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Today's episode is all about how to befriend anger. It's an emotion that can do great harm and one that also has great benefits. Whether you thrive on anger or try your best to bury it, one thing's for sure-we all have to reckon with it. When you learn to work with your anger, it can become a powerful force for good in your life and in the lives of the people you love. Today, my friend Rowena Day (see Episode 31) returns to the podcast as we discuss how we've learned to create space for healthy anger in our lives.
Here's what we cover:
1. Practical strategies to befriend and build trust with anger
2. The guilt and fear we feel about having anger
3. How to manage anger while parenting
4. Examples of speaking on behalf of anger vs. from it
5. The problem with comparing our pain to the pain of others
6. Jesus and anger
Be sure to pick up your 3 free Boundaries for Your Soul resources here.
Thanks to our sponsors:
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Music by Andy Luiten
Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
Resources
- Get 46% off Boundaries for Your Soul & The Best of You
- Inside Out Movie Trailer
- IFS Institute
- Guided IFS Reflections:
- Insight Timer - KimberlyMiller
- Insight Timer - Ann-Marie Bowen
- Resources for support
Scriptures Mentioned:
- Psalms 51:6 "You desire truth and our inward parts, and in the hidden part." (NKJV)
- Matthew 11:30 "Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." (Message)
- Matthew 12:34 "You brood of vipers…" (NIV)
- Matthew 21:12-13 "He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves." (NKJV)
Books Mentioned:
- Boundaries for Your Soul, by Kimberly Miller & Dr. Alison Cook
- The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner
- The Other Half of Church by Jim Wilder
- The Best of You by Dr. Alison Cook
- Holy Listening, by Margaret Guenther
Other Episodes in this Series:
- Episode 39: Boundaries for Your Soul—How to Navigate Your Overwhelming Thoughts & Feelings
- Episode 40: 5 Steps to Healing Painful Emotions & Why Parts of Us Get Stuck in the Past
- Episode 41: Boundaries With Fear And Anxiety—How to Calm the Chaos Within and the Joy of Internal Boundaries
- Episode 42: How to Honor Sadness, Set Boundaries with Loneliness, and What to Do When You Don’t Have Time for this Work
Transcript
Alison: Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Best of You podcast. This is our last episode in this series on Healthy Boundaries for Your Soul. This has been such a powerful series, and I've appreciated hearing from so many of you. Wherever you listen, whether it's Apple, or Spotify, or Amazon, music, or wherever you get your podcast, how much you've gotten out of this series.
So thank you for listening, thank you for subscribing, thank you for giving me your feedback. I love creating this podcast, and I just so appreciate hearing from you and knowing that it's reaching so many people who need these resources.
As we close out this series, I want to leave you feeling equipped and empowered, to do good in this world and to create change in your life and relationships. And one of the most empowering emotions that we have is our experience with anger. Anger is such a valuable member of your internal family. It can alert you to danger, whether you're being mistreated by someone else or maybe you're even in physical danger.
It can motivate you to take action on behalf of yourself or on behalf of an injustice that you're witnessing. It can help you point out brave truths. It's also one of our most uncomfortable emotions. It's an emotion we often fear, or don't like, or even exile. Sometimes we push it away.
But if we do not befriend our anger, it will come out. It can come out as irritability, as aggression. It can come out as harsh or critical judgments toward ourselves or toward others.
It can come out as cynicism or bitterness. It can come out as physical tension in our bodies, or anger can come out sideways as passive aggression.
These little digs, where we get it out, but not really directly in a way that is healthy for our souls and for our relationships. So there's a lot to cover here with this emotion.
So for today's episode, I invited my dear friend, Rowena Day, back on the podcast, to be a conversation partner with me, as we discuss this emotion of anger. Rowena was first on the podcast in episode 31. Where she talked about being a peacemaker, and how she had to learn to befriend anger as someone who really loves to keep the peace.
Rowena is a writer, an artist, and a spiritual director in training. She's the mom of four children between the ages of one and eight. She and her husband live in Washington, D.C. We met over a decade ago at a spiritual listening community. Where we became friends and discovered each other as kindred spirits, on this journey toward emotional and spiritual wholeness. And we have both worked really hard to create a healthy relationship with anger.
It doesn't come naturally for either of us. We've had a lot of conversations about it over the years, and I'm so happy to have her on the podcast today. Let's dive into our conversation about anger.
Welcome back to the podcast, Rowena. I'm so glad you are here today with me.
Rowena: Thanks for having me back, Alison. This is a really important conversation.
Alison: I thought it was so interesting. And I didn't know you were going to do this in that first episode, where you came on to talk about peacekeeping. Where you really brought it back to this experience of anger, and that the two really go hand in hand to be a more effective, more powerful peacekeeper.
Someone who really shows up wisely in relationships with others versus someone who just bypasses yourself, in order to keep peace for others. You have to get in touch with your anger. And that really resonated with my experience of being what I would call someone who likes to please others, likes to perform for others. Where I had to realize that anger sometimes felt like a disruptor, in a negative way.
Because how can I please someone else if I'm feeling angry? And, yet, the reality is it actually empowers me to the higher good, which isn't just to please or to perform. It's to actually create good, to create real help, to create meaningful change, in the lives of other people and in my own life. So I really resonated with that. And I'm so glad we're going to talk about it today. I'd love to get started, for you to just talk about how have you come to understand anger.
Rowena: Mh-hmm, anger is such a powerful force and it can create such an internal conflict. And I think this internal conflict is not talked about a whole lot for women because, I think, women are socialized mostly. Maybe not every woman identifies with this. But, I think, it is true for a lot of women that we are socialized to see anger as all bad.
And, so, it's very uncomfortable when we feel it in our bodies to know what to do with it. It's a hidden power and a hidden fuel. And it can lead either to destruction, outwardly or inner, inward disintegration or fragmentation, of ourselves. Or it can be a fuel that leads to greater goodness, and integration, wholeness, and healing of fragmented parts of ourselves.
And, so, it takes a lot of practice to figure out how to harness anger well and have a healthy self-expression of it. And, so, I think in our society, we probably have a false dichotomy of anger. Where on one side of the spectrum, you can either bypass, suppress, or deny your anger. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you can have an eruption or an explosion of anger. That's like a volcano that just erupts in a really destructive way.
And, so, there's this false dichotomy where it's either I suppress it or I explode. And there's just such a range in the middle where there's healthy self-expression of anger. And this is really tricky to navigate when you're feeling it in your body because there's all these other emotions that entangle and wrap around it.
But there really is a third option to express it in a healthy way. And you talk about this a lot, but the key is to have a lot of curiosity and compassion for these angry parts of ourselves. And we don't want to suffocate the flame of anger or stoke it so much that it's exploding into a huge fire.
So I think the fire analogy is really helpful. Like a fire can produce warmth and light when it's contained. But when the fire goes out, there's no light and no warmth anymore. And then if the fire is huge, it can set off a whole forest and cause immense damage.
And, so, having a healthy amount of anger in our lives is actually good, and it's a God-given emotion. And it's just so important that we figure out, our minds can think one way about it and our bodies can feel a different way.
Alison: Yes, it's so true. It's so good. And because it is such a physical emotion, we feel it in our bodies. I think also that's where there's some fear with it. Because if and when you've, and as we say, lost your temper or become angry, it's scary. It's almost like it takes over. It's an activating emotion. So it activates us to move, and to get big, and to yell, do these things that can be harmful.
And, so, it really is a process of learning how to have this grounded experience of, sometimes I use the word authoritative anger, of gravitas, of healthy sternness. Because when we don't have enough, when it's too far away, we actually can become passive, or feel like we're a victim of our circumstances, or feel helpless, and that's not healthy.
But if it becomes that volcano, or if it becomes that raging, blazing fire that will burn the forest down. We're hurting the people that we love, and we're not being effective in our anger. And, so, I love that metaphor. I think it's really helpful. I think the trick here is to learn how to befriend our anger, to find it in our bodies, so that we can lead it versus either shoving it away, exiling it to where it's not constructive to us, or letting it take us over.
Rowena: Yes, exactly, I love this part in Psalm 51 where it says, "You desire truth and our inward parts, and in the hidden part, you will make me to know wisdom."
And Jesus also says, "Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." And this is incredibly appealing. Who doesn't want to live with that sense of inner freedom and lightness, no matter what is happening externally or internally?
And having a harmonious internal family system is crucial for this. And anger is a big part of that for me, and for lots of other women, learning to witness this part of ourselves, and see it in front of us, and bringing it to the light with other people. So that truth can come to these inner parts and can be unraveled, and put in its rightful place in our life instead of being exiled within us.
It can so easily become a trapped emotion, where you've got fear on the front end for me. And then guilt on the back end, literally, a sandwich with anger in the middle and, literally, trapped by other emotions that are terrified of feeling this feeling, and then guilty for feeling it afterwards.
So, yes, it's incredibly important to see anger in front of us and then see the other emotions around it that are keeping it stuck and trapped. Either in this ping-ponging back and forth between suppressing, and denying, and then exploding.
Alison: Yes, or they're stuck, I love how you describe that. I remember when you and I were talking about anger a little bit, last summer. And you described, literally, that feeling of... because those parts of you that were fearful of it were trying to shut it down. And, so, then there's a war inside of you. There's "I'm angry, but I can't be angry."
Rowena: Exactly, yes, you asked me a question about how anger felt in my body, and I immediately felt a lump in my throat. And it was hard to talk, and hard to swallow, and it was just like, "Wow, this is a physical barrier between my brain and my body that is just trying to keep anger from coming out." And it was so interesting how you think about anger in a certain way in your mind. But then your experience of it, in your body, is so telling and so important to pay attention to.
Alison: And I remember that conversation, Rowena, because this parts work, that we're talking about. Really what was going on, it was the part of you that was terrified coming up against the part of you that was really angry, and both were valid.
And, so, that was that feeling of just literal stuckness inside your body. Like, "What do I do here? I've got these two emotions and, yet, I need to feel a little bit angry because it's real. But the fear was just keeping you from any sort of healthy expression of the anger.
Rowena: Yes.
Alison: So as I think about how we learn to access that anger. I think about how Harriet Lerner talks about in her book The Dance of Anger. How our families, our most intimate relationships; whether our relationships with our own parents. Whether our relationships as parents, our relationships with our kids, or with a spouse is that real crucible, ironically and paradoxically, for anger. Because these are the relationships we care about the most. We have the most passion. They're the most delicate, they're the most important.
These are the relationships that have shaped us. These are the relationships we're keenly responsible, that we are shaping there are high stakes. And, so, they're the relationships where we want to be our best, calmest, wisest self. Especially our relationship as parents. And, yet, these are also the relationships that tend to bring up these angry parts of us. That without these people bumping it to us, in our space, in our day to day lives, we might blissfully be able to just ignore. If we live, by ourselves, on the top of a mountain, we don't have to deal with our anger.
But it's when these people come knocking, and tapping, and bumping into us. These angry parts of us start to come to the surface. And I'll just speak to my own experience. That's when, what you're describing, that fear, anger, "I'm feeling this, but I can't feel this because I cannot blow up this relationship."
"I'm feeling this but I can't feel this. This isn't allowed here." That's where that real tension inside of us kicks in. And that tension that we feel when those competing emotions come up. When we have that what we call polarizations, these polarized emotions, which you describe so well. "I'm angry and I'm terrified of being angry."
That actually creates more tension inside of us. And that's when we're, actually, going to be more susceptible to going to the false extreme or hurting ourselves by trying to exile that anger away. Which was a little more my experience. My experience and a lot of the women with whom I worked, early on, as my work as a therapist.
What I would notice is when you don't access that anger in a healthy way, and you really shove it aside. You end up taking it out on yourself. It comes out sideways in some way or another. You end up feeling the bitterness. You feel the resentment. But you won't put that anger on the responsible party, of where it belongs. And, so, you just end up simmering in that stew inside of you. And then you might even end up hurting yourself in that process, and it's so hard.
And I've noticed this, as a therapist, when someone is so clamped down on their anger and will not let it come out. Inevitably they're going to hurt themselves and, inevitably, that anger will also come out sideways. It comes out in criticism. It comes out in these passive aggressive ways. Where we find a way to get that anger out, but it's not constructive. I'd love to hear a little bit about your experience with anger.
Rowena: Yes, boy, parenting has taught me a lot about myself. We cannot teach maturity to our children. We need to possess it and embody it ourselves, in order to give it to our children. And that's been one of my biggest lessons these last eight years of parenting, almost nine. Parenting revealed holes in my maturity that I didn't know existed before.
Jim Wilder, who's a neuro theologian, says in his book The Other Half of Church, that "We're not responsible for holes in our immaturity. But we are responsible for repairing these holes later in life. And cleaning up parts of ourselves that are emotionally stuck in younger stages."
And, so, before I became a parent, I thought of myself as an incredibly patient person. I didn't have lots of blow ups and I thought I was in control of anger. The hidden message under this belief, however, is that I'm patient and, so, I can control my anger and I don't experience it.
And, so, thinking of myself in this fixed mindset way, it sets me up for having a low tolerance or immature relationship with anger. Because when you do, inevitably, get angry, it challenges this idea that you have of yourself that you're patient. And, so, then, that's when the guilt kicks in. So then you're fearful of anger, and then you feel guilty for having it because you think, "No, I'm a patient person; how could I have done that?"
And, so, the reality is you're not either a patient person or an angry person. A mature person must definitely have a high degree of patience. But this doesn't mean rising above anger or eradicating it from our life. It means skillfully using anger constructively. And, so, over the last years, I've been slowly growing in this, and I don't claim to have arrived.
But the fear, anger, guilt, sandwich is not such a crippling force for me anymore. And I can have more acceptance and even, sometimes, approval and validation of righteous anger from my other parts. Whereas before it was like all the other parts of my internal family were saying, "No, you can't come out, it is not okay to be angry."
Alison: Can you give me an example, Rowena, of what that has felt like in your body. And perhaps even looked like to your kids. The difference between suppressing or the tension of, "I can't be angry." To "Here's a healthy expression of anger?" What does that look like? Give us an example.
Rowena: Okay, so what it feels like in my body when the anger is starting to overtake is like rising in my heart rate. And basically like a physical feeling of the lava starting to rise and about to erupt, if I can't manage it effectively.
And, so, it's the feeling of being taken over and the pressure. There's a pressure that mounts, and builds, and you feel this, kind of, in your blood and probably in a clenched jaw, in your hands. Just this need for anger to come out of the body in some way. But then if you haven't practiced the skills to get it out in a healthy way, then it is going to be more on the destructive side.
Alison: So I love what you're saying. So you've become aware through the work of befriending your anger. When you feel that rising lava. You're in the throes of parenting, and I think every parent listening can relate to what you're saying. You're in the throes of parenting. Before some part of you would just come in and be like, "You can't feel that way." Which I would guess just increases the tension.
Rowena: Yes.
Alison: And therefore, actually, makes it harder because it adds pressure. And, so, as you've done this work. Which I know you've done so faithfully to befriend that anger and notice, "Oh, there's a queue, I'm feeling the rising lava." What are some strategies, when you feel that because you don't want to hurt anybody? But you might want to do something, or take on some authority, or speak on behalf of what you're feeling in a healthy way. So what do you do to keep that lava from just exploding? What are some strategies that you've learned?
Rowena: The first step, for me, has been being more connected with my body and noticing what is happening in the moment. And being like, "Okay, wow, I'm really feeling the pressure starting to rise." And, so, once I can name that for myself, then, I have some choices.
Whereas if I don't know what's happening in my body, then, I can't manage it because it is just going to come out without having that healthy sense of choice. So the better I am connected to my body then I can realize, "This is I'm feeling it. I'm feeling it a lot." And I need to just probably name it and be like, "Kids, I'm feeling really frustrated right now, and I'm just going to go take a break for a few minutes."
And I've learned that splashing cold water on my face can be really helpful. Just to shock the body and be like, "Okay, you don't have to feel this high heart rate and this pressure internally." And just having that cold sensation is incredibly helpful. Naming it to my kids instead of trying to deny it. And just being like, "I'm feeling really frustrated, guys." It's a lot of work to try to navigate the role, as a parent, especially, when there's multiple kids.
And, so, for me, taking a break is helpful and just realizing this is not an emergency. I can come back and deal with this situation but first I have to deal with my own body. And I cannot impart any wise lessons to my children when I am in an activated state myself. They are certainly not going to be able to receive any helpful instruction, when they are in an activated state.
And, so, just taking away that sense of emergency has been really helpful. I don't need to deal with this right in this moment. I can come back to this. So I might even just say that "I'm feeling really frustrated. We're going to talk about this in ten minutes. But let's just have a cool off period." And that's what I try to do when my kids get activated with each other, it's just not try to fix or solve the problem in the moment. But just say, "Let's have a cool off period. Let's play in different areas for a little bit."
But we come back to it at another moment and we discuss how they were feeling and what was bothering them. I do my best to try not to take sides, or blame, or shame one kid and to really validate what each child was feeling and thinking. That just increases the anger when they sense that you're taking sides.
Alison: I love this because what you're describing is this process of modeling. Just, as you said, we have to model for our kids what we are able to do ourselves. And, so, you're modeling this idea of emotional regulation. And the only way to do that is to become aware. It's to do all these things we've been talking about in this series is, "Oh, boy, I feel that tension rising in my chest. I do myself no favors to pretend I don't. I need to get curious about it." We talk about in Boundaries for Your Soul. "I need to take a U-turn."
Which is what you're saying is, "I need to actually give myself a little time out. I need to go make sure that my nervous system is calming down. Because I'm not going to help anybody from this activated state. I'm also not shaming myself because this happens." So you're naming without shaming, both to yourself and to your kids.
Which is modeling emotional regulation. And then you, also, when your kids get activated, you're helping them realize; "You're experiencing anger or you're experiencing frustration, that's not bad. However, you can't take it out on your sibling."
And it's like the way we parent our internal family maps on to how we parent our external family. And everything you're saying about building trust, you might say, "Let's separate for a second." But you also build trust, "We're going to come back. We're going to come back and reconnect when we're all a little bit calmer." I just love that example.
Rowena: Yes, I've also noticed from my kids that their anger needs to come out of their body. They can't just be told, "Don't be angry." That doesn't work, especially, for two of my boys, sometimes, they'll say, "Push against me." And they'll feel my force against them in a friendly way, but just it helps so much to get their anger out of their body. It's amazing what some gentle wrestling can do for them. Where they'll feel like, "Okay, I could flush this out of my system because I could push it through my hands."
Or for my six-year-old, I thought this tip was strange at first, and was skeptical that it would work, but it really does work for him. He loves to draw when he's angry. And he'll draw how mad he was, and he'll show me his drawing, and he feels so much better afterwards. But he's drawing, and he's just livid, just creating this hilarious angry face or something, and I find that to be such a helpful thing for some kids. And shaking out hands is so helpful, for me, because it's got to come out of my body, too.
And, so, my three-year-old will sometimes say, "Mom, shake your hands." We try to discuss a lot of tools for how to acknowledge the reality of anger, in our household. While not shaming and blaming, but not suppressing and denying, and also not exploding. And, so, it's really just a long journey of practicing.
Alison: I love what you're saying. These are such practical tips, and you've got four kids. You've got a lot going on. And even if you have one child or even just between spouses, anger will be there. Anger will be there. So we have to get creative, and I love what you're saying. It reminds me of the C-word in IFS — Creativity. "Okay, let's all have an angry handshake out or angry art time." Whatever. You're creating a space for anger without letting it take everybody over. That's so practical and so wise, I love that Rowena.
Rowena: And laughter, laughter, I think is the best way to get anger out of the body. This is the beautiful parenting moments when you're angry, but somehow you can turn into a playful zone and it can't be done authentically every time. And, so, that's okay. But, occasionally, when you can authentically do it to create a sense of play and get people laughing, then it's like the anger just dissipates so dramatically.
And, so, whatever creative way you can bring in laughter. Like trying to have a game where you take each other's socks off or something, it's hilarious and kids just love it. Or putting on a fun song and having a dance party. Getting everybody outdoors and just being like, "All right, let's just get outside and go run around."
< Music >
Alison: I love what you said; you've got to get anger out of the body, and that's what starts to calm the nervous system.
Rowena: And, so, often, I think kids get a message like, ''You can only be in my presence if you are in a happy place, in a well regulated place. And if you're not, I'm going to exile you to your room." And, so, I think there's nothing wrong with it in terms of "Let's take a break." Like, "Maybe we can just read some books for a little while." That's very different than the message of "Go to your room and come back when you're in a better place." Going to the room part is not, necessarily, a problem, but it's the way that we deliver that message that is very important for kids.
Alison: It's so interesting because it makes me think about my own childhood, and you're right. And, inadvertently, I don't think that parents mean to do this. For me I have this memory. I don't have a lot of memories of being angry. I've always struggled a little bit to access anger.
But there was this period of time, in high school, where I must have been pretty angry because I would journal. And I would journal so hard. First of all, I would journal swear words, which I didn't swear in real life, I wasn't allowed. But in my journal, I would swear. And I would write so hard that I would rip through the paper and it would just get it out, and it made me feel better.
It reminds me of your son drawing the angry picture. And I remember just ripping through the pages and giant letters, words that I felt that were not pleasant words. And this was probably 9th, 10th grade, and it worked, and also I was by myself. I was in isolation.
I mean nobody knew that I was doing it, this wasn't said to me. But the internalized message about anger is, "Go off and be angry by yourself, get it all out." Yes, that helped a little bit. But then, "Go back out and be happy with everybody else." And that doesn't work in adult relationships. You have to be able to go somewhere between the ripping the page out of the journal, because you're writing so hard. To "I need to have a conversation about something that's frustrating me." You have to get from A to Z somehow. You need tools to do that.
Rowena: Mh-hmm, journaling can be super effective to get that ugly version out first.
Alison: Yes.
Rowena: That we can go and do a more healthy expression of anger. So journaling can be super powerful for naming and getting our anger out in front of us on a page.
Alison: Exactly. So you have these tools to try to get it out. To get it out of our bodies so it's not just festering there or turning sideways. Again, because if we don't get it out, it will come out one way or another. We will start to get critical. Again, passive aggressive, which are these little barbs that come out sideways, resentful. All this fester, so we got to get it out.
But I love what you're saying. And as you're parenting your kids and even thinking about it in our own lives, we get it out. We allow ourselves permission to get it out. Maybe in some ugly ways where we don't want other people to see it. God sees it, God gets it, God's okay with it. And then we also have to, once we've defused it a little bit, still figure out how to go back into that relationship. Whether it's a parenting relationship, a friend, a spouse, whatever, in a constructive way, and have the conversation.
There's two parts to this anger puzzle that are really important.
Rowena: Yes, I think, the chapter that you have in your book, The Best of You, about noticing what longing is underneath, is so important. And that cannot be accessed unless you have space to be curious about your anger.
But anger is a cue that there is a longing there that needs to be witnessed, and to come out. That's where it's a powerful tool, and it points to something deeper that wants to be named in real life. Like, "I have a longing for a peaceful relationship between my kids, and I feel really sad when they're fighting." And naming that with my kids can be really helpful. Instead, of being like, "I'm so mad that you guys are fighting."
Naming the longing like, "I really long to have a harmonious household here."
Alison: Yes, I love what you're saying. Where there is that anger, underneath it is a pain, I would say.
Rowena: Mh-hmm.
Alison: And that pain might be a deep longing that we're just not seeing coming to fruition. A need, a desire, and those things are painful. When we take the time to get underneath the anger. But the anger has to be heard first.
Rowena: Yes.
Alison: "I'm so angry at him. I'm so angry at her."
Rowena: Yes, often, for me, I think, underneath anger is just a sense of being overwhelmed and longing for more support, or a longing for more rest, or whatever it is. And those are really important things to notice. Because I want to be healthy in my body, and mind, and soul, to be able to parent my kids well.
And I learned this really early on from my sister, who is older than I am and has older kids. And she really recommended, when I had my first child, to do some preventative maintenance. And make sure I had some time where I was by myself and could take care of myself.
Instead of thinking I needed to be a parent round the clock. Instead of reaching that place of burnout, or utter exhaustion, or fatigue. Having that sense of asking for help and getting support in whatever way you can.
And, so, for me, that was doing some babysitting swaps with a friend. Where we would each take care of each other's child, and then we would get a morning or two off a week. And that was so critical to realize early on, I need to take care of myself because that is such an investment in my relationship with my kids." Or powerlessness is a really underlying emotion underneath, or the state, underneath the anger. And, so, if I can identify that, yes, there are certain things that I am powerless about. I can't really control anyone other than myself.
So there are certain ways that we need to accept ways where we are powerless. But then there are also ways where we feel powerless. Where we long for more authority, or more agency, or more healthy, effective leadership. And, so, that can be really helpful to name as well. Curiosity and no shame around anger is really important.
Alison: I love what you're saying about creating space for yourself, to get to the root of what's really going on. And I think that can be hard, as a parent.
I also think it's essential. I was thinking as you were talking, Rowena, last summer, I was dealing with a lot of anger. It was related to some work stuff that wasn't going right, and I was feeling really frustrated.
