think these kinds of personality assessments can do.
Now I'm going to get to the pitfalls for those of you who are a little skeptical, stay with me. But let's talk about what is helpful about these kinds of personality assessments. Number one, they help us understand ourselves better, both our strengths and our limitations. They help us not to judge or shame ourselves. But as we describe some of these personality traits, it leads to greater self-acceptance. And, as I've said numerous times, self-acceptance is actually the soil in which we can grow, heal, and change. It's not self-condemnation.
And, so, these are tools to just help us name things so that we can begin to accept them. So that we can then begin to grow in healthy ways. Because, as Dallas Willard said, "Understanding is the basis for care."
Number two, these types of personality assessments can help us begin to ask for what we need in our relationships. Instead of getting annoyed at someone else for being different from us, for not understanding our inherent needs, and our inherent preferences, and our inherent ways of being in the world.
We can start to name things together, "This is how I tend to function. This is how you tend to function, let's come together and figure out how to optimize and maximize how we can bring the best of who we are together. Instead of me trying to get you to change or you trying to get me to change."
We can start to say, "Hey, I want to honor the way you are and I need you to understand that it works a little differently for me." And, then, lastly, that leads right into our differences help us work better together.
Adam Grant, who's a Wharton organizational psychologist, has a great book called Think Again, and I love this book. He talks about how important it is for us to intentionally put people around us who are different from us, who challenge us. Who help us see things from different perspectives.
So the more I understand myself, and I'm confident in myself, and I'm not shaming myself. The more I actually am grateful for the way that you see things that is different,
or the way you make decisions, or the way you approach the world, or approach this relationship. And I can start to value that and incorporate elements of that in my approach.
This just dramatically impacts the health of our friendships, of our marriages, of our communities. When we begin to name, and see, and honor our differences versus trying to get everybody to be a "Yes" man or a cheerleader for the type of person we are.
We have more confidence the more we understand ourselves to invite in differences. So this is one of the things I love about psychology assessments. It's one of the things that I'm just going to geek out on throughout this series. But I do think this understanding of individual differences, is one of the gifts the field of psychology has brought to us.
Now, there are also some pitfalls to focusing on individual differences in personality. It's a relatively new phenomenon, we really only started studying personality as a psychological construct in the last century. And while there's so much helpful information, from the field of psychology about individual differences, there can also be pitfalls.
So this is for all you cynics out there, but also just for everybody to remember, we have to hold these things always in tension. So number one pitfall, is what I would call hyper individualism. This is an extreme form of individualism; where individuals prioritize their own interests, their own needs, their own preferences, their own need for self-expression above all else. Including the needs of others and the needs of the collective or the community around them. Whether it's a family, a church group, a community, or even a nation.
This form of hyper individualism prioritizes personal freedom, autonomy, and self-expression so much that we almost reject the idea of collective or shared responsibility. Of coming together as a community, of our social obligations. Of this idea of being a good citizen for the whole of our society.
So if we swing too far, imagine this as a pendulum and you can think, historically, where it was like we looked at the good of the group. We needed the community, we needed the whole. And then we swung, and I do put psychology a little bit to blame for the swing toward hyper individualism. Where we emphasize or prioritize the individual so much above and beyond the group. That it's almost impossible to come together and that is not healthy either.
While we want to understand the individual, and the individual's needs, and the individual's preferences, we also have to be able to set aside some of who we are for the good of the greater whole. The greater community in which we live.
Hyper individualism can lead to more isolation, more loneliness, less community. Because we are so focused on becoming our individual selves, we forget how to move toward each other in our relationships. So it's so important to strike a balance. We only want to understand ourselves, insofar as we can bring more of who we really are into creating healthier relationships with other people.
Number two, focus on personality traits can lead to stigmatizing. We can take a personality trait, label somebody, and sometimes weaponize it. And I talk about this in the very first episode of this podcast, episode one on narcissism. The importance of describing patterns of behavior versus labeling individual people. And number three, we risk oversimplifying complex behaviors and situations.
So, for example, when we talk about personality traits, we also need to understand that traits develop in the midst of our cultural environments. They develop in the midst of our traumas. They develop in the midst of specific situations, all of which have an impact on how we behave. So we don't want to reduce people, simply, to a personality style, without understanding all of the factors that go into making us who we are.
Remember, the goal of learning more about ourselves is not to become entitled, to glorify the individual self. It's not to label other people. It's not to oversimplify complicated situations. The goal is that as you begin to understand more about yourself, you become more whole inside yourself as an individual, as the person God made. You actually become healthier in your relationships. You become a healthier contributor to your family, to your community, and ultimately to this world.
< Music >
So what is personality? Well, psychologists define personality as "A set of enduring traits and characteristics that make you individually unique". Your personality includes your patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that are relatively consistent over time, and across a variety of different situations. So when someone has a fairly stable personality, which is what we look for in a healthy person. You can predict, a little bit, how they're going to react in different situations over time.
If you think about your kids, or you think about your spouse, or you think about your friends, there's not a lot that surprises you. You could have some ability to go, "That's how they're going to act when that situation happens." There's a way in which people just are who they are. God created each one of us to be so extremely unique, and I think that's just so beautiful. That there's no one person that is the same as another person. There's no one who is exactly like you, and it just gets at the amazing creativity in our God. So it's a beautiful thing to understand.
Personality is influenced by a variety of factors, including your genetics. Some of this is just your biology. Some of it is your upbringing, your family of origin, this is the nature versus nurture. Psychologists have really come down squarely on it's both. It's both your DNA, your genetics, your nature, and also it's the environment in which you were raised your family, your community, the environment around you.
Personality is also influenced by our larger cultural environment. Cultural studies are very interesting. For example, how does it shape us to be raised in America? And I think this is why it's so important to get outside of this cultural American mindset, that can get so myopic. And place ourselves, whether through studying, or reading, or understanding, or physically going to a different culture and realizing, especially, as Christians, "Oh, my gosh, so much of who we are and what we believe is shaped by this overlay of our Americanism."
If you've had trauma, if you've been abused, if you've experienced racism, misogyny, bullying. If you've been marginalized, if you've grown up in poverty, these things have an impact to some degree on how your personality forms. So, again, it's really important not to oversimplify these personality traits. They are influenced by a number of factors. With that being said, I want to get into what are what psychologists call the big five traits of personality.
So this is a well-researched theory of personality that originated in the mid-20th centuries, that hypothesizes there are five basic dimensions of personality. And actually there's a 6th dimension that has surfaced in the last decade that we'll also look at today. These dimensions of personality tend to be reliable, over time. They tend to be reliable descriptors of different traits that most people across cultures have to varying degrees, and they tend to be discrete. Meaning these tend to be discrete from each other. You could test high in one and low in another.
So these big five personality traits tend to be universal. One study looked at people from more than 50 different cultures, and found that these five dimensions could be accurately used to describe personality, and they exist on a spectrum. And, so, this is where the big five, sometimes it's called O-C-E-A-N or H-E-X-A-C-O, if you add in that six factor, these are acronyms to explain these.
While you'll see similarities, if you're someone who's familiar with the Myers Brigg, you might see similarities in these traits. But here's one of the big differences is these exist on a spectrum. So, for example, if you take a Myers-Brigg Type Indicator Test, you're going to test out as either an introvert or an extrovert.
However, if you use one of these O-C-E-A-N or H-E-X-A-C-O assessments, it's going to put you on a spectrum. And I think about human behavior, it just makes more sense.
You're not either an extrovert or an introvert. You might be more inclined toward extroversion and less inclined toward introversion. But you could look much more similar to an introvert if you're 52% of an extrovert than you might look like someone who is an extreme extrovert.
So I like this way that it measures things on a spectrum. And, then, lastly, these are not prescriptive they're descriptive. And what I mean by that is if you find yourself testing high in one of these personality traits that you don't really like, it doesn't necessarily mean this is the person you're going to become.
So, again, these are descriptive. So if you find yourself testing high on a personality trait that you don't really like or don't wish that you had, it doesn't mean that it's telling you what kind of person you have to become. There are lots of different kinds of people in the world and lots of different ways of relating to these different traits. It's just helpful, again, to name, "Okay, wow, I'm not someone who's really high in this quality, I'm lower in it. So what does that mean for me and the kind of person that I want to become?"
That's what I mean by it doesn't prescribe the kind of person that you have to become. That's between you and God, and the choices that you make, and the people you put around yourself. But it does describe a little bit of where you are now and what this is going to look like for you, and that your journey is going to look a little different than my journey.
Because we start out at a different place. We're starting out on different paths. And if you think about that mountain we're both trying to climb of becoming a more whole, beautiful version of the person God made us to become. Your path is just going to look different than mine.
They're going to take different winds, and different turns, and we're going to go up different, treacherous parts, and you're going to go through different valleys because of your starting at a different baseline. But we both have to go down that path of growth. We both have to go down that path of becoming more of the person God wants us to become, and we're both going to hit different landmines.
So it's descriptive, not prescriptive. You're going to go down this path, and your path may start looking great, and you'll see what I mean when we get into these traits. Like, "I've got this easy path, I'm a really agreeable person." But, oh, my goodness, you are still going to hit some valleys. And my path may look treacherous at the start, it's like, "Whoa, this is really hard for me, this particular trait. This part of my personality, is just I came out of the womb this way, this is going to be hard for me."
But guess what, you're going to hit some beautiful oasis that I may never taste. So we don't want to compare our different journeys to each other. So what are these big five personality traits? So we're going to use this O-C-E-A-N acronym, number one, Openness to experience. And if you imagine this spectrum in front of you, someone high in openness is very creative, very imaginative, inventive, very curious.
They like to try new things. They're open to new ideas. If you imagine that path, this person's going to be someone who's like, "I'm so excited, let's see where the path goes." And they might not really wait to run down the path. That's what it looks like if you're high in openness.
Now, if you're lower on the openness scale, you're someone who tends to be more concrete. You don't like change. You're not super creative, maybe, you're more literal, you're more into facts, more into data.
You may be looking down your path going, "What are these types of flora and fauna in front of me? I want to understand them." You're not just going to race down into the adventure. You're going to understand the concrete details and data in front of you before you even take any steps, and when you do start to take those steps, they'll be very cautious and measured. And I'm sure you're already imagining people that where they maybe test out on this scale.
Number two, the C is Conscientiousness. This is a dimension of personality; everybody has an orientation to conscientiousness. It refers to a tendency to be organized, responsible, and reliable. Someone high in conscientiousness might be more efficient, more organized, more able to get things done. They tend to plan ahead. And, so, what's really interesting is imagine someone who tests high on conscientiousness and high on openness to experience.
So they might be very creative and simultaneously very organized. So we're complex. Or if you're someone really high on openness and low on conscientiousness, that's the person that's just going to run down that path without putting on a backpack, without getting prepared, without thinking about what they're going to eat. And, again, the beginning of that path might look amazing, but they're going to hit some landmines that they got to learn to work through down the road.
If you're someone lower on conscientiousness, you might be a little bit more careless, a little bit more extravagant, maybe more free spirited. People low in conscientiousness tend to dislike structure and schedules. They might procrastinate. They might wait till the last minute to complete tasks.
Now, remember, there are other factors that go into why each person has some of these traits. So let's take, for example, if you have a child who tends to be very careless. They can't find their homework to save their life. They're always getting, on their report card, that they're disorganized. They turn in things late. It might be tempting to say, "Well, they're not conscientious, they're careless." Which can sound stigmatizing. So remember, we are not using these traits to stigmatize, they're descriptive, not prescriptive.
Instead, when you describe, you say, "Wow, okay, I have a child or I have a spouse or me, I am someone that scores fairly low on this test. I have a hard time staying organized. I don't really like it, people have described me as careless. I wonder what that's about, and is there a moral undertone to it?" Sometimes there is, sometimes we just don't care about other people. But it could mean there's an underlying neurological issue, such as ADHD, or another neurotypical diagnosis.
Now, I'm not saying everybody who's careless has some sort of neurological deficit. What I am saying is it's an opportunity to get curious. What's going on that's contributing to this? And then at the end of the day, even as you become the best of who you are, you may well be someone who struggles a little bit with disorganization, for whatever reason.
Again, the goal is not to shame ourselves; the goal is to name, understand, describe, get all the data as to why this might be true for you. And then just move the needle of growth just a little bit, as you're looking down your path, the trail you have to blaze. It's like, "Okay, I'm someone that's going to lose things on this path. I'm someone that's going to have a hard time staying organized. And, so, what do I need to do to equip myself so that I stay safe?"
Again, the beginning of that path might feel a little bit more fraught because there's going to be a little steeper learning curve for you. Maybe you need to ask other people, say, "Hey, this isn't my forte, this isn't my strength. Can you come alongside of me?"
Again, this is where it leads us to community, not away from community. When we begin to name and tame these things. We say, "I need a buddy, I don't want to go down this path alone because I'm going to lose things. So can you be my buddy, that helps me stay organized because you're great at that." So this is how these kinds of self-awareness, self-understanding, can help bring us into healthier relationships with other people.
Number three, the E is Extroversion. Now, extroversion is less about how much you talk or how outgoing you are, and more about how you derive energy. Extroverts tend to derive energy from external stimuli, especially social activities. Extroverts tend to go to parties, engage with a lot of people, and come back more energized. They feed off the external energy. It doesn't mean you're the loudest person in the room, necessarily, but it does mean that you gain energy from other people.
On the other hand, if you score low on this continuum, if you score closer to introversion, you gain more energy through solitary activities, through being alone, through being in nature. You might have to ration how much you are with other people because it depletes you. It doesn't mean you don't like other people. It doesn't mean you're not good with other people. It just means that being with other people and being with a lot of external stimuli is depleting for you. Again, it's just really helpful to understand and to not shame yourself.
There's a wonderful book about introversion called Quiet by Susan Cain. It's been a bestseller for years because she just named some of the really unique challenges for introverts, especially, in our world and, especially, our country here in America, that tends to value extroversion. It's a great book, I highly recommend it.
Number four is Agreeableness. Someone who scores high in agreeableness tends to make other people feel good. They're easy to get along with. They value harmony. They want the good of the group, sometimes above their own individual needs. They tend to be warm, empathetic, and sensitive to the needs of others. If you score high in agreeableness, you might struggle with people pleasing.
At the same time, people who are high in agreeableness tend to get along well with others. So there are ways in which people who are high in agreeableness, if you're looking at their path that they're ready to hike. It may look like, "Man, they have it so easy, people just naturally like them, they're just walking through a meadow."
However, folks who are high in agreeableness are also going to have to figure out how to manage that. So that they don't disconnect from their own needs, from their own convictions, from their own values. Folks who score lower on this scale tend to be more what, in this framework, is called disagreeableness. They might be a little bit more critical. They might be more willing to be direct, to state what they really see, to speak up in a contrary manner. To not go along with the group, to point out flaws.