I was just feeling like I was on my own and couldn't get the help that I needed. And in the middle of that time, my daughter, who loves hiking and loves the wilderness. And she wanted me to go on a backpack with her. And, so, we did this two-day backpack and each day was nine miles. And that whole nine miles going in, it was like the whole way down, the angry part of me. All those angry thoughts, were just given an opportunity to finally be heard by me. Because I had nothing else to do I wasn't suppressing them. There was no one around me to get mad at.
And, so, I was just present to them and it was like attuning to all the frustration that I was feeling. All the anger that I was feeling. And then I just noticed, I was like, "Oh, I need to do this." And I wasn't writing, I wasn't journaling, because I was walking. But I was bookmarking; "Yes, that's frustrating."
Pretty soon, the tears started to pour. And I became aware in that process because, again, but here's the thing, I was walking. I had a backpack on my shoulder. My body was engaged. There was something physical going on that created almost the container for the anger. It's almost like the parts of me knew, and it was a really interesting experience. It almost created this safety.
My body was engaged and, therefore, it created this safety for my mind to allow me to become consciously aware of all this frustration that had been building inside of me, and it all came out. And I remember releasing it, there were mountains all around me and it just felt like, "God is here." It took me that whole first day. By the second day, that next morning, I was sitting by the creek, and I finally got to the root of the longing.
It took me that whole day and that whole nine-mile trek to let all of that volcano that had been simmering inside of me just come out. Release into God's hands, honor, and validate all those frustrations to the next morning. Where I just remember sitting by the creek and going, "Oh, here we are, God, this is what's really going on. I'm so disappointed. I'm so sad that this is the way this went." And there's peace in that.
It's just another example of our anger needs our attention, and it needs our attention, in a very embodied way. Whether it's through journaling, whether it's through walking, whether it's through moving our bodies, as you've given so many examples of. In my case, it was almost I needed to take a nine-mile hike because there was that much there. That I had been just shoving aside to get to the root of what's the disappointment?
What's the heartache?
What's the longing that's underneath it? Where there God finally comes in. Not that God isn't with us in the anger because He is. But when we get to the root of it and we're like, "Here we are, God, this is the actual thing beneath the thing that I am just so upset about." And it's usually a good thing. There might even be an injustice there.
Rowena: You can't see it and have clarity about it, until you can sit with the discomfort in your body. And get connected with your body, and allow the anger to somehow come out through walking, and it's an amazing way. And then once the anger isn't exiled, then it can flow out. And then you can see the diamond that is underneath it, and you have so much more clarity. And then there's a sense of maybe some action steps you can take from that place, so that you can speak up on behalf of this longing.
Alison: That's right, and you get to that place of surrender, of "Here's what I do have control over. Here's how I can fight for this. I do want my kids to get along with each other. I want my kids; I do need more help that I'm not getting." But there's also a surrender.
That's where that place of, "Here's what I have control over. Here's, God, what I don't have control over." It doesn't mean it's not important and you start to find that balance, that equilibrium inside your soul.
Rowena: Yes, and we mentioned this earlier, but this is where we have to be aware of the other emotions that are surrounding anger. Whether it's anxiety about the anger, fear, guilt, shame. And those layers are almost the layers that need to be peeled away first to free the anger, to have some space.
And, so, yes, I just encourage every woman to get curious about what, for you, are the emotions that might be keeping anger stuck.
Alison: It's so true, because on that hike the whole first few miles were, "What's wrong with me?"
"Why can't I just get it together?" It was all the self-shaming. And then you can't even get to the anger until you've actually gotten to all the ways we tell ourselves the guilt. I love how you call it the guilt-fear sandwich. Let's talk just a little bit as we wind down, today, about the role of God. About how God sees anger and how God gets angry.
I know that we see anger in Jesus. We know that Jesus demonstrated anger, and we know that Jesus didn't sin. And, sometimes, when I read the Gospels, I'm amazed at the ways in which Jesus demonstrated His frustration. Demonstrated even anger that we don't really hear a lot about, I feel like, from the pulpit. We tend to talk more about how Jesus was gentle, Jesus is loving, Jesus is mild, and all of those things are true. And I would say, it's fair to say, you can't read the Gospels without bumping into a fair amount of His anger.
Rowena: Yes, this is really helpful. I'm so glad that Jesus had a right relationship with anger to model that it is not all bad. It's actually really an important emotion to come out. Jesus was led by His anger in some situations, and that, to me, is fascinating. That it was a force that led Him to turn over those tables. He was so harsh with the Pharisees in a really important way, not in a bad way, just, "You hypocrites." And He was angry with people who were hypocritical and who were claiming to do things for God. But then, under the surface, it was all a show for themselves.
Alison: I think it's so important when we think about our faith, our spirituality, that anger is a part of it. That we see anger in God, we see anger in the Old Testament.
Sometimes it's really hard to understand God's anger, and we see it in Jesus's life. And when we get to Jesus's life, I love what you said, I'm so glad we have those examples of where He called things out, sometimes, harshly.
His words were not always sweet, they were not always soft. He said, "You brood a viper." And not that we should go around calling people a brood of vipers. Because what we know for sure is that Jesus didn't sin and that it was always righteous. And we better be very careful in how we don't want to look for a license. And, again, to that spectrum, we can rationalize our judgment and our anger based on Jesus's life in a way that's very unhealthy. We better be very careful.
And we can also exile our anger and deny or bypass other people's suffering, or injustices, or even our own experience of injustice in our life. "Oh, Jesus says to turn the other cheek." I talk about this in The Best of You. It's a little more subversive than that. Jesus is complex, there's a lot of nuance to Tis anger. There's a lot of shrewdness, there's a lot of wisdom in it, and He didn't sin.
And so it is a great example. I think doing a study of the anger that we see in Jesus would be a great example for us. I think one of the things I say the most often is anger, as a member of our internal family, when we have a healthy relationship with it. When we befriended it, when it understands the boundary lines and it lets us lead it, not the other way around.
When we are leading it in partnership with the Holy Spirit, anger is amazing. Anger can empower us to set really healthy boundaries that empower not only our own lives, but empower other people. Anger can help us fight injustices in our own lives and on behalf of other people, and on behalf of wrongs we see in society. It can be the part of us that helps us speak, honestly, that speaks truthfully, even when it's hard.
Now, again, all of those things can get misused, but that doesn't mean there's not truth in them. Anger is a really important emotion that can help us create change in our own lives. Create change in a healthy way in the lives of people we love, and create change in this world.
Rowena: At an Ash Wednesday service that I went to last week. There was a prayer of penitence that was sticking out to me that said, "For our unrighteous anger, bitterness, and resentment, lord have mercy upon us." And I just really loved that it was specifying unrighteous anger and that there is therefore a righteous anger that has space in our life, that God created and is good.
Alison: I love that.
Rowena: I think it's so interesting that the Bible talks a lot about enemies, and it's so easy to view enemy as an outward thing. But there's also internal enemies that we can have and I think anger is one of the best examples of that. How we can, inwardly, think of our anger as an enemy, and you talk about this also. That we need to love our inner enemies. And that's part of the healing that Jesus creates, is in learning to love the enemy of anger and befriend it, then, it can be transformed into something really beautiful and powerful.
There's an incredible book called Holy Listening by Margaret Guenther has some powerhouse quotes that I wanted to read. And she says, "I am convinced that much of women's tentative speech arises from fear of her own anger. That somehow there will be terrible retribution, divine or otherwise, if she reveals herself a strong person."
Later she says, "Tentativeness, a kind of clenched teeth, sweet rage..." Which I love that phrase. "May also result from a mistaken understanding of anger. Since women are socialized to believe anger itself is avoidable and wrong, and that its expression is sinful. As a result, a great deal of spiritual energy goes into combating the wrong sin. And the potentially constructive use of anger is neglected. The result is hurtful and destructive to the woman, and to those around her."
Alison: So good.
Rowena: I just love how she names that. And then later she says, "most women are not prepared for the question, 'Where do you hurt?' Although they would expect it from a physician. Socialized to put their own wishes aside or at least disguise them, they see the question as an invitation to selfishness or self-indulgence. Instead, it is an invitation to self. Merely naming the source of hurt can expose it to light and air, and thereby bring about healing.
As she begins to answer the question candidly, she may reveal, to her own surprise, years of denial and suppressed pain. The cost of faithfulness has been high, and the cost of peacekeeping, the cost of people-pleasing all of those things. And how just important it is to notice if anger is an enemy within us and to befriend it, and to realize that there is a healthy expression of it, and a potentially constructive use of anger.
Alison: That's right. Two things can exist side by side that gets at that selfhood versus selfishness. And selfhood is actually having a healthy relationship with our anger. Even as we also have a healthy relationship with our desire to do good, our desire to help. These two things can exist side by side. And anger is that part of us that helps us to be more assertive. That helps us to ensure that our needs are not getting sidelined. It's such a powerful emotion.
I'm curious, Rowena, there are so many reasons why, I think as women, we fear our anger. We worry about our anger. We don't want to be angry. How do you think comparison factors into that?
Rowena: Yes, I think there's a real potential for an inner critic to arise and tell ourselves that our story isn't important. That we don't have it as bad as other people. And therefore we should suppress and deny the reality of what is happening internally for us.
And, so, I think, that is just really important to name because that can be a powerful blockage that shuts down curiosity of anger. And that needs to be freed up to say, "Yes, there are so many different kinds of pain and suffering in this world. But not to minimize what is going on for each of us."
Alison: I think that's a big one for me. I think there's a part of me that can always say, "I don't have it as bad as that person, therefore, I shouldn't feel this way."
Rowena: Exactly.
Alison: And I think that's so important to highlight. And it has taken me a lot of years, my spiritual director saying, "What?" Just because your pain is your pain.
Rowena: And your longings are under there?
Alison: That's right. I think many of us have that refrain in their head. "That person has it worse. I don't have it that bad, I should just be grateful. I don't want to be entitled." No, we don't want to be entitled. We don't want to think we deserve more. We want to be grateful. All of those things are good and, also, I can be grateful and frustrated with this situation.
I can be content and want to see more out of my family, out of my kids, out of my relationship. I can value that person and their efforts, and be disappointed that they've fallen short of what I really needed. Both things can be true, and that's the heart of anger. Anger doesn't have to tell us the whole story, but it can have a seat at the table. It can have a seat at the table. We can sit side by side and say, "Yes, I'm grateful, and this is frustrating." Two things can be true.
Rowena: Yes, learning to hear the shoulds that we have in our internal dialogue. And also the either/or thinking. And once you can catch yourself hearing, "Oh, I heard, I say, I should." And that's a real big clue, the either/or thinking. If we can catch ourselves in the moment. Awareness is so key to just unlocking so many things and allowing God to really transform us on the inside, and bring truth to these innermost parts.
< 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.
Today, I am joined by my friend and co-author of Boundaries for Your Soul, Kimberly Miller, to discuss the almighty inner critic, how to get space from it, and how to bring this work into your relationships. Kim describes how she first encountered Internal Family Systems (IFS) and how combining it with Christian faith and practice changed her life.
Here's what we cover:
1. How Kim finally healed the ache in her heart
2. The most ubiquitous part of the soul
3. Why self-acceptance is better than self-condemnation
4. How to differentiate from painful emotions
5. A real-time exercise for quieting your inner critic
6. How this work translates into marriage
Connect with Kimberly Miller at kimberlyjunemiller.com or on Insight Timer
Be sure to pick up your 3 free Boundaries for Your Soul resources here.
Thanks to our sponsors:
Organifi-Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order 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.
Resources
- Connect with Kimberly at kimberlyjunemiller.com
- Get 46% off Boundaries for Your Soul & The Best of You
- Inside Out Movie Trailer
- IFS Institute
- Guided IFS Reflections:
- Insight Timer - KimberlyMiller
- Insight Timer - Ann-Marie Bowen
- John 10:10
- Psalm 23:5
- Psalm 139:16
- Revelations 12:10
- Luke 15:4
- Isaiah 55:6-7
- Matt. 11:28-30
- Boundaries for Your Soul, by Kimberly Miller & Dr. Alison Cook
- Renovation of the Heart, by Dallas Willard
- Hearing God, by Dallas Willard
- The Soul of Shame, by Dr. Curt Thompson
- LeAnne Payne
- Leading Wholeheartedly
- EMDR
- DBT
- Michi Rose - Table Technique
- Disciplines of the Spirit by Howard Thurman
- Resources for support
Quote: "The wildness is gentled out of a personality at war with itself."
Other Episodes in this Series:
- Episode 39: Boundaries for Your Soul—How to Navigate Your Overwhelming Thoughts & Feelings
- Episode 40: 5 Steps to Healing Painful Emotions & Why Parts of Us Get Stuck in the Past
- Episode 41: Boundaries With Fear And Anxiety—How to Calm the Chaos Within and the Joy of Internal Boundaries
- Episode 42: How to Honor Sadness, Set Boundaries with Loneliness, and What to Do When You Don’t Have Time for this Work
Transcript
Alison: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You podcast. I am grinning from ear-to-ear and thrilled today because I have my friend and my co-author, of this book we've been talking about Boundaries for Your Soul, with me on the podcast today, Kimberly Miller.
Kim is a marriage and family therapist who lives in Southern California with her sweet girl and her husband, Ken. She is an author, she's a speaker, she is a retreat leader. The head of a wonderful ministry called Leading Wholeheartedly, and she is my co-author.
We wrote this book Boundaries for Your Soul together. It took us really years in the making. It came out of some of the very first conversations we had. When we very first met and became friends, Kim introduced me in those very first conversations to this Internal Family Systems model of therapy.
I'd almost finished my doctoral work and I had not yet been introduced to it. And when Kim and I met, we were talking about our work. We were talking about our love for therapy and our love for faith. And she started telling me about this model and I was just hooked, instantly.
We began to lead retreats, teaching other women about this model. About how to integrate this IFS model with Christian faith and practice. And then out of that grew this book, Boundaries for Your Soul.
So I am thrilled to have Kim here today. Thank you so much for being here, Kim.
Kimberly: Thank you so much for having me, Alison. It's always wonderful to be with you in any setting.
Alison: It's bringing up a lot of different parts of me. Because so much of our time, for those few years leading up to when Boundaries for Your Soul came out. Where you and I just talking back and forth about these different concepts, these different ideas. Trying to flush them out, both in our own lives, in our practice, and for the work of this book. So I would love to hear, today, as we get started, how you learned about IFS. And how it's been helpful to you in both your own life and in your practice?
Kimberly: Sure. Again, thank you so much for having me. And thanks just for being such a wonderful friend, and co-author, and just dialogue partner, over the years. I was living in Boston, at the time, and I had been a Christian since I was young, and I had been serving God.
I had committed my life to full-time Christian service at an Urbana Conference when I was in college and I was working for University Christian Fellowship. And, yet, at the same time, I was hitting a wall emotionally and spiritually, just stuck in certain places. And this is, I think, a normal stage of development that people go through. There's that initial enthusiasm and passion when you meet Jesus.
And then there is the stage of discipleship and productive surface. And then, oftentimes, people just hit a phase where they just want to go deeper. And there's a frustration that there's not the abundant life, and the joy, that the Scriptures talk about.
And, so, that was happening to me. Where I was just thinking, regularly, like, "Why am I not living abundantly the way that Jesus said that I will in John 10:10." And, so, I started seeking help in different places, and counselors, and spiritual directors going to prayer a lot at church. And I was always going up for prayer at the end of the services.
And by God's grace and providence, I was introduced, through a friend, to a social worker who was also the wife of an Episcopalian priest. And I told her my normal spiel, about how I was following Jesus, and I wanted to live the abundant life, but I had these areas in my life where I felt stuck. And I stopped and I looked at her, expecting her to say something like, "Do you want to talk about it?" Something that I had heard before, that wasn't really ultimately that helpful to me.
And she responded and said, "I can help you." And now I know that what she was doing was she was being a hope merchant. And she had this confidence because she had seen transformation through this model of therapy, and I was intrigued.
And, so, we started meeting regularly. Ali, I was so eager for healing that we met for 2 hours, at first, every week. So we met for 2 hours a week and, boy, she helped me so much. And it was this amazing experience, for me, of realizing, for the first time, that I had the ability to unblend from the parts of me that were experiencing pain and to care for those parts from my spirit-led self.
You and I began to call it spirit-led self. In IFS it's called the self. And this was revolutionary for me. It was very empowering and I felt like I had agency over my emotions. What was happening was internal differentiation. I was being able to detach from the parts of me that were hurting and to care for them like you care for a child. And it just changed my life.
And then what we started doing was praying and inviting Jesus to be present with us, in the sessions. And Jesus was ministering to these parts of me and I had never experienced that before. I'd never been able to access His power, in the place where I needed Him the most. And I was able to do that, in these sessions, and it changed my life, really.
And then I started feeling like, "I want to share this with the people that I'm working with. The students that I meet with through university that have deep pain in their lives." And that's how I got started.
Alison: It's amazing. I've heard you tell that story before and I just love the power of it, and you continue to live it. I've gotten to bear witness to you, as a friend, in your marriage, as a mom. Not to mention all these professional hats that you wear, which are so amazing. Where you continue to bring this work into all those different relationships, and it's really beautiful.
Kimberly: The other way that it really helped me was it gave me a framework for understanding other people. And for making sense of what seemed, to me, like apparent contradictions in other people, in my life. And that brought me so much peace of mind.
Because I could finally have a framework for these different people, in my life, that I cared so much about. And I could understand why they behaved in different ways, in different contexts, and said different things at different times.
And instead of feeling like I didn't know who anybody was. I started realizing, "Oh, this person has these different parts and that's so good to know. And let me get to know the parts and befriend of those parts." And it just really helped deepen my relationships. And it helped me to trust in the relationships in a much deeper way, instead of being afraid of people.
Alison: So true. Instead of being confused by people, it begins to explain the complexity that we encounter in people. That sometimes they don't even know they have. And, so, it helps us begin to go, "Okay, this is what's going on there." And it helps us not feel so confused.
Kimberly: And I've heard that one of the goals of therapy is clarity. And when we don't have clarity, we're stuck. And we're really, like you said, confused and it's really hard to know how to move forward.
But when there's clarity and understanding, as we know, Dallas Willard said, "Understanding is the basis of care." And when you understand something, then you know how to care for that thing. Or in this case, it's a person, you know how to care for them well. And befriend the part of them that may be relating to you in a way that is different from their spirit-led self.
Alison: Yes, or have patience with a part of them that is frustrating.
Kimberly: Yes, it really helps with patience and also perspective.
Alison: Sometimes, if we think about this word toxicity. Even when we bump up into a toxic part of someone, where we have to set some boundaries with that toxicity. It can help us both have the healthy boundaries that we need and have some of the healthy distance. I get that there are other parts of that person, but I can't access those other parts of that person. Therefore, I have to make these decisions to keep myself safe.
Kimberly: Yes, preach.
Alison: Okay, so, I'm curious if this has been your experience, Kim, because, over time, this has become, I believe, my experience. And, so, I'll say it this way, and I'm curious what you think about this. I think most of us run into some form of an inner critic, as one of the first parts we actually bump into.
We may not be aware of it; we may not call it that. But in my work with other people and increasingly in, as I get to know the parts of my own soul. Almost always right when I begin to notice some emotion, or some part of me that needs care, or if I'm doing this work with someone else.
When you begin the process of differentiating, we talked a lot about this in these past few episodes. This process of focusing, getting some healthy distance from this part of us, from this painful emotion. And you get to that question of - "How do I feel toward it? How do I feel toward it? I don't like it."
There's almost always this shaming or inner critic, this critical feeling about this way that we feel. And we didn't do a whole chapter in Boundaries for Your Soul on the inner critic, but it's everywhere throughout the book. Because in that step, as you begin to differentiate from a part and you want to befriend it, usually, you're bumping up against that inner critic. And we talk about it in the chapter on shame when we get into the shaming inner critic.
But I'm just curious if you have found that to be true. Do you think that inner critic is, typically, one of those first few parts we bump into, both, in your own life and in the work that you do, with other people?
Kimberly: Absolutely. Usually, when I'm working with a client, the first part that they encounter is a part that's responding to something that's happened in their life. They're feeling angry about something that was said or grief about a loss, et cetera. And then when I invite them to take a U-turn and they focus on the part. And then I ask them how they feel toward it, just like you're saying, that's when it's almost always an inner critic. There's almost always an inner critic there.
It's very rare that a person says, "Oh, I just love this part of me." If they happen to be really soaked through with the Holy Spirit, perhaps. But usually it's more like, "Arh, I just can't stand this part of me. I wish it would go away; it's so annoying. It's getting in the way of my being productive, et cetera."
And, so, we notice the inner critic, and then they have a polarization that we're working with. So there's this critic that's frustrated but, usually, the part is willing to step behind a glass wall. That's my go-to strategy. I know that oftentimes, in IFS, we ask parts to step back. Naturally, I don't want to do that. My inclination is not to ask parts to step back because I feel like they may resent not being welcomed. And the whole philosophy of IFS is all parts are welcomed.
But I do find that critics don't get offended by being asked to watch behind a glass wall. So that's my usual strategy, and I've never had anyone resist that. So, yes, I have very rarely not encountered an inner critic, in myself and in others. And usually what I do is I ask the client or with myself, I ask the inner critic to step behind a glass wall and just watch. I'll just say, "Would you watch behind a glass wall for a minute? And then help us to work with the original part that we discover?"
Alison: So this is great. I love that. And I want, for those listeners, hearing you say, "All parts are welcome". I could hear some of that pushback of, "Aren't there parts of us that we should almost condemn?" So I love that you brought that up. Because I think this is so foundational to this work, especially, for Christians. And we talk about this in the book and, actually, I got this idea from you. I got this concept from you, and it really resonated with me the line - self-condemnation and self-acceptance.
I'd never heard it put that way before, but this idea of self-acceptance is actually the soil in which the Holy Spirit brings healing, not self-condemnation. However, I think some of us, not all of us, but some of us come to the table of this work thinking, "Aren't there parts of me I'm supposed to condemn because they're bad?"
And, so, I want to ask you a little bit about what that has meant for you, that movement from self-condemnation? Because, I think, that's what the inner critic is doing. I think the inner critic, in the best case scenario, sometimes the inner critic is just a voice we've inherited from the past. It's just a bad habit. But sometimes it's a part of us that thinks it's helping by keeping us on the straight and narrow.
Kimberly: Oh, they have very good intentions. They really think that they're helping, for sure. Whether it's the manager that's being critical of you because it wants you to get in line, and not mess up. Or whether it's an inner critic of the original part that you encounter, and it's thinking that that original part is messing things up for you, and for your system. Either way, I think, all parts have very good intentions. They just have strategies that can be unhelpful. And, so, they need correction.
Another thing, Alison, that I've been discovering lately, I should say I'm coming to the belief that inner critics are very young. And it hadn't occurred to me how young they are. Because you think, "Oh, they're so powerful." And they have such strong emotions and such serious emotions, what seem like adult emotions.
But if you realize that these are probably parts that developed very early on in your life. May have even started mimicking critical people in your life, around you, and it's, I think, human nature. So I think we just come out of the shoot this way, just critical.
Think of it like a three-year-old or a four-year-old; they really don't know what they're doing. They really need guidance, and they need to learn the way of compassion. And that's the job of your spirit-led self. We need to become emotionally mature by embracing these young, critical, parts and helping them to see that there's a better way.
Alison: Yes, that's so good, Kim.
Kimberly: Yes, and I love what you're saying about self-acceptance, and I think that is a foundation to a life of service. Self-condemnation is painful. It's like walking around with a broken leg, it's debilitating. And it really holds us back from living into the plan that God has for our lives. And God has a plan for each person's life, even for every day, of each person's life, which is incredible. But the Scriptures tell us that. And accomplishing God's plan for our lives takes concentration, it takes focus, it takes work.
And it takes work that in some way is helping other people. And one of the lines that we came up with, together, in Boundaries for Your Soul. That really has stayed with me and ministered to me a lot is, "It's hard to help others when you're hurting inside." It's really hard to help others when you're hurting inside. And one of our main jobs on this earth is to help people.
And, so, I am so passionate about figuring out how do I get to that point of being able to help other people, so that I can glorify God with my life. And I can't do that if I'm walking around with a broken leg that's not been cared for or attended to. So that's why it's so critical to move from self-criticism to self-acceptance. And that's what this work is all about.
Alison: I love what you're saying about the inner critic being young. I think that's really helpful because they don't feel young. They feel adult, they feel very stern, they feel very parental, they feel authoritative.
Kimberly: They're very scary.
Alison: And you think about little kids, who at times, they can just say what they think. And have really strong opinions, and not really censor themselves or think about the way that they're saying that. It makes sense. It's helpful to differentiate from that part of us and just get that maybe it's on to something. But it doesn't have the best strategy for helping us find our best way forward.
And I think all of this really gets into our experience of shame. Because we know that shame is toxic. You and I spent so much time really going round around, "Is there ever a constructive role of shame?" And we really landed on, "No, it's really toxic."
Our friend, Dr. Curt Thompson, he calls it evils vector. He comes on that strongly about shame. And, so, I think, this inner critic, it's not always connected to shame. But often it's very much connected to where we start to experience shame about ourselves, which is never constructive.
So just circling back to that. How do we manage this shaming inner critic? I know you've talked about we ask it to step back or we ask it to go behind a glass wall. But what about when there's really a lot of shame there, and there's a lot of vitriol? I know for me, when I experience shame, sometimes, it takes a slightly different intervention. How about you? What do you think about it when we're talking about it in terms of shame?
Kimberly: Yes, such a critical topic. And I have experienced a lot of feelings of shame throughout my life. And, so, it's something that I've worked on a lot. In fact, it goes back, for me, so I started naming it and working on it back when I was in grad school. And, so, I've really worked on this issue, Alli, and like I said, it feels like a broken leg.
When you feel shame every day. It feels like you're walking around with this broken leg that hasn't been treated, and it really needs care. You really need to tend to this feeling because, first of all, it hurts. But it's hard to fulfill your God-given purpose when you're debilitated by shame.
I agree that it's never good. I believe that it comes from our fallen nature. And the enemy, Satan is his name, is the accuser. He's called, "The accuser of our brethren," our brothers and sisters in Revelations twelve. And he wants us to feel shame but that's not the voice of Jesus.
And, so, how do we get the parts of us to accept the voice of Jesus and to speak truth? And one of the strategies that I've found to be super helpful, Alli, and it's really just like a go-to technique that works for me really well.
And it works for my clients and it seems to work in groups also, when I'm doing guided exercises. Is to imagine a table, and this is I believe it was a woman named Mitchy Rose IFS therapist who developed this technique.
But I just go to it every time because, first of all, I've seen it work over and over again. Second of all, it's biblical. There are so many wonderful, beautiful, Scriptures about sitting at the table. God wants to invite us to His table. And it's just an analogy in the Scripture, that I believe God wants us to dwell on and to meditate on it.
So in this context, what I like to do is imagine the part of you that's feeling criticized. Imagine your criticized child, and imagine the inner critic sitting there at a table, with the Lord, if they're willing to be with Him. You always want to get permission from parts. If they're willing, and check in with them first, and if they don't have any objection.
See if they're willing to acknowledge His presence or if He's not there to invite His presence. And I always love to do real time exercises, Ali. So if you don't mind, I'll just go ahead and ask your listeners, wherever they are, just take a breath. And if you would like to close your eyes and just picture a table in front of you. And then picture your criticized child sitting there, across the table from you.
Picture the inner critic that doesn't like the criticized child and that's criticizing the child sitting there. And let them acknowledge each other so that they develop a relationship, a more intentional relationship. And realize that they're on the same team and they both have good intentions.
And then if they're willing to recognize or invite the presence of Jesus, whatever name they'd like to use for the sacred presence, to be there as well. And just take in His compassion because every time we connect with the Lord, He speaks love, He speaks grace. He welcomes every part of us. He loves us, and this is where there is healing. This is where there is relief from the suffering of shame.
Alison: Yes, what you're saying reminds me so much of what we talked about, I believe in chapter five, about David's prayer, about setting a table.
Kimberly: Yes, "you have prepared a table, for me, in the presence of my enemies." And you can apply that verse to your internal parts, that sometimes feel like enemies.
Alison: Including your inner critic. And this is this pretty radical work of even befriending this enemy within. Which is this part of you that has taken on this really toxic strategy of shaming you. I love also the quote, I talked about this in a prior episode, that we put in chapter seven, from Howard Thurman, that says "It gentles the wildness". Such a powerful quote. Gentles the wildness out of that part.
Kimberly: He was Martin Luther King Jr.'s mentor, Howard Thurman. And that is such a powerful quote; "It gentles the wildness out of a personality at war with itself."
Alison: Yes.
Kimberly: And I want to be clear, Ali, because it's so important to say we are not suggesting the welcoming of our enemy at the table. Not the enemy, Jesus is very clear that we reject Satan and evil forces. And we have to distinguish between rejecting Satan and the evil forces, and welcoming the part of you that God made, which is good. Because God says that what He had made is good.
Welcoming the part of you that may have picked up some ways of thinking and feeling from the world of flesh and the devil, that's the source of the evil. And disciple that part of you in the way of Jesus, in the way of the heart, in the way of compassion.
Alison: It's so good. I love the image of the table, and I love the image of inviting these different parts and imagining them sitting at the table together. And, again, this is that work of internal reconciliation which is bringing these parts. Not just into connection with you and with God, but also with each other, where they learn to work together in healthier ways.
So the shaming inner critic loses that strategy. It releases that burden of shame. And maybe it starts to become a little bit more of an encourager, or a little bit more of a cautionary check, or whatever thing is, in a healthy way to say, "Hey, I'm not sure about that."
Where the other parts start to trust; "Okay, that part is not out to get me. But it is there to help us stay aligned. Stay true to who we are, to who God is, so that work of creating the healthy boundary lines."
Kimberly: And I wanted to tell you something, Alli, because I love our friendship. We can share with each other how God is healing us, over time, and our friendship is the context of the development of this work.
And I had written about a part that I had told you about, that I encountered early on in my work with therapists, which was my abandoned baby part. That I felt that's the part that we identified, when we started to work with my feelings about my parents' divorce.
And, over time, that abandoned baby part became more healed and accepted by Jesus. And just, recently, Ali, it started to feel like it was changing its name and it wanted to be called - "My comforted child"
"My celebrated child" even, isn't that amazing?
Alison: I love that.
Kimberly: And it has spent so much time with Jesus and it has a new name now. I would say I used to have an abandoned baby part, but it's not abandoned anymore, it's loved by Jesus. And it's not only comforted, but it's celebrated.
And what's so cool is that the inner critic can see that transformation, and then no longer needs to have such a stern strategy of criticizing it anymore. Because it's like, "Oh, I like that part, actually, that's great that you're celebrated. It's not a problem anymore, so I don't need to be critical anymore."
Alison: Oh, that's great.
Kimberly: That inner critic can just become, like you're saying, an encourager and advisor.
Alison: Yes, it has a role, it's just a much more helpful role. That's beautiful, Kim, I love hearing that. Because we did talk a lot about these parts of our own selves, as we were writing that book. And I love that part of you, who's found so much freedom, and peace, and joy in this work.
Kimberly: Yes, oftentimes, when parts meet Jesus they want to sit on His lap, which makes me think they're really young. They're like little children. And they want to put their heads on His shoulder. I'm amazed, when I'm working with clients. That's so often just what naturally happens is these parts want to put their heads on His shoulder and just let Him hold them. I mean, because He's just so good. He's so steady and calm, and He brings comfort to us and He loves us. So that's really the place to hang out.
Alison: It's so true that we tend to hear things like, "We need". As humans, we need safety, we need security, we need attachment. We need these foundational building blocks that creates health in a soul. And I think for the listeners that aren't as familiar with the parts language. What we're doing is applying those same concepts to a very specific part because we're multifaceted, as we've been talking about.
And, so, when a very specific part of us experiences that secure attachment. That maybe that part didn't get from a caregiver, from a parent, from a mom or a dad. Or maybe they had it and lost it, whatever. That part starts to experience that sense of safety, of comfort, of attachment, that we all need as babies with you there.
You're there and with God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, those parts of us start to heal. And that's where we get into this unburdening. They don't carry that heavy burden anymore, of this part of our story where, "Yes, this hard thing happened to me, and the pain of it has now been relieved. The burden has been lightened."
Kimberly: Yes, I mean, because you knew me back then and I wasn't walking around moping all the time. I was productive. I was teaching. I was living a very productive life. But, yet, I was doing it with this great pain in my heart, which was a part of me that was carrying the burden.
And, so, once I realized, "Oh, I can actually unblend from that part." That part of me doesn't have to sit on the seat of consciousness of my soul all the time. I can get healthy, proper distance from the part. And I love how we came up with this term proper distance.
I don't know that we invented it, but we love talking about proper distance from parts. Okay, I don't want it to be rejected. I don't want to get rid of the abandoned baby part, but I don't want it to overwhelm me. I want to be in a healthy relationship with it and have good boundaries with it. And, like you're saying, have secure attachment with the part. So we're talking about secure attachment between yourself and the part, and between the part and the Lord, and between the parts, among themselves. So there's a lot of attaching going on.
Alison: It's truly a family. And that's the other thing I think is important to highlight, Kim. What I love about your circling back to that is it takes time. It doesn't happen overnight. And I love what you're saying; you've had a really full life.
It's not that this part immobilized you. But through tending that internal family. Through tending that garden inside your soul, this part of you not alienating it, also not letting it take you over. Just gently, over time, really tending to that part of you, you see the fruit of that, over time. Where there is this real peace there now.
Kimberly: It sort of snuck up on me, this healing experience, I had recently, of realizing that this part was celebrated and not abandoned. How long has it been? 20 years since I had that original therapy session.
And this just happened like a few weeks ago. Where I reconnected with that part as I was doing a guided exercise, in a group. And I realized, "Oh, my goodness, it doesn't want to be called abandoned baby. That's not me anymore, I'm celebrated. Jesus loves me."
And it took a long time, but if you stick with it. I mean, it's not that I hadn't experienced relief before. Obviously, I had experienced relief, or else I wouldn't have continued on the journey. But to completely change your name, that doesn't happen every day.
Alison: Exactly.
Kimberly: And it had gotten to a point where it just did not identify with being abandoned anymore. And it was like, "No, that's really not who I am." This part wanted me to know like, "I want a new name. I'm celebrated." And, so, I like how we talk about this, it's a slow way to get somewhere faster.
Alison: I was just thinking that exact same. That was a line in the book that you came up with. We wrote all of those sentences so closely together, that it's hard to tell, sometimes.
Kimberly: No of that would have happened without you because you came up with the idea of the book. I'll never forget, we were driving in the car, in Washington State and you said, "We should write a book."
Alison: I know.
Kimberly: It changed my life, so none of it would have happened without you.
Alison: But that is that slower way, it's exactly what I was thinking. That's a slower way to get to where you want to be faster. It's really interesting.
Kimberly: Because, realistically, I never would have gotten there if I hadn't done this slow work of attending to the needs of this part. And that I could have gone in a lot of different directions and never experienced the healing for this part, that I was looking for. So I did get there and I think it was faster than it could have been, and it also could have never happened.
Alison: And in a way that allowed you to continue to live a productive life where there was enough relief.
Kimberly: Yes, there was enough relief. And also I was able to put that part in a room in my soul. This is another really helpful technique. Somebody just asked me the other day, " What if you are experiencing symptoms of PTSD?"
And I said, "One helpful technique is to imagine the part in a room." Because then it's contained within a specific area of your soul and it's not overwhelming you. And it can be a wonderful little room that it loves with Jesus there, and it has windows.
Everything that you can do to help contain the part. And anything that assists with internal differentiation, not being enmeshed with it, observing. There's other healing therapy models that have to do with differentiation like EMDR. Although I'm not certified in EMDR.
My understanding is that clients are often encouraged to sit in a bus and look out a window, and imagine a circumstance that traumatized them happening outside the window. And that's the technique that helps you get space from that experience. So what we're really after is that differentiation internally. That healthy detachment that gives us a chance to love the part of us that is hurting.
Alison: Yes, it's still connected to but not taken over. It reminds me of DBT, where it's two things can be true. I've experienced this painful thing and I have a full life.
Kimberly: That's how we realized that this was a boundaries concept. When we realized that the problem that we experienced has been blended with or overtaken by, or enmeshed with a part. Because I was enmeshed with that part of me that was hurting, and that was causing me to feel symptoms of depression.
But when I unblended from the part, whatever word you want to use, detached. I don't really like detached as much because that makes it feel like it's too far away because I still want to have that connection. But I was able to get space from the part. I didn't understand that language initially. I was like, "What does that mean, get space from it?
So I differentiate. That's the word that really speaks to me. It's one of my very favorite words. I differentiated from the part and then I was able to connect with it from that loving place within me.
Alison: Yes.
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Part Two
Alison: What we talk about in the very last chapter of the book, is how we then take all this work we've done to unblend from and create these healthy relationships, with these parts of us. Then we take that into a relationship with another human who has their own internal family that they've got a parent. These different parts of them. And those different parts of them are in relationship with the different parts of us.
And I just love that last chapter. Which is really, honestly, I always say this most people come to us, and I'm sure this is your experience. Most people come to us wanting to solve the relationship problems in their lives, first and foremost.
And that's where we get at this idea of a U-turn. Because in order to solve the relationship problems in your life you, first, have to learn how to reestablish a healthy relationship with the different parts of your own soul. So you can lead yourself.
I love that story that you talk about how you began to bring this work into your relationship, with your husband. Can you tell us a little bit about that, Kim? What is that been like for you? To bring this work into your relationships, especially, the one with your husband.
Kimberly: I'll start by saying that when I first met Ken, I was already very much into using the Soul Care method. And he did not warm up to it at first. I think like a lot of people that first hear about the idea of having internal parts, he was skeptical and suspicious.
And then one day, thanks be to Pete Docter, we got to go see the movie Inside Out in the theaters. And we laughed all the way through that movie. And we walked out of the theater, and he looked at me and he said, "Okay, now I get it." It was so helpful, and that really changed our lives.
And we started talking about the different parts of us. And he started talking about his criticized child. And then we realized that what was happening, sometimes, when there was tension between us is we had sparring protectors. And we realized that what we both needed to do is take a U-turn. So he is so great at taking a U-turn, and he's always the first to do it. He really models it so well in our relationship.
And, so, if our protector parts start battling one another, he'll just say, "Okay, let me take a U-turn." And then we'll start to talk about the parts of us that are activated, and name them, and then that calms us down.
And I think one of the things that recognizing parts does is it helps us to regulate our emotions, and put things in perspective. And get proper distance from the parts that are overwhelming us. And then we're able to speak on behalf of them.
And this is really a process of growing in emotional maturity. Little children don't know how to do this. They don't know how to say, "There's a part of me that's really angry right now. I love you, but there's a part of me that's angry right now, can we talk about it." A three-year-old can't do that, I promise.
Alison: And a lot of adults can't. Because we didn't learn how to do that, as kids, we don't know how to do that as adults.
Kimberly: It's a skill that one has to learn, it really is. We know how to say, "I'd rather not go there for dinner." That's not so hard. But when it comes to a painful emotion. And some people can't even say that, they can't even express their preferences.
But a lot of people know how to say, "No, I'd rather not be in that environment."
Or "I was bothered when such and such said something." But how much more difficult is it to speak on behalf of a part of you that's really filling hurt. That's really feeling tender. And this is an important life skill to develop if you're going to have an intimate relationship. Because issues are going to arise, that you have to talk through.
Alison: It's so true. And, so, I've touched on it very briefly, but give us an example of the difference between speaking from a part versus speaking for, and this could be with anybody. With a partner with a friend. This, to me, is one of the most profound things about this work because it just takes everything down a notch. So that you can have a very calm conversation with somebody.
Kimberly: I'll use the example that I write about in the book, about my husband, Ken and I having to deal with the mail.
When we first got married the mail would mount up and neither of us would go through it, and it would just really bother me. I mean, because we get so much mail and I would get overwhelmed by it. And I would just find myself being so reactive, and anxious, and angry about it. And it was my birthday and he said, "What do you want for your birthday." And I said, "I want you to go through the mail with me."
And he had a part that got activated, he felt criticized. But we talked it through and we ended up having a lovely dinner and he gave me a sweet present. And then we also went through the mail together. But, anyway, I guess the example of speaking from a part would be to say, "I'm so frustrated that there's mail on the desk all the time."
A way of speaking on behalf of a part would be to say, "First of all, Honey, are you available for me to share something that I'm feeling?" Ask for an appointment and then when the other person is available to say, "I really love you. I love being married to you. I appreciate all that you do every day." So express appreciation and reaffirm your commitment.
And then just say, "Would you be open to hearing about a part of me that's activated right now." And then just say, "I have a lot of appreciation for you, and there's a part of me that's feeling anxious if the mail isn't getting opened on a regular basis." So that's an example.
And it takes a lot more time but, again, it's a slower way to get where you want to go faster. Because it'll end up getting you the results a lot quicker. And then there's not as much tension or no tension, in the environment anymore. And I don't claim to be perfect at this, but we're aiming for progress, not perfection.
Alison: Yes.
Kimberly: And it's a lifetime process. I think it takes a lifetime to develop this skill. And even just being able to internally realize that you're activated, is a very good first step. And curiosity is a great starting point. I used to think curiosity and compassion were the best starting points. But compassion is actually asking a lot of a person.
And I think it's very helpful just to say, "Let's just begin with becoming curious about this feeling of reactivity and what's that about? When he's focusing on reading the paper instead of being with me. And that must mean that I'm not important to him."
There's a lot under there, and I need to really pause and take a look at why I'm feeling so reactive about it. And then move in the direction of speaking on behalf of.
Alison: Yes, it's so interesting, to bring this full circle, to that inner critic. Because I think when we haven't done the work inside of ourselves, or when we're on the front end of it, that inner critic comes in.
We see the mail we're annoyed, and then we're either mad at ourselves. And then that inner critic turns also on the other person, who's not taking this problem magically away, that they may not even know. Maybe it's not bothering them, they don't care.
So all of a sudden, that inner critic is now mad at us, they're mad at this other person. And then we can speak from it, which is, "What's wrong with you? You don't care about me. Why don't you help me out? I don't even know what just happened."
And, so, all that work that has to happen internally to, first of all, validate, "Wait a minute, this is causing me stress. This is causing me anxiety for numerous reasons, that go beyond just the mail." And this is the thing in marriage, it usually is these little things, initially, yes, they start to pile up.
But the more you begin to get curious, I love that you went there. Get curious about, "Okay, what is going on? Why is that so activating to me?" Not from a shaming place but from a validating place. Then that allows you to go into that conversation with the other person, without criticism, which is never helpful to relationships.
Kimberly: No.
Alison: And to go into it with curiosity. Naming, again, naming is so important. Without shame, without criticism, "This is what's happening inside of me. And then together can we figure out how to solve this problem." It's just so much healthier, but it does start from the inside out. This work of how we bring it to that other person is really critical, to that conversation going well.
Kimberly: That's right, and owning what is going on inside of you and sharing about that, at a time when they're available. I can't stress that enough. Being aware that the person you're in a relationship with, whether it's a friend, or co-worker, or spouse, they've got their whole life going on, themselves. And they're not necessarily where you are in your mind. And it's really important to ask for an appointment to talk. Because these are really important things to talk about, and you want to do it at a time when they're available.
And then also a little tip that I've learned is never bringing anything like this up after 06:00 p.m., at night because people are just spent by then. So do it at a time when you're fresh and you've got space. And it may be that you have to put it in the calendar, but it's important. It's as important as whatever else is in your calendar.
Alison: Yes.
Kimberly: Make space for it and then take a U-turn, stay on your side of the tennis court, own what you're experiencing. And use the opportunity, as a trailhead, to walk down a path of worrying what's going on with your inner world and find the curiosity within you. Extend that curiosity to the part of you that's feeling activated.
And then another phrase that's really helpful, is to think of the context as a torment. The mail, for me, can be a tormentor. Because it can be an opportunity, for me, to learn about myself because of the reactivity that it causes in me.
It sounds like a benign example, but for some reason, I think it's also because I'm an Enneagram One. And I really like for my environment to be clean, and orderly, and just seeing all the paper causes clutter in my psyche. But I've really gotten good at unsubscribing and discontinuing things, and just doing a lot electronically just as much as I can. I make it a daily practice to unsubscribe and discontinue.
Alison: Oh, that's cool, good for you.
Kimberly: Yes, it's just one thing a day, yes, it really helps a lot. Anyway, that's a whole another podcast.
Alison: That's what I was going to say. How do you use this parts work as part of your ongoing spiritual practice? Because I talk a lot about how you can do it in the context of therapy. And I think it's important to do it in the context of therapy, especially, when you have a lot of trauma. When you have a lot of deep pain that you've never unpacked, that you've never looked at. I think it's important not to do it alone.
It's important to do it with someone. And I also think this work is something we can incorporate into our daily practice, as we get to know the contents of our soul. So how do you use it in your own daily spiritual practices?
Kimberly: I had an IFS therapist, for a long time, and now I feel like I've so internalized the process. And I really learned, over the years, what it was that I was really wanting to get to in therapy. Which was the encounter of the part with Jesus. And now I really do that just on my own, on a daily basis in prayer. And it helps me to journal and journaling facilitates that divine encounter.
I do what you might call solo IFS, so I usually write out a thought that I'm having such as, "I'm feeling anxious about speaking tomorrow." Or something like that. And then I just write whatever other parts are speaking or I write what they're feeling. And then really quickly after that, within a few lines, I start to sense the Holy Spirit speaking. And I start to sense my Spirit-led self-comforting the parts, and responding in truth and love to the parts, and the parts relax.
I also do this through just imaginative prayer. I'll just close my eyes and picture a table, that really works for me, like I said. I just picture the part of me that's anxious, or sad, or hurt, sitting with Jesus and just listening for His voice. I also love to do it in guided exercises, with groups.
So, actually, you helped me start, together, you and I started a group. Again, it came out of our conversation. A group that meets on a regular basis, and we have a facilitator that leads us in a guided exercise.
So I do that on a regular basis, and that gives me a chance to be led in the experience of seeing parts connect with Jesus. And there's Insight Timer, there's a lot of good recordings on Insight Timer. I think, Anne-Marie Bowen just posted something, she's been encouraging me to do it too.
Alison: She does. I'll link to that in the episode, for folks who want to see what these guided exercises are, they're really helpful.
Kimberly: Yes, she is a Christian IFS therapist and just posted some Christ-centered IFS exercises to help you connect parts to Jesus. There's one that I did that's on my website, so I encourage your listeners to go there and find it.
But, yes, journaling solo IFS, mapping out parts, drawing a picture of the different parts. What I should say is I map out what the parts are saying on a piece of paper. So I put the voices or the thoughts of managers in one corner of the page.
The voices and feelings of firefighters in another corner. And then the exiles at the bottom and then the spirit-led self in the middle. And then the voice of God will usually speak to me, somehow, and I'll write that down in the middle with the spirit-led self, too. So that's a really common spiritual practice that I undergo.
Alison: Yes, it's super helpful, I do that too. I write out, I journal out the different voices in my head. And, like you said, with practice it comes more quickly, that ability to breathe into the reframe, the Holy Spirit-led reframe.
Kimberly: I love that.
Alison: Yes.
Kimberly: Yes, I love that. I love that integration of psychology and spirituality, that's beautiful. The Holy Spirit-led reframe. I love to pray, "Lord, help me to differentiate from this part. Lord, please let this part of me know that you love me and you care for this part of me."
And He responds. He says, "Seek my face while I'm near."
And I'm working on this book I've told you about called Inviting God. And I just have been going through the Scripture, just looking at all the different places that God wants us to invite Him into our lives. And it's become really clear to me that God wants us to invite Him in, and He wants to minister to us, and He's right there.
He's right there for us, but we need to bring the parts of us that are hurting into His presence, so that He can minister to them. Just like a doctor can't operate on a person who's not staying on the operating table. And we need to present the hurting parts of us to Him and then He heals us.
Alison: Yes, I love that. It's so beautiful. It reminds me of the passage that we talk about, I think, in chapter four. About how Jesus goes after the lost sheep and He leaves the 99 to go after the one. And it applies to the parts of our own soul, that even if we're doing all right but there's one part of us that's hurting, God cares about that part of us, too.
And this is the process of our lives. This is the work. This is the work of becoming more spiritually and emotionally whole. In my experience it sure means life is never boring. There's always a way to tend the garden, tend the soil of our souls.
Kimberly: It takes courage, Alison, because it's easier to just let yourself be distracted all the time, and it's easier to avoid these feelings. But I just encourage everyone to really lean in to this process because God wants us to be free. He doesn't want us to live enslaved to firefighter parts that have a grip on us, or manager parts that just won't relent, or won't relax, or exile parts that are just constantly living under the weight of heavy burdens.
He doesn't want us to live like that. He wants us to live freely and lightly. And He invites us to come to Him when we're burdened and promises that we'll live freely and lightly when we do that.
Alison: I love that. Tell us about any projects you're working on; how people can find you?
Kimberly: Yes, as I mentioned, I'm working on this book that I'm calling Inviting God into the Broken Places. And it's really an elaboration of step three of taking a U-turn. Just really going deeper into that experience of encountering Jesus, where we need to meet with Him. And then I'm also working on a mental health Bible. There's different types of Bible. So I'm talking about the Word of God, but there's different publications.
I'm not talking about there's a nutrition Bible. I'm not talking about just something like that. I'm talking about the Word of God, but published in a way that that highlights the ways in which the Bible facilitates mental health.
And working with a publishing company to come up with ten articles on ten topics, so it'll be 100 articles of ancillary materials to go along with Scripture passages. As well an index at the beginning of the ten topics so people know where to find those passages, on whatever topics that they're struggling with. So that is the project that I'm working on right now.
And then I'm also preparing to lead a retreat here in California, in May. So I have those things going on and I'm on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, but really the website is the main place to find me and to connect if you want to reach out.
Alison: Which is kimberlyjunemiller.com, we'll link to that.
Kimberly: Exactly, just my name.
Alison: That's awesome, Kim. That Bible sounds amazing. I can't wait for that. We will be so excited to hear more about that. I have a couple of questions I ask everyone. I've never asked you these questions, so I'm very curious to hear your answer. What or who is bringing out the best of you right now?
Kimberly: Oh, I would say right now you are.
Alison: Oh!