Now, I want to be very clear here, there is a need for all types of people. And, again, Adam Grant, in his book Think Again, talks about how we need some of these quote-unquote "Disagreeable people" in our lives.
We need to have people in our lives who don't just like everything we say and do, who don't just agree with everything we want. But who are willing to stand up and say, "Hey, I'm not so sure about that." So, again, wherever you score, on this spectrum, there are pros and cons. There are temptations and benefits, God uses all kinds of people.
Number five is Neuroticism, and that's just a word that they use for this trait which is really related to emotionality. If you score high in neuroticism, you're likely more emotionally volatile. You're more susceptible to getting taken over by emotions, especially, negative emotions. You're more sensitive to stressors in the environment. You might have a greater tendency toward anxiety. I think sometimes of that word melancholy, you're just more aware of what's negative around you.
There's a tendency to maybe be a little bit more prickly about life. And if you think about folks where we say, "All those things just roll off their back", the opposite of that as well. If you're a little prickly things stick to you, it's harder for you. And, again, this isn't a great example, if you're somebody who scores higher in neuroticism.
It might be tempting to look down your path and go, "Oh, man, all I see is the forest and the dangers and what's going to be hard, and that person over there is just prancing down the path. They're scoring low on this, they are more emotionally stable. They don't tend to take things too hard. Emotions tend to roll off their back. Man, why is this so hard for me?"
But, again, it takes all different kinds of people. What's important to know is "This is how I am, it's not bad or good. What is my journey going to look like? And what do I need from God, from the people around me, to help me thrive on my journey toward wholeness?"
The truth is there are just some people for whom life hits a little harder. There's a little bit more emotional volatility. There's a little bit more of that susceptibility to the negative. And it's just so helpful to know yourself, not to shame yourself or wish you're somebody you're not. And to begin to live this life God has given you with your unique personality and your unique makeup.
Now, I want to touch on this 6th trait that has surfaced more recently. I love this. This is such fascinating research, to me, it's called the H Factor. And this H Factor refers to Honesty-Humility. And what is so interesting about this factor, this dimension of personality, is that these two traits really go together. It's considered one trait Honesty-Humility.
They're intimately linked honesty and humility, think about that for a second. From a psychological perspective, they tend to exist on one dimension. That means they're hard to measure, separate from each other honesty and humility. I mean, this just amazes me and brings delight to my soul at the wonder of how God made us, and how it's reflected in science, and in psychology.
It's hard to be an honest person and not be a humble person. It's hard to be a humble person and not be an honest person. And I think as followers of Jesus, that just makes so much sense. If we are really honest about ourselves and honest about who we are before God, there's just no way around humility.
But if we're deceiving ourselves and we're deceiving others, and we're lying about who we are. And we're denying aspects of who we are which also means we're going to end up exploiting, mistreating, and using and abusing others. Folks who are high in this Honest-Humility dimension tend to be sincere, honest, fair, not greedy and unassuming. They're not full of themselves. They don't try to puff themselves up.
On the other hand, folks who are low in this factor, in this Humility-Honesty factor tend to be more interested in their own status and power. They tend to be more willing to engage in lying, or manipulating, or trying to exploit other people to get ahead. They tend to have a sense of entitlement about their own self-importance, as if they deserve or are owed certain things.
Now, here's the thing about this scale. If you are someone who is aware of your own sense of entitlement, of your own propensity to ego, of your own self-centeredness, you are going to be further up toward that Honesty-Humility scale. It's such a paradox. The more we know ourselves and the more we see our ego, our self-centeredness, our pride, our entitlement, the more honest and humble we become.
Humility about our areas of deceptiveness, of arrogance, of self-centeredness, is the beginning of health. What's more scary are folks who cannot face the truth about our own sinful, toxic, propensities.
< Music >
As we close, I want to touch on some practical takeaways. As well as an insight from the Bible and how we can think about these personality traits. So I want to circle back to why it's important to understand ourselves on these different spectrums.
Number one, when we understand ourselves, "We name it to tame it," as Dan Siegel says. For example, I am someone who's fairly high on this neuroticism scale. My emotions are pretty volatile, I feel them. They go up and down, for whatever reason, things do not just roll off my back. That's how I am in my marriage. That's how I am as a parent. That's how I am as a friend. And you know what, I'm going to stop shaming myself for that. I'm going to name it. I'm going to try to understand it.
What are the factors that contribute to that?
What are some of the contributing factors? Is there some trauma in my life?
Am I someone who's just naturally an HSP, a highly sensitive person?
Am I somebody who has more of a just biological predisposition to anxiety?
What are the different factors that contribute to this?
Where are areas that I can heal, that I can work on?
What are areas that are just out of my control? This is just the way God made me. We begin to go down a journey of self-investigation, to arrive at healthier and healthier degrees of understanding of ourselves. Are there certain cultural experiences that have contributed to this?
Did I grow up in poverty?
Did I grow up in a racist environment?
Did I grow up in an environment that taught me to be anxious because it was completely unsafe?
Okay, help me understand that, God, what are some of the things I can do to heal?
What are some of the things I can change?
What are some of the things I cannot change? Because if you test out fairly highly on this scale, you're not going to be able to turn yourself into an emotionally phlegmatic person, a laid back person. You will be able to move the needle a little bit. You will be able to grow, but more importantly, you're going to be able to help put the people around you. You're going to be able to equip yourself, as you head out on this journey that God has put before you.
You're going to be able to ask for what you need from the people around you. You're going to be able to stop shaming yourself. You're going to be able to equip yourself with tools to stay healthy. For example, because I am a more anxious person, some of these X, Y, and Z activities don't work for me.
Maybe they work for you and that's great, but I have to be careful with my energy. I have to be careful with my time. I need to be careful with where I expend some of my energy. Because I need to stay healthy; and the best way I can be a parent, or a spouse, or a friend, or a community member is to really stay healthy myself and I'm just going to claim that.
We stop condemning ourselves. If you're someone who tests really high on this emotionally phlegmatic, things just don't get to you scale. It's helpful to know that not to take pride in it, but to go, "Wow, what does this mean for me? What do I have to contribute to others? And how do I need to ensure that I'm not bypassing certain negative situations, that I actually also need to face?" So you've also got a journey toward wholeness.
So understanding where you begin is not just a, "Hey, this is great, life is good. I'm just going to coast through life for the rest of my days."
No, it means I have to go, "Hey, Lord, this is a gift and it's also something I need to be mindful of. How do I honor others with this gift? And, also, how do I ensure that I'm not just putting my head in the sand, and not facing situations that need to be faced."
We stop condemning ourselves and we start accepting these traits in ourselves, as well as in others, and we begin to work together for the good of everyone. Number two, we stop projecting our own needs and issues onto other people, and start taking responsibility for our own selves. And, so, what I mean by projecting is we stop saying to other people, "You're just so uptight."
You're just so careless."
When really what we mean is, "Things don't really get to me." Hear the humility in that. "Things don't really get to me, but I know that they really get to you, and that's okay. Let's both just name that as a dynamic in our relationship. I'm pretty laid back, things don't roll off your back, and there's no better or worse than that."
So we stop projecting onto other people. "What's wrong with you that you don't want to go to all these parties with me? That you don't want to sign up for all these social events with me? What's wrong with you?" And, then, maybe, we even moralize it, "You're not Christian enough, that you don't want to go to all these highly extroverted church activities."
When what we really mean is, "I love these social activities, they're fun for me. I get energized by them." And the other person is like, "Yes, and they exhaust me, and if you want me to be a healthy partner, or a healthy parent, or a healthy friend, I can't go to all of these." So we begin to own and take personal responsibility for our side of the street, instead of projecting and criticizing onto others.
Another one is, "Why do you have to be such a contrary and always picking me apart, always telling me what's wrong with me? If I bring to you an idea, can't you just say, 'That's great, I love it.'" This is a classic example of a difference between somebody who's high in agreeableness and someone who's more disagreeable. And there's a way in which you can begin to label dynamics in your relationships, without criticizing, shaming, or projecting on the other person.
So, for example, in that dynamic, you might say, listen, "I'm someone, when I bring you an idea, it would just mean so much to me in this context if you just said, 'That's so interesting, tell me more.' That's a way you could love me. And I know that I'm not going to act on it, and I'm not going to go do something foolish. I know that it's important to you to pick it apart and analyze it from every different angle, and I want you to do that at a certain point.
But today, in this conversation, I just want to raise this and have you go, 'That's so fun.'" And you can start to coach a partner or a friend along to understand you. And that person who's more critical, who likes to pick things apart, can say, "Listen, this is how I am. This is how my mind works. I see something and I just start to shred it.
I just start to see it from all different angles and I can't help myself. I'm not trying to be a jerk here and I'm working on it, and sometimes when I do this, it's not personal. So let's work together on this and on how this dynamic affects our relationship so that we can each support each other."
So we start to be able to help each other work with the grain of who we are and, simultaneously, we're no longer demanding that people just accept us exactly as we are. We are the ones in the right, "My way is the right way. Well, you just have to accept me because this is who I am."
Neither of those extremes works. Trying to get somebody to change doesn't work, and it also doesn't work to become entitled that "This is just how I am." Instead, as we name these dynamics, these variables, these traits, and we tame them and we look at all the nuances of them, we begin to come together, and we each become a healthier version of our God-given selves.
Finally, I want to talk about how this relates to some of the spiritual gifts that we see in the Bible. I love how Paul speaks about this balance that I've been describing throughout this episode in 1 Corinthians 12:12-27, and I'm going to read this from The Message version. I like this version for this audio because it's just fresh. It's less familiar to most of us.
Here's what it says; "I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn't just a single part blown up into something huge. It's all the different but similar parts arranged and functioning together." This is Paul, I love this.
"If foot said, 'I'm not elegant like hand embellished with rings, I guess I don't belong to this body,' would that make it so? If Ear said, 'I'm not beautiful like eye, transparent and expressive, I don't deserve a place on the head,' would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where He wanted it."
But here's the rub, as Paul goes on, he cautions us toward the other extreme. So he's saying this makes us more significant, not less. More valued, more worthy, more important to the whole, not less. But then he goes on to caution against the other extreme. Here's what Paul says; "But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of."
I'm going to read that again. "For no matter how significant you are; it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn't be a body, but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine eye telling hand, 'Get lost; I don't need you.' Or head telling foot, 'You're fired, your job has been phased out.'"
He goes on to say, "You are Christ's body." That's who you are, you must never forget this. Only as you accept your part of that body does your part mean anything. Paul then goes into a list of a lot of the different spiritual gifts that different parts of the body have. And I thought it was interesting as I was reading this, in light of these personality traits we've gone through in this episode, today.
So this is not scientific, but I want to propose this to you as we close. As you think about some of these biblical gifts that Paul describes. Number one, think about the apostles. Maybe they scored high on this extroversion scale. They liked people. They were constantly among other people. Maybe this allowed them to get energized out of their work. I don't know, I'm just imagining, I'm creative, I'm being high on the openness scale right now.
Think about the prophets; it's possible they might have been considered quite disagreeable in their time. I'm just saying these guys were not well liked when they would come along and point out all the negativity, all the hard things, all the things no one else wanted to see. And, yet, how beautiful and critical they are in the body of Christ and how beautiful they are to God,
Think about the healers and helpers, maybe, they're highly agreeable. They know how to bring empathy and healing balm to the souls of other people. The organizers, the administrators, that Paul describes, those who are perhaps highly conscientious. Those who pray in tongues, Paul talks about, maybe, these are the folks more open to these creative, innovative experiences that make some other folks uncomfortable.
We see it right there in Scriptures, there is a place for everyone and every type of personality in the body of Christ. Our goal is to learn the part we can play and play that part well. And as always, considering the example of Jesus in His honesty, in His humility, which I think is that dimension of who we are that is the most ripe for the transforming work and power of God's spirit.
< Outro >
Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you'd take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts and click the Plus or Follow button. That will ensure you don't miss an episode and it helps get the word out to others.
While you're there, I'd love it if you'd leave your five-star review. I look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.
Gosh, it can be hard to live in a body, let alone learn to love it. We have so many demands that compete for our attention, not to mention all the mixed up messages we get as women- how in the world are we supposed to take the time to honor these bodies God has given us?In today's episode I share with you more about my own journey of learning what it means to be an embodied person.
Here's what we cover:
1. Why so many of us bypass the body
2. 4 insights from psychology about tending the body
3. 3 ancient heresies that sneak into our modern thinking
4. The difference between what the Bible calls "flesh" and "body"
5. How to start to honor your body as a daily practice
6. How I am learning to dance again (but definitely not in public)
Want to receive free bonus content? Sign up for my free weekly email here
Related episodes:
- Episode 11: How to Start Loving Your Body with Christy Joy
- Episode 19: My Stroke, A Process of Healing, and How I Began to Write The Best of You
- Episode 36: An Update on My Social Media Detox & How to Create Boundaries With Toxic Distractions, Numbing, & Unhealthy Coping Tactics
- Episode 44: Why Anger is a Surprising Friend, What Happens When You Avoid It, and How to Create Space for Healthy Expression of Anger in Your Family
Resources
- Boundaries for Your Soul Series
- Try Softer, by Aundi Kolber
- Strong Like Water, by Aundi Kolber
- Somatic Therapy
- John 14:15-17
- 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
- Matthew 10:28
- Luke 24:13-32
- John 20:19-23
- 2 Samuel 6
- Ecclesiastes 3:1-4
- Psalm 149
- Footloose Clip
- H-A-L-T
- "The body is the envelope of the soul, which it serves to carry and to manifest. It is also the instrument of the soul, which it uses to effect whatever it desires. . . . Therefore, let us cherish the body as the divine workmanship that it is, and let us not defile it with impure thoughts and actions, but rather let us make it a partner in our spiritual life." - St. John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith
- "We are not angels, and our bodies are not separated from our souls; indeed, our Lord Himself has told us that we are not to kill the body. So we must try to make it holy and capable of serving God, so that, when it is united with the soul, the two will make a perfect dwelling-place for our Lord." - St. Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection
- Resources for support
Thanks to our sponsors:
- This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/BESTOFYOU and get on your way to being your best self.
- Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
- Order Aundi Kolber's new book, Strong Like Water today!
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 today's episode of The Best of You Podcast. Where we are in part two of a two-part series on Loving Your Body as a Spiritual Practice. Before we get started, I want to remind you that I do send out an email newsletter every week, with bonus content related to each episode. Almost, always, when I record one of these episodes, I realize that maybe a phrase or a word came up that didn't get explained clearly enough. So what I do in the weekly email is create some bonus content around some of those topics.
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My goal with this podcast, with everything I do, is to provide affordable resources to as many people as possible that brings together the best of what psychology and science are teaching us, with Christian faith and practice. So all of this is free for you, that's why we have advertisers on the podcast. For those of you who ask "Does advertisers help cover the cost of some of this work?" So I appreciate that we have this way of getting these resources out to you.
All right, so, today, I want to talk about living in a body. It can be hard to live in a body, even a healthy body, even a body that you love. Our bodies require our attention, they require work. And, frankly, I don't know that many folks, especially, women that have a really healthy relationship with their body.
There are some, but so often our relationship with our body is fraught. Even when we don't have a clinical diagnosis, even when we are, for the most part, maybe, even relatively healthy physically or medically speaking. We still tend to have a pretty complicated relationship with our body. And here is the thing about these bodies that God gave us. This is going to be sort of a love letter to our bodies, in today's podcast episode.
Our bodies carry so much. Our bodies carry our pain, they carry our joy, they carry our anger, our rage, our frustration, our tension, our stress. They carry our fragility, they carry our tenderness, they carry all of our bad habits.
Sometimes we don't treat our bodies very well. We don't feed our bodies very well. We don't move our bodies in the way they need to be moved and, yet, they continue to show up for us every single day.
Our bodies are amazing. We can neglect them; we cannot treat them right, we can discard them, sideline them, bypass them, as we talked about in last week's episode, on spiritual bypassing. We can ignore them and they still show up for us every single day. Our bodies matter. They help us metabolize our emotions. They help us pray. They help us honor our own limits. They help alert us to danger. They're a critical piece of this holistic life God has given us. That includes our mind, our emotions, our spirit, and our bodies.
But so often we disconnect from our bodies. We climb up into the safety of our minds. Where we can analyze, and criticize, and stay out of our bodies. But when we do that, we miss out on the beautiful embodied life God wants for us.
Now, personally, today's episode hits very close to home. Because over the last five months, I have been on a journey of learning how to care for my body. I wasn't expecting this process. Ever since I had a stroke, if you go back and listen to episode 19, I talk about how I had a stroke out of the blue, in the fall of 2020 with no known medical conditions. And as a result of having that stroke, and a lot of medical tests, and not finding anything wrong with me. There was still some mystery around what caused that.
Now, prior to that time, I'd never really paid that much attention to my body. I've been someone, to be honest with you, who has taken my body for granted. It's much easier for me to live a life inside my mind. I can crawl up outside of my body and just mentally talk myself out of anything that my body is feeling or bypass my own body, my physical limitations. I've known that I've done that. But up until I had that stroke and some serious medical issues, I didn't really do the things I know I've needed to do to care for my body.
Well, fast-forward to fall of 2022, and I just started to notice some things that didn't feel quite right, I was tired. It didn't feel like the tired of, "Oh, I need a good night's sleep." My body wasn't working quite right. And, so, I decided to go off social media in November. That was what I thought was going to be my big detox.
I knew I needed some time away, just some time to step back. Again social media, it has some good things, I've talked about it in the last few weeks. It's how I've met some really neat friends. There's a lot of good about it, but it's very disembodied. It's by nature very addictive. It's just such an easy way, especially, at night, or especially when we're stressed, or we're tired, or we're emotionally down, or sad, or feeling anyway that we don't want to feel.
It's such an easy way to pick up the phone and look for that dopamine hit from social media. And I had fallen into that habit a little bit. I've had pretty good habits with it in the past. But during this season, I had fallen into that habit a little bit. So I thought, "I'm going to just cut that out for a while, get back into some of these good habits."
I thought it was going to be a quick fix, and it really ended up being much more involved. It, literally, was just the tip of that iceberg. And I began a journey, over the past five months, to completely change how I relate to my body and it's been a pretty intense process. I'm still in the middle of it. It's learning how to honor my body, as a spiritual practice.
And, at some point, I'll share more with you what that looked like in my life. And how I'm learning to incorporate the care of my body as an act of honoring God, as an act of worship, as an act of living out an embodied faith. It's been surreal, it's been intense, it's changed my life.
And, today, I want to share with you some of the psychology, of why our bodies are so important to our mental and emotional health.
And I also want to share with you some theology, about why the body matters to God and some of the heresies that we unwittingly fall into. When we bypass, or sidestep, or minimize the importance of our bodies.
So I want to start off by talking about the field of somatic psychology. Which has done a lot to help us understand the relationship between the body, and the mind, and the emotions. It's a field of psychology that recognizes the body, not just as a physical entity. So like over here is our body; we need to eat well, we need to sleep well, we need to exercise, all these things that our medical doctors tell us. And then over here is our mind, and our spirit, and our emotions. And we do other things over here to help stay emotionally healthier, to stay spiritually healthy.
Well, what we now know, from psychology, is those two things are deeply interconnected, and I talk about that a lot in Episodes 45 and 46, with Aundi Kolber. And her new book, Strong Like Water, has a lot of information about that connection.
Here are some of the key principles that we have learned from psychology, as it relates to the body. Number one, it's the role of the nervous system and how the nervous system is this key part of us, that connects the mind, the emotions, the gut. Which gets at what we eat. What we put into our bodies that, literally, sends signals all day long back up to our brain. Which then influences our emotions, which then influences how we sleep. All of these things are interconnected.
Number two, somatic psychology talks about the importance of paying attention to physical sensations, that give us information about our external world. So, for example, tension in your body is a cue that you're tense. And that sounds obvious, but think about it for a minute. If you're going about your day and you're disconnected from your body, and then suddenly you notice that your shoulders are really hunched. That's a cue that you are not only disconnected from your body, but there's something that's bothering you.
And, so, instead of trying to beat yourself up because you're not feeling well, or you're in a bad mood, or maybe you're lashing out at your kids, or maybe you are feeling grumpy or off. What somatic psychology says is notice where the tension is in your body. And then maybe roll those shoulders that are tense, or maybe shake out those hands, or maybe wiggle those toes, or stretch out those legs. And as you begin to release the tension in your body, start to notice what happens emotionally, and I'm telling you, it'll be surprising.
I've been on a deep dive into this journey, in the last five months. You might notice tears start to come. You might notice "I don't want to do that because then I have to face the fact that I'm actually angry." So your body is holding that tension, or that discomfort, or that pain, or that emotion on your behalf so that you don't have to consciously feel it. This is what I mean when I say our bodies are amazing.
But our bodies also wear out. They need the rest of us to come online. They need us to work with them, not against them. And, so, as you start to notice where you hold tension in your body or pain in your body. Maybe it's pain that comes from a medical diagnosis. Maybe it's pain that comes from stress or tension, it could be either one.
But either way, your body is telling you something. Your body might be telling you, "I need you to slow down. You're pushing me too hard." And you don't want to face that, and you don't want to name that.
But your body needs you to pay attention, and it's giving you a signal through that pain. And instead of beating on yourself, which I have done so often, more often than I like to admit, and saying, "Come on body, let's just get in line. Let's just give you some pseudo comfort by way of sugar, by way of comfort food, by way of a dopamine hit from social media."
Whatever the thing may be, "To whip you into shape instead of giving you the real comfort, the real help, the real nourishment you need. Body. I'm giving you a fake hit of something that only makes it worse, in the long run." How often do we do that to our bodies?
Instead of listening to them when they tell us, "I'm tired, I need you to slow down. I need you to move me in a kind and tender way. I need you to provide me with actual nourishment instead of a quick hit, that's not what I need from you." My body says, "I don't need that quick hit from you, I need real care."
Number three, what we've learned from somatic psychology and psychiatry, is that trauma is stored in the body. Traumatic experiences that don't get metabolized. And what I mean by that is traumatic experiences that don't get witnessed, and cared for, and where the emotion is allowed to flow through the body. In a healthy way that is proportionate to the pain and the stress of the traumatic event, it gets stuck in the body. It's stored there. And this can affect not only our physical health, but our emotional health.
So we have to learn to work with the body as we heal from trauma that's been stored there. For example, it can be stored through tension, and imagine years and years of storing pain through habitual physical tension. It can be stored in our nervous system.
Where, again, you're constantly living out of that state of fight/flight. Instead of experiencing the homeostasis or the balance of a nervous system that is at rest, that is calm, that is able to be regulated, and restored to that home base. Where the body is restored to where it's not constantly monitoring the environment and living out of a stress response.
Trauma can disrupt bodily systems like digestion, like your immune system. There are so many ways, that psychiatrists and medical doctors are seeing the impacts of trauma on the ways in which these systems function.
And, so, we have to pay attention to the body, sometimes, as one method, not only to relieve and alleviate some of the medical issues, but also to begin to tap into some of the emotional pain. This is why trauma-informed work is so important. If you've got a history of trauma, if you've got a history of unhealed pain, to work with a therapist who understand a trauma-informed approach.
And, finally, somatic psychology has taught us some very clear interventions for how to improve that connection between our mind and our body. Now, again, I always recommend Aundi's work on this. Both her first book Try Softer and her second book, Strong Like Water.
She's got some very practical interventions that help you begin to mend that connection between your mind and your body. But simply beginning to pay attention. To take all that energy of your mind that wants to avoid noticing what's happening in your body or bypass what's happening in your body, and beginning to pay attention to your body as a spiritual practice. And at the end of this episode, I'm going to walk you through some of the things I've been doing as I've begun to pay attention to my physical body, as a spiritual practice.
Before we get there, I want to just briefly mention why this is all part of Orthodox Christian theology. This is not some woo-woo, new-age thing. This idea of somatic psychology. This idea that our minds, and our emotions, and our spirit, are all connected to this body that God gave us. This is as ancient as the days. This is not some new idea. Orthodox Christian theology has always taught that the body is an integral part of the human being. It is not separate from the soul or the spirit.
We see this in numerous ways in Scriptures. We see in John 14, where Jesus promises the coming of the Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit would dwell within us and we would no longer relate to God only as an external being separate from us. But that the Spirit of God would come to live within our bodies.
We see this in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 when Paul talks about the body being a temple of the Holy Spirit.
Now, often we think about that in terms of morality, in terms of sexuality, that's the context in which Paul is talking. But I would argue that it goes beyond that. And I would say we see it most clearly in the life of Jesus.
I mean, how amazing is it that God became a human body? Jesus is God in the flesh. Jesus lived in a body. And here are just some examples from early church fathers and mothers that show that this is not a new idea. St. John of Damascus, a Christian monk, from the eighth century wrote this beautiful phrase about the body, and I love this.
He said, "The body is the envelope of the soul, which it serves to carry and to manifest. It is also the instrument of the soul; which it uses to affect whatever it desires." So it goes both ways, he's saying. The body is the envelope of the soul; it carries the soul. It's such a beautiful love letter to the body, that it carries our souls for us.
What a gift! We couldn't be on this earth without it. What a gift, our bodies give to us.
And then, secondly, it's also the instrument of the soul. So as the mind wills, it acts through the body. And, so, we work together, all of these parts of us, in harmony with each other. And he goes on to say, "Therefore, let us cherish the body as the divine workmanship that it is. And let us not defile it with impure thoughts and actions, but rather let us make it a partner in our spiritual life." I love this.
And then St. Teresa of Ávila, a Spanish mystic and a Carmelite nun from the 16th century says this, "We are not angels and our bodies are not separated from our souls. Indeed, our Lord, himself, has told us that we are not to kill the body. So we must try to make it holy and capable of serving God. So that when it is united with the soul, the two will make a perfect dwelling place for our Lord."
So, again, it's the body coming together as the envelope of the soul and the two working together in this dance of harmony. To both honor God and affect change in this world around us. So we need to honor this body, even as we want this body to help us do the work of honoring our minds, hearts, and souls.
Jesus spoke about the body in several occasions, in the gospels. In Matthew 10:28 He says, "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. Rather be afraid of the one," meaning the enemy. "Who can destroy both soul and body in hell." Now, oftentimes, this verse can seem as if we're saying the soul is more important.
So better to lose your body because your soul is actually more important. But that's not actually what Jesus is saying here. He's not saying that the body is not important. He's saying that the body will end, at some point. But we also know, from the life of Jesus, that His very body was also resurrected. And there are a lot of really smart theologians that have a lot of thoughts on what it means to have a resurrected body, and it's complicated, and it's mysterious. It's hard to understand what it will be like to be reunited with our bodies, for all eternity.
You think about the kinds of questions that kids ask, and I love these questions when they say, "Well, what age will I be, when I have the resurrected body? What age will I be?" It's hard for us to understand because we are so limited to these finite minds and these finite bodies. It's hard to understand the concept of eternity.
But there are a couple of things we do know Jesus lived in a body. Jesus died in a body, and Jesus was resurrected in a body. According to the New Testament, when the disciples first saw Jesus, in His resurrected body, it was clearly still His body, when they were on the road to Emmaus. When they encountered this man that they didn't quite recognize, so we know He didn't look exactly the same, there was something different. This is Luke 24:13-32.
Then it says in John 20:19-23, later that same day, "He showed them His wounds." So it was the same body, even though it looked a little different to them. He was in a body. And then on the Ascension, when He goes up to heaven, His body goes with Him. So there is some sense that the body is still a part of the picture, even after Jesus dies and is resurrected.
Which would suggest that our bodies will still be a part of the picture with us, not just for now, but for all of eternity. And, in fact, there are several heresies that emerged about the body in those early years, after Jesus died and rose from the dead.
History talks about a couple of heresies, one is called Gnosticism. And Gnosticism which showed up in those first few centuries, is much more similar to modern, new-age spirituality than what I was just describing to you we've learned from somatic psychology. Gnosticism believed in this idea that the material world, anything physical, including the human body, was inherently corrupt.
So the goal of the spiritual life was to escape from the confines of the physical body, and live on the superior spiritual reign where you're above the limits of the body. You can transcend the limits of the body. And I'm telling you, if you spend any time in any new age spirituality, you will hear a lot of this language, and it's very insidious.
That could be a whole episode in and of itself, to begin to discern some of these Gnosticism heresies. That are especially prevalent again in some of these new-age spiritualties, but that are seeping into some of our Christian spirituality, too.
And I want to underscore this idea that this is not a new idea, this paying attention to the body. Augustine spoke out, vehemently, against this idea that the material world, that the physical body, is evil and corrupt. The body was created as part of God's design. When you were created in the image of God and God called you good, that included your physical body. Adam was the first Adam. Jesus is called the second Adam; He came in a body. There's something about our bodies that matters.
Now, there's a second heresy that surfaced during this third century, in the early, early parts of our Christian Church history called Manichaeism, and Manichaeism was what we called dualistic. And what we mean by dualism is that it divided the body from the spirit. And, again, not unlike what was going on with Gnosticism. They believed that the human body was inherently evil and that the spirit was inherently good.