Kimberly: [Inaudible 00:16:21] topic and it was like people that have helped me to live out my God-given calling, and that's definitely you, Alison. Friends who are challenging me and loving me right now, probably, Ken more than anyone, my husband.
And I've got a couple of girlfriends that I work closely with, Elizabeth, you know her. My friend Lauren here and she supports me in my ministry, as well. Do they have to be alive? Because there's so many authors from the past that I read a lot, that really speak to me.
I think books just really get my mind just active and I just get so inspired by people like Dallas Willard. I'm reading his book Hearing God right now. And just a few pages of that book, I'm just so excited about listening to God's voice. Friends, family, wonderful books get me in the writing zone. And, then, God's Word when you said, "What really brings out the best in you?" Spending time in Scripture it really builds me up.
Alison: I love that. What needs and desires are you working to protect?
Kimberly: Really time with God. Time with family and friends. Time to work and write. Time to exercise and cook healthy food, and, of course, time to open the mail.
Alison: That's always good. Until someday it goes away, which it, might.
Kimberly: I think, less and less.
Alison: Yes, oh, Kim, it's so fun to be with you and have some of these conversations again. I'm so grateful for you and for the work that you're doing and putting into the world. And I so appreciate you coming here today to share with us about your life and about these topics, just grateful for you.
Alison: Thank you so much for your friendship, Alison. Ever since I first met you in Boston, since Jeff set us up for that tea, that we had, it's just been such a life-giving friendship. And thank you for who you are and all that you're doing and just the incredible impact you're having on so many lives. It's a beautiful thing to see.
Alison: Thanks, Kim.
< Outro >
Alison: Thank you for joining me for this episode of The Best of You. Be sure to check out the show notes for any resources and links mentioned in the show. You can find those on my website at dralisoncook.com. That's Alison with one L- cook.com.
Before you forget, I hope you'll follow the show now so that you don't miss an episode. And I'd love it if you'd go ahead and leave a review, it helps so much to get the word out. 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.
You need your pain. Grief makes you real, and disappointment can inspire creativity, change, and growth. Sadness brings texture to the joys we experience. And yet, it's also not wise to let sadness take us over. In today's episode, we discuss how to set healthy boundaries with emotions like sadness and loneliness.
Here's what we cover:
-The surprising benefits of sadness
-3 types of grief
-The science of tears and how they help us
-What loneliness needs to heal
-Childhood play and how it informs your adult dreams
-What to do when you just don't have the time for the pain
Be sure to pick up your 3 free Boundaries for Your Soul resources here.
Thanks to our sponsors:
Organifi-Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
Listen & subscribe to The Snack Show - https://tinyurl.com/TheSnackShowPodcast
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
- Get 46% off Boundaries for Your Soul & The Best of You here.
- Inside Out Movie Trailer
- IFS Institute
- Episode 39: Boundaries for Your Soul—How to Navigate Your Overwhelming Thoughts & Feelings
- Episode 40: 5 Steps to Healing Painful Emotions & Why Parts of Us Get Stuck in the Past
- Psalm 23
- Isaiah 53:3
- The House that Built Me, by Miranda Lambert
- Rebuilding Beautiful, by Kayla Stocklein
- Matthew 5:4
- Psalm 68:5-6
- Resources for support
Transcript
Alison: Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Best of You Podcast. I just want to tell you how much I enjoy doing this podcast. I have heard from so many of you how much this podcast means to you, and I can't even tell you, as we're approaching episode 42, so ten weeks away from a year, how much joy I've gotten from creating this podcast.
Oftentimes when I'm talking to people about their dreams, and what they long for, and what they want, and what they desire. I often say, "What were some of your childhood dreams? When you were by yourself, what would you do that was just pure joy?" Because often that's a cue to what our real longings are. What our real dreams are. And, for me, it really was this playing school. It was getting to talk to people about the things that I found really fascinating.
And that's what I get to do every single week, with this podcast, is talk to you all about these ideas that I think are so fascinating. And that have informed my own life, and informed my practice, and inform my work. And the fact that you're responding to that and that it means something to you, that's just the sweet spot, that's just the joy. That the thing I love to do is resonating and connecting with you and what you need, that's the magic. That's the magic.
And, so, thank you so much for your feedback, for your encouragement, for your responses. I appreciate the ways you've been sharing this podcast with your friends,
with your family members, and with other people. We just continue to grow every week, and it makes me excited. I just have this sense of God ushering in His healing through these means, through technology, through modern technology. And I just pray with you, as we learn to honor these parts of ourselves, in partnership with God's spirit, that we would just bring more healing, more goodness, more beauty, more kindness. More of this compassionate self-awareness into our lives, into our relationships, into this world that is so desperately in need of it.
So thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing it. I also want to add, that today is my birthday. I wasn't planning to record this episode today, but it also feels very right, and timely, that I'm recording this episode on my birthday. It's one of those birthdays.
I actually have very complicated feelings about it. It's a little bit of a milestone birthday. And when we have complicated feelings, usually, that's a cue that there are different parts of us. Different parts of you have different feelings about this birthday. And today we're talking about these vulnerable emotions. These emotions we tend to want to exile, in particular, sadness and loneliness.
And, so, today, as I was reflecting on my birthday, on these complicated emotions I have about it. And I've been steeping myself, as I prepare for this episode, in thinking about sadness and loneliness. It actually came together for me in a really beautiful way, personally. And that is this a part of me is really happy and deeply grateful, today, on this milestone birthday.
I am very aware of how grounded and anchored, and content I am in the work God has given me to do. How content I am in my family in my relationships, in my life. There's a lot of sweetness on this birthday. And that ability to recognize the health, the goodness, the joy, is very much informed by the reality of sadness and loneliness, that has characterized a lot of my adult life, especially, my 20s and 30s.
These experiences from the past that are not as much part of my current reality, of my present realities. But that have very much played a role that I'm experiencing today. The happiness that I feel today, is informed by the sadness and the loneliness I have experienced in the past. And because I can still connect to those parts of me, I haven't eradicated them. They're a part of my story; but they've been reintegrated into this larger, more beautiful tapestry of my life.
I can enjoy the present happiness in a much more complete, a much more nuanced, a much more textured, vital, beautiful way. I see the fruit of all of these parts of me. There's a humility in the gratitude I feel today. Because parts of me understand deeply what it's like to experience life's fragility. When sadness and loneliness are very palpable and very close at hand.
And, so, I appreciate more deeply the experience of today because of, not despite of, the sadness and the heartache. But because of their part in this story that is my life.
There's a way in which the sorrow, the parts of me that are acquainted with grief, with loneliness, with sorrow, give texture and illuminate the joy.
It provides a fuller picture of all of the whole of this story of life that we're all in the business of creating. We're in the business of working out this story that is our life. The acquaintance that parts of me still have with those experiences of sadness and loneliness, creates a more beautiful harmony as I experience the whole.
And, so, today, as we look at two of these emotions that are such a deep and vital part of every human experience, sadness and loneliness. I want you to consider that while these emotions are challenging to navigate, especially, when you get really lost in them. And I've been there at different times of my life, and I've walked numerous people through those valleys.
When you're in the valley and all you can see is sadness, and all you can feel is the aloneness. We all go through those valleys, some people more than others, but they are real. Those valleys are real.
But when they begin to be held within healthy boundary lines, in your soul. And they begin to come together with other parts of your story. Other parts of you that begin to experience joy, and begin to taste goodness, and begin to experience connection, they become beautiful parts of who you are. That light up the landscape of your internal life in beautiful, nuanced, textured ways.
And, so, I don't want you to eradicate these parts of you. I do want you to learn how to establish healthy boundary lines with them. So that they create color, so they bring a little texture. They bring some nuance like those flutes in that middle school band, we talked about in episode 39. They bring some beauty and some nuance to your story, but they don't tell the whole story of who you are.
So I want to start off with sadness by saying, first of all, you need your pain. Grief, sadness, suffering, sorrow, disappointment, while painful, these emotions make us real. They are part of being alive. If we got rid of those emotions we would not understand the feeling and experience of joy, of happiness, of excitement, of anticipation, of hope. Those emotions go hand in hand.
Part of the joy that we experience is because we're aware of what it feels like when things are hard. It's a very odd dichotomy, but it's one that even Jesus experienced. "He was a man who was acquainted with suffering, with sorrow, with grief." And He was also a man who understood joy.
We don't want to numb out. We don't want to shut down these harder emotions, they help bring us alive. They also help us understand resilience, which is something that we need to survive. They can fuel our creativity. Our ability to connect with other people and bring life and bring innovation.
They help us to understand what it's like to walk so closely by faith, when we are walking through the shadow of the valley of the dark. When we have a sense of God's leadership. Even though we feel alone, and scared, and maybe even lost a little bit.
The pain of our lives can drive us to seek Jesus, to seek out other people, to dig deeper into ourselves, to grow. And I'm not saying that makes it okay, but I am honoring that pain can have a byproduct of teaching us resilience. Of teaching us how to be stronger, of teaching us how to change certain things. To fight for what is good and honorable in our lives.
It could fuel purpose. Sometimes when we're hurting, when we're struggling, when we're sad, we start to look for purpose. We start to look for meaning; and we can gain new insights. And those insights that are hard won in the battle of our suffering. Can lead us to be incredible channels of empathy, and healing, and hope, and goodness for others.
So we need our pain, we need our sadness. We need our sorrow to help us become more of who God wants us to become, on this side of heaven. In this world that desperately needs us to be real, as we show up to our own lives and to other people. And that means coming into contact with our sadness, with our sorrow, with the things that are hard.
The trick is not to let those emotions overtake us. To feel like they're all of who we are. The trick is to keep our sadness, to keep our sorrow within healthy boundary lines. And that'll be easier at different times of life than others.
There are times when we're just in it. When we're just in the hard stuff, and we're really in it, and we need anchors around us, we need other people. We need anchors to keep us going. To keep us strong until we can get to that place where the light starts to break through. We start to see our way forward and we start to climb out of that valley. We don't stay in the valleys forever. And when we're in the valleys, we need support to guide us.
But those valleys also become beautiful places that when we look back on them. When we look at our suffering from the rear view mirror, we say, "I'm grateful for that. It was hard, I don't necessarily want to go through that again. But I'm grateful for what God did in my life through that season. And for the good that I have to offer out of those places inside my soul."
And, so, I want you to consider, as you're listening today, what's your relationship like to your own sadness. Is it an emotion that's very close to you, that you access readily? And you have to work to keep it within healthy boundary lines, so that it doesn't take you over. Maybe you're somebody who struggled a little bit with depression or struggled to remember the good. It's easier for you to sink into the sorrow. And there's no shame in that, but it's just something to be aware of.
For some of you, listening, sadness comes fairly easily and you have to work to remember the joy. You have to work to keep that sadness within healthy boundary lines. And remember that there are other parts of your experience, there are other parts of your stories. And, to be honest, folks who are very well acquainted with sadness tend to be highly empathetic. They tend to be highly in tune with the suffering of others. It's a beautiful quality, and I don't want you to shame yourself if you feel that your sadness is fairly close to you.
In fact, I want you to honor that as a gift and, also, think of that sadness as just one part of you. And some of you listening feel like sadness is a little further away. It's maybe harder for you to tap into it. Maybe you have very healthy protectors that just keep sadness far away. Maybe you're someone who produces, or performs, or pleases some of those P-words, and that helps you keep sadness at bay. Or maybe you're someone who has a little bit of anxiety or anger, and all of those things are more present to you.
And, so, you don't as easily or often dip into that well of sadness. It doesn't mean it's not there. It's just a little more far away from you. It's a little more foreign to you. And for those of you listening who find that sadness is farther away, there's no shame in that either. I would encourage you to consider your relationship to sadness, and consider that it is an important part of your internal family. That grief and that sorrow isn't something to shove aside. That it's something to bring into relationship with these other hardworking parts of you.
That sometimes sadness can remind you, "Hey, it's okay to slow down."
"It's okay to ask for help."
"It's okay to need support."
Sadness can help you bring yourself back into balance.
So whether sadness is close to you or whether sadness feels far away. This is an opportunity to just get curious about your own relationship to this God-given emotion. An emotion we know Jesus was deeply acquainted with. This is an emotion that is not to fear, not to exile, it's an emotion to get curious about.
What are some of the benefits of sadness? Well, number one, we've all experienced loss in life. We've all experienced some pain. And those losses, those parts of our story, are worthy of honor and respect, right? These are parts of our story that we can exile, or we can honor, and reintegrate into this larger narrative that is our life in a healthy way. They can help us become aware of these losses, or of burdens, that we may still carry with us that need our attention.
They can help us understand our own hearts and the things that we deeply love, the things that we deeply value. Where there is sorrow, there is something that we've grieved.
There's a good thing, a beautiful thing that we've lost. And that helps us understand, "Oh, wait a minute, I'm someone who valued that friendship or who longed for that thing. And the sadness reminds me that there was good in that longing. That I'm someone who cares about these relationships, that cared about that thing. And while there's loss in owning that, that's also a cue to some of my God-given desires. To some of my God-given makeup.
These parts of us that carry sadness, that carry loss, can help us develop empathy and come alongside others who are suffering. It's a channel for connection to other people. Sadness can help us honor the reality of our story and the hardships we face. And I like that word honor; to honor those parts of our stories, they're real. We survived something. We got through something.
Sadness helped us get through that. Sadness told us you're alive, you're human, and that is something to be sad about. And if I weren't sad, I'd be a machine, I'd be a robot. I'd be an unfeeling person or I might even be a sociopath. I wouldn't care.
Well, that's not what it means to be human. Our sadness reminds us that we're human and that we experience loss. And, gosh, if we could shut that off, that would not be a good thing. We don't want to be robots in this world. We don't want to be people who are cut off from our feelings. And sometimes our feelings get the best of us over and over again.
You hear me saying we want to set healthy boundary lines with our sadness. We don't want it to take us over and we don't want it to go away. It reminds us of what's real. It reminds us of people that we've lost, that we love, that we do not want to forget. That we want to create a space to honor, even as other parts of us are able and ready to move forward.
This is what I love about this parts model. Parts of us grieve even as parts of us hope in a future that we still have before us. This is health. This is health that both of these things can be true. I can honor my heartache about that loss, about that hard thing, about that hurt. And I can also honor parts of me that are hopeful about the future. That are even looking forward to a future. Those two things can exist side by side, and in fact, they should exist side by side. In fact, they both help make us more complete. They make us whole. They create a harmony.
Now, sadness can get too close. And when it's too close to us, we can be overtaken by feelings of sorrow, of suffering. We can even move into victim mentalities. Where we just feel like we're destined for a life of sadness. We can shift into depression and despair. We can feel worn out, and exhausted, and burdened, and heavy laden.
When sorrow gets too big we can stay ruminating and stuck in painful memories from the past. Instead of healing them and allowing them a proper place within our internal family. We can move into shame, self-doubt, even false guilt, some insecurity.
So we want to keep sadness within healthy boundary lines. When it gets extreme, it can take us into some dark places. And if you've struggled with depression, you know this. And there's no shame in this, it happens. But, again, we don't want to exile the parts of us that carry sorrow altogether. We want to welcome them as important members of our internal family and help them find healthy boundary lines within our soul.
[00:20:42] < Music >
What happens when two friends who love snacks and have mostly differing opinions start a podcast? Welcome to their weekly journey with Jami and Fallon, who love laughing as much as they love food. Follow along as they live their motto - "Live, laugh, snack." I love Jami and Fallon. I get to work with them on the TSF network. They are awesome humans, and they are just having so much fun on this podcast.
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It's helpful to think about three different categories. The first is when we experience sadness over the loss of something that was good that we wanted. The second, that sometimes surprises us, is there can be sadness or sorrow over the loss of something painful. And then finally there's the sorrow or sadness about a lost dream. Something that might have been. Something that we longed for, that never was. And all of these things can cause sorrow or sadness in different ways
When you think about the loss of something good. And this is why we get into this very delicate relationship between sorrow and joy. If you're someone who has moved a lot. That was the source of a lot of my sadness and loneliness in my adult years as I moved around a ton.
And, so, I was very untethered from communities. I was very untethered from this very anchored childhood, all the way through 18 until I left for college. And, so, I understood what it felt like to be tethered, very intimately, to a real present community. And then suddenly in my 20s and 30s I was very untethered, it was the opposite. And there was so much sorrow around that loss, of that anchoring community of my childhood.
I just couldn't recreate it, and a lot of that was my own choices. I made a lot of movements. A lot of us who are part of sort of Gen X, if you relate, we started moving around. We didn't stay where our families were. And everybody started moving around, and our friends started moving around, and nobody was in the same location. And it's created some good things; we had these different opportunities, and it created a lot of loss. A lot of loneliness, a lot of untethering.
And then technology came into that in the '90s and the 2000s. Suddenly, we're all on technology and that contributed to some of the untethering. It created some ways that we could reconnect, but it also wasn't the same thing.
And, so, there's a lot of sadness in that untethering. And, so, there's a loss of something good. It's a good thing to become aware of, "Oh, my goodness, there was good in that. And, so, I'm sad now because I missed something that was really beautiful and really good and I can't fully recreate it."
And, so, what do we do here? What do we do with the sadness? Because the sadness is telling me something important and I've got to figure out how to move forward, not back. I can't get stuck in what I don't have anymore. I've got to figure out how to take that sadness, let it inform me about what I value.
And I tell this story in Boundaries for Your Soul, in the chapter on sadness. About, for me, it was all about revisiting that community of my youth and letting myself grieve. I didn't know how special it was until I left it. It's all I ever knew. I literally was born in the same house that I left when I was 18, and went off to college.
And, so, all of that safety, all of that security that was no longer there, suddenly, in my 30s. And I'd been living in all these different cities and no permanence, no stability of community. And I was like, "Oh, my gosh, that's a loss. I am sad about that." And I didn't even know it until it overtook me. And slowly I began to listen to that sadness and let it inform me, so that I can make wiser, healthier, decisions moving forward.
I couldn't recreate the past. I couldn't go back. And I talk about that Miranda Lambert song and that song still makes me cry when I sing it. It's the song about "The House That Built Me". This poignancy of that feeling of home that I'd had, but that was gone and would never be again.
And also that sadness informed me. It began to tell me I value roots, I value anchors. I need to figure out how to move toward that over the next few years. I can't magically bring it in, but I can begin to move toward it. I can begin to reconnect with some of those people that made me feel so tethered in my youth. I began to return to Wyoming. You'll hear me talk about the mountains of Wyoming; that's why they're so important to me.
I began to build in ways of reconnecting to those beautiful images. The anchoring of the land of that mountain face that I would look at every single day until I was 18, into my present and future reality.
I let that sadness, that grief, that feeling of loss, help me reintegrate important things that I valued into my life. Some of you feel sorrow over a person that you've lost. Maybe someone who has passed away, who is no longer with us.
Maybe a relationship that is gone and that person cannot come back. That relationship cannot come back. And that sorrow reminds you of love. It reminds you of love. It reminds you of the beauty of a human life. Of a relationship that brought something to you that might have healed parts of you. And even though that relationship is gone, a part of it remains because it changed you. That person might be gone, but that person remains because they changed you.
And, so, that sadness, while it's so hard to face, also, reminds you of the tremendous good that that person brought to you. And that still lives on, not just in that memory, but in the part of your soul that has forever been changed by that person or by that relationship.
And, so, while the sadness is hard and the grief is hard, it points you to something deeply good. Something deeply beautiful. Something God brought into your life to change you and to bring good to you, and you'll find ways to honor that good. You honor that person, or that relationship, by holding the good that they brought to you alive and by celebrating that. This is how we honor grief. We honor the people and the good things that we miss by honoring the parts of us that have been forever changed. By those situations, by those people, by those relationships.
This is the work of healthy boundaries with sadness. Where instead of letting it take us over and consume us and destroy us. We let it bring up the very best. Not only of who we are but of these other people and of these other relationships that have enriched our lives.
We want to honor those other people with the goodness that we bring into our life, as a result of having been touched by those humans. This is the work of grief. This is the work of honoring our sadness because our sadness points us to something that was so deeply good. This is the work of healthy boundaries.
It's not exiling our sadness. It's not saying, "Oh, God, I just won't go there, you took that person for a reason." It's also not saying, "I'm going to dwell in that sorrow and I'm going to let it take me out, and keep me from living this life that I still have."
It's saying, "I'm going to honor the place that person had in my life. The place that relationship had in my life by becoming even more of the person I really am. I honor them by moving forward with this beautiful life."
Now, this is a process, this takes time. You can't rush this process, but I want you to hear me talk about this healthy balance. There's a little bit of a tension in our souls. This is delicate, nuanced work of honoring the sadness. Even as we let it shape us into someone even more whole, even more beautiful. Even more of a reminder of the way that person or that relationship left a lasting impact.
We can also feel sadness over the loss of something painful. Something that reminds us of a really complicated, maybe, even, terrible chapter of our lives. Now, this is complicated grief, complicated sadness. This is where we get into the complexity of trauma.
I've worked with numerous women who have had to get out of abusive relationships. And there's a grief involved with that too. There's a complicated grief. There's the grief of, "It took years from my life."
There's the grief of "There was a little bit of good there or I wouldn't have been in it." But then that good went bad, that good went awry. So there's complexity. There was something there at the beginning that then turned toxic.
And, so, I have to grieve both the lost years, the lost time, and I have to grieve what I had hoped it would become. So there's nuance to that loss. When something went sideways, when something went bad, a relationship or a person.
We have to sometimes grieve the loss of a childhood that we never had. Where there was complexity in our relationships with our parents, there's sorrow there. And the sorrow doesn't, necessarily, just simply point us to something that was good. It points us to a really complicated part of our life, where we suffered at the hands of someone else's toxicity.
And, so, we're sad that we got ensnared in that. We're sad that that person became that toxic thing. We're also sad about what we didn't get, and this gets complicated. And there might be some anger there close, side by side with the sadness and that anger needs to be there.
And, so, there's a little bit more complexity to working through that sadness. And people sometimes feel a lot of shame or a lot of frustration with themselves. "Why do I feel sad about this relationship?"
"Why do I feel sad about this person, this parent, this ex? They only mistreated me. Why do I feel sad about that relationship?" Well, that sadness is there for a reason. That person was all you had. You didn't know any better, at the time, when you were a kid or when you were in that relationship. They did provide parts of you with something, even though now you know that it wasn't healthy. Overall, there was something you got from that at the time, that was all you knew.
And, so, your grief is complicated. And you want to do that work with someone else. Don't do that work alone of teasing apart the different layers of sadness. The grief over something that even was toxic. And the ongoing grief, if the person is still in your life.
So every time I bump against this person, I have grief over the fact that that relationship is gone. And I have grief over the fact that that person was never the mom, the dad, the spouse, the ex-spouse, that I wish I had had.
And, so, grief can be a little bit ongoing and we have to nurture that relationship to it, so that it stays within healthy boundary lines. Grief work is often ongoing. It doesn't happen on a dime. It's a way of tilling this garden inside your own soul. And you can find ways as you, tenderly and compassionately, care for those parts of you that carry that grief. Where it doesn't go away but the burden is eased, the burden is lightened.
And that's what Jesus says, again, that He comes and He says, "My burden is light." It doesn't mean the burden isn't there, but He steps in and He helps you carry that burden. And it becomes a little lighter and it begins to inform you of the person you want to be, and the kind of relationships you want to form, going forward. And you till that soil with care because it matters and your story matters. And you want to honor that part of your story without letting it take you over. Without letting it rob you of the best of who you are.
And then, lastly, there is this loss of what might have been. The loss of a dream that can no longer materialize. The loss of a certain way of living, that has been curtailed by a physical limitation. Or a quote-unquote "Happily ever after." It's not the life you had imagined for yourself, but it is the life that you have. And there's disappointment with that and there's loss with that. And there is also beauty that can come from that.
And, man, this is the work and the work is not to let one run roughshod over the other. If you too quickly go to "There is purpose and pain."
Or "There's beauty and brokenness." You risk exiling that sad part of you that needs to be heard, that needs to remind you of the disappointment, of the loss, even of the anger. And, also, if you let that part of you take you over, too much. You risk missing out on the ways in which God wants to help you weave together another beautiful story.
Really I appreciate the work of Kayla Stoecklein on this. She writes about her experience surviving her husband's death by suicide and raising their children. And she just talks in very profound and very nuanced ways of the heartache, and the sorrow of that, and the ways in which she's continuing to create her own life.
There's a lot of nuance and texture in this work of creating healthy boundaries in your own soul. I want to remind you that roughly one third of the Psalms express lament. Lament, signifies faith, not weakness. It shows that you're hanging on. It shows that you value the good things in life.
So when you notice pain, or you notice sadness, or you notice disappointment, don't try to shoo it away. Instead name it, befriend it, extend compassion toward it. "There you are, sadness, I see you there. It's okay, you can be here with me and I bless you for this grief you're reminding me of. I don't want you to take me over, but I do want you to be here with me. You're welcome here; and God welcomes you too."
Jesus said, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." We won't know comfort if we don't first honor the sorrow. We won't understand the deep and meaningful ways that God meets us, in our sorrow, if we don't first acknowledge it to ourselves and to a few safe people.