And, so, we're in this battle between good and evil. The spirit is good, the body is evil, and the two are fighting and combating. And this is really subtle, when you sometimes hear people talk about the battle between the spirit and the flesh. This is why I don't like to use that language, although, I understand, theologically, that that is a different thing. But when we talk about that battle between this spirit and the flesh, what sometimes makes me squirm a little bit, and I don't like it, is it's we do not mean that there's a battle between our spirit and our literal body.
When we talk about the battle between the spirit and the flesh. By the flesh we mean the sinful part of us, the sinful nature. We do not mean the physical body. I was often confused by that, even though I knew a lot of this stuff intellectually. I studied Augustine quite a bit in college and in my doctoral program.
There was a part of me that I'd taken up this insidious idea that, essentially, the body is inferior, the spirit is more important. We really need to focus on the spirit. It was a little part of me that I wouldn't have claimed, it was very subtle, very insidious, but, man, was it wreaking some havoc in my life that I've had to undo.
When we talk about, again, the battle between the flesh and the spirit, we do not mean our literal bodies. The flesh is just the part of us that continues to be our imperfect human nature. It continues to be where we carry woundedness, where we continue to sometimes want to go our own way away from following Jesus, away from following God. It's not our physical bodies.
Again, Augustine who was a Manichaean, himself, before he converted, spoke out vehemently against this idea that the body is inherently evil and that we should escape it. He argued for the goodness of the physical world, including the human body that God created. Remember that God called you good before sin entered in. God called us good as human bodies.
And then there was a third heresy called Docetism, which denied the actual humanity of Jesus. Jesus only appeared to have a physical body, but in reality, he was really spiritual, which again is a heresy. And we may be like, "No, we don't believe that. We know that Jesus had a body, He bled, He died, He did all these things that we did."
But it's really important that Jesus had a body. It's really important because it shows us that the body, this envelope of the soul matters. It matters as much as our mind and our emotions matter. It is the container for all that God gave us and created good. We may not like our bodies. We may not like caring for our bodies, and we may bypass our bodies without even realizing it, as I have done, in the name of superior spirituality. But this is not what God wants.
Learning to honor your body, learning to live in your body, learning to care for your body is a deeply important part of your spiritual practice. It's not only good for your physical health; it's how we honor the God who made us mind, emotions, body, and spirit.
So how do we love our bodies as a form of spiritual practice? I am going to be honest with you, today, I am a newbie at this. There was a time I could have probably waxed on about this from a purely intellectual standpoint, without really understanding it in my own day-to-day practices. And I'm just so aware of how human we all are, that I would rather be honest with you about that than pretend otherwise.
I am a newbie at this and it all started, for me, last November when I went off social media. Now I've been off for about five months, and as I mentioned, that was the tip of the iceberg. It launched a whole journey into the depths of paying attention to my body, at the cellular lived experience level. And I'm nowhere near done, yet, I am barely beginning.
But I am starting to build trust with myself again. To the point where I'm, very gingerly, taking baby steps to see if I can integrate what I have learned about paying attention to my nervous system. Paying attention to what my body, actually, needs in the moment versus the pseudo dopamine hit that I would rely on in the past.
I am practicing, now, in fumbling, uncomfortable, like riding a bucking bronco, ways, what I've learned these last five months, bringing that into my life. When, to use that ever so helpful acronym — H-A-L-T — whether I'm Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired because that's when we're most vulnerable to doing these things, that our bodies don't actually want or need.
What I want to share with you are just some very basic practices that I'm leaning into right now. To ensure that I care for this beautiful, of all beautiful gifts that I do not always think is beautiful, but I am learning to cherish the body that God has given us.
Number one, the first thing I do, when I wake up in the morning, is to remind myself I have a body. I have a body. I am not a walking mind. I am not a walking task machine. I am not a walking caretaker of other people. First and foremost, when my feet hit that floor, I have a body. And I say it to myself as a way of saying to God, "God, I have a body this morning. That body needs things from me. And the best way I can honor you right now is to check in with that body; is that body hungry?"
I cannot tell you how many years of my life I have skipped breakfast. I do not give my body breakfast. I give everybody else in my life breakfast, but I got things to do. I got to get going. I got thoughts to get down. I got work to do. And, then, somewhere around the middle of the morning I'm like, "I'm starving." I didn't feed my body. So this is a radical new practice for me, to hit the ground in the morning and go, "I have a body. What does that body need?" This is a spiritual practice. This changed everything for me.
This is not, "I need to go right into my prayer life."
This is, "God, I am honoring you first thing this morning by checking in with this body you've given me." This is not separate from my spiritual life. "Is my body hurting? Is it sore? Did I get sleep? Does it need food? What food does it need?"
And, then, a process of "What does my body want to eat first thing in the morning? What is healthy for it?" Not just grabbing a fistful of something and calling that food or nourishment. This takes time, this takes attentiveness, this takes attunement. There are lots of parts of me that do not like this. I want to jump right into the work. I want to jump right into the caretaking of others. It takes space away from, instantly, jumping into caring for other people to say, "I first need to care for my own body." This is hard for us, as women, and it's so basic and it is so not basic.
Number two, when, throughout the day, I notice myself reaching for those seemingly innocent go-to's pick-me-ups, pausing. And it's not just about inhibiting an impulse, or a compulsivity to reach for a phone, or reach for a sugary snack, or whatever it is. Whatever the food is, whatever the thing is in that moment that feels good, that we all know isn't actually what we need in that moment. It's more importantly, "What is my body saying right now?"
A lot of times, in my case, it's, "Oh, my goodness, I have not literally moved my body from my computer for three hours." That is not only not healthy for my circulation, for a body that has, literally, had a clot that turned into a stroke.
So it's not only that, it's my body wants to move and then I'm learning what does my body want. Because, again, it's not willing control over the body from the mind, which is how I have perceived it in the past. Which is "I should exercise."
"I should now take a walk around the block."
It's, "Hey body, what do you want to do?" And my body often wants to have some fun. It's like "I've been sitting here, holding you up for two hours. I want to move around; I want to stretch" Sometimes my body wants to dance. It wants to put on some music and wants to do a little five-minute shakedown; get out the tension, get out the anxiety, get out the frustration. It's been really fun to realize that my body likes little mini-solo dance parties, throughout the day, just shake it out.
Rowena talked about this in episode 44 on anger. When she talked about, in her family, when her kids are getting angry, they shake it out and have a little anger dance party, and just get the frustration out. Put on some music. This has been really interesting for me to notice, throughout the day, that so often when I'm unconsciously reaching for something, the real need is that my body needs some attention. It needs to move, it needs to stretch, it needs to work out or metabolize some emotion that I'm having.
Other things that my body likes, stretching, taking a walk when it's sunny outside. I'll look out the window and I'll just notice this longing in my body to just go be out in the sun with the dogs. Running around the yard, playing with them, throwing the ball, having some fun out in the sun. My body really likes that. Sometimes it wants a hot shower. Sometimes it wants to go to the gym where it can just bake out, sweat out, some of what it's been feeling.
Breathing, again, not just because my psychologist's brain has told me, "This is what you're supposed to do. You are supposed to take deep breaths." No, actually, feeling in my body what it feels like to slow down my breathing, and release some of that tension, this takes time. It's like a body time-out.
Another thing that's been really fun is to think about kids. What do kids do? If you think about children. Watch your children how they're wriggling, and moving, and dancing, and tussling, and wrestling, and on the ground, and they're throwing their head back in laughter. Or they're pounding their fist, or their hand on the table because they're so upset, they physicalize all that emotion. And, so, reminding myself, "What did I do as a kid?"
And remembering some of that in my body to let the body get some of that out. Not just for the purpose of, then, I can do my work better, or then I'll be healthy, or then I'll have checked the box of being a healthier person. No, because there's joy in it. There's joy in honoring this long-suffering body that I have, frankly, taken for granted, and have not treated very well throughout my life.
I thought a lot about David, and I'll be honest when I think about David, I cannot help but think about that beautiful scene of Kevin Bacon, in the original Footloose movie. I went back and watched that scene because it's just so etched in my memory, and I'll link to it in the show notes. Because he talks about all three Scriptures that I often think about, when I think about this movement of the body as a form of worship, as a form of honoring God.
And I'm going to close today by reading these Scriptures to you. 2 Samuel 6, "So David went to bring up the Ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the City of David with rejoicing. When those who were carrying the Ark of the Lord had taken six steps, he sacrificed a bull in a fattened calf. Wearing a linen ephod, David was dancing before the Lord with all his might, while he and all Israel were bringing up the Ark of the Lord with shouts and this sounds of trumpets."
I've heard that verse my whole life, but only now have I begun to glimpse and taste what it feels like to dance before the Lord. Not always in joy, sometimes in anger, sometimes in sorrow. But that physical action of honoring God with my whole body.
Ecclesiastes three, again, I've read this one before, but I love it. "There's a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to uproot. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance."
And then Psalm 149, "Let Israel rejoice in their maker. Let the people of Zion be glad in their king. Let them praise His name with dancing and make music to Him with timbre and harp."
There's so much to this spiritual life that we have. There's so much joy in it. There's so much, yet, to be discovered. I have been doing this work a long time and there are some areas of this journey of healing that I am such a newbie, and it means that life is never boring. It is always an adventure. I'm learning how to dance and how to move my body, as a spiritual practice before the Lord. And I pray for you, on this day, that you too will begin to love this body God has given you as a form of spiritual practice.
This week on the podcast, we're kicking off a mini 2-episode series on loving our bodies as a spiritual practice. Today, I dig into the problem of over-spiritualizing and how that does harm to ourselves and to others.
Here's what we cover:
1. What is spiritual bypassing?
2. Does every problem have a spiritual solution?
3. How we spiritually bypass ourselves
4. How not to be a "friend of Job"
5. The antidote to spiritual bypassing
6. An example of spiritual bypassing from the Bible
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Resources
- See Chapters 2 and 11 of The Best of You, by Dr. Alison Cook
- Episode 46: People Pleasing as Survival, How Jesus Regulated Emotions & the Problem With Toxic Positivity and Spiritual Bypassing with Aundi Kolber
- John Welwood on Spiritual Bypassing
- Job 20 and Job 22
- Matthew 23:4
- Job 42:7-8
- Isaiah 53:4
- John 11:33
- Matthew 5:3-5
- Matthew 25:34-40
- Hebrews 11:1
- Romans 8:28
- Resources for support
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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. I'm Dr. Alison, and I'm so glad you're here to discover what brings out the best of you. This podcast is all about breaking free from painful patterns, mending the past, and discovering our true selves in God. I can't wait to get started as we learn together how to become the best version of who we are with God's help.
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to The Best of You podcast. I am so glad you're here. I'm so glad you keep coming back, each week, for these conversations that are just so important. As we navigate all the challenges that we face in our families, in our relationships and, frankly, in this world. There's just so much turmoil, so much chaos, all around us. And, so, I so appreciate this time each week to center our hearts, and to just pay attention to what is happening inside our souls, our minds, our bodies, and to invite God into that process together.
Today and next week, we're going to do a two-episode miniseries called, Loving Your Body as a Spiritual Practice. I have been in a, pretty intense, process of learning what it means to honor the body that God has given me, as a form of honoring God.
This is something I do not think comes naturally for most women, in particular. And it's not something that we hear a lot about in our faith communities. I do think that message is changing. And, so, in today's episode, I want to talk about this phrase - spiritual bypassing. We touched on it in my episode with Aundi Kolber, last week, episode 46. And several of you wrote to me and said, "Can you talk more about that? What did you mean by that?"
And, so, today, I want to get into what is spiritual bypassing. And then I also want to touch on what does it mean to bring our whole body. And by our whole body, I mean our mind, our heart, our spirit, and the body, the physical body that contains our mind, our emotions, and our spirit All of those things into our spiritual practices.
So to get started today - what is spiritual bypassing? Spiritual bypassing, essentially, means using spiritual concepts, platitudes, or spiritual language to bypass or over-spiritualize the real struggles that we face. And one of the ways I like to think about it, it's saying that every single problem, every single struggle of life, can be solved with a spiritual solution.
And I want to pause there, and I want you to think about that for a minute. Because I think a lot of us might agree with that. We might agree or have even said, or have even heard, in a sermon, that every problem has a spiritual solution. And I'm going to challenge that just a little bit today.
So spiritual bypassing, this phrase, was actually introduced, it's credited to this Buddhist psychotherapist, actually, his name is John Welwood. In the mid-'80s, he began to see a trend in the clients that he was seeing, that they would bypass their pain or bypass the reality of their problems. By using, vaguely, spiritual language like, "It's all good."
"I'm just going to follow my bliss."
"I'm just living my truth."
His clients would just repeat these positive-sounding phrases, that really didn't allow them to get into the heart and soul of what they were really struggling with. And if you remember, again, in episode 46, Aundi talked about how there's a secular version, which is called toxic positivity. Which is using positive phrases to cover over pain or suffering.
But there is also a Christian version of this and it's using Christian phrases, Christian platitudes, even Bible verses, to cover over pain and struggling. Instead of owning it, naming it honestly, and bringing it into the light, where God can actually bring the healing. And, also, sometimes the practical, very embodied resources that we need.
So here are some examples of spiritual bypassing and how it might show up in a faith community. So maybe you've shared a hard situation with a small group or a member of your church community, and you've heard a version of the following response. So, for example, if you share "I'm really struggling with depression." And someone tells you, "Oh, you don't need to feel depressed, God has given you so much."
Or "You should just pray more. You should just ask God, if you pray more, god will take that addiction or that relationship problem away."
Or if you're struggling with forgiveness and you really are carrying resentment towards someone who's really hurt you. Someone might say to you, "Well, God just says you should forgive. You just need to turn the other cheek." But there's no real acknowledgment of the complexity of what that means.
And, listen, sometimes we do this to ourselves. We constantly tell ourselves, "If I would just pray more, if I had just been in the Word more. If I was just walking closer with God, I wouldn't be having these problems, I wouldn't be struggling. Everything would just, magically, fall into place."
We tell ourselves these things all the time and we beat ourselves up with this form of spiritual bypassing. "If I was more holy, if I was more faithful, if I was a better Christian, I wouldn't be having this fight, flight response and lashing out at my kids. If I had just spent more time in the Word, today, I wouldn't be behaving in this way."
Now listen, I don't want to suggest that it is not important to spend time in the Word, to spend time in prayer. To ask God, constantly, for help, meeting us where we are in every detail of the day. That is part of the work of growing in spiritual formation, of allowing God to form us on every level.
Some of these things are true. We do need to forgive. We do need to pray more. We do need to be in the Word more. But here is what I want you to hear me say, God meets us in every pain and every problem that we face.
But that does not mean that every problem, every heartache, every challenge has only a spiritual solution. I'm going to say that again. God meets us in every pain and every problem that we face. But that does not mean that every problem, every heartache, every challenge, has only a spiritual solution.