Now, for those of you for whom sadness can be hard to let in. I invite you to consider a part of you that might be sad. What if you could befriend it? Not so that it takes you over, but so that you can tend it.
What if you could honor its pain? And in doing so, it might even soften a little bit to become this very tender, very sweet place inside your internal family. What if instead of fighting to keep it away? The tears that it holds are part of what will bring you even more connection to your God-given self and maybe even to other people.
You know, crying is such an interesting thing when it's done in a safe, supportive environment. And it's so healthy for us, that it releases endorphins and other good chemicals. It reduces stress and it can function as a deep form of self-soothing. It can help you sleep better. It connects us to hope, paradoxically.
A good cry can really open us up to more connection to others and to more connections to God, which opens us up to hope. The release of sadness is a prayer of surrender. So often your tears say, "I don't have the answers. I have no more words. I simply have the reality of these human emotions." And that is my form of prayer right now. If you have much buried pain, please don't try to cry it out all alone. Seek help from someone who can help hold some of that pain with you.
But, regardless, we don't want to let sadness take us over, but we also don't want to exile it either. It's a beautiful part of being human. It's a beautiful member of your internal family. We want to have a healthy relationship with our sadness.
So as we close, I want to answer a question. Essentially the question was this, "I struggle with sadness and loneliness. But I am so overwhelmed with the things I need to get done in my life. I'm a parent, I work all the things. How do I do this work when I have such a busy life? It feels so overwhelming." And I really love this question. I want to give you a couple of really practical nuggets, especially, with sadness and also loneliness. Though sadness and loneliness are not the same thing, but they are similar in one way. And that is that they scare us because they can take us over.
And, so, the thing with both sadness and loneliness is that when they take us over, when they get big, they literally depress or suppress body function. So they're the opposite of activating. Activating emotions are things like anxiety, anger, those amp us up, they get us going.
Sadness and loneliness slow us down. They suppress us. That's where the word depression comes on. They depress some of our bodily functions.
And, so, as is suggested in this question and it's like, "I don't have time to be sad. I don't have time to be lonely." And, so, I want to address that briefly here because that's very real, I get it. I mean, we're busy parents, we're working. And you can start to maybe feel those emotions tug at your soul and you're like, "I don't have time for this." And I hear that all the time.
And here is what I want to say, a couple of things about that. Structure is your friend. And in order to build trust with those emotions, so that they don't take you over. Because here's the thing if you don't honor them, and if you don't tend to them a little bit, they will start to come out. They'll come out sideways. They'll overtake you when you least expect it. So you don't want to completely ignore them, but you can build trust with them and you do it by scheduling it.
And here is an example, if you're a parent and you've got a bunch of kids. And you've got a kid come home from school and they've had a really bad day. And they want to tell you all about it because their friends were mean to them, and they're really okay, they're not dying. They're not in an emergency. And you've got stuff to do. You've got a commitment. And you cannot just drop everything and be present to their every emotion. When you've built trust with your child, you can say to your child, "Listen, I want to hear all about it. I'm so sorry this happened to you. I can't do it right now, but we're going to circle back later tonight after dinner. I've got time after dinner, I want to sit down and I want to hear all about it."
You schedule it and then you got to circle back because you're building trust with them. And you can do this with your kids and it's actually healthy because it teaches them they're going to be okay in that emotion. They're not going to die. You're going to be there for them. You can't drop everything in this moment, but you're going to circle back, so you build trust. You're teaching them emotional tolerance that they can tolerate their emotions.
A couple of things are going on there that are really valuable. This gets into healthy boundaries. "I want to be present to you, I can't do it right now. So here's the time that we're going to do it.” It's the same with these parts of our souls, this is the goal.
Now, again, at the front end of this work, you may need to schedule the time with a therapist. Because if you've never looked at your sadness or there's been a lot of loneliness there, that you haven't wanted to look at. You will want to do that with a therapist who can help you pace that process.
But this is the goal, I want to paint you a picture of when you schedule that time. When you notice, "Man, I am sad about that and I don't have time to be sad about that now." Instead of shoving it aside, you mentally think to yourself, "Where can I talk about that grief? Can I call a friend and say, 'Hey, listen, can we take a walk on Saturday, I need to talk to you about something?'
Can you tell a neighbor, 'Hey, listen, could you have coffee with me tomorrow? There's something I need to get off my chest.'" And what you're saying to that part of you is, "I see you there; I am not going to just shove you aside. I've scheduled some time to really dig into you, or I'm going to schedule some time to journal about you later today."
And this leads me into tip number two. When you are reaching out to a friend, to a neighbor, even to a therapist, to someone at church. Whomever it may be, to your small group, communicate on behalf of that sadness, on behalf of that loneliness versus from it.
Here is what it sounds like to speak on behalf of it. "Hey safe person, who I trust,
I am going through something. I'm not sure what it is, but I wanted you to know that I'm struggling with some loneliness. I'm struggling with some sadness. Would you be available to talk it through with me? Could we have coffee? Could we have lunch? Could we take a walk this weekend? Because I'm noticing this and I need to have a place to talk about it."
What friend isn't going to be like, "Yes, I'm there for you, let's do it." Because you are taking responsibility for that emotion when you speak on behalf of it. You're saying, "Here is what's going on with me. I'm aware of it; I need some support for it. Would you come alongside me as together we begin to unpack it?" This is friendship, this is connection.
And it's so different than just downloading on a friend.
So when we first name, and befriend, and extend compassion for ourselves and say, "Here's that sadness again. You're welcome here but, man, I don't have time for you right now. Gosh, loneliness is really closing in. It's not good, I'm going to work but, then, I'm coming home and there's that loneliness. Or it's just a little too lonely on the weekends or when my kids aren't at home with me, boy, that loneliness is there. I'm lonely in my marriage even. I don't know what to do with that, but I need to get support for that."
When you focus and you befriend, and you're not shaming yourself. And you're a little bit differentiated from it. You can actually reach out and get the help that you need in a more strategic way, that honors the busyness of your life. That says, "I don't have time to do this this week but, boy, this weekend I'm getting some support for that part of me.
And you start to care for that part of you, just as you would care for a child in your own family.
I want to remind you, again, today, as we close, that if you are suffering. If you have sadness inside of you. If you are lonely, there is a God of the universe who honors those parts of you, who loves those parts of you. Who wants to help you create healthy, beautiful, boundary lines within your own soul where we can get comfort to those parts of you. Where we can get community to those parts of you. I love the psalm that says, "God is a father to the fatherless, a defender of the widows. He sets the lonely in families, He leads out the prisoners with singing."
It starts with honoring, with naming, with befriending. And, then, with God's help getting those resources to the lonely, to the sad parts of your soul that are so precious and so worthy of your care and God's love.
< Outro >
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The Best of You. Be sure to check out the show notes for any resources and links mentioned in the show. You can find those on my website at dralisoncook.com. That's Alison with one L- cook.com.
Before you forget, I hope you'll follow the show now so that you don't miss an episode. And I'd love it if you'd go ahead and leave a review. It helps so much to get the word out. 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.
So many of us live at war with ourselves. We hate our anxiety or battle with fear. We beat ourselves up or try to get rid of these parts of us. But this approach only makes things worse. One of the most surprising ways to calm your anxiety is to stop waging war against it. In today's episode we discuss how to honor your fear and soothe your anxiety so that you are in charge of them, not the other way around.
Here's what we cover:
1. A picture of healthy internal boundaries
2. How anxiety tries to protect us
3. The surprising truth about fear
4. How to establish healthy boundaries with both fear and anxiety
5. Fear and the Bible
6. 5 Steps to work through fear and anxiety
Be sure to pick up your 3 free Boundaries for Your Soul resources here.
Thanks to our sponsors:
Organifi -Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
Hiya Health-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
Resources
- Get 46% off Boundaries for Your Soul & The Best of You here.
- Inside Out Movie Trailer
- IFS Institute
- Find a Christian IFS Therapist
- Episode 39: Boundaries for Your Soul—How to Navigate Your Overwhelming Thoughts & Feelings
- Episode 40: 5 Steps to Healing Painful Emotions & Why Parts of Us Get Stuck in the Past
- Mindsight, by Dr. Dan Siegel
- Genesis 1
- Psalm 16:5-6
- Exodus 4:1-10
- Luke 12
- "The wildness is gentled out of a personality at war with itself." Disciplines of the Spirit by Howard Thurman
- Resources for support
Transcript
Alison: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. Where we are in the third episode, in this six-week journey into healthy boundaries for your soul. And before we get started, just in case you haven't, yet, had a chance to go pick up those three free resources. They are still there available for you.
It's a map of the soul, which we went through in episode 39. There's an 11-day PDF devotional that will take you through, basically, the biblical background for some of these key concepts, that we're talking about in this series. And then there's a guided audio reflection. It's a 10 to 12-minute guided exercise where I walk you through those five steps we talked about in episode 40.
You can actually extend the length of it. This is really helpful when you're first learning to pay attention to the contents of your own soul. To listen to what's happening inside of you, as I guide you through it.
You can just pause it if you need more time. Don't feel like you have to go at the pace of that guided audio. Just pause it, take the time you need, and then hit play for the next question prompt. Those resources are available for free on my website.
And you'll also find there that link to get both my books; Boundaries for Your Soul and The Best of You for essentially the price of one book. It works out to be 46% off when you buy them together. It's just a great bundle that my publisher has put together just for you.
So in episodes 39 and 40, we talked about what it means to have different parts of your soul. What are those different categories of parts are. We also talk through a five-step process of getting to know a part of your soul; to focus on it, befriend it, and invite God to be near it. To unburden it from any belief burdens, or feeling burdens, or messages all the way from the past that are still operating, often, outside of your subconscious awareness.
And then to reintegrate that part of you into your soul in a healthier way. And, today, and for the next few weeks, we're going to get into how to set boundaries with specific emotions. We're getting into this idea of internal boundaries and I'm going to talk more, in today's episode, about what that means. And then we're going to get into fear and anxiety, today. And then we'll move through some of the different emotions over the next few weeks.
The most commonly researched emotions in psychology, there's five of them. They're happiness — that's the only "Positive" quote-unquote emotion on this list. The others are sadness, fear, anger, and disgust.
Disgust is an interesting emotion that's linked to our morality. It's very much linked to this idea of judgment, disdain, and even shame. So it's a really interesting emotion. And if you've seen that movie, I've talked about it, I think, in every episode, the Pixar movie, Inside Out, those are the five emotions that they feature as characters in that movie. It's happiness, they call it joy.
- Sadness
- Anger
- Fear
- And disgust.
So these are very common emotions. So here's the thing, emotions are complicated. They're connected, and I really like how this IFS model, that we're working through, it talks about emotions as connected to these parts of us.
Emotions are connected to beliefs that you hold. They're connected to memories that you have. They're connected to a whole narrative about your experiences, in this world, that go all the way back to childhood. They're linked to complex neurological systems inside of you. We don't just have emotions in a vacuum, they're complicated.
So, for example, sadness, when you experience sadness, usually, it's associated with a lot of things that you believe about sadness. Your own relationship to sad events. The ways those events have impacted you, in the present. The ways in which sad events have impacted you in the past. You may have created narratives around sadness, such as, "I've always been sad."
"I'm always destined to be sad. I don't know what happiness feels like."
Same with anger. Anger might be tied to certain messages you've come to believe about yourself. "People are never trustworthy."
"People will always let me down." And that goes back all the way to memories you have stored from your past. So these all tie into those burdens, we talked about in step four. Where these parts of us carry burdens, and often these burdens show up as emotions.
So emotions are complicated, and emotion is tied to a part of us that has a whole narrative about what's happening in front of us. And emotions are linked to each other as well. Anger often shows up as a way to keep pain or sorrow away. Sometimes we get mad at ourselves when we feel fearful or even when we feel sad.
Sometimes we exile our anger and that's when anxiety can kick up. When we're overthinking, overanalyzing, trying to keep everybody happy. And really what we need to do is get to the root of some anger that will empower us to take action. So these emotions, also, have relationships with each other. And this is, again, why I love this movie, Inside Out, even though it's a kid's movie, is it shows those interrelationships. The way that these emotions compete for authority in our soul.
Sometimes these emotions are too close to us. Sometimes they are too far away when we exile them. Some of these emotions we wish we had less of, we want more space from. And some of them we've disowned, we've denied, we've shoved aside, and we actually need them to come in a little closer.
All of these emotions need our leadership from that place inside, where the Holy Spirit lives. Where we're the best of who we are. Where we can name what's happening in our souls and lead ourselves wisely. And this is where we get into internal boundaries.
So what do we mean by setting boundaries with an emotion? Because typically when we think about boundaries we think about our external relationships. "I need better boundaries with my parents."
"I need better boundaries with my kids."
"I need better boundaries with my friends, with my work." Almost always, when people come to me and say, "I need better boundaries." They are not talking about the contents of their own soul. We're talking about these other people.
The truth is we need both. We need healthy boundaries inside of ourselves and we need healthy boundaries with other people, and the two are very much linked. For example, guilt is a great example. A lot of us have a hard time setting healthy boundaries with other people. Because we have been taken over by a part of us that is a guilt-tripping part of us.
And, so, we have to learn to set healthy boundaries, internally, with a part of us that guilt trips us erroneously. Not the true guilt of conviction, but the fault guilt of always thinking that we need to do what other people want us to do. We have to first differentiate from that part of us, internally. Set healthy boundaries with our guilt. Learn to reintegrate guilt in a healthy way, so that we can set healthy boundaries with other people.
These two things, these two different types of boundaries, work in tandem. This idea of psychological boundaries is rooted all the way back, in the mid-20th century. With psychiatrist Murray Bowen, who was an American psychiatrist who really developed Family Systems Theory. And, again, we talked about the family as a system of interrelated parts. This is our literal family. If you think to your own family, there's a bunch of individuals who all work together as a system. And just as I said with our emotions, no one individual in a family exists in a vacuum.
Every individual in your family; whether it's your kids, whether it's you, whether it's your spouse. Whoever it is that lives in your household, is both shaped by the other family members and shapes family members. We both are shaped by and we exert influence over the other people in our lives.
This is the crucible of healthy boundaries. Families are a collection of individuals. And there are two things that go on in those early formative years, as part of a family, whatever your family look like. The first word is interoception. Interoception is all the perceptions, noise, and sensations inside of you, that you have to learn how to make sense of. It's the cues your body is sending. It's your fight/flight response in your nervous system. As a baby it was hunger; hunger is rooted in interoception.
How do you know you're hungry if you're not connected to your digestive system, and the signals it's sending to your brain? And that makes you cry as a baby, that's interoception and it also gets at our emotional cues. And then there's exteroception. Exteroception is how we take in data from the surrounding world, through our five senses. Through what we see, feel, taste, smell, and touch, both are important.
We need to attend to what's happening inside our bodies, inside ourselves. And we need to be able to read the cues that are coming to us from the people around us. And a lot of us, I talk about this in The Best of You, and I think, especially, women are over-conditioned toward exteroception, we read the room. We read the room. We know what's going on with everybody around us far before we know what's going on inside our own selves, both matter. And the family is the crucible for this.
And, again, getting back to Bowen, he emphasized the importance of boundaries as a way to create health. As we exist both as individuals and as part of a collective, it's both. And boundaries are the key to that, and this is what I want you to understand about boundaries.
So often in our current vernacular, I hear boundaries being talked about as this negative thing. "I need boundaries" is a way of saying, "I need to get that person out of my life."
"I need more space from that person."
"I need more distance from that person."
Now that may well be true, but the reality of boundaries is they're not negative. We need boundaries in all of our relationships. We need boundaries because we exist both as unique selves and as individuals. There is no one on this earth; this is both the good news and the frustrating news of existence. There is no one, on this earth, who is exactly like you. Who will see experience, feel, and understand the world exactly as you do. You are a unique individual and that's beautiful. You are as unique as every snowflake. God made every single one of us completely unique. We have a completely unique experience of the world around us.
If you've heard that phrase people will say "No two children grow up in the same family." And it's true., everybody's perception of their family is a little bit different because we're all just so unique. And we're processing all that data, both internally and externally, in slightly different ways. This is our individual selfhood. This is what I talk about in The Best of You.
This is not a bad thing and, simultaneously, we are a bunch of selves that are intrinsically connected with a bunch of other-selves. We do not exist in isolation. We do not thrive in isolation. We need other people. Other people influence who we become.
And, so, we are also part of a whole, we are part of a collective, and boundaries are what help us navigate that. Boundaries help me understand where I end and you begin. Your emotions are not my emotions. You do not read my mind. You may not even understand how I feel or what I think, and that does not make you a bad person. It makes you a different person. We are different. We are differentiated from each other. And, again, this is both the joy and sometimes the frustration of relationships.
I mean, wouldn't it be nice if someone just completely stepped inside your own skin and saw the world as you did? But in a way, also, it wouldn't be nice, it's going to be boring. The reality is there's beauty in the different parts. There's beauty in the whole, in the harmony, in our relationships with other people. Your perspective helps me understand my perspective.
Even our differences; even where you see something slightly in a different way than I do. When we have that conversation it's like "I don't see it exactly as you do, but that was helpful to me because now I understand my own perspective a little bit better. And, now, I hope you understand your perspective a little bit better." This is Psych 101. This is foundational. And when you think about all these problems we're having in our world today.
It all gets back to this fundamental reality that there's a me, there's a you, and we are different. We have different perspectives. We have different experiences.
We have different lived realities. We have different ways of interpreting both our internal world and the cues that are coming at us from our external world. And the beauty of a relationship is we need each other to arrive at increasing degrees of truth, of reality.
I do not have the full take on truth, on what is real. I need your perspective to help me enlarge my perspective. You need my perspective to help you enlarge your perspective. This is the beauty of relationships. We need to be firmly rooted in our own perspective and how we are seeing the world, and confident enough in that to understand I also need to hear your perspective. Your perspective is going to help enhance mine.
It's not going to take me over; it's going to help me see the truth, and to see reality, and to see what's going on more realistically, more honestly, more accurately. This is the way God made us, and boundaries are what help us delineate those differences.
And this comes from the work of Bowen. Bowen believed that healthy boundaries are essential for individuals to develop both a clear sense of self and to avoid getting caught up in what psychologists call enmeshment. Which means, "I lose track of myself and, so, I just take on your identity."
And we see this happening in relationships. When you don't have a strong sense of self, you start to just like what other people like. There's a movie, from the '90s, with Julia Roberts, it's called Runaway Bride and you see this played out in that movie. Where she just takes on the identity of all her different fiancé. And then she ends up getting to the altar and she freaks out because she's like, "I don't even know who I am; I've just taken on your identity." And it's a funny, cute romcom, but the truth is it happens to us. If we don't have a sense of ourselves.
We just take on the identities of the people around us. And then the other extreme is also true, where we just are so full of our own perspective. This is where we get into narcissism or counter-dependent, where we don't care what anybody else thinks. We just don't care because it's just all about me. Neither of those extremes is healthy.
Healthy boundaries help us delineate relationships where you get to be you, I get to be me. And then together we get to negotiate a way forward that's more beautiful, that's more whole. That gives us, together, a combined, a shared experience of reality that's actually more complete.
So in this work of setting healthy, internal boundaries with emotions, with parts of ourselves, we're really getting into this interoception. And, again, so many of the people I see, especially women, this is where we struggle. The internal life, the contents of our own souls are foreign to us in so many ways. We don't know how to read the cues that are coming to us from inside our own souls. So this work of establishing internal boundaries is exactly the same as that of external family. It's this family of parts that you have inside of you.
And, oftentimes, emotions are the best first line of how we begin to understand we have a part of us. It's like, "Oh, there's that anger. There's that sadness that I can't shake. There's that fear." These are connected to parts of us.
They're our first window, our lived experience, of these parts of us that we need to begin to get to know so that we can differentiate from these parts of us. They are not all of who we are and establish these healthy boundaries.
So these different emotions can exist within healthy boundary lines, within our souls, because we need these emotions. None of them is bad. We need them, but we need to be able to navigate through them. So that they stay within healthy boundary lines, within our souls.
I want to just pause here and remind you of this beautiful truth, that God is the originator of boundaries. And just to underscore this idea that healthy boundaries are not a negative, they're not a bad thing. Sometimes they're frustrating and it's hard work, both internally it's hard work, and externally it's hard work. But if you think about the creation story, the very first thing that God did was to establish boundary lines. He delineated day from night, land from the sea. He engaged in the process of naming and differentiating different things, one from the other.
These boundary lines are part of the created order. They're pre-fall, if you will. There's this beautiful harmony, this order, that God creates out of chaos. And this is exactly the same thing that happens in our families, in our relationships, we create order out of chaos. And it's the same thing that happens inside our souls. We begin to create order out of chaos, by participating in this work of naming and delineating the parts of our soul.
And just think about it, I want to cast a vision here for a second. What an amazing feeling it is if you've glimpsed this, even, in your family, in your marriage, in your friendships, where the boundary lines fall in pleasant places. Where everybody involved is thriving as individuals and as part of the collective. Where as an individual, who you are, your identity, your talents, and your preferences are honored. And you are also deeply invested in honoring the talents, preferences, opinions, and needs, of the people around you.
It's such a beautiful feeling. You have those glimpses in your family when everybody is okay. And they're just being their beautiful, individual selves and at peace with each other simultaneously. This is the hope, this is the design, and we have lots of ruptures in our families, even, in the healthiest of families. The goal is not perfection.
But when you get that glimpse of, "Oh, this is so cool when it works." When we're just in sync together. When we're all just thriving, this is a picture of healthy boundary lines. And it's the same inside your own soul. Where it's not the absence of some of these emotions, but there's just this being at peace with.
There's being at peace with the different parts of yourself and you're just thriving, and you're good, and you're at peace. And it's not because you're just happy, there's other emotions involved there. And you're also at peace with the different parts of yourself, with the different parts of your own story. Even with some of the hard parts of what's happening in your life. This is the work of naming. This is the work of healthy boundaries for your soul.
Let's get into fear and anxiety. These are two of the most common emotions. In fact, fear is the most common emotion mentioned in the Bible. Which is very interesting because a lot of folks write to me and feel like they've been shamed for feelings of fear.
That there's a lot in the Bible that says it's wrong to feel fear, which I'm going to debunk today in this episode. And then we get at anxiety, which is a cousin of fear, but they're not exactly the same thing.
Anxiety is the most commonly reported mental health concern globally. Globally. It's just so common. So many people deal with anxiety and we don't really want to feel anxious. These are not emotions we want to have. And, yet, I would maintain, I would set forth before you today, that these are part of our God-given design, they're not bad.
The goal is not to eradicate all anxiety and fear, at least, on this side of heaven. We need these emotions to survive. We want to get them within healthy boundary lines. Let's start with anxiety. Anxiety is a normal and often healthy emotion. Everyone experiences it, at some point in their life. It's a feeling of worry or unease about something. It can become intense, or excessive, or maybe long-lasting.
It might start to interfere with your day-to-day activities. That's when we start to talk about an anxiety disorder, where if for a prolonged period of time beyond what is considered quote-unquote "Normal". Your anxiety is inhibiting your day-to-day functioning. You might need to get on medication. You might need specific therapeutic techniques. This is very common, it can happen for a wide variety of reasons. I'm not going to go into that today. But at its baseline, anxiety is actually a normal emotion that all humans experience.
It helps keep us safe. There are things in the world about which we should be a little bit anxious or even a lot anxious. Same as sadness. There are things in the world about which we should be sad. There are things in the world about which we should be angry.
Anxiety is no different. It gets problematic when it gets extreme and it starts to take us over. But in a healthy amount, within healthy boundary lines, anxiety can signal the presence of a real fear that needs your attention. It can inform you when you are overwhelmed, when your mind or your body is overwhelmed. It can protect you by warning you about things that might go wrong. It can alert you to danger. It can remind you that you are tender, that you are a sensitive soul, and that you are not a machine. That you are a human being.
Anxiety tends to be future-oriented and creative. It tends to think up all things for you to worry about. Things that may or may not actually have a bearing on your current reality. It tends to try to protect you, anxiety is a protector. When we talked about those managers, firefighters, and exiles, anxiety tends to be a manager that's trying to protect you. It's trying to keep you safe.
And, oftentimes, when it gets extreme it can keep you from facing the real fear, that actually needs your caring and can be almost a distraction, by stirring up all this worry about things that don't really need your attention, don't really need your worry. And keeping you from the actual fear, the vulnerability, that actually does need your attention.
So anxiety functions as a protector. Fear, on the other hand, comes in as that exiled vulnerability. Fear tends to be focused on a specific present concern. Anxiety tends to step in when we have an untended fear.
So I want you to think about that, for a second. An example I like to give about anxiety is that it just tends to be all these floating distractions. It's like, "This could happen." And it's like that game of whack-a-mole at the fair. It's like, "This could go wrong." It's just all this stuff going on in your mind.
And, sure, any one of those things could go wrong, but it's completely missing the point of the root of the issue, almost, always. Which is one of these basic primal fears, which tend to be along the lines of, "I'm going to be rejected."
"I'm going to be abandoned."
"I'm going to fail."
"I'm going to make a fool of myself."
"I'm going to be alone."
These existential fears are usually at the root when all that anxiety kicks up. All that internal chatter, "What if?"
"What if I'm going to be alone?"
"What if nobody's going to love me?"
"What if I fail?"
"What if the floor falls out underneath me and everything falls apart?" Which is a fear of losing control. There's a lot of that underneath anxiety. And it's fascinating, to me, that distinction that so often all of that worry really goes right back to one of these really basic existential fears. Of "I'm going to make a fool of myself."
"I'm going to be alone."
"I'm going to be rejected."
"I'm going to be abandoned."
"The floor is going to fall out."
"I'm going to just spin out, no one will be there."
And, so, much of this goes back to attachment wounds. To our childhood, to being made fun of. To the feeling of being alone, when someone did leave us. So much of these very deep-rooted fears go all the way back there. And when we can get to the root of them and go, "What is really the worst thing that's going to happen? Well, somebody might not like me."
"Well, someone might walk away from me."
"The ceiling may fall, right?"
"The worst case might happen. I might lose someone to something." And here's the thing when we can get to the root of the fear and go, "That might happen." It's not brainwashing yourself. It's not telling yourself those things might not happen. Sometimes the hard stuff happens. Listen, I've been a therapist for a long time. I've also been a human for a long time. Sometimes the hard stuff happens, I'm not going to try to tell you otherwise. But what I will tell you is when you get to the root of that fear and you go, "That hard thing happens, I'm not alone."
And you can start to face that fear. And you can start to resource that fear. And you can start to get support for that fear. And, then, you can start to be brave. We can't be brave if we don't have fear. We're not human machines, we're human beings.
When we get to the root of our fear, there's an opportunity to go, "What do I need to be brave? What support do I need? What assistance do I need? What reassurance do I need from God, from the people around me? What help do I need to ask for, to be brave in this situation?"
Because this situation is kicking up all my anxiety. My anxiety is just telling me, "Red alert. Do not go there, this is only going to end badly. All these things are going to happen." But I need to do this hard thing, whatever it is.
And, so, then, you get to the root of your fear, which is vulnerability, "I am terrified, I'm going to lose everybody I love if I do this brave thing."
"I am terrified, I'm going to make a complete fool of myself. I will be a complete failure."
Whatever the fear is, "I'll fall apart." Anxiety often thinks it's keeping us together. Because anxiety is activating your nervous system, which keeps you in that fight mode, so it's energizing. And it's like if your anxiety steps back, just a little bit. If you get just a little bit of distance from it. You don't understand that feeling of not having that activated nervous system, that can feel very foreign, initially. And that's another fear that anxious protectors will have.
"Who will you be without me?" Anxiety will say, "I've been your best friend since you were very young. I've been there for you." And it's not untrue, and that's why we want to extend compassion and befriend these protectors. They have worked hard to help us survive.
And, so, I'm already getting into the five steps here. But when you begin to focus and name anxiety, "There is a part of me that is anxious about this." And you differentiate from it, and you name that. It's just creating this cacophony inside of all the things that could go wrong and it's not helping me anymore.
And you begin to focus on it, and you name it, and you sense where it is in your body, you get an image of it. And, then, you befriend it and you thank it. And you say, "Man, anxiety, you have been trying to help me all these years. You've been trying to be a friend to me." And, so, you don't shame yourself for it, but you differentiate from it.
And you say, "You know what, anxiety, I need to ask you to take a step back." And then you find out, "What are you afraid will happen, anxiety, if you were to take a step back?"
And you'll sense a sense of, "Well, what will I do? Anxiety is how I show up in the world. It's how I protect myself. It's who I am."
What if it's not? What if you could get just a little bit of space from your anxiety, and tap into that spirit-led place inside of you and discover other parts of you? Oftentimes, there's an angry part of you that is much more equipped to take brave action. Anger's a little bit braver than anxiety. Sometimes there's a part of you that needs to grieve. And then, also, there's this fearful exile that simply needs your presence, not all your scenario planning.
That simply needs you to say, "It's okay to be afraid. You're frightened, it's okay this is scary. But let's make it a little bit scary. Let's resource ourselves compassionately. Let's get ourselves the help that we need, so we move this into a little bit of afraid versus giant afraid. So that we can actually take some brave action."
It takes fear to have courage, and our anxiety is a little bit nervous about that. If it keeps us distracted, if it keeps us just worried, we may not actually get to that place of grounded courage. That says, "This is a little bit scary and I can be brave. I can be brave." And when anxiety is held within these healthy boundary lines, it'll let you do that. It'll be like, "Okay, it makes me a little bit nervous. I'm not sure I like this but okay."
It doesn't necessarily go away altogether. And I want you to hear me say that fear and anxiety don't, necessarily, go away altogether. We need them to survive. But when they're contained within healthy boundary lines. And the anxiety dials it down just a little bit and says, "Okay, I'll stop just throwing out at you all these landmines. All these things that I'm worried about."
Take a deep breath anxiety is rooted in the nervous system. We've got to take that deep breath and calm the nervous system. We don't analyze our way out of anxiety, typically, that just adds more fuel to the fire. Instead, we have to breathe our way through anxiety. We have to take deep breaths. We have to ground ourselves in our body. We have to become more aware of our physical surroundings.
And, then, we come into contact with that vulnerability inside that says, "Yes, I'm afraid. I am afraid this is going to be hard. This is going to be scary. This person might not like this. This is going to feel foreign to me. This is uncomfortable to me. This is new for me, I don't usually do this, but I'm going to be brave."
And suddenly we're tapped into that calm, clear place inside where fear is there and, even, anxiety is still there a little bit. We can still feel its energy fluttering off to the side, but we're tapped into our God-given selves. We're tapped into the best of who we are, and we start to lead ourselves through it. And we start to take one brave step at a time. And we've got some healthy boundary lines. We've dialed down our anxiety to a dull roar. It might still be there, but it's no longer taken us over.
We've connected with the fearful part of us. We've honored it. We've even validated it, yes, it is scary, It is scary to do this brave thing. To say no to this relationship.
To take on this new project that you're terrified to take on. You're not sure if you can do it. You're afraid you'll fail, you'll just completely be annihilated. These fears are so existential, "We'll be alone."
"No one will ever love us." We validate that part of us.
We say, "It's okay, I see you. God sees you. We're here, it's okay. Put your hand over your heart. All right, let's take it one brave step at a time." And suddenly you're leading yourself, those parts of you don't need to go away. They do need to learn to let you lead them, not the other way around.
I want to touch briefly on fear in the Bible. I hear from people almost every day, struggling with the fact that they felt shame about their fear. Shame about their anxiety. And I just want to be really clear that this is not a biblical understanding of either fear or anxiety.
In fact, we see fear all over the Bible. Some of the greatest heroes of our faith were very fearful, were very anxious. Moses is probably the one that is the most common. You just see a lot of anxiety, a lot of fearfulness, in Moses. He didn't want to step up and lead when God called him to do it. He was fearful.
Some people think when he talked about having a speech impediment, that he may, in fact, have had a stutter. That he may have had a hard time getting his words out. Maybe he had a fear of public speaking, I don't know.
But what I do know is that he was fearful and God didn't shame him for that. God honored that it was real, it was true, and He named it. God brought him Aaron and He said, "I'm going to resource you. I'm going to get you support. I'm not going to ask you to do this alone." And He brought him, Aaron, his brother. And He said, "Aaron's going to help you." And there's a lesson there for us that we don't need to feel shame in our fear.
When Jesus shows up with people and says, "Do not be afraid." It's not a shaming thing. It's not a "What's wrong with you? Why are you fearful?"
It's a, "I see your fear and I'm here with you. I see your fear, I get it. I see it, let's name it, let's call it out. There's fear here and I'm with you." There's a reassurance. I love this, where Jesus says to His followers in Luke chapter 12, "I'm speaking to you as dear friends, do not be bluffed into silence or insincerity by the threats of religious bullies. True, they can kill you." He's not trying to brainwash them.
"Yes, they can hurt you, sure, but then what can they do?" There's nothing they can do to your soul, your core being.
"Don't be intimidated by all this bully talk." He says, "You are worth more than a million canaries." In verses six through seven. "Don't be afraid of missing out you're my dearest friends. The Father wants to give you the very kingdom itself." Verse 32.
Jesus assumes that His followers will be frightened by very real threats in the world around them. That they might be intimidated by bullies. That they might be fearful of going against the crowd, of losing people, of being rejected. These were real fears.
He didn't try to pretend like they weren't. He brings their fear out into the open, He names it. And when we name without shame, fear has a way of losing its power, same with anxiety. When we name without shame, "Yes, there you are, anxiety, I see you there. I'm going to take some deep breaths. I'm going to ground myself. I'm going to ask for some support. I'm not going to shame myself for this."
When we shame ourselves for things, it kicks up even more tension, even more chaos, inside our souls. When we name, we start to tame. That's what Dan Siegel says "To name is to tame." It helps bring relief to these parts of us that gets so anxious, so fearful, and so worked up.
So here we're going to go through the five steps. If you deal with a lot of anxiety, a lot of worry, whatever degree it is focusing on it simply means to name it. This is what it is; naming without shame. When you focus and you befriend, you're simply saying, "Yes, this is a part of me. A part of me worries a lot. A part of me feels anxious a lot."
I just named that. I just bless that part of me. "You know what, sometimes I don't like it. And you know what, I'm going to forgive myself for that, for the ways I've beat myself up for that. Because you know what? This is also a beautiful part of me. This is a part of me that's sensitive.
This is a part of me that wants to be prepared. This is a part of me that likes to plan ahead. That likes to be equipped to deal with uncertainty. This is a beautiful part of me." And, yes, sometimes, does it get out of hand? Yes. Yes, it does and that's okay, that's when we just name it to tame it. Not to shame it. We just name it to say, "Oh, yes, there you are, old friend, worry, old friend, anxiety, I see that you've flared up."
That's a cue; what are we afraid of here? And then name the fear; "I'm afraid I don't have what it takes."
"I'm afraid I'm not good enough."
"I'm afraid I'm going to be alone."
"I'm afraid they're all going to hate me."
"I'm afraid I'm going to be a fool." Let's just name it; "You can be here too." And you start to just name the different parts of your soul, and they start to soften, they start to relax.
Again, this isn't magic, sometimes this can take years. If you've had years of struggling with anxiety, with fear, this doesn't just happen overnight. But you start to focus and you befriend, and you just bless these parts of you. You just bless them, God sees them. God does not shame you for them, and then you invite God in. And you say, "Hey, God, here we are again, here's that anxiety."
Not to magically take it away. We can pray from that anxious part of us. Those are these Hail Mary prayers where we're like, "God, please, please, please." And almost it's activating to your nervous system. "God, please, take this anxiety away." We're praying from that anxious part of us. This is a little different; when we name we befriend, and we say, "There it is."
And, then, we get a little distance from. And, then, we say, "God, you see that anxiety. Help me take a deep breath and connect to that deep place inside where the Holy Spirit lives.
Where there's calmness in my nervous system. Where I'm embodied. Where I have feet on the ground. Where I am in touch with the body you gave me. Where maybe there's another person here who reminds me, 'I'm okay.'"
This becomes a form of prayer. It's a deep breath prayer of "You see the anxiety, too, God, and you don't shame me for it.
You help me resource myself through it in, sometimes, very practical, concrete ways." And then we unburden, what are some of these old messages that the fear underneath the anxiety still tells us?
Things like, "I'm just not worthy; I'm not good enough."
"I'm going to be alone; I'm going to be abandoned."
"No one will ever want to be with me."
"I'm going to be a fool."
"No one's ever going to love me."
"This is just all of who I am."
These are some of those fears. "I'll just always be this way." We just name them, again, not to fix them, not to rationalize our way out of them. But to just name them and then unburden them. What if? And this is where that beautiful what-if question comes in, "What if I am worthy?"
"What if God does love me, no matter what?"
"What if, even, if someone leaves, I'll be okay?"
"What if I'm stronger than I think?"
"What if I'm more courageous than parts of me believe?"
"What if I'm more anchored in goodness, in truth, in beauty, in God's kindness, than I really feel?"
"What if it's really going to be okay?"
"What if I'm not alone?" What if? You don't even have to convince yourself of it at this point. Just what if? This is how you begin to unburden.
"What if that part of me that, so long ago, started to believe that no one would ever bother with me? That people will always leave me. What if that part of me could unburden that belief, find freedom, and find the healing that that's not true? And what if I was worth people staying? And what if I'm still worth people staying?"
And you know what, even if they don't stay, in this case, there will be someone who will stay. There will be. There will be someone who will stay. This is the way we start to unburden, and we get to the root of that fear. It's brave to face these fears. It's so brave. And don't do this work alone. If you've been dealing with a lot, and you've been holding a lot in, don't do this work alone. Get someone to come alongside you, a therapist, a coach, a spiritual director, a small group, a dear friend. But just get to the root of that fear and just name it.
And here's the thing, it may not go away entirely, but you're going to resource it. You're going to reintegrate that fear and say, "Guess what, fear? Now you get to be a part of me that reminds me that I need support. I need resourcing. This thing that's hard for me to do is scary.
It's hard for me to get up on a stage and speak to a room full of people. And because it's hard for me and because I've been wounded there before. Because someone made fun of me in the past, I'm going to get you support, fearful part of me. I'm not going to make you do it alone, I see you. And I'm going to ask someone for help. And I'm going to learn what I need to help you stay calm when I go do this brave thing.
I need to say no to this person. I need to break off this relationship. And it's really scary to a part of me because it brings up all my old attachment wounds and I feel like they're going to leave me. But you know what, fearful part of me, I see you in that and I'm not going to shame you for that. And I'm going to get you support for that.
And, so, guess what, we're going to come up with a plan; where I'm going to talk to my therapist before I schedule that breakup. So I get you the support you need. I'm going to talk to that friend right before and right after that breakup or I'm going to journal right before and just let you fly free with all of your fears. And I'm going to honor and witness all of your fears, and I'm going to let you have your say.
And then we're going to close the journal. And then I'm going to pick up the phone and make that hard call, and we're going to do it together. We're going to do it together. So you don't have to go away, but I'm not going to let you dictate the decision."
Do you see how this starts to become the healthy boundary lines inside your own soul? You begin to create more spaciousness inside for your spirit-led self, for the best of you. For this God created you to start to kick in and lead you in freedom, and in truth.
This is a process of internal reconciliation. You're reconciling with parts of yourself. You're no longer at war with your anxiety, at war with your fear. You're not trying to get these parts of you to go away or just leave you. Instead, you're reconciling yourself to them.
You're going, "This is a part of me. This is a part of my story. And I'm going to be reconciled to the fact that I'm someone who sometimes deals with some anxiety, deals with some worry. I'm someone who has these fears from time to time. I'm reconciled to that. I'm at peace with that." Which doesn't mean resignation; it means I'm at peace with that. Which means I can lead myself through it with courage. I can lead myself through it with courage.
These parts of me are no longer my enemies. Instead, they're my cues; "Oh, my goodness, I've got to ground myself in my body. With anxiety in particular, I've got to take some deep breaths. I've got to slow things down, and I've got to be brave. I've got to be brave when it comes to facing this fear."
And I love this quote from Howard Thurman, who was a mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr., and he said it this way about reconciliation with the parts of ourselves. He said, "The wildness is gentle doubt of a personality at war with itself."
When we stop being at war with ourselves and we start to reconcile with these parts of ourselves. And just name them, and bless them, and befriend them.
And name them before God and invite God to be with them. Not to get God to magically make them go away, but to let God help us lead them. We start to gentle our way out of the wildness, out of the chaos, and we start to know ourselves. We start to understand ourselves, and we start to say, "Okay, this is a fear that I have."
Listen, just recently, I got a question from one of you about a fear of public speaking. And I thought to myself, "Well, isn't that ironic?" I have that fear and I publicly speak all the time, and it kicks up anxiety inside of me. It doesn't go away. But I've learned over time what resources I need to help me be brave when I do it.
And it is a delight and a joy to honor that fearful part of me. And not be at war with it and say, "Oh, you get to be here what do we need? Here's what we need before, and here's what we need after. And I am so proud of you that you showed up so bravely to let me do that hard thing." And suddenly I'm at peace with myself. I'm not trying to get rid of these parts of me that also make me who I am, and they make you who you are.
If you have these fears of getting up in front of other people. These fears of saying no to other people. These fears of trying something new; that's a little bit out of your comfort zone, don't eradicate that part of you, bless it. And see what it needs to help you be brave. We don't get these opportunities to be brave, to be so proud of ourselves if we don't first honor the fear.
Do you ever feel like a part of your soul is trapped in the past, holding you back from fully embracing the present and moving forward? Pain, fear, worry, or even bitterness can weigh heavy on our hearts and minds. This is a common experience for all of us at times. In today's episode, I guide you through a 5 step process of healing and growth. We'll discuss how to mend the parts of your soul that are causing you distress.
Here's what we cover:
1. 5 Steps to healing painful emotions
2. How to overcome criticism, shame, and judgment
3. 4 Questions to grow in self-discovery
4. A surprising way to pray throughout the day
5. Why parts of us struggle to experience God's love
Remember, this journey is a process, not a one-time event. With the right tools and guidance, you can learn to make peace with the parts of yourself.
Be sure to pick up your 3 free Boundaries for Your Soul resources here.
Thanks to our sponsors:
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Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
Resources
- Get 46% off Boundaries for Your Soul & The Best of You here.
- Inside Out Movie Trailer
- IFS Institute
- Find a Christian IFS Therapist
- Episode 39: Boundaries for Your Soul—How to Navigate Your Overwhelming Thoughts & Feelings
- "A part of you was left behind very early in your life: the part that never felt completely received. It is full of fears. Meanwhile, you grew up with many survival skills. But you want yourself to be one." -Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love
- Anatomy of the Soul, by Dr. Curt Thompson
- Mindsight, by Dr. Dan Siegel
- Matthew 11:28-30
- Luke 15:4
- Resources for support
Transcript
Alison: So last week, in episode 39, I walked you through a map of the soul. And we talked about how parts of the soul, any one of these three categories, whether it's your manager parts that won't stop working, won't stop pleasing, won't stop perfecting. Or if it's your firefighter parts that won't stop shutting down or numbing.
Or if it's these exiled parts, these more painful emotions right. If you're noticing in any one of these categories and don't worry too much about the technical terms.
We talked about what happens when any one part of you gets out of balance. When any one part of you starts to take you over in a way that is leading to behaviors, or feelings, or relationship patterns that aren't good for you.
And, so, today, I'm going to walk you through a five-step process of getting curious about the parts of your soul. This is a way of becoming your own inner detective. And just as you care for your own children, if you have children. Where sometimes you have to just really pay attention. You go, "There's something going on with my child. I don't really understand what it is, but they're not behaving as they usually do or they seem off emotionally."
And you have to become a detective; you have to start paying attention, asking questions, showing curiosity. You don't want your child to shut you out or push you away if you go in too hard, especially if they're older. If you're parenting young adult children, you have to be really tenuous in how you get curious about behaviors or emotions that you see that are concerning to you. But you just start paying attention, and you're trying to find your way in. You're trying to get to the root of what's going on. And it's the same process inside your own soul.
These parts of you need you to attune to them just as your children, in your real life, need your attunement. And, so, there are two keywords I want you to think about, as we walk through these five steps today.
Number one is getting curious. Showing curiosity toward yourself, and it's curiosity versus criticism. "I wonder why I just lashed out at that person."
"I wonder what's going on, that I'm still feeling the pain of that interaction."
"I wonder what causes me to always say yes when what I really want to say is, 'No, thank you'". Do you hear the tone of that curiosity? Versus how we typically talk to ourselves which is, "What is wrong with me? I'm so stupid."
Or "Why did I just do that again?" And you can almost feel the tension when you start to come down on yourself. Your whole body gets tense, and your nervous system, then, gets activated. But when you show curiosity. It's asking a question; "I'm curious, I wonder what happened? There's no shame, it is what it is. I may have to go back and apologize, sure. But really, I'm just curious about what was going on inside of me." It's such a powerful way to be with yourself.
And then the second word is Compassion. To show compassion toward yourself. Sometimes that can be a little harder for people, especially, if you're doing things or behaving in ways or feeling things you wish that you didn't. It's like, "Really, I'm supposed to be compassionate toward myself?" But the truth is this we heal in the context of compassion, not in the context of criticism, shame, and self-judgment.
And, so, those are two words I want you to think about throughout this episode. Get curious about what you notice inside yourself. Even as I'm talking, even as you're listening to this episode, just get curious. And also consider showing yourself compassion.
Here are the five steps. These are based, again, on that model of therapy called the Internal Family Systems Model of Therapy. They're a condensed, consolidated version that my co-author Kimberly Miller and I came up with for our book Boundaries for Your Soul, number one is focus. Now, this may sound counterintuitive to most of you. "Why would I want to focus on a negative or a painful emotion? Don't I want to not focus on it?"
But here's the thing, when you focus on an emotion, an unwanted feeling, a negative thought, about somebody else or about yourself. What you're doing is what psychologists call differentiating from it. When you become aware of an emotion and you name it, it's almost as if you bring it out in front of you. You get some distance from it. Instead of that emotion just taking you over and being what you feel.
So if you're noticing envy, for example, it's an uncomfortable feeling. And the minute you go, "Oh, my gosh, I'm dealing with envy right now. I don't like it, but that's what that is." You've just named it, and you've got a little distance from it.
When you differentiate from an emotion, you move into a different part of your brain. There's an actual, really, interesting neuroscience to this. Where your prefrontal cortex comes online and you begin to observe the emotion that you're having. So suddenly you're in two parts of your brain. You're not just in your amygdala, having all the feelings without that prefrontal cortex online to observe it.
So suddenly you're in two parts of your brain. You're observing, you're witnessing the emotion you're having. "Oh, my gosh, I'm angry." But that anger is now out in front of you, it's not taking you over.
"I think I'm sad. There's a little bit of loneliness there." Again, notice that curiosity, "I am aware that this thing is going on." Suddenly, it's inside of your conscious awareness, which is such a healthier place to be when it comes to your emotions.
When you're not aware that you're having that feeling, those emotions are operating. They're just operating outside of your conscious awareness. And who knows what you're going to do out of that emotion because they're there, but you're not in charge of them. But the minute you focus on the emotion. You name it, you bring it out in front of you. You might write it down, you might visualize it, and that's part of that guided audio reflection.
If you download that from my website, it's a process of sometimes people visualize the emotion, whatever it is. Whether you just name it, or write it down, you are becoming aware of it. And that awareness is key, suddenly, you're in charge of that emotion, not the other way around. You can see it more clearly.
When you focus on a painful emotion or a negative thought and get curious about it, you can give that part of you the leadership, the wisdom, or the care that it needs. And if you think about a doctor or a surgeon who's working to heal a wound. How can she heal that wound, that's acting out in some way, or causing pain in some way, without first finding it, focusing on it, and seeing it clearly?
So this step of focusing, not to hyper-focus on it, but to put your attention on that uncomfortable, that negative emotion, or that thought that's causing you frustration. "Oh, that's what that is." We're just naming it, no shame, no judgment, just naming. "I cannot stop comparing myself."
"I am worried. Worry has really gotten the best of me."
"I'm angry. Anger is really close to me right now." This is all part of focusing. It's naming without shame the emotion or the thought that you're having. Now, if you're having trouble naming or focusing on the thought, or the feeling that's causing you a problem, or that's trying to get your attention, here are some questions to help you.
"Where am I feeling this emotion in my body?" For example, do you notice your mind feeling like it's going to explode? Or do you notice tension in your body? Do you notice it in your heart? Like your heart is aching. Do you notice it like a pit in your stomach? Just getting a cue of how you're experiencing this emotion or thought in your body, can help you identify it better.
Another question you can ask yourself is, "If this was an image, what would it look like?" For example, you might feel it's just like fire coming out of your brain. That's how I feel when I'm angry, it's just like my head feels on fire. Or you might notice swirling, spinning thoughts, just going, going, going. Like a tick, tick, tick that you can't stop. And that's a form of worry or a form of overthinking.
You might notice yourself just feeling blank inside, like a blank wall or a brick wall. There are all sorts of ways that God has gifted us with imagination. And this is where our right brain, creativity kicks in to help us understand what's happening in our hearts, minds, and bodies.
And, so, if you have that sense of the way that you experience that emotion, or that thought as an image, it's a super helpful way to get clearer about it. This is how God made us. We're creative, we're imaginative beings. And, so, don't shy away from using your imagination to capture how you feel.
Another way is to think, "Is there a thought or a belief that you can focus on?" So instead of it being an emotion or a feeling in your body, is there a word, or a thought, or a belief that is taking you over? Maybe it's a negative opinion about somebody else. Maybe it's your own inner critic that has a very clear phrase that it says to you, to try to beat you up or get you to do what it feels like you should do.
And then as you're focusing, consider if this is a familiar emotion. Has it been with you for a long time? Often these parts of us go all the way back. We store past events and our responses to them, our emotional responses, our physiological responses to them, in our implicit memory.
And, so, you may not be consciously aware of why you are responding the way you are, in this current situation. But it's possible that a part of you is stuck in the past, and this situation is taking you back to an old memory, almost, outside of your conscious awareness.
And, so, it's very familiar to you. You're like, "Oh, yes, this is how I used to feel in 6th grade when this thing would happen." And that's great information to understand this part of you better. Becoming more aware of your thoughts and feelings is a skill you can practice every day. It leads to what psychologists call emotional regulation. As you can acknowledge and name what you feel, just as simple as "I feel angry."