Some of our problems need very practical solutions. Some of our problems need us to attend to a jacked-up nervous system. That has gone into fight-flight response, as a result of trauma or as a result of stress. And we have to learn how to calm that nervous system through physical intervention.
Some of our relationship problems require the help of a therapist or a third party, to help us untangle the knots that have come into that relationship. And it's going to take more than just prayer. Or perhaps the way God is going to help us answer those prayers is to teach us how to bring the problems we are facing in our relationships into the light. Where people who are trained can walk us through it very practically.
Sometimes our addictions are going to take medical interventions. We're going to need doctors to help us. We're going to need support groups to walk us through it. These things don't, magically, get solved through prayer or through reading the Scriptures.
Now, again, I am not saying that we don't need spiritual solutions. What I am saying is that we limit God, if we assume that God only shows up in spiritual ways. That God cannot also show up in very embodied, physical, ways.
Think when we only hear about the spiritual solutions, especially, in our faith communities. We can start to beat ourselves up if those spiritual solutions are not solving the problems that we face.
In fact, when spiritual bypassing is used as a prescription, oftentimes, it can make us feel more alone in the problems that we face. Instead of sticking close, by you, in the uncertainty or the complexity of the situation you're facing. When someone spiritually bypasses you, in a way they're blaming you for what's happening.
"If you were just more spiritual, this wouldn't be happening to you."
Instead of helping you ask questions or getting curious about the situation that you're facing. Spiritual bypassing minimizes the struggle in the name of a superior faith. And, to be honest, it's what we see in Job chapters 20 and 22. It's what the friends of Job were doing.
They were looking at Job sitting there, in all of his pain, in all of his torment, after losing so much. And you just get the picture of these friends coming in with their little spectacles, and being academic, and being like, "Well, you must have done something wrong to be hurting in this way."
Or, "You must not have been doing enough of your praying, and fasting, and spiritual disciplines, or God wouldn't be letting this happen to you." And they're coming up with all of these platitudes to explain away Job's problems. Instead of setting aside all their certainty, all their spiritual-sounding language, and going down into the pain with Job, and just sitting down next to him.
And saying, "Hey, Job, this is hard; we don't get it either. We know you're not perfect, but we also know you're a really good guy. And, frankly, I know I'm not perfect either. And, so, frankly, I know that whatever you're going through, there's no reason why I'm not going through it, because neither of us has it all together.
So I'm just going to sit here with you, in that pain, because I don't really get this. And I don't think it's really fair that you're going through this, and I don't really understand it. But I know I can enter into it with you. And I know that together, we can beseech God for mercy. We can ask God for help because I don't have all the answers."
But you know what, Job, whoever you are, whatever your name is, and the problems that you're facing, I can enter into it with you, and I can sit here with you. I can bring my whole body, I'm not going to sit here above you, and float above your problem, and analyze it or dissect it or spiritualize it, from a safe place, far away. Where I don't have to be tarnished by the pain that you're feeling. I can stay safe outside of it." That's not real friendship.
Instead of floating above your pain, I'm going to come and literally take my whole body, and I'm going to sit next to you, and I'm going to even put my arms around you, and I'm going to hold you. And I'm going to say, "I don't get this either but I'm here with you. I'm going to help you ask questions. Together, we're going to try to find our way through this. I'm not going to leave you alone. I'm going to bring you the literal, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual presence of my whole body. I'm not going to leave you alone."
That's embodied comfort, that's friendship. That's coming alongside someone from a position of "We are all in this together." And, man, whatever you are facing, maybe, I'm not going through it quite the same way. Maybe my life looks a little less complicated on the surface. But I have enough humility to know that my pat answers are not what you need right now. Because I don't fully understand either.
And maybe I will need to speak some words of truth, as I sit with you in this. I start to notice some things, and I can hold up a mirror, and in great humility and with a lot of grace, say, "Hey, I'm wondering if you've thought about it this way." But I'm doing that with humility. And I'm first coming alongside of you, and I'm sitting with you in the dirt, and in the mud, of your pain.
I'm not floating above you with all of these easy answers, that do nothing but make you feel more alienated. That's what spiritual bypassing does. It makes us feel alone in our pain. It makes us feel like "If we were just to be better Christians. If we would just pray more. If we would just be more faithful, we could just float up out of our pain and walk around with this numbed-out bliss." And it doesn't work, and it's not the example that we see in the gospels and it's not the example that we see in Jesus.
Instead of entering into the pain of a hurting soul with compassion, humility, and the gift of loving presence, or frankly, of practical help. We minimize, we spiritualize, and we make faulty assumptions. In effect, we are wounding the already wounded.
We're saying, "If you were a better Christian, you wouldn't be feeling this way. You wouldn't be going through this." We're blaming others in the name of our faith. And we become the very people Jesus rebuked when He said, of the religious teachers of His day, this is what He said about them. Matthew 23:4 He said, "They tie up heavy, cumbersome, loads and put them on other people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them."
They're not willing to go down into the mud, in that pain, in the heartache, in the challenge, of that other person's trauma. Of that other person's pain and actually get in the mud, and get dirty, and say, "Hey, I'm in this with you. I don't have easy answers for you, but I'm here."
Instead, they stay up out of it and just scold, just judge, just spout out easy, feel-good platitudes that do not meet other people in their pain. We tell the hurting person to be more spiritual instead of doing the holier embodied, more important, work of sitting beside them in their pain.
Sometimes we do this to ourselves. Instead of seeking to understand our painful emotions or, frankly, even our reactions to other people that we don't really like. Again, those fight/flight responses, where we lash out. We just ask God to remove them or to work a miracle in our life.
And, listen, there's nothing wrong with asking God for a miracle. But what I've learned, living a few decades on this planet is we don't always get the miracle and we're still responsible to do the work.
Sometimes God answers us with a miracle and sometimes God says, "This is going to be a daily practice." Sometimes we get that miracle of healing. More often God says, "Partner with me to take brave steps each day." You have a part to play.
I cannot even tell you, and I'll get into this more in next week's episode, how much God has been teaching me that lately. I so desperately want the miracles, the quick fixes, the easy way out. And, so, often God is saying, "I'm healing you. I'm here and it is not the easy way."
It is the way that requires digging deeper and facing the truth of what's hard. Facing the truth of what I don't often want to see about my own self, and taking tiny, brave steps every single day. Floundering a lot, sometimes seeing a glimpse of grace, but all the while holding tightly to the hand of Christ.
Who says, "I am with you as you walk through it. I may not pick you up out of it, but I will not leave you as you walk through it." Spiritual bypassing, we do it to other people, we do it to ourselves, and it's not what Jesus does to us. Jesus walks with us through the valley of the shadow of our lives.
< Music >
Alison: Spiritual bypassing is not what Scripture recommends. Jesus welcomes the beat-up, downtrodden, hopeless, and even doubting souls He encounters. See Job 42:7-8, Isaiah 53:4, John 11:33, and Matthew 5:3-5. Jesus does not exile those people who are hurting and in the messed up middle of their lives.
He doesn't say, "Go get yourself cleaned up and then come back to me." He says, "I'm here with you now. I'm sitting with you here at this well. I'm sitting with you here at this pool of exiles. I'm coming to you right where you are."
I think of the words of Jesus when He said, in Matthew 25, and these words bring fear and trembling to us. Because they apply to all of us and I do not always get this right. Please hear me say that, I know I do not always get this right. Here are the words of Jesus. "For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison, and you came to visit me."
And then, again, He goes on to say, "Truly, I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."
What are we doing for people when they're hurting when they're suffering?
Are we slapping pat answers on them?
Are we telling them to pray more?
Are we slapping Bible verses on them?
Are we saying, "Hey, what do you need? Do you need food? I'll bring you a casserole and I'll sit with you, while you grieve."
"Do you need something to drink? A cold glass of water? Maybe you need a break. Maybe you need me to take out and just listen while you share with me what you're struggling with. And I won't judge and I won't try to solve your problem. Let me just take you out, and be with you, and listen to you, and bear witness to your pain."
And maybe I'll offer some insight, sure. Maybe I'll say, "Have you thought of this?" Sure. But I'm going to be with you and I'm going to listen. And I don't have all the answers, but I'm not going to leave you alone. Maybe you're lonely and you just need some company. You just need someone to show up in your house, and not try to solve your loneliness problem.
But just show up every once in a while and say, "Hey, I'm here. I'm Christ in the flesh. I'm not perfect, but I am bringing my embodied comfort to your doorstep. Can I come in and just sit with you for a minute? Not to solve anything, just to take your loneliness away for one moment."
What if we went to the friends who are struggling with addictions, with really hard challenges, and said, "Hey, I know you're in a rough place. I don't have all the solutions for you. Could I go with you to a support group meeting? Could I drive you?" And imagine, for just one moment, if that's how we all were with each other.
When we share about our own struggle with depression, or anxiety, or we share about our own marriage challenges. Or we share about something our kid is going through, or we share about a hard situation at work or a really hard financial situation. And the very first thing that we were met with were the words, "Tell me more about that. I care, I'm here. I want to learn more about what you're dealing with."
What if we first started with that?
What if we first started by entering in and saying, "I'm here."
And what if that's how other people met you, in return?
I can just imagine this way that we are actually starting to be in a community together. We're actually sitting together and listening to each other, and absorbing each other's pain. And guess what, shared pain is half the pain, right there. We're not solving any problems. We're not, necessarily, fixing all the things.
But right there is the miracle. Right there is the miracle of sitting with each other in an embodied way. Saying, "I'm here, I hear you. I'm listening, I'm with you. You're not alone." And that same person is going to do the same thing for me when it's my turn, and when I'm struggling. And, all of a sudden, there's so much trust, and there's so much safety, and we're coming together. And this is what I believe it means when we are confessing one to another, "Hey, this is the real truth of what I'm struggling with."
And it's the other person saying, "I hear you. I'm with you. Yes, me, too, I struggle with these things over here." And, collectively, we are connected to each other and we are becoming a body, an actual body.
I just had an experience, recently, with a few friends where we lived this. We came together for a weekend and we just could not stop sharing, confessing, opening our hearts and souls to each other about everything that we were dealing with in our lives. With our kids, with our relationships, with our work. With all the things that we all deal with. It was a holy weekend and it was holy ground.
We weren't solving each other's problems. Nobody went away going, "Oh, yes, I prayed more and therefore my solutions were solved." We were just living prayer in an embodied presence with each other. We were the body of Christ for each other.
Before we close, today, I want to talk a little bit about what I believe the antidote to spiritual bypassing is. It's what I call embodied faith. It's a faith that includes our hands, our feet, our nervous systems, our mind, our emotions. It's holistic, it's heart, mind, soul, body. And I want to turn to Hebrews 11:1 to just close out on this idea of what is a healthy faith. Because we do believe that God is in all of our problems, in all of our pain. That God is, ultimately, the one who cares the most about us when we're hurting. And that God is the one who leads us through the valley.
So if we look at Hebrews 11:1 "Faith is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It's our handle on what we cannot see." That's The Message version. I want to say that again, "Faith is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It's our handle on what we cannot see."
Now, there's a lot in that verse, and that is not a verse that encourages spiritual bypassing. Even though we are understanding faith as the foundation of everything, even all the pain that we are dealing with. If you think about it, this definition of faith, in Hebrews, brings together two contradictory ideas.
First, faith is said to be like a firm foundation. Foundations are solid, often concrete, literally, concrete. When you pour the foundation of the house, it's usually concrete. You can see, feel, and touch a foundation. There's no question it exists.
In fact, every time you walk into a building or enter your home. How often do you think, to yourself, "Oh, I'm walking on a firm foundation? There's a firm foundation under my feet." But you know it's there. You just trust it implicitly. You just trust, for the most part, that that foundation is not going to crumble out from underneath you. That's how sure our faith in God can be no matter what we are facing. Faith is that firm foundation, that God is there no matter what.
But here's the second part of that verse. "Faith is also getting a handle on what you cannot see." Getting a handle on something means to grasp something complicated, something puzzling, something uncertain. You try to get a handle on a difficult situation. You try to get a handle on a challenging personality or you try to get a handle on your anger that you feel.
It's unwieldy, it's wild. It's like, "I don't know what to do with this. I'm trying to get a handle on it, it's outside of my grasp. I don't quite have control over it." So when you're trying to get a handle on something, you're often wrestling with it a little bit. You aren't certain of how to proceed. You don't know exactly what's happening, but you know you need to stick with it. And that is, also, how faith is, it's a firm foundation under everything. It's also getting a handle on something we can't quite understand, we can't quite see.
Faith in God is a firm foundation. It's a fact God is there; we can trust Him. Faith is also getting a handle on stuff that's really hard to see, that's elusive. Where God feels mysterious, where we have to feel our way through the dark. We're not sure exactly what this wild thing is that we are facing, that we are dealing with. It's scary, it's outside our control, we can't easily grasp it, and that is also faith.
Both are true, faith is a fact and it's a work in progress, it's a wrestling. Faith is a firm foundation, and faith is a feeling our way through, sometimes, one tiny step at a time through a long, dark, tunnel. When life is going well and things are working, faith tends to be more like that firm foundation.
We can almost take it for granted. We understand that these good gifts come from God. The foundation feels solid, we're good. And it's in those seasons that it is very tempting, from our safe place, way up high, to look down on others, who are suffering and say, "They're not on that firm foundation."
When in fact our brothers and sisters, or sometimes us, when we are going through the valley, we are just as much in faith when we are feeling our way through that dark tunnel. Where our steps are wobbly and uncertain, and we do not know. And for every step we take forward, we might be taking half a step back, we are also walking in faith.
What does it mean to get a handle on faith, when it feels like the foundation is crumbling underneath you?
When you're trying to find your way out of an abusive relationship?
When you're trying to find your way through a challenging set of issues, with a child?
When you're trying to find your way through a betrayal, in a friendship?
When you're trying to find your way through a faith community that has hurt you?
When you're trying to find your way through a job that you absolutely hate and that might even be toxic, but that you need to stay afloat, financially?
When you're trying to find your way through loneliness and you can't get a handle on it?
That is still faith. Faith is still a foundation underneath you, even when you can't see it, when you can't feel it, and you can't find those easy answers. In fact, I would argue that is an embodied faith that is even more pleasing to our God. The faith of fumbling. The faith of I don't know what in the heck is happening, God, but I'm getting up this morning. I'm going to try to eat my breakfast.
I'm going to try to read the Bible, even though, right now, I don't know exactly what it's trying to tell me because I'm confused. I'm going to pray to you, God, even though I don't know what you are doing in my life. I'm going to turn my kids over to you, even though I can't see how you are helping them. I'm going to turn this relationship to you, God.
And then guess what, I am going to keep walking through this day. I'm going to keep nourishing my body with the food that it needs. I'm going to keep seeking wise counsel from people who I trust and I'm going to keep turning away from counsel from people who are minimizing or spiritually bypassing my problems.