"I feel jealous."
"I feel sad." Just that act of naming begins to soothe the brain's limbic system, and it helps you gain access to other regions of the brain. You can check out Dr. Curt Thompson's work in The Anatomy of the Soul or Dr. Dan Siegel's work in Mindsight if you're interested in the neuroscience of this.
But just naming what you're feeling and beginning to pay attention to it without shame, in and of itself can bring some relief. This is a practice.
Step number two is Befriend, you're going to befriend this part of you. This is the step that is really hard for some people, especially, if you have a really active inner critic. Because often when you give these parts of yourself this attention, you will notice that you don't like them. "I don't like that part of me."
"I don't like feeling that way."
"I wish I didn't have that."
And, so, we have to address this internal resistance because, as we talked about, we don't heal in the context of criticism, including inside our own souls. So as you focus on this emotion, this thought, this part of you that you're working with. Ask yourself how am I feeling toward it. And if you notice that there's a lot of criticism, a lot of inner clamor, like, "Aah, that is just argh, we do not like that part of me."
Pay attention to that and turn your attention toward that other part of you, whether it's an inner critic, an inner skeptic, an inner naysayer, or whatever it is, or even maybe you feel sad. Maybe you've noticed that there's an angry part of you and then you feel sad about feeling angry. Just notice those other feelings and there's this really cool thing, and it sounds too good to be true.
But as you begin to do this work and you notice, "I really just need to get curious and try to understand this anger and beating myself up about it is not helping." And, so, you can ask that part of you, that part of you that is so used to beating you up, "Could you just give me some space?
Could you just take a step back?
I'm trying to get curious about this anger because, to be honest, if I can get curious and show myself some compassion, I'm going to be able to arrive at a better solution. So you begin to retrain the critical part of yourself, the skeptical part of yourself, whatever it is. To give you some space to lead yourself from that spirit-led place within. Where you can be present to yourself without judgment, without shame.
So this step involves extending compassion toward yourself. And this is a step that is so important to all of this work. You're beginning to retrain how you connect with yourself and beginning to notice those critical voices.
It's a process of noticing, and naming, and then pivoting to, "Can I be with this part of me, with this emotion, with this negative belief, with compassion? Is it possible that showing compassion to my anger, even to the parts of me that carry shame? To the parts of me that carry insecurities. To the parts of me that are fearful; is it possible that if I show compassion toward myself in this moment, it might actually lead to a better way?"
These parts of us tend to soften in the context of compassion. And I want you to think, again, about parenting your own kids, if you have kids. And if you don't have kids think of a niece, or a nephew, or a child, they need you to connect with them before you can help them change. Connection precedes, change.
If you just walk into a room full of kids and start telling them what to do, they might do it in a minute, but they're not going to like it. But if you walk in and you connect, "I see you there, I know your name. I'm here with you. I'm not going to shame you. I need to understand you so that we can figure out a better way." You're authoritative, don't get me wrong, but you're not shaming, you're not judging, you're not criticizing. You are connecting before you try to change the action.
So this is the model for how we want to start to be with the parts of our own selves. "It's okay, I get that you are terrified. I'm not going to berate you for that any longer. We're going to take a deep breath. We're going to own it. We're terrified, this is going to be really hard. I don't even know if I can do it. It's okay, I see you. I see you, it's okay. You get to be here at this table. There are other parts of me that are a little bit braver and that are going to take over now. But I'm not going to shame you or berate you that you're scared."
And then suddenly you start to notice that part of you soften. "Oh, okay, if I can be a little bit afraid, then I won't take you over." And you start to create these healthy boundaries. "You can be here, fear, but I'm not going to let you drive. I'm not going to let you take me over." And you start to connect to yourself in a more compassionate way.
< Music >
Step three, and this is for folks who have a faith background. You invite God to be with you and, especially, to be with this part of you. We are emotional, thinking, and spiritual beings, and there are tremendous spiritual resources available to us. But so often when we are in pain, when we are fearful, when we are angry, we feel like we have to solve that on our own. Instead of naming what's happening and inviting God to be with us in that. "God, I am angry. Can you be with me in that anger?"
And, so, often, so many of us have been trained that we have to make that go away. That if God shows up, well, then we can't be angry. But I want you to consider Jesus and the different emotions that Jesus had. I'm not convinced that God is there to shoo those emotions away. What I believe is that God comes in and helps us gain clarity. "You know what? You're angry for a reason, and I get that."
"I'm angry with you."
"Let me carry some of that anger so that you don't go off and do something stupid. So that we can be wise in how we act on behalf of that anger, but I'm with you. I'm with you."
Or "I see that grief and I grieve with you, and I can carry some of that grief with you. I'm not here to take it away, or shame you, or tell you that you've got to spiritualize that grief. That somehow your grief is a sign that you don't have faith. Ah-ah, I'm here with you in it. I grieve, too, for those atrocities. They break my heart, too, and in fact, I can carry some of that grief with you so that it's not so heavy for you."
This is what I think it means when Jesus says, "My burden is light." It doesn't mean we don't still carry some of that weight. But He comes along and He makes those burdens a little lighter because we're not alone in them any longer. We're not alone in those painful emotions.
So we invite God to carry some of that with us and help us be wise in those emotions. And this is where the heart of this work, as a spiritual practice, comes to light. In my own life, I often first take inventory of the parts of my own soul that need my attention. So in the morning, I might just make a list, "I'm tired, this morning."
"I'm defeated."
"I'm excited."
"I really don't want to pray. I just want to get going with my day, today, because, I think, I can handle it today."
Whatever it is that I'm feeling I just make a note of it, and then I invite God into that experience. This is prayer. This is prayer, "God, I just wrote this down on a piece of paper. Would you come look at what I wrote down on this paper, too? Would you help me?"
Not so that I can shine it up and be all set, so God will be happy with me because that's what so many of us have been trained to do. But so, "God, this is just real right now. I'm fighting every instinct to just bypass my quiet time, today, and hit the ground running because I got so much to do and I'm just going to get it done on my own. So could you just own that with me and see that that's where we're at?"
And God may not magically take that away, maybe that's the best you do for prayer that morning. But that was a prayer and God's now in it with you, and you're not alone. And these parts of us begin to trust God in a different way. "God, there is a part of me that is so worried about my child, about my spouse, about this friend, about this situation. I am so worried, God, I can't stop myself from worrying, and I'm not going to shame myself for that.
But, God, I know you see that worry and I'm going to lift that worried part of me up to you. And I'm going to ask you to help other parts of me that you've made. The parts of me that can just take a deep breath, the parts of me that can put one foot in front of the other, to be emboldened, to be strengthened. And I'm going to ask you to help me nurture that worried part of me that's actually getting in my way, but she's scared, God.
So come be with all of me, today. Here it is, I'm not hiding anything from you. I've just bared my soul open, you see it all, it's all there anyway. Here it is, it feels like a mess, this morning.
Here it all is, God, let your light shine into every corner of my soul, you see it all. You see it all. I don't have to fix it to come to you, here it is, God. Here's my heart laid open bear."
Right there is a little glimpse of hope. A little glimpse of you are not alone. A little glimpse of relief. A little glimpse of, paradoxically, wholeness. You're not hiding anything. And, so, this work becomes a form of prayer. It becomes a spiritual practice, and you start to pray for parts of yourself as you would pray for a close friend.
For example, maybe you're aware of the chronic people-pleasing part of you. This part of you that just sneaks in and you can't make it stop. And, so, you get a tiny little bit of differentiation from it. Just a tiny little ability to go, "Yes, when I go into this situation, I am just going to turn it on and I'm going to start pleasing everybody, and I'm not even going to be able to stop myself.
God, I just want to name that. I just want to name that. Would you help me take a deep breath and get just a little bit of space, some healthy distance, from that part of me? I'm not going to be able to solve it altogether. She's been with me a long time. But what if I could just take a deep breath, with your help, before I say any yeses, today. I'm just going to try to take a 10-second pause before I do any perfecting. When I worry, I'm going to just take a deep breath, God, and invite you to be with that part of my soul."
Again, this isn't magic, this is a practice, but, over time, as you practice bringing each of these parts into your own conscious awareness, you begin to differentiate from them inside of your soul. You begin to name them; you begin to get curious about them. You begin to show compassion for yourself because there's a reason these parts of you are there, almost, always going all the way back to childhood, in ways that you've been conditioned by the past.
As you begin to get to know them, you begin to build trust with yourself. And in partnership with God's Spirit, these parts will begin to soften. They will begin to trust you to lead them, not the other way around.
Now, I want to talk briefly about steps four and steps five. We go into great detail in Boundaries for Your Soul. So if you want more resources, especially, on this unburdening part, I would refer you to chapter seven. There are a bunch of lists in chapter seven, of Boundaries for Your Soul, on a lot of the fears and burdens these different parts can have. So I'm going to just touch on this here. Those first three steps are really where I want you to focus because that's sort of the entry-level of this work.
But some of these parts of us carry burdens from the past, and these relate to these wounds from childhood. These burdens are extreme beliefs or feelings that parts of you have taken on, as a result of painful experiences. When you're a young child you can't process complex events. And, so, at some point, you interpret events in ways that maybe were not helpful. And, so, parts of your soul hold on to these beliefs all the way into adulthood.
So some examples are, these are common examples. Let's say your parents are divorced. "My parents got divorced, so I'm destined to get divorced, too." This is sort of a common belief burden that can lurk in the corners of our soul.
Or "I have to take care of others to earn their approval, there's just no way around it." I talk a lot about this in The Best of You, in chapter two, this fawn response. Where a rational mind, in the present day, knows this isn't true. But parts of us really believe, all the way back in our implicit memory, there's this memory stored of, "I have to take care of other people otherwise I'm not worth anything."
And, so, there's this weight, deep inside, that's really hard to change. And your rational brain won't, necessarily, change it. You might notice a vague sense of distrust of others, that goes back to childhood wounds, of being taken advantage of, of being hurt. You might notice deep-seated, self-doubt that doesn't really make sense anymore because you're doing okay in your life. You've figured some things out. But there's a part of you that's stuck back in childhood.
I see this all the time, those childhood years are really formative. Parts of us get stuck back there and they take up these burdens. And, so, again, rationally, you may understand that you don't need to feel this way anymore or think this way anymore. But this part of you still does get stuck back in childhood. And to further complicate matters, parts of us get mixed up about God, too. Developmentally, young parts of you don't know the difference between, say, a caregiver and God.
And, so, when a parent, or a church leader, or another adult disappoints you or misrepresents God, a young part of you picks up this idea that God is not trustworthy. That God does not care about you, that God has abandoned you, and it makes sense. Because those first initial caregivers are our first glimpse of what God is like and, so, there's this wound.
And, so, part of you is like, "I believe that God loves me. My theology tells me that's true. The Bible tells me that's true. I believe God is good, but there are parts of me that just cannot experience it." And whenever I hear that; I wonder, is there a wound? Is there a burden that goes all the way back, where somebody did not give you the care that you needed? That did not give you that lived experience in your body of what goodness, of what love, of what somebody being present to you feels like?
And, so, how could you know that when that part of you never got that? And, so, it can be frustrating because you're like, "I believe this. I wish I could experience this." And it's pretty common. And, so, if that's your experience, please know you're not alone. You might pick up beliefs like, "God is a harsh taskmaster who is there to punish me."
Or "I have to be perfect to earn God's approval."
These parts pick up these messages and they can go really deep. And, again, it can be frustrating when parts of you know this isn't true, but you just can't let go of it. And, so, this step of unburdening is all about connecting to these young parts of us, hearing their stories, where they picked up these ideas and inviting them to be in this new reality. Where you, and God, and a few safe other people can help them understand a different experience of love.
A different experience of whatever that mistaken belief or burden they've picked up. In this case, healing is experiential it's not just cognitive. There is a reparative experience that happens as you connect to a deep part of yourself, to a part of your story, that never got heard.
Henri Nouwen talks about going and bringing, home, parts of us that got left behind. And this is the work of deep healing. And this is work that I would encourage you not to do alone. You can do this in the safety of a therapist's office, especially, if you've got trauma or deep, unhealed pain.
You can do this with a small group, with safe people, where you learn to bear witness in a safe, healing way to each other's stories. But this is a really beautiful step. I want you to know about it because if you're someone who relates to what I'm saying, there is a way for you to repair that part of your story.
And then, lastly, finally, this fifth step of integration. I love this step because this is the step where these parts begin to take on new roles. And, so, you've begun to connect to each of these parts. We all have a lot of different parts, but we all have our go-to parts. In Boundaries for Your Soul I talk about three-key parts, for me, the people-pleasing part of me that just smiles and nods. And it's always, "Okay, oh, sure, I can help."
"I can do whatever you need."
"I'm good."
"Never worry about me." This part of me that's just so familiar to me. I've had it forever and I work with her all the time. And then there's a numbing out part of me, an avoidant part of me, that is like a brick wall of avoidance, that just will not go to the painful places. And in my own journey of reclaiming long lost desires, long lost dreams, that I wasn't invisible, in fact. That I'm not always okay, and that I also have needs.
And, so, these are three of my go-to parts that I've gotten to know, I've gotten curious about. I've spent a lot of time showing compassion, understanding their stories. Doing this work with other people, and in the privacy of my own heart and with God. And this integration piece is so beautiful because it's where you start to see each of these parts take on their original God-made role.
And, so, in my case, that part of me that just smiles, and nods, and is so pleasing, and makes everybody else happy, and just to a degree where I start hurting myself. There is a kindness to that part of me. There is a gentleness to that part of me who, very so genuinely, never wants to harm a soul. Who would, if she could, and was God, which she is not, take on the burdens of everybody around her. She is the highly empathetic part of me and these are good qualities.
But she has learned that she does not get to take charge of the controls of my soul because when she does, it is not healthy. She takes me way beyond my own limits. Which ends up causing harm to me and also causes harm to other people, when I can't follow through because I have human limits. And, so, empathy is a great example.
Like joy, if you watch the Inside Out, a Pixar movie, which is good quality but cannot take over the seat of your soul because there's also got to be a place for sorrow.
In my case, I've had to learn to let her be kind but within healthy boundaries. And that means she has to make place for parts of me that are also suffering. Parts of me that need empathy. Parts of me that need to be seen by other people.
And, so, these parts of me have learned to take on new roles. They let me lead them. The part of me that is just a brick wall of avoidance. Sometimes that's helpful, when I do need to muscle my way through something because I'm on a deadline. But that part of me is no longer allowed to operate outside of my conscious awareness.
And, so, that part of me becomes the part of me that reminds me, "It's time to shut down in a healthy way."
"It's time to play."
"It's time to do something silly."
"It's time to do something besides work."
Each of these parts is now reintegrated. They each play an important role, as I have, more deeply, more skillfully, more wisely, learned how to lead the parts of my soul and I would not be able to do this work apart from the God who made me. It's paying attention to each of these parts with the help of God's always kind, always present, always patient, always truthful presence to help guide me.
And as I become more whole, more of all of these things, and can lead myself wisely, I have expanded my capacity to show up for other people in healthy ways and within healthy boundaries. The two things go together. The healthier the boundary lines fall within my own soul, the healthier I show up with other people. This is a spiritual practice that leads to emotional, mental, and spiritual wholeness. We will never arrive at perfection.
Do not get me wrong, I still get out of balance. But so much more quickly, I know how to course correct, and I know what to do. I know how to find the part of my soul that needs attention, and I've built trust with these parts of myself. This is my prayer for you. Start by getting curious. Just getting curious, you don't have to fix anything. You don't have to heal anything. Just start getting curious about the parts of your own soul.
Start showing compassion for what you notice. Which might even mean starting by showing compassion for that inner critic, who works so hard to keep you in check. And, lastly, invite God into this process every single step of the way. The good shepherd who left the 99 to go find that one lost sheep, and who wants to do that very same thing inside your own soul, He cares about every hair on your head, and He cares about every lost, or wounded, or hurting part of your soul.
< Outro >
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The Best of You. Be sure to check out the show notes for any resources and links mentioned in the show. You can find those on my website at dralisoncook.com. That's Alison with one L- cook.com.
Before you forget, I hope you'll follow the show now so that you don't miss an episode. And I'd love it if you'd go ahead and leave a review, it helps so much to get the word out. I look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best of who you are you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.
We all need a map to our soul. A way to understand the emotions, the wounds, the areas that feel broken. That's what I love about the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model of therapy-it provides a map that everybody can incorporate into their daily spiritual practice. It's your guide to navigating overwhelming thoughts and feelings.
Today on the podcast, I'm walking you through this map, including the following:
1. A picture of wholeness
2. The cost of not tending your inner life
3. A map of the parts of your soul
4. The 3 types of parts we all have
5. How Jesus relates to each part
6. What it means to have healthy boundaries inside your soul
Thanks to our sponsors:
Organifi -Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
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Music by Andy Luiten
Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
Resources
- Get your 3 free resources here!
- Get 46% off Boundaries for Your Soul & The Best of You here.
- Inside Out Movie Trailer
- IFS Institute
- Episode 4: What Do I Need To Know About Trauma?
- Episode 35: Change is Hard–Why We All Need to Detox From Unhealthy Dependencies From Time to Time
- "Try thinking about this place as the core of your being-your heart, where all human sentiments are held together in truth. From this place you can feel, think, and act truthfully." The Inner Voice of Love, by Henri Nouwen
- "We need to have spaces inside ourselves where we can have a feeling, an impulse, or a desire, without acting it out." Boundaries, by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend
- John 14:16-17
- Matthew 23:25
- John 8:1-12
- John 5:1-18
- Resources for support
Transcript
Alison: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this episode of The Best of You podcast. I am so glad you're here, and I am so excited to start, today, this brand-new series on Boundaries for Your Soul. It's all about turning overwhelming thoughts and feelings into your greatest allies.
It's really all about emotional and spiritual wholeness. It's a deep dive into the center of your God-made soul. It's the heart of everything I do.
In fact, as you listen to these episodes today and, especially next week, you will hear so much of my approach to this work of becoming emotionally and spiritually whole, in partnership with God's Spirit. We have so much to cover here.
Next week I'm going to walk you through five steps to identifying and understanding a part of your soul that needs your care, that needs your attention. And then we're going to take a deep dive into different emotions that can be tricky and challenging and hard for us. So it's going to be a great series.
And, so, before we get started, I want to point you to some resources I've provided, that will help you as we move through this series. So there are three free resources on my website. One is a PDF - Map of The Soul. We're going to go through that map today.
There's a PDF devotional that takes you on this whole journey, and there's a guided audio reflection. This is a way for you to practice this framework, that I'm going to teach you today and next week, with me guiding you through it. Some people learn more through visualizing. Some people learn more through reading, and some people learn through hearing. And, so, I've got three ways for you to engage this work.
They're all at my website, it's dralisoncook.com/ifsbundle. Those three resources are there for you for free. You will also find there a link to get my first book Boundaries for Your Soul, which is a detailed overview of this approach. As well as my book, The Best of You, which also alludes to this approach. You can get both books together for the price of 1, which is 46% off. The link to that special discount bundle also there at dralisoncook.com/ifsbundle.
As always, if you are someone who is dealing with trauma, or unhealed pain from the past. If you have emotions that you haven't really looked at, and they're pretty deep. And you have a sense, "Ooh, that's going to be scary." We've talked about this in the episode on trauma. Please do not journey alone.
There is a list of all kinds of resources; including support groups, counselors, IFS therapists who operate from a faith-based perspective. All of those resources are at my website dralisoncook.com/resources. Including thoughts on how to go about finding a therapist. So please don't take this journey alone. Find those resources at dralisoncook.com/resources.
So I want to start off, today, by talking about wholeness. Wholeness is this thing we want. We want to feel whole. We want to feel aligned. We want to feel at peace with ourselves, is another way, I think, of thinking about wholeness. It's things coming together. It's harmony. It's a sense of being undivided. It's integration. It's a good feeling.
When we feel united inside of ourselves, we feel at peace with the decisions we're making. We feel at peace with our past, we feel at peace with the people in our lives. This is the picture of wholeness that we all want.
The problem is that we tend to think of this idea of wholeness as the absence of conflict, as the absence of tension, as the absence of challenges. We tend to think of it as this magical place we'll arrive. When we just are suddenly at peace with ourselves and with the world around us.
And if you think of a puzzle, this is the best metaphor I can think of, where there are all these pieces laying around. And you have to take your time to, painstakingly, take each piece put it together in its proper relationship with the other pieces, to create this beautiful picture. The pieces matter to the whole. If you lose some of those pieces or you can't figure out how to put certain pieces together, you miss out on that whole. There's a process, there's work, to be done inside our souls to get to that picture of wholeness.
And, so, this is what I want to walk you through, today, is the pieces. We first have to understand the pieces, the parts, of our souls, in order to bring those parts of our souls together to create this beautiful wholeness.
This harmony, this way of being in the world that is a little bit lighter, a little bit easier, a little bit more calm, a little bit more clear. Where we're really operating out of all of who we are, in a way that is emotionally and spiritually integrated. This is a lofty goal, that's why we're doing a six-week series on it. This is a lofty goal.
So today, I want to give you a map of these parts. A framework, a way of understanding the different parts of your soul. Because in order to get to the wholeness, the harmony, the piece, we have to understand the parts.
Our interior lives are murky; we can't see the parts of our souls. If you get a broken arm, you know something is wrong, you can see it. You can go to a doctor and point to it and they can help you mend it. But when a part of your soul is out of alignment, or hurting, or broken, or shoved so far aside, that you can hardly even find it. What do you do? It's murky in there.
And, so, in my work, I've developed a great respect for an evidence-based model of therapy, that looks at the soul as an internal family.
Just as you parent in your own family, right, where every part of the family, every family member has a role to play, every family member is valuable. Every family member needs to have a voice, and then somehow all of these voices have to come together in some sort of semblance of harmony where everyone is honored. It requires a lot of negotiation, right? To help your family to thrive. Not everybody gets their way. It's how we learn to get along with others, right? We have to learn to negotiate. We have to learn how to speak up for ourselves, and also have to step back to give others a turn.
In a healthy family, no one individual is taking over the family, but also no one individual is getting shoved aside or not getting heard. It's a lot of work to create harmony in a family.
And this is the way of your soul, your soul is like a family.
Now, if you've seen the Pixar movie Inside Out, I would encourage you to go back and watch that film as you listen to this series. It's a great film. It's a children's movie, but it's great for adults too. And it depicts a little bit of what I mean by these family of parts, these different emotions where you've got fear, you've got anger, you've got joy, this “will” to be happy all the time. You've got sadness, you've got disgusted sort of this eye rolling part, all existing inside the minds of each character. And each one of those emotions, each one of those parts is vying for control of that person in any given moment. And it's a great picture of what happens inside our own souls.
Now this Internal Family approach that Inside Out does such a great job of depicting is based on the work of psychologist, Dr. Richard Schwartz. Dr. Schwartz, in the early 1990s, came up with this model of therapy, it's called Internal Family Systems. And it's this way of viewing the parts of yourself so that you can lead yourself to wholeness, to harmony.
It's an evidence-based approach to therapy. I also view it as a spiritual practice, it's a deeply spiritual approach.
And in Boundaries for Your Soul, which is my first book with Kimberly Miller. We combine this evidence-based approach, IFS, Internal Family Systems, with Christian faith and practice.
And, so, this is an approach you can use every day, in your life. It's also an approach that people can use, with the help of a therapist, to heal deep trauma, to heal deep wounds, it works for all of us. It's a way of orienting to the parts of our soul, so that we can lead ourselves with clarity, with courage, with compassion. So that we can lead the parts of ourselves wisely.
The basic premise of this approach is that we're all comprised of parts, and it's pretty simple. If you think about your day-to-day, you can imagine a part of you might be tired and wants to stay home or call in sick from work. Another part of you is saying, "No, we can't do that, we got to get ourselves through it. We got to get to work."
Right there, you're experiencing some inner tension. Some inner conflict between two parts of you. A part of you wants to go out this weekend, and a part of you wants to stay home. A part of you is tired, another part of you won't let you stop working.
We're complex.
We're comprised of different parts, and wholeness doesn't come through choosing between the different parts or shoving 1 part aside. It comes as a result of learning to attune to these different parts of you, to pay attention to them, and to negotiate within yourself the best way forward. This is a way of leading the parts of yourself in partnership with God's Spirit
Now, I know some of you may think, "Gosh, this sounds like a lot of work. It's hard enough to raise my kids, and get to work. And how am I going to do this work of parenting my own soul?" And I get that, I mean, this is the biggest thing that's on my heart. Is to encourage you that creating space for this relationship with yourself is as important as all the work you put into the relationship with other people. And it's a deep, profound part of your relationship with God.
Now, here's the alternative, what we tend to do, if we don't do this work, and I have done this, listen, I have done this. I lived my life this way for so long. We do a couple of things; we work really hard to show up well for others, we please, we produce, we perform, we peace-keep, we hustle, we get the job done. We go and then we shut down, we numb it out, we escape. We do whatever we have to do to try to fill up our gas tank so that we can repeat the cycle the next day. Work hard, shut down. Work hard, shut down. Go. Numb.