I'm going to take one step, today, to nourish my body, to try to get a good night's sleep. To maybe move my body in a way that releases some tension, that releases some stress. I'm going to reach out to a friend to take a walk. I'm going to listen to some music that calms my nervous system."
And guess what, I'm going to continue to turn away from those voices of people, who are telling me that if I just prayed more or if I was just more spiritual, I wouldn't be having to struggle like this. Because, in fact, these very acts of taking care of my body, of taking care of my mind, of what I put into my ears, of what I put into my heart.
Of taking care of my emotions, of giving myself space to grieve, of giving myself space to be angry. Of giving myself time with healthy friends, who maybe even make me laugh a little bit in the midst of the pain, and who take my mind off of my struggles, that is me living out my faith. That is me trying to get a handle on it, God, and you understand that. You see me here struggling my way through, wrestling my way through, and it's not always pretty, God. It is not always pretty.
Sometimes I'm angry and sometimes you're hearing it from me, but I'm still talking to you. I'm still talking to you. I'm still caring for this body. I'm not giving up on myself. I'm still here with this child of mine who's hurting. I'm still here, hanging in by a thread, with this marriage. I'm still here alone because I've had to leave the relationship and a lot of people have abandoned me, but I'm still here, God. I'm not giving up on you and I'm not giving up on myself.
And, today, that act of faith might simply be that I woke up this morning and I said, "Hey, God, I'm here. I'm here today, I'm going to live this day." And that is my radical act of embodied faith. The antidote to spiritual bypassing is embodied faith and embodied faith is lived out every single day.
Every single day you get up in the morning and you say, "I'm here, God. I haven't given up on myself, yet. And I haven't given up on this person, yet, and I haven't given up on you, yet. I don't know what that's going to look like by the end of the day, but I'm not giving up today, I'm here. And that is my radical act of faith."
And I will tell you, good and faithful servant, your God is pleased with you. Your God is pleased with you when you keep showing up every single day. And maybe your life isn't that firm foundation, of just feeling all great about your faith, and about God, and about your life. But when your faith is that feeling your way through, trying to get a handle on things, trying to wrestle it through, and you're not giving up on it every single day. You are in the heart and center of a God who loves you, and of a God who walks with you.
Whether you feel it or not, He is right there with you in that faith. He is right there with you. Because when we are faithful to this work, of getting up every single morning and not giving up on ourselves, and not giving up on God, He is faithful to us. And I can't promise you that'll come in a really clear solution today, but I can't promise you that He is pleased with you. That He is pleased with you and that you are not alone in your pain. And that your pain will not go unnoticed to the God who loves you and turns all things for good, for those who love Him.
< Outro >
Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you'd take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts and click the plus or Follow button. That will ensure you don't miss an episode and it helps get the word out to others. While you're there, I'd love it if you'd leave your five-star review. I look forward to seeing you back here, next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.
Phew! Buckle up. Part 2 of my conversation with Aundi Kolber is out today, and it is absolute fire! We set aside the script and got real about our own experiences, including. . .
1. How people pleasing becomes a survival response
2. The shame we feel when we start to change
3. Alison's unexpected experience of comfort in a crisis
4. Jesus and the Nervous System
5. Did Jesus ever get "activated"?
6. The problem with toxic positivity & spiritual bypassing
Check out Aundi Kolber's new book, Strong Like Water anywhere books are sold!
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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
- Connect with Aundi Kolber at www.aundikolber.com or on Instagram or Twitter
- Purchase Strong Like Water, by Aundi Kolber
- Purchase Try Softer or The Try Softer Guided Journey
- Listen to Part 1 of our conversation: Episode 45
- Learn more about the Fawn Response: Episode 14
- Learn more about Trauma: Episode 4
- John 2:1-11 Jesus turns water into wine
- John 11:35 "Jesus Wept."
- James 1:17 "Every good and perfect gift comes from above."
- Matthew 21:12-13 Jesus overturns tables in the temple
- John 10:10 "I have come that they may have life to the full."
- Pete Walker, MA, MFT "Codependency, Trauma and the Fawn Response"
- Dr. Arielle Schwartz "The Vague Nerve and Your Health"
- Deb Dana Rhythm of Regulation
- Resources for support
Transcript
Alison: Hey, everyone, welcome back to The Best of You, Podcast. I am so glad you're here today. I can't wait to share with you this second part of my conversation, with my friend Aundi Kolber. It's a special week. This is the week her brand new book, Strong Like Water, is out in the World. I'm sure many of you have already gotten your hands on it. It's an incredible book about the power of strength and really the nuances of strength. That there are different types of strength. That it's not always what we think it is on the surface.
And today we get into some really interesting nuances of the conversation. Including a conversation about the fawn response, which is a way of pleasing others, or winning others over, that emerges as a form of a trauma response. And we also dig into a really fascinating discussion about Jesus and the nervous system, and how He models resilience and this flow of strength. So please enjoy my conversation with Aundi Kolber.
< Music >
Alison: We tend to think of activation, or we tend to think of this situational strength. My sense is we might tend to think of it more, obviously, as when I'm in that fight response. Or I'm in just a high, anxious, my body is tense, my stomach's in knots. All those ways in which cues that we are now in that situational strength. What about that fawn response?
What was so confusing, for me, is my situational strength is pleasing people. That's how I am surviving, it's the fawn response. And how do I become aware of that?
Because that seems like a nice, good Christian thing to do. And, for me, with that particular one, because it's so interpersonally linked, I almost need, in that one place, other people to remind me, you being one, of, no, safety doesn't feel like me setting myself aside to make someone else feel okay. Safety doesn't mean playing small so that I don't threaten anybody. Tell me how that piece of it, for those who are listening, whose situational strength is just playing really small is just disappearing.
Aundi: Yes, thank you for bringing that up. And like we talked about in the other episode, how I led with the fierce part, and then there's the stalwart part. You and I have talked about how much I also resonate with the fawn part, and that is very much a part of my story and my strategies, as well.
And, so, I just appreciate you bringing that up. Because this is definitely the nuances where people get missed or where, particularly, in Christian culture, there is this sense of praise, particularly, for women who are living from the fawn response. And that is a very confusing place for the person themselves. Because whereas if someone is in the fight response, you might get interpersonal feedback like, "Whoa". Or if someone's leaving, you might get different feedback.
So with the fawn response, there are many things to say. And, honestly, I find the fawn response fascinating and, also, at times, a little bit infuriating, but fascinating. And what I mean by infuriating is just because it's also part so much of my story. So with the fawn response, I really conceptualize it similarly as a place of you're leaving. If we're thinking of it as self, there's a sense in which the self is disconnected from. Or if it's the other language I use, you're leaving the window of tolerance and you're either going to a place of hypervigilance like, "How can I help?"
"What else do you need?"
"Oh, can I do that for you?"
"Oh, but can I take care of that?"
"Oh, hey, can I just crawl on the floor in front of you?" You can feel the energy in my voice, with the hyper-vigilant fawn response. And then what I would say, because I think there's really more research that's needed with the fawn response.
But my understanding, and this is really from consulting with Dr. Arielle Schwartz, which she's done some great work around different nervous system responses. But that it can also go into more of a dorsal-vagal fawn response. So what that means is that, again, it's still situational strength, but it's more from that place of the hyper-vigilant like you've, "Oh, I want to help you. I want to do this." And, then, it's almost the submission piece. Like now it's just, "Okay, go ahead and just walk all over me, I'm good"
Alison: I'll just roll over and play dead."
Aundi: Yes, "You can just take whatever you want from me." And that's a different energy. And it's important when we're talking about the nervous system, we can track how different states are experienced in our body. The reason why both of these are fawn, and that's not a dissociative response is that the goal there, Pete Walker coined this term fawn response. And it's really about over-accommodating and pleasing, or submitting, to neutralize the threat.
It's important to say it's really adaptive and it's a very complex response. This is not something that most people just do, the first time they are in a situation that someone wants something from them. Most folks learn it because, over time, they've learned fighting doesn't help. Fleeing doesn't help. Just playing dead, just dissociating, maybe not enough.
What they've learned is, "If I spin myself in circles and give you every single thing that you want, and walk on eggshells around you. And then not say anything, maybe, I will be able to navigate the threat." And, so, that's situational strength 100%.
Alison: And I love that, again, because then there's no shame because we do shame ourselves for that. And it's, no, that's how you learn to survive, it worked. And even if you find yourself in it, one of the things I've learned is that is probably a cue, there might be some unsafety around me.
I want to circle back to this because you touched on this, and you started to talk about how when there's a lot of it. When someone has been living almost only out of situational strength. In that moment of beginning to recognize we can feel shame. Before we immediately go to the compassionate resourcing and we start to see ourselves, we start to observe ourselves. And when we start to observe ourselves when we start to see ourselves. I remember this vividly, for me, when I began to witness and observe that fawn response in action, there was shame in that.
Aundi: Yes, I love that you named that. And, I mean, from the perspective that I often work, it's like saying, "If shame is showing up, the question becomes what function is shame playing in that situation?" And it may be that in the past it wasn't safe for me to access the resources I needed. So shame may have actually kept me in the situational strength and in the cycle because something in my body was like, "If I don't, there is nobody for me, there is nowhere else to go."
And, so, I want to be clear in saying, I'm not saying shame is necessarily where we want to live, but we can have compassion for the role that shame has played. And perhaps how it's kept us in the survival mode because it communicated, in some way to us, it is not safe to come out of survival mode.
And, so, part of this work, and I talk about this a lot in Strong Like Water. Sometimes people might even feel like it's too much, but this is just my own journey of really wanting people to pace themselves. That pacing ourselves, it's that growth that feels doable. It's the bite-sized pieces where we're not trying to do so much at once. That it, paradoxically, might even be too much for the nervous system to digest by doing so much at once.
And, so, I say that even with shame. Even if we can just begin to think about thinking that's it. Maybe we aren't ready to have compassion, yet. Okay, that's fair.
Maybe we are not ready to have compassion toward the fawn response yet. Okay, that's fair.
First, if we can even just develop the capacity to notice it and just to be with it. "Oh, there you are; I see, from a functional standpoint, here's what you've been doing for me." Over time, what can begin to happen is we may begin to develop some respect for "Oh, the fawn response actually helped me navigate an extremely abusive system."
Oh, okay, "I wonder what would have happened had I not fawned. How much worse would it have been for me?"
And, so, again, in our culture, we're not always good at holding that nuance. But I think it's this place where we really honor the role that it has played for us.
Alison: Yes, I love that. Shame, it's not telling us the truth, it's not where we want to live. And also, I've learned when it shows up, there's a reason. It's a cue to just say, "Okay, hello there, shame, I see you." It doesn't help me to shame myself for the shame.
Aundi: That's right.
Alison: It's just a cue that there's a wound there, that there's a pain there. And often it's just a matter of letting it run its course, but it's part of this journey. The biggest thing to remember is it doesn't mean that you've done something wrong. It might mean you're doing something really brave.
You talk a lot about this idea of becoming flexible and adaptable as this key to strong like water. So give us a little bit of a reminder of what you mean by that. And then I loved this idea that Jesus is actually this beautiful example of that. So tell me a little bit about that.
Aundi: Yes, the nervous system flexibility that I'm talking about, when we go back to this flow of strength idea. Part of how I conceptualize healing is not that we're always living in integrated strength. Because, honestly, that's not necessarily possible. And, frankly, there are just times that our body needs to be able to not even have a conscious thought before it reacts. We actually need that to exist in this world that we live in.
And, so, one of the ways that I conceptualize healing is that it's moving toward our body, our self, and our nervous system, accurately responding to what is in front of us. Now, this really, for me, I could just camp out here and we are going to talk about Jesus with this. But what, I think, is so countercultural here, I mean, this is not only secular culture, this is also Christian culture.
In a way, secular culture's version is toxic positivity; "Put on a happy face, just smile, everything's going to be fine." And then from a faith perspective, spiritual bypassing might just look like "Just pray a little bit more. Just believe."
It's not to downplay, like what we talked about, we are holistic beings. It's not that faith is not a resource; faith very much can be a resource. But if we have to disconnect from ourselves to our experience, our faith, that is spiritual bypassing. And I would say it's a form of potentially situational strength.
Alison: Say that again.
Aundi: If we have to disconnect from ourselves in order to function. In order to experience our faith, then we are almost likely going into spiritual bypassing. Which I would say is a form of situational strength.
Alison: Okay, I'm sorry, I have to pause because I've never really thought about it exactly like what you just said. Which is disconnecting from the nervous system, disconnecting from those cues to go to faith resources. It's not that the faith resources in and of themselves are a problem. There are times when I am connected to myself and I'm connected to my body, and the Word of God is flowing through. It is changing me, transforming me, and beautiful, same with prayer, same with all the things.
There are also times in my past when I'm totally disconnected. I'm totally in whatever mode of fight, flight, whatever, activation, situational strength. And I'm trying desperately to remember that Bible verse, and it's another form of anxiety. It's another form of striving, and it's soul-killing. And, so, you're saying, in fact, that is potentially another form of situational strength, it's survival. Not all bad, again, no shame in it.
That helped me understand, after I had my stroke, Aundi, in the car, on the way to the ER, I was so activated in my body. And the spiritual part of me was grasping for promises of God, grasping for prayer, and it was not soothing me. It doesn't mean it was bad, but it was confusing to me.
I was like, "That was interesting." Because in a moment of almost feeling like I was going to die or not knowing what was going to happen to me. Those resources were there but not comforting. And what was comforting was when I got to the CAT scan and the nurse put her hand, I said, "I'm so scared." And it brings tears to my eyes, put her hand on my arm and said, "I know it's scary, honey, it's scary." That's what soothed my nervous system, that embodied comfort and safety.
And it wasn't that all those things I was grasping for weren't true. It's just that was a situational strength response, in that moment. And, again, not bad, not good. Just not exactly what I know to feel as that deep sense which I felt after that of God with me.
Aundi: That's right.
Alison: That is so interesting.
Aundi: Yes, I think that's such a good weaving together, that's exactly right.
< Music >
Aundi: It's just understanding that there have maybe been times for folks when spiritual bypassing has played a role for them. That they may be, again, like all situational strength, have needed. There was something about that that it didn't feel safe to maybe go to God, for example. So they couldn't bring themselves to God. So they disconnected from themselves and in a way dissociated toward God.
And, so, we can honor the function while also naming that, ultimately, that's maybe not really getting us where we want to go. Which is bringing it to our full self. Which is allowing faith, as a resource, to be experienced as a true resource.
And not as a way to suppress the body, the nervous system, or the sensations we're experiencing because in that way it can be harmful. And in that way, it may mean, "Oh, I'm going to have to come back to this thing later to process." Because our body is not experiencing the support needed to metabolize the distress that's happening.
Alison: Yes, that's so good. I'm so glad we're continuing this conversation because I think, man, in that moment I had to come back and go, "What God? Because God is with us when we're in situational strengths, we know that baseline, God is there. But our bodies are not experiencing that and parts of us are scrambling to experiencing that God is there.
But that experience, for me, that was the biggest piece I had to process. I was like, "I spend a lot of time with God, why in that moment did I not feel the comfort of God? Is there something wrong with me?" And that's I think something a lot of people feel, and God bless you if you do in those moments feel. There are other times where I felt the comfort of God.
But that was fascinating to me and I had to learn to look at it "Oh, isn't that interesting? And how do I resource myself in a new way?" Because, for whatever reason, the thought of death, for me, did not bring that. And I did, I went through a journey of working that through with God and not shaming myself for it.
I think so many people have that experience of praying, of trying so hard. That situational strength and, again, we want to be clear, we're not saying God isn't there with you in that. But for whatever reason, that strategy is not actually what your nervous system needs in that moment. And that particular thing might not be the resource that you need to move you into that lived, felt, experience of safety with God.
Aundi: Yes, there are certainly people who are in situational strength where God is God. So I don't want to put God in a box. It is not to say that apart from anything we do, God shows up in some way and, generally, speaking we are in that survival brain. What is first and foremost going to move us towards that compassionate resourcing and into the transitional strength, is really almost a case by case. The question, "What feels safe to your body?"
Alison: Yes.
Aundi: And, so, it's not to say that Scripture couldn't be also a resource.
Alison: A hundred percent.
Aundi: It is not to say that a prayer wouldn't be part of the resource, but if it is not, it's okay. It's okay. It's valid. And here's what I would just say, I think, a lot about the Scripture that says "Every good and perfect gift comes from above."
Alison: That's right.
Aundi: And, for me, I'm like, "Listen, these things that are communicating safety to our bodies, that's a good gift."
Alison: Amen, that's right.
Aundi: That's a good gift, and there's no shame in having to use whatever resources are communicating safety. So you can have a foothold into your transitional strength, and then you can make decisions about what you need, or what people you need, or in what ways you need to experience God.
The other thing I would just say, that I would just communicate, is that in situational strength, probably, one of the biggest indicators is that there really is no choice. In transitional strength, you have some choices. In that survival brain, situational strength is like you got buckled into the roller coaster, and now you're going. Now, right before you get on the roller coaster, if you can be like, "Hold on, I think I want to get off the roller coaster." That might be possible. And, so, I hope, as folks are hearing this, I hope that maybe evokes some compassion.
Alison: Yes, Amen.
Aundi: This is not you being like, "Oh, I don't need God, I don't need support." No, this is your body doing what it is designed to do, which is to survive.
Alison: That's right. And you know what, it also goes back to conditioning your own childhood wounds. Like, when you go into that situational strength, especially, if it's a crazy thing out of the blue, like what happened to me. You go right back to eight years old where I didn't have a felt experience. I only knew this legalistic way of relating to God.
So, of course, it wasn't a conscious choice, it's just where my brain and nervous system went. So tell us, Aundi, I got to have you talk to me about how does Jesus represent this nervous system flexibility? Does that tie in here?
Aundi: Yes, absolutely. Well, before I say that, what I want to step back and just say is that one of the things that, similarly of the geeking out, that I like to do. I love and, for me, this just roots me a lot in my own faith is that Jesus, this incarnational, embodied God.
Alison: That's right.
Aundi: And, for me, that is so vital as I've walked through my own traumas, and healing those experiences. And walking consistently in my career with folks who have been harmed in so many different ways. It is not to minimize the other elements of Jesus's divinity and the bigness of God, those matter.
But, for me, it is a love letter. It is an absolute love letter, an invitation to really security and the with-ness of God. That God lived in a body. God lived in the constraints of a body. God was birthed in vulnerable circumstances, wept, and slept, and did all these things that are human and embodied.
And, so, I frame it that way first because I cannot overstate the significance of Jesus living in a body. There are so many things; one, we're going to talk about the nervous system in a moment. But even just from this attachment lens, which is also something that I integrate a lot.
That instead of a God who remains far off, I think the fact that the embodiment of Jesus really communicates, in a very attachment-oriented way, the nearness, the solidarity of God with us.
And, so, all of that, for me, is the context in which here is Jesus, this incarnate God living in a human body. And in His life, I mean, in Scripture, we do get pictures of Jesus, but, obviously, I know that there's a lot of His life we never were privy to.
And, yet, I think about the flexibility of, for example, going to the wedding, His first miracle, and He is making water into wine. And that there's this sense of celebratory, there's this sense of that is a nervous system experience. You don't just do that through the lens of just like everything is perfectly calm, it's like remaining neutral, all the time.
Alison: Yes, that's right.
Aundi: Jesus was not vanilla, Jesus showed up as a human. When He's flipping the tables to the money changers, that's anger. One of the stories that is so sacred to me is when He shows up after Lazarus has died and He sees, I think it's Mary weeping. And just those verses, Jesus is moved and then Jesus wept.
Alison: Amen.
Aundi: And, for me, I mean, there's more to that story, He raises Lazarus. He does that. But I just cannot get over the fact that the God of the universe, who already knows what's going to happen first is moved and weeps.
Alison: That's right.
Aundi: That is nervous system flexibility. If we go back to what we said, at the beginning of this episode, we are responding appropriately to what is in front of us. Jesus, even in these examples, there is a match there. There is a match in His literal nervous system to what's happening in the situation.
Now, I think, this is a beautiful example on so many levels. One, it is our own invitation to be matched. To have different emotions, to honor anger, to honor joy, to honor grief, among the many other experiences we might have, and Jesus had. But it could have been different. It could have been communicated to us differently. Jesus didn't have to necessarily weep. Jesus didn't have to show this anger.
The fact that He did not only, I think, is an invitation to us in our own humanity, but it's also an expression of the fullness of God with us, in our humanity. It's not like God just being "Okay, I guess you're human; I'll tolerate that."
It's like, "No, I love you so much and I, too, share those experiences with you, and model that with you, and feel with you." Yes, I mean, all of that inspires me. It inspires me because what I have learned about the nervous system and embodiment.
I'm like, "There is no true healing on this Earth if we don't bring our bodies." And, so, what a beautiful picture that Jesus shows us what it's like to be fully human and to live in a body.
Alison: So do you think Jesus went through the whole flow of strength? Do you think He had situational strengths?
Aundi: Yes, this is the way that, based off of what I know about the body, and just know about Jesus, and also how I viewed Jesus as being both fully God, fully human. It's that I believe He did probably access situational strength and in also the partnering of His divinity. I could see that maybe as I heal, how I'm able to move more quickly along the flow.
Alison: Yes.
Aundi: And it would make me wonder if that's maybe that picture. Because it's just I don't know what big, scary, animal would have maybe potentially eaten Jesus in those days or something. But there is a sense in which to be human requires situational strength.
Alison: It's so interesting. And, so, Jesus experienced it without sinning. I mean, so often, again, there's this link when we're in situational strength is maybe when we are more inclined to lash out or do something. But, again, it gets to there's nothing inherently wrong, it's part of being inherently human.
Aundi: That's right.
Alison: That's so interesting.
Aundi: It can come out sideways and we can cause harm, and that is real. And I think that's where the language of repair matters, the language of reconciliation and forgiveness, and all those things matter. We aren't perfect, and being in situational strength is also not an excuse for harm. We have to hold the inherent value of other people even if.
Alison: That's right.
Aundi: Now, that doesn't mean it's always easy and God makes a way. God makes a way for repair; that's a hard tension to hold, and, yet, you're right.
Alison: That picture that you painted of Jesus in all the different ways that He showed up in His body. It also strikes me as that picture, sort of we're closing out here, of the integrated strength. Because we've talked so much about... because so much of where we live is trying to move from situational into transitional. But I love when you were describing that picture of Jesus. It's like that's the picture that integrated strength isn't passionless, it isn't emotionless.
Aundi: That's right.
Alison: It's not this sort of numb, I think people conflate numb. Give us a little picture of vision, a glimpse, for people listening, of what it feels like.
And even in your own life, thinking back to that 22-year-old that you start off with in the boo. What is your body experience strength like now, in this integrated way? Knowing, obviously, that we're not always there.
Alison: Yes, thank you for this question. I think it's really important and you're exactly right, it's not this numb, flat way of being in the world. I think of it much more like a fullness, like expansiveness. And through my own work, I think of it as these younger parts have continued to be integrated, as my fierceness has become integrated.
What has happened is that it's not that the fierceness exists less. This is phrasing that Deb Dana uses it's before it was in service of my survival but now it can be used in service of my wholeness, and really the good of myself, and also the good of others. That my adult self can partner.
That's what the picture of integrated strength is, it's partnering. It's all those experiences, maybe those experiences that were meant for evil, maybe those experiences that were meant for harm. It's not that we have to celebrate that those happen, but do you know what we do get to celebrate? It's that we survived, that we've learned, that we've grown. The gold that comes from that, that is us.
And in integrated strength, that feels the most accessible to us. The fullness that Jesus talks about; "I have come that they may have life to the full." And, to me, that is the invitation as often as we can access, as often as we can come back, to come back to that place of honoring all the strength. And as we are able to bring those parts of our stories, bringing those pieces of gold, bringing those woven-in pieces that have felt disparate, and allowing them to exist in wholeness.
Alison: That's beautiful. I love that picture of all of it. I love that picture of fullness. It's the fullness of all of who you are and the fullness of who we see in Jesus. Thank you for this gift of your presence and this gift of this work Strong Like Water. Please tell everyone, Aundi, how they can find you, how they can find the book and where to connect with you?
Aundi: Thank you so much, my friend, this has been amazing. I would love for folks to connect with me over at my website, aundikolber.com. You can check out the book wherever books are sold, major retailers like Amazon, and Barnes and Noble, and places like that. I'd love for you to connect with me on Instagram, instagram.com/aundikolber, and twitter.com/aundikolber.
Alison: All right, everybody, grab your copy of Strong Like Water. It is such a deep dive and, again, it's also just so practical. Aundi and I talk about it, I can be disembodied, and those exercises just bring me right into that embodied variancing. Check that out, and thank you again.
< Outro >
Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you'd take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts and click the plus or Follow button. That will ensure you don't miss an episode, and it helps get the word out to others.
While you're there, I'd love it if you'd leave your five-star review. I look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.
What an honor to have my friend and fellow therapist, Aundi Kolber on the podcast today for Part 1 of our two-part conversation on her brand new book, Strong like Water: Finding the Freedom, Safety, and Compassion to Move through Hard Things--and Experience True Flourishing
Aundi and I connected through social media, and she has become the dearest real life friend. It was my absolute honor to have this conversation with her abut her personal story and her new book, Strong Like Water, available for pre-order now.
Here's what we cover:
1. The problem with being the "strong one"
2. The turning point when Aundi discovered a different kind of strength
3. 3 Different types of strength
4. How to find safety when you need it the most
5. The difference between information and transformation
6. How Aundi has come to understand strength now
Preorder Strong Like Water here
Resources
Connect with Aundi Kolber at www.aundikolber.com or on Instagram or Twitter
Preorder Strong Like Water, by Aundi Kolber
Purchase Try Softer or The Try Softer Guided Journey
- 2 Corinthians 5:2
- Boundaries for Your Soul, by Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller
- The Best of You, by Dr. Alison Cook
- The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk
- Resources for support
See Also:
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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, I'm Dr. Alison, and I'm so glad you're here to discover what brings out the best of you. This podcast is all about breaking free from painful patterns, mending the past, and discovering our true selves in God. I can't wait to get started as we learn together, how to become the best version of who we are with God's help.
Hey everyone, welcome back I'm so glad you're here this week. Today, we are launching our first-ever, two-part series with my dear friend and fellow therapist, Aundi Kolber. Aundi is a licensed, professional, counselor and the author of Try Softer and the Try Softer Guided Journey, which are just beautiful, helpful, resources.
I recommend them all the time. Aundi brings a trauma-informed lens to everything she does. She is one of those friends who just, as much as teaches, she shows what it means to live in an embodied way. She has a new book out, this month, called, Strong like Water: Finding the Freedom, Safety and Compassion to move Through Hard Things and Experience True Flourishing.
This book is hard-earned wisdom. Aundi has lived what she teaches others. She has an incredible mind to understand complicated theory, as it relates to trauma and make it practical and digestible. I got to read an early copy of the book. And I wrote, in my endorsement of it that "She reimagines strength as a dance of both tenacity and tenderness. Of holding tight, at times, and of learning when to release. So she gets the nuances of strength, of resilience."
It's such a powerful book and I can't wait for you to hear this conversation with my friend, Aundi Kolber.
< Music >
Alison: This is so fun.
Aundi: This is so fun. I was just thinking, as I was sitting down for this call, I was like, "What a cool job that I get to do this with my friends."
Alison: We just get to have a conversation that we might, normally, have back and forth via Voxer only Live, while it's being recorded. Because we talk about this stuff all the time.
Aundi: We do.
Alison: So it's pretty cool to have you on here, and I'm so excited about Strong Like Water. I just can't believe it is here and upon us, and launching into the world, while you are near water. I love it that this journey of creating Strong Like Water mirrored this journey of you, actually, getting to be nearer the water. That I know you love so much and speaks so much to you.
Aundi: Yes, thank you so much. It has been really beautiful because now we are closer to a lot of lakes but, particularly, Lake Michigan, which it's not an ocean, but it's not too far off. And you've been just such a huge part of my own journey, especially, the last couple of years. So it's beautiful to get to have this time with you.
Alison: It's amazing, because, I think, it's been three years, almost, exactly, since we connected. And, honestly, for people listening, this is one of, there are all these pros and cons of social media. I go back and forth with a love-hate relationship with it. But one of the best things is I have made a couple of real friends out of it, and you are one of those very real friends. That's how we met about three years ago, I'm grateful for that.
Aundi: Yes, I feel the same; I mirror that so much. There's definitely, still, some ambivalence, I think, valid ambivalence around some things with social media. And there is the opportunity to connect with people at times in ways that, honestly, probably, would have never happened for you and I.
Alison: Yes, we don't live in the same part of the country. We would have, maybe, known of each other's books. But how would we have known how to reach out and connect to each other?
I want to dive in because you open the book with this glimpse of your 22-year-old self. And I want to go back in time to her. She's at the ocean, and she's feeling the weight of a lot of different things. There's this image of her having been super strong and perceived as a very strong person, the wise person. The person other people turn to for support.
But there's also this foreshadowing, this sense in that story, of there was a lot inside of you that was yet to be unpacked. And, so, what did that 22-year-old you think strength meant?
Aundi: Yes, thanks for all of the things that you said before that question. That just feels so good to me. That just means the world. But this 22-year-old me, oh, my goodness, bless her heart. I think about that age of myself with just a ton of compassion. And at that age, I had what I would call a very narrow perspective of strength. I would say I had a very rigid perspective of strength. And what that meant to me was it was a form of like, "I'm the only one. It's all on me. If I don't do it, who else will do it? If I don't show up for myself, who else would be there?" Also a sense of nobody else can.
And I think this was a reflection of the family I grew up in. But a sense of even if I want help, other people, even if I could ask for help, others may not be able to handle it. And, so, since I in some way seem to be handling it better, then, I should just continue handling it. And, so, there was this sense of almost wanting to protect other people in my sphere. Because I had internalized this belief that because, for whatever reason, people perceived me to be doing well.
And there's a sense in which that was true, there were things that I was doing well. But what was tricky about that is that it made it so that instead of receiving some of the care and support that I needed. That acted like a way for people to think that I didn't need that, I didn't need support. And, yes, it was very rigid. It was very, "You just deal with it. You put your head down and you just keep going."
Alison: Is it fair to say, you and I sometimes flip back into parts language. We flip in between our different languages. It almost sounds like there was a very ferocious, tenacious, you use the word fierce in the book. Part of you strong, very legitimately strong, could get the job done. But you didn't have access to other ways, to other parts of you, that might have needed help or might have needed to understand strength in a different way.
That part of you was like, "This is it. This is what we got going. And, so, I'm the game, I'm the one showing up. I'm the one getting things done." This was actually your experience, too. It was reinforced. And, so, that part of you was like, "Yes, this is what strength means; it's me getting the job done." Is that fair to say?
Aundi: Yes, that's absolutely true. And there is, probably, without getting too deep into the parts work, my guess is that there was actually even more than one. There was, particularly, very bright, fiery, fierceness and then there was more of a stalwart steadfast, keep going, no matter what. And those were like two of my main protectors, in that period of my life.
Part of my story is that I am recovering and have recovered, in the process of recovering from complex trauma. And, so, that means that it's complex. And, so, I say those two parts, among many, but those were very active in those years. And I appreciate what you said, that it was valid. It was not, "Oh, you know what, how can I make my life really hard?"
It was because of what I'm facing in my family, because of the lack of support. Because of dynamics of emotional and psychological abuse. This is the safest way for me to exist in the world
Alison: A hundred percent, this was the way you had to survived. When did you begin to realize you might need to rethink this way of being strong? What was that moment that you began to realize, "Huh, maybe that isn't the only way to be strong?"
Aundi: It was close to that time. That moment that I described, that 22-year-old self, is just prior to me making a huge change. Which was that I, essentially, moved across the country to Denver, Colorado, all by myself. As a 22-year-old woman, I did end up getting a nannying job. And I had one friend from high school that I knew, that I had visited, and that part of that helped facilitate some of that. But it wasn't like I had this full-on plan.
But I will say, for me, that's a big God moment in my story. Because there was something in me that was so deep, and so true, that knew that it was the right move for me. That it bypassed, not just bypassed, even my protectors believed that this was the right move for me. Which is saying something because I'm a cautious person.
And, so, all that to say, it was that move. I've experienced many of what I would think of as almost like a cracking-open moments. Of the various protective strategies and patterns, and that was one of them. Because, up till that point, the way that I had lived was I was a college athlete. I was an excellent student. I was seen in these roles as being just people could depend on me. I did a good job; I was a hard worker. There were a lot of those things which were good.
But that was also ways that I used to suppress what was really going on for me, and when I didn't have that. I wasn't playing college basketball anymore. I wasn't on the same track, academically, because that wasn't available to me. So all these ways that had previously existed, they were not even possible.
And that, first of all, was very vulnerable and there was a grief to that. In addition, to the fact that I had called off an engagement. I had quit my first professional job. And both of those I'm so thankful for, ultimately, in a way, there was a wisdom to that. But just thinking about that was when I began to think, "Is there a different way?"
I think how I would have phrased it "Is there a different way to even be?"
And, so, at that point, I don't think I had language for the strength part. But I just was like, "Wow, I don't know how to be who I am anymore."
Alison: Hindsight is 2020, but it's almost like you used the strengths of those formidable parts of you to go, "I need a change; so let's just catapult me into this new setting in Denver, where I'm completely vulnerable." It's almost like this way in which using your strength, you put yourself in a situation where you would have to confront the vulnerability, almost. I don't know, that's what I'm hearing. I don't know if that resonates?
Aundi: I think all these years later, so we don't live in Denver anymore. But this fall would have been 18 years since that. I think it was early October that I drove across the country, and moved officially. And looking back through the years, I'm grateful because it was the right decision for so many reasons. And, yet, puzzled because it was a part of my story that I'm like, "That is not me." It's me, but it's not something where you're like, "Oh, yes, here's all the times that Aundi did something like this." It's very few.
But I think something in me like the Bible talks about, Paul writes about it, "We groan." All of creation groans. And there is this sense in which, I think, that's when I first felt that ache of "Is there something more for me?" And the dynamics in my family system were such that I wouldn't have been able to articulate it then. But I really needed to be able to differentiate from my family system. And at the time, what that felt like, to me, is "I have to leave or I will get swallowed up."
Alison: Yes.
Aundi: And it was a body knowing. It was almost like it was that space, and the profound sense of just peace that I really felt was God's peace when I was in Denver. And it never went away, it just was confirmed. I was like, "Yes," again and again, just I knew that. And I tried to be mindful of not spiritual bypassing, things like that. But it was such this deep anchored knowing. And that's been such a resource to me through the years. Because when you've had those moments, you're like, "Oh, that's what that's like."
Alison: Yes.
Aundi: When you know that and all the systems know, at least for me in that circumstance. And, so, all that to say, yes, it was this really paradoxical where something in me felt called, and led, and almost a deep knowing that, "Something has to change; and I'm not sure exactly how it's going to change, what that's going to look like, but I'm willing to try."
Alison: I love that. In a way I'm hearing you say "I need to choose myself."
"I need to put myself in a position where I'm away from all this, give myself a shot." And you did that in partnership with God's Spirit and you never looked back. As much as I know there's still a whole lot more to the story. That decision was, "I am going to choose a life of my own, I'm going to choose myself." And that moment was a real turning point, a real breakthrough, that's beautiful.
I'm curious, for you, therapist to therapist, when you land in Denver, did you start doing that internal work first or was a part of you drawn to this whole, "I think I want to be a therapist. I want to learn more about this journey of healing." How did that go for you?
Aundi: I had never been in therapy before I moved to Denver. I had started to, and was familiar with some pieces around some of the psychological elements. My older sister is also a therapist so that gave me a little bit of a picture, of some idea, and some perspective on this.
I had done a little bit of work in my undergrad working with social workers. And, so, I had a little bit of a sense of some things that were interesting to me, and where I felt like I might want to be helpful. I got to Denver, and to be honest, I mean, I had no clue just the level of work that I needed, personally, to do.
I think even at the time, I would have been able to say, "Yes, my family's really dysfunctional, there's a lot of chaos." At that point, we had been through a couple of interventions for both of my parents. I had been through some things; I had seen some things. And, yet, I think, partly, our body does this, in my opinion, to protect us. I think sometimes we're not ready to see the fullness of our story. And I would say, for me, that was a part of it.
So one thing that really was a gift is that one of the people I connected with really early on, she was a therapist, but she was my mentor. So I wasn't seeing her for traditional therapy. But she was going to Denver Seminary, or she had gone there a few years before. And she just was this really beautiful person, who I knew through one other person. And she was willing to meet with me semi-regularly.
And, so, she began to give me some language around some of the things I had experienced. She gave me the beginning understanding of some of what I had been through. And she has remained a really beautiful resource in my life, I'm so grateful for her. And, so, even before I went to therapy, I think that relational peace remained. I think she saw some of herself in me. She had a similar story. She knew that I wanted to potentially go to get my masters.
And, so, it was a way to support me and it made a big difference. Because, for me, really, it wasn't until I was in my master's program that I went to more formal counseling. But, honestly, I really needed even that pre-step of having that mentorship through an attachment lens was really helpful. Then the other piece that, and this can look different for different people. But a lot of my trauma is attachment related.
Brendan and I, my husband, we were introduced pretty, early on, set up for a date very early on when I was in Denver.
And there was a lot of complicated elements to that because I had been through some things. And I was trying to figure out, "I want to trust myself; I don't know if I can trust myself." Just even to pick someone who would be a good fit for me, and just navigating these layers.
But what's so interesting, and what I'm just so grateful for now, is the role of even just a few people, who were safe for me, in my life. And how that, in a way, laid the foundation for so much of my healing. That was a lot of the beginning. But without that, I don't know that some of my deeper healing could have happened.
Alison: Yes, it makes a lot of sense. What I'm hearing you say is that from the minute you landed in Denver. There was a way in which different people, enough people came alongside to create safety, and you talk about safety in Strong Like Water. To where you could begin to do the work of digging deeper.
We still weren't talking a lot about trauma. It was before that was being talked about. I'm curious, when did you begin to be able to feel comfortable with that label? When did you more, consciously, begin to say, "Oh, I need to go down this road?"
Aundi: Yes, I would say it was a progression over time. Even through seminary, I would not have labeled my experience as trauma. Because at the time, according to the DSM, I didn't fit. And now I actually even see that a little bit differently. But, at the time, I would not have considered it PTSD.
So this was in the early, gosh, this was 2006, 2006 through 2008. So there was starting to be, in the field, a lot more discussion. But I would say, in my particular program, there wasn't much training around that.
I will say there was a lot of really good, I'm super grateful. I got a chance to really do a lot of integrative work with my spirituality. A lot around understanding our stories and attachment. And, so, there was a lot that was really good. And what happened for me is that I graduated, and I was on my journey to become licensed and doing all these things. And it was like another cracking open because I went from this very structured, contained, environment. Where I was like, "I know what it looks like to achieve."
"I know what it looks like to" fill in the blank. To being like, "Oh, now I'm going to go out in the world and I'm going to be this person. I'm already beginning to try to be a person who offers healing to other people, who create spaces where they can heal." It wasn't that during seminary, that good healing didn't happen. I think that I would say that layers of that began.
There's a lot of professional understanding of here's what it looks like to do notes, and here are the ethics, and that's all really important. But, for me, it really was because I felt like I didn't have permission. And I think it's part of what it comes down to. Because part of what was going on, in the background, is that things with my family were continuing to get worse and worse. Now, I was quite farther away, so that created a little bit of a buffer.
But there were several really intense, painful, things that happened just in those years, while I was even in seminary. That, at that point, now I understand I had traumatic energy, I would not have known that then. I can remember trying to explain this to my mentor, and I remember my hands shaking. And as I think about that, I just have so much compassion, I had no idea. No idea.
I'm like, "Oh, my body doesn't have the capacity to process the intensity of the pain that is coming up." And most people in my sphere did not understand that. Even therapists that I might be seeing, they did not have that training. And I say that it just is what it is, this has been a progression.
And, so, it was really a couple of years, after I got out of seminary, and I had been doing some work to get my license. I was doing agency work. There's a lot of things, when you're first wanting to get licensed, that's not for everybody, but you're willing to be like, "I'll just go wherever I can." Which is great to the sense that you get lots of different experience. It's really good to feel out where do you want to work and what do you want to do.
But as I did that more and more I had the sense, I'm like, "Oh, wow, there are these people and they know so much about something, for example. But that knowing is not translating to their transformation." And I was seeing it all over. And it was like once you see it, you can't unsee it.
Alison: I know.
Aundi: And then the thing was, that was me too.
Alison: Yes,
Aundi: Not that there weren't some changes, there were. But some of these big dynamics, in me, I was like, "Why I can know all this information and it still not changing it?"
Alison: The big thing at the time, for me, at that season I was, there was cognitive behavioral therapy. Where you look at your thoughts and you change them. And I was like, "I can do that with the best of them."
"I can get rational."
"I can analyze."
"I can capture every thought."
"I can change it to the truth." And it does not get anywhere below the neck. It's not getting to any emotional truth. It's not getting to any embodied truth. So it's interesting, to me, this was really before all of this trauma-informed, and what you're doing such a great job of bringing to so many people.
Before it had really broken through into the mainstream, I think, it's fair to say, practice of therapy. And I love what you're saying, you're like, "I could tell, I could see it, there's a lot of information here, but there's not the transformation. And I see it in others, and I experiencing that in myself."
Aundi: Yes, and I think that's what really motivated me, for me, post-graduation, to seek out additional training. In things like EMDR, integrating somatic therapy with things like EMDR. This is right around the time, then, I think, it's 2015, Bessel van der Kolk released The Body Keeps the Score. There's all this stuff beginning.
And, for me, it was this blooming it changed my life. It changed the trajectory of all my work. It changed, for me, everything, frankly, because it gave me a new lens both of understanding, but of deep compassion and of understanding the necessity of things like safety. Of understanding why, I needed to be so strong, a certain kind of strong. And that there was value to that, that I didn't need to shame how I survived. That was God's grace to me, that I could survive.
Alison: Amen.
Aundi: And that I was so loved. I have always been so loved. And that, for me, there was an alignment of things that I had known for a long time.
Alison: Mh-hmm.
Aundi: Things like Henri Nouwen talks about "Belovedness". There was a sense that maybe for the first time, I could fully hold that, fully integrate that. And not to say that it was always accessible, we ebb and flow. I think in the past, I experienced concepts like that as fleeting versus it being an attachment language, a secure base.
Alison: Yes.
Aundi: Like, "Oh, no, this is where I go home to. This is where I live. Everything else I do is just an extension of this place where I am secure, no matter what. No matter what comes. No matter if I have to go into a trauma response or I'm able to stay integrated, I am loved."
< Music >
Alison: Thank you, Aundi, for just sharing with us a little more of your personal story. I know so many people have come to trust your voice, to turn toward your expertise. And I just, as your friend, what I know to be true, more than anything, is that it is 100% embodied. Everything you say, everything you put out, whether it's social media, what you write, it's coming from a lived experience. It's coming from your authentic lived experience on the ground, in real life. You are, 100%, this person in your own life, doing your own work, as you are showing up for others.
And I appreciate you're just giving us a little window, and you do it a little bit throughout the book. You give us little glimpses of how close to home this work is for you. This, literally, comes out of your own experience. And it's just such a gift that you've taken all of that pain, and all of that trauma, and through your own work of healing, created these paradigms, these ways for other people to come in and do the work.
< Outro >
Alison: Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts and click the Plus or Follow button. That will ensure you don't miss an episode, and it helps get the word out to others. While you're there, I'd love it if you leave your five-star review. I look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.
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The Best of You Every Day offers short, daily reflections on Scripture through the lens of emotional health—helping you stay steady, connected, and rooted in love.