We bounce between those two things, and I've done this, I've lived there, but we end up divided. We don't feel like we're showing up as the best of who we are, and we're not. Because there are parts of us that are being tossed away by the wayside, and this is what I want to walk you through today.
According to Dr. Schwartz and his model, there are three categories of parts of the soul. The first category is that one; that go, please, produce, perform.
Get through the day, show up for work, do all the things, get the job done. These are our manager parts. These are the parts of us that protect us by preventing bad things from happening. At least, that's what they think, "We just got to get this done."
"We just got to keep people happy."
"We just got to get everything more perfect, and then we'll be okay."
"We just got to keep putting on performing, making sure no one sees what we're really feeling on the inside."
These are our manager parts. These are parts of us that worry and analyze over and over and over when they're not really solving the problem anymore. They incessantly people please, because we're terrified of what other people are going to think about us.
They're the parts of us that keep working long hours, long after we needed to take a break, they overanalyze, they overthink. They are critical primarily of ourselves.
These parts of us think they're trying to help by forcing us, shoving us, criticizing us, berating us to make sure we never let anybody down or never let anyone else see our vulnerabilities or our areas of weakness.
And then we get tired because we are not machines. We are human beings. And so this second category of part kicks in and Dr. Schwartz calls this category firefighter parts. They're called firefighters because they come in to put out the flames of pain after you start to feel overwhelmed. They are the parts of us that just wanna shut it all down. They numb, they escape. They indulge in whatever feels good in the moment just to make it through the end of the day.
These parts are often operating outside of our conscious awareness. If you've ever found yourself mindlessly surfing the internet for hours on end, you can't believe it. When you look at the clock that all that time had passed, they reach for the credit card and just start buying things. When you don't really have the money to spend and might not even need the things.
These are the parts of us that go to food or sleep or exercise or otherwise good things, but to an excessive degree, that's not healthy. These are the parts of us that binge television for hours on end, they can turn toward excessive daydreaming of fantasy life. And these are the parts of us that can also turn toward addictions like alcohol, drugs, pills, anything to put out the flames of pain inside of us.
And this is the dichotomy. We are working hard, and then we are shutting it all down. We're out of balance.
Now, here's the thing, there's a third category of parts. And these are the parts of us we don't often want to face, but they're the parts of us that we need to attune to. That we need to connect to, to bring ourselves back into harmony, and Dr. Schwartz called these parts exiles.
They're called exiles because we shove these parts aside. They're the parts of us that harbor shame, fears, self-doubts and insecurities, our hurts, our wounds, and our unhealed pain. They harbor feelings of being less than feeling worthless, of being unappreciated, unseen, invisible, alone.
These are the parts of us that need our care and God's healing the most. But we are so busy managing or shutting it all down, that we don't get these parts of ourselves the care that they need.
And as a result, sometimes these exiled parts ambush us. They take us over. They've been left alone at the corners of our soul where they're not getting the care that they need, and then they can take you over and suddenly you can just be overwhelmed with sadness. You can be overwhelmed with pain. Sometimes we exile anger, and you might find yourself overwhelmed with anger. They come roaring out from where they've been exiled and overwhelm us with the fear, the heartaches, the self-doubt that they carry.
We're out of balance and we begin to think of ourselves as only sad or only lonely or only broken, and we lose sight of the whole.
This is just one part of our story. It's not the sum total of who we are. Your depression, your sorrow, your fears, your anger, your loneliness. Yes, they are real and they are not the sum total of who you are. They are not your identity. And when we get outta balance, these parts of us can start to feel like all of who we are.
The truth is there are two opposite and equally unhealthy ways of relating to these parts of your souls. One, you can keep them too close to you, right? And you become that one part of you. And that's what we saw in the Pixar movie Inside Out when one part tries to take over. But you can also push these parts of you too far away.
If you're too close, you risk being overwhelmed by them. And if they're too far, you risk being cut off from them only to be influenced by these parts of you in harmful ways.
Our job is to learn to lead each of these parts of us wisely.
Together, these three categories of parts create a whole. None of these parts of you is bad. Please hear me say that. We need the manager, parts of us that get us up in the morning, that help us comb our hair, that help us clean up the house, or get the chores done and put our best foot forward. But they become problematic when they take over, at the expense of the other parts of us.
Same with those firefighters, they are not all bad. We need healthy relief, healthy comfort, healthy distractions, healthy escape. We talked about that in the series on detoxing. The goal of a detox isn't to remove our coping tactics, it's to find healthier ones. But these firefighters can get really problematic, if we are not aware of them, they're sneaky. They sneak in and they get us to just, mindlessly, numb out, instead of giving ourselves the care that we actually need, and these exiles are precious - These are the parts of us that remind us that we’re human That we’re tender, vulnerable, and that we have needs. They remind us to slow down, that WE might be the one who needs our attention:
I wonder what that loneliness is about. Let’s not sideline it. But let’s also not let it overwhelm us. Let’s get curious about it and talk with a friend about it.
These are the parts of us that help us identify where we have needs and where we need to learn to speak up on behalf of ourselves with safe people. They are the parts that need our compassion, our attention, our kindness, our patience, our gentleness the most.
So how do we know when we are out of balance, when a part of our soul needs our attention?
Well, the biggest cue is when you find yourself doing something at an extreme. You might notice,
“Man, I just cannot stop working. I am exhausted. I've worked long past my deadlines. I just can't stop myself. I wonder what else is going on inside of me.”
OR
“I cannot stop analyzing this situation. I'm not getting anywhere. It's not helping me, but I can't stop. I need to slow myself down and pay attention. Some part of me might be hurting and this, all this analysis, all of this, you know, mental paralysis is not helping.”
Or
“I cannot stop saying yes or pleasing other people. It's like a compulsive need meeting and I can't stop and it's starting to hurt me. I wonder if there's a part of me that needs my care, how can I slow it down to discover what's really going on inside of me?”
OR
“I just checked out for hours, like I could not get myself to do something.”
And so you start to become your own detective. We start to pay attention to the different parts of our soul, so we can bring ourselves into alignment. And next week, I'm going to walk you through a five-step process of doing that. But for today, I just want you to begin to recognize these different parts of yourself, and begin to notice when maybe a manager part of you is taking you over.
An extreme emotion, like anger, like frustration, like worry, like fear, doubt—a lot of things can serve as a cue to pay attention. It's like a light on that dashboard of your car, when it goes off saying, pay attention to your car.
Something isn't working quite right. These extremes are an opportunity to get curious. A part of your soul needs your care. Now, remember we talked about this in episode four on trauma. Do not take this journey alone. If it feels overwhelming to you. Bookmark it. Say, “wow, this is something I might need to pay attention to with the help of a therapist or in the safety of community.”
Now, here's the good news. At the center of all of these parts of us is the place inside you where the Holy Spirit lives. And, so, often we tend to look externally to God to solve our problems or externally to other people. And I talk about that in The Best of You, a lot, in chapters two, three, and four. Where we forget about this internal place inside of us. Where the best of who God has made you to be, your God-given self comes together with the power of God's Spirit to help you lead yourself wisely. To help you lead yourself with wisdom and in truth.
This place inside of you, is a place where all of you are comes together with all of who God is to lead these parts of you into wise, brave, action. You have this inside of you, it's the best of who you are. And part of our job, as humans, is to begin to peel back the layers of all of these parts so we can access this beautiful place inside of us, and lead ourselves wisely.
Henri Nouwen talks about this place inside of us as, "A place of truth, where we hold ourselves together with compassion."
Dr. Henry Cloud and John Townsend, talk about it as "A place inside where we can become aware of our different thoughts and feelings.” We can name them without shame, and without judgment, and without criticism. We can just be with the parts of ourselves with compassion.
Dr. Schwartz called this the “Self.”
And in Boundaries for Your Soul, we call it, "the Spirit-lead self." It's the place where who you are comes together with God's Spirit, and you can lead yourself well.
Before we close, I want to give you a metaphor that I really love to describe this process, as well as examples from Scripture. And then next week, we're going to get into a practical five-step process to begin to do this work inside your own soul. Of just paying attention to the different parts of your soul, and learning to lead the parts of you wisely.
All right, in my experience, both as a therapist and in my own life, I came to find out that we are so often trying to operate in our lives without connecting to this place inside of us. Where God's Spirit helps us lead the parts of ourselves well. And the metaphor that I love is it's like a middle school band.
Now, I played in a middle school band and it was chaos. And I want you to imagine this middle school band without a conductor. The trumpets are over there just taking over. They think they're knocking it out of the park. They think they're in charge, but they’re playing too loud.
The flutes are playing so quietly or out of tune, you can barely hear them. They're such an important part, but if they’re not led well, you can miss them.
And then we got the drums, in the background, and these guys are just having a ball, they could care less about anybody else. They are just beating in whatever way feels good to them, and it's chaos.
And imagine a wise, capable, kind conductor steps up in front of the band and begins to slowly, methodically, with such wisdom, such tenderness, such compassion begins to help each of those parts play their role well.
Suddenly the trumpets are in key and they're playing at the right tempo, the right volume. The flutes come in and sound so beautiful, adding a gentleness, a serenity to the melody, and the drums are back there keeping everybody on beat. Suddenly, you have a beautiful harmony, and that wise conductor has helped each of those parts play their role well.
We all have access to that wise, inner, conductor and that's our job. It's to begin to learn how to show up for these parts of ourselves with wisdom, with gentleness, with honesty, with direction, with leadership. So that we can show up in the world authentically, from all the way down deep inside.
So that the insides of who we are begin to match how we show up on the outside.
This is the work of becoming more whole. It's how we heal the different parts inside of us. It's also how we show up to be a healing force, for good, in the lives of others.
And as you consider these different parts of your own soul, I want you to think about the way that Jesus interacted with three different kinds of people in the Gospels. And I love this because it maps onto these characters inside our own soul.
So number one, we see Jesus interacting with the sanctimonious, the stubborn, the self-sufficient religious leaders who thought they could do it all on their own. They thought they knew the right way, and they didn't really need Jesus. They were just going to get it done on their own.
And how did Jesus respond to those folks? He often asked them to take a step back. He accused them of shining it up on the outside when the inside remained empty.
And then Jesus also engaged with those who were straying; the sinners, the ones who were cheating, who were stealing, who were lying, who were engaged in adultery, and all sorts of things like that.
And how did Jesus engage those folks? He did not shame them. He named what was happening and He invited them into a different role. "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."
"Your faith has saved you, go in peace." He did not shame them; He gave them a new role.
And then, finally, we see Jesus engaging the suffering. Those who were sick, whether mentally, emotionally, or physically. For reasons beyond their control, they have been marginalized by society. And, yet, Jesus invited them to draw closer. He welcomed them in and gave them purpose, "Get up, pick up your mat, and walk." You have value here.
You matter.
You are no longer invisible.
And here's the thing, we all have a little bit of all three of those types of people inside our own souls. Those sanctimonious, stubborn, sometimes, self-sufficient manager parts of us that just think, "We can muscle our way through and get it done on our own."
And then we have those parts of us that just are so tempted to stray. Just drown it out in that bag of cookies, in that endless scrolling, in that entertainment, in that alcohol, in whatever it is, that will just shut it all down.
And then we have the suffering parts of us that are so weary, so silenced, so invisible, in the corners of our own soul.
And Jesus comes in and He helps us reorient our own soul, to create a more beautiful melody.
"It's okay, inner critic, you've done your work telling me all the ways i’ve gotten it wrong, today, could you please step back. I'm in charge now, and I know a better way.
I don't need to pick up that bag of cookies, that alcohol, that credit card, that numbing. I need to rest, reach out for help, dance, or play or be silly instead, in this moment."
And, "Sadness, you're welcome here. I don't want you to take me over, but you have a seat at the table. It's okay to be here, you are welcome."
"Fear, you can be here, too, you don't get to drive. You don't get to take control of this decision. But I see you, you can be here, you can also have a seat at the table."
And suddenly it's like our inner lives become this grand boardroom, where all these parts have a seat at the table. Our inner critic, our fear, our worry, our sadness, our people-pleasing parts, our perfectionists.
We start to honor each one, and the good intention behind their actions, when we are leading from this place inside where the Holy Spirit dwells. Where we can hold all of these parts together in wisdom, and in truth, and lead ourselves into a brave new way forward. This is the work of becoming whole.
We start to course-correct with patience and with intention.
This is the work of taking every part of your soul and bringing it into the light of healing, so that you can begin to lead yourself well with joy, even with some playful energy. You start to delight in parts of you that sometimes make you roll your eyes; you're no longer shaming yourself. You are delighting in the intricacies of how you were made,
This is the beauty of healthy boundaries inside your own soul.
Today on the podcast, I'm talking with my friend and teaching pastor at Crossroads Church in Cincinnati, Alli Patterson, about her new book, How to Stay Standing. In this powerful episode, Alli shares her own story of hitting rock bottom when the scaffolding of her life collapsed, and how she rebuilt the foundation from the ground up.
We discuss the following:
1. How tiny decisions can lead us toward devastating realities
2. What kept Alli from making eye contact for over 6 months
3. How shame sneaks in, even when you know you've been forgiven by God
4. The power of telling your story in safe places
5. 3 practical ways to build a strong foundation6. How to take risks on God
Thanks to our sponsors:
- Organifi -Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
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Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
Resources
- Get 46% off Boundaries for Your Soul & The Best of You here.
- Order Alli's new book, How to Stay Standing
- The Soul of Shame, by Curt Thompson
- Episode 35: Change is Hard–Why We All Need to Detox From Unhealthy Dependencies From Time to Time
- Matthew 13, Parable of the Sower
- James 1:22-25
- Resources for support
Transcript
Alison: Hey everyone. Welcome back to today's episode of The Best of You podcast. I am so excited, today, to have my friend, Alli Patterson, on the show. I met Alli almost a year ago. She is a wife, a mom, a writer, and a teaching pastor. She serves at a large church in Cincinnati called Crossroads Church. And she's passionate about equipping others to know Jesus, especially, through the pages of Scripture.
She's written a new book called How to Stay Standing: Three Essential Practices to Building a Faith That Lasts. I got my hands on this book, and just from the get-go, from the go, Alli is just honest, she's open, she's real. She pulls you right into her story, and right into these practices that she's learned to help you stay strong in your faith. So I am thrilled to have Alli on the podcast today. Hello, Alli, and welcome.
Alli: Alison, thank you for having me, it's really fun to be with you. I feel like I've gotten the pleasure of knowing you personally, and now we get to actually do something together, professionally, which is so fun.
Alison: It's like a continuation of the conversations we've been having. When I was reading your book I was like, "We operate on different sides of the same coin." I go in more into the psychology piece of standing strong, with a biblical background. And when I read your book, I was like, "Oh, you go into the biblical basis for standing strong."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but with a real genuine nod to psychology, to what it means to be human. You're not bypassing your humanity, at all, in this book, and I really appreciated that and respected that. So thank you for this gift.
Alli: Thank you for saying that. I think as I've watched, and read your book, and watched how you interact with your faith, through mental health, and true emotional honesty. It's really been inspiring for me to watch you do that because I have felt encouraged that, "Oh, I don't have all the words that you use for it, but God has taken me on a similar journey." And to some places that you, actually, do such a great job helping other people get to.
And, so, I wish I had known you 25 years ago, you could have helped me a lot. But I know that God will continue to use you like that, and so often. And, so, I'm like, "I'm paying attention." Because, so often, I think what you're doing is helping people have language for things that we know are happening in us, and around us. But we can so much better engage in them with ourselves, and with God, when we actually understand what's going on, and I think you're just wonderful at that.
Alison: I love that, thank you. Yes, the naming, and I saw that in your book. I remember when I first started reading it, I texted you and I was like, "I get it." Because you've been saying to me, "Alison, I think there's a synergy between our work."
I knew that on a human level, but the minute I started reading your book, I was like, "I get it. I see it. I see exactly what you mean." And it's like you're coming at it from a different angle, but you're absolutely trying to put words on this experience of being a human, who is trying to consistently turn toward God.
So I'd love to get started, Alli, today, just from the start, right from the get-go, in the book. You say this thing that I thought was just so well-stated in How to Stay Standing. You start out by saying that you had, quote, "Cracks in the foundation of your life." And then you say something that I thought was so interesting, this was speaking of your early 20s, I believe that, "You'd built a framework for a great life, but you didn't have the foundation to support that framework."
So I'd love to go back in time, for a moment, to that time, and, obviously, hindsight is 2020. There's a lot you know now that you didn't know then. But what do you mean by that? Well, it sounds like you had the scaffolding. You knew some of the right things, but the foundation wasn't there. And they were even cracks in the foundation that was there.
Alli: I think, as I look back, and I think about the cracks that later became problematic for me, they were, primarily, internal. They were primarily things that maybe only I really knew were happening in me. And therefore, for some period of time when cracks in your character, let's say, for instance, I knew that often I would avoid conflict. I would avoid conflict to the point where I would compromise honesty or integrity, in order to avoid conflict.
So that would be one example of an enormous crack, that is going to be a problem. But at the time, I just didn't see where that was going to lead. So that would be one specific example. Another one, for me, which is really the base of what I was standing on, at that time in my life is, what I now have words for, I was very driven by performance.
I was very driven by what I could accomplish and what goals I could meet. And I really thought of myself through the lens of what I did or what I could do, and that was a huge crack. Because we all come to the end of ourselves, at some point, or we have experiences that tell us, at some point in our life, that we actually are not enough, we cannot be enough for ourselves. And I was pretty convinced, in my early 20s, that not only did I have the right tools to build a good life, which in many ways I did, and I was very blessed in some of those things.
But I was convinced that I was strong enough to put together a life that worked. And I don't think I would have used those words at the time. But when it came right down to it, what I was most trusting in was me, and my ability to be smart enough to work hard enough, to make the right connections. To just do whatever I needed to do to put together a life that worked. And, unfortunately, that does work for some period of time.
Alison: Yes, at the time, would you have considered yourself a Christian? Was this something that was operating under the surface or?
Alli: So I was raised in a church-going family, and I had a very genuine, I would call it, when I first came to a personal faith in Christ, I was 16. So I was right in the heart of learning what it is to be myself, and on the verge of adulthood, and all of that.
And I had these couple of years where, as I look back on it, what I think happened was God gave me this gift, I call it a little oasis from 16 to 18. I had this wonderful community, a true faith, a very genuine conversion to a follower of Christ, and then I went to college.
So I had this little bubble, and I've often thought back on that time and thought, God gave me quite a genuine experience of what it felt like, and looked like, to truly follow Him and experience Him. And in so many ways when my life, in my 20s, as I was doing it, man, I was adulting with the best of them.
I was at a great job. I was traveling. I was newly married. I was making money, all this stuff that you would think would work, when it all started to fall apart. I had this little experience with God, with a very living and genuine faith I fell back on because I was desperate. So I reached out for Him when things started to fall apart, for me.
Alison: Yes, so what I'm hearing you say, as far as the foundation goes, you did have a seed. You had a seed of faith, you had something there.
Alli: I did.
Alison: Now, I'm curious, to work with that metaphor. So would you say you set that aside, to start building on a different foundation? Or would you just say you did that little kernel or that rock? You did have a rock. You did have something there, but it wasn't strong enough to be that foundation. And, again, if I'm trying to tease out what was conscious? Did you, consciously, was it slow like, "My faith is still there, but I'm not really building that deeper foundation?"
Alli: Yes, so if I go back to your seed metaphor, what I would say is I never had roots.
Alison: Okay.
Alli: I never knew what would develop roots. I had this experience where I grew very quickly, and I never rooted, so Jesus tells that parable. And I received the Word and I grew, something sprouted very quickly, and it was very real.
Alison: Yes.
Alli: And then I went into a space, in my life, where I didn't have anyone helping me. I didn't know, "Hey, when you go away from that community, the one that was helping you, you need another community of Christ followers around you." I didn't know.
Alison: Yes.
Alli: And that's one of the... the title of my book is called How to Stay Standing, and in some ways, I have this burn in my heart. Because I think there are things that if we have people alongside of us, who can just say, "Hey, did you know that if you don't have friendships developed in your life, that are moving the same direction you are, that's not a neutral thing. It's actually going to pull you away from God." I just didn't have anyone telling me some of those things.
Alison: God, it's like you were consciously saying, "I'm going do this." Because sometimes we hear these dramatic, that's what it's so interesting to me about your story. It wasn't like this, "I'm going to do it my way, God." It isn't like a prodigal son story.
It's slow. You didn't have the tools to know how to keep that foundation strong underneath you. So you ended up just, almost, slowly, little by little, moving in this direction of self-sufficiency, of self-reliance. Of doing things in your own strength, and also you mentioned not having those skills of navigating relationships in a healthy way not knowing how to.
Who does learn that? I think about that to myself, I'm like, "We don't learn to adult, and we don't learn how to deal with conflict." And, so, you find yourself in your 20s going, "Oh, my gosh." And, so, then, presumably, the structure started to collapse because that foundation wasn't strong. So tell me a little bit about that.
Alli: Yes, so you're totally right, in how you characterize that. I would never have called myself rebellious against God, angry, or I never made the decision to walk away from my faith. I would have considered myself a good person, and I just did it the way I knew how to do it. That's what I learned, and that's what worked for me and, so, that's what I did. Which is why as things started to fall apart it shocked me, it really shocked me.
So in my early 20s, I was working at a big corporate job, probably, bigger than I should have been in my early 20s. And I was really enjoying traveling a bunch, and making money, and having a big career, and all of that kind of stuff, and it was fun, and I was good at it. But also, I was very naive in how I was building relationships. And, at that time, I got into a relationship with another man, and I ended up having an affair, very early days of my own marriage.
When I say the day before, I would have told you, I would never do something like that. Like never did I think of myself as somebody who would even be open, to doing something which was so clearly out of bounds. Even in my own morality, so clearly wrong.
Alison: Yes.
Alli: And I think that's where all of my illusions ended about who I really was. And as I had this moment, and I described this moment in the book, but it's such a poignant moment in my life. That I found myself looking in the mirror, and I was trying to look at myself. And I think maybe for the very first time, in my life, I actually saw who I was and I had to be honest. "I'm not a person of integrity, here's who I have become. How did I get here from a person that was strong, and smart, and thought of herself as good? Where in the world did this happen?"
Alison: Yes.
Alli: And in lots of work with me and God, and a couple of other wonderful people He put in my life. I really realized that your foundation is solidified in tiny, little decisions you make every day, or you fall into the cracks of those decisions which are getting wider and wider every day.
And that is, again, beneath the book, is strengthening your foundation and standing on something firm it's not a one big decision that you make at any point in time, it is a continual set of daily choices. And the good news is they're always available to us.
God is always happy to meet us exactly where we're starting from, whether we're collapsed on the ground, or whether we're just realizing, "Oh, I've been doing something on my own. I wonder what it would be like to include God in this part of my life." And that's really even now as a parent I see that helping lay foundations in other people, in your children, is the same way.
You could let things go. Sure, you could let something go, you could even call it like, "Hey, he's a good kid, we'll just let it go this time." Or you could take the time that it takes to dig down and actually lay a piece of the foundation. And, so, I find it very much a daily work of living a life that can stand firm. Because all of a sudden it doesn't unless you've been tending to it.
Alison: Yes, I love what you're saying. I talk a lot, on the podcast, about how any decision we make is usually the result of about a thousand, tiny decisions prior to it, and that's what I hear you saying. It's not one day you woke up and said, "Oh, I'm going to do this today."
Nobody does that, well, very few people do that. Instead, I love that awareness, it's okay, "I got here through a thousand tiny steps." And, like you're saying, the good news is I can start taking, now, tiny steps in the direction I want to take; toward God, toward building this healthy foundation.
So in that moment, Alli, I want to ask you, did you experience any shame? Because one of the things we talk a lot, on the podcast, is how shame can sometimes keep us in hiding. It can keep us from that healthy foundation.
So how did you, in navigating that self-awareness, that, "Oh, my gosh, who have I become?" What was that process? And then to where you are now, which is this teaching pastor, a mom, a wife. I believe you ended up repairing with your husband, correct?
Alli: Yes.
Alli: So we get there. But what was that process for you? You still had a choice to make in that moment. When you were like, "Who have I become?" You could have just given up. Shame could have taken over and you could have continued to hide. How did you dig your way out? It wasn't just about a foundation; you had to start digging your way out of something. How did you do that?
Alli: Absolutely. So there are two processes, and I didn't write specifically about this in the book, but I'm so glad that you asked. I really see a process of forgiveness as something very different than a process of removing shame. I think those are highly related but different processes.
So I knew, fairly, quickly that God, when I asked, and I came to God and I said," I need your mercy, please forgive me. I want to do something different." I was pretty convinced pretty quickly that I had God's forgiveness. And then I went through a process of seeking forgiveness from the people that I had hurt, in the process of that. So the first way out toward forgiveness, for me, was a brutal, honest confession.
Alison: First with God? Would you say first with God?
Alli: First with God.
Alison: I love that you immediately turned toward God. Because, again, I think, shame in many instances steps in and goes, "You can't go to God, you've done this terrible thing." And somehow inside of you that seed, what I love about this is that seed that was there, even if it was a seed. You knew, "Oh, I've got to turn toward God." I love that.
Alli: Yes, I need Him.
Alison: Yes.
Alli: He was the only thing that I actually felt that I had, and I don't even know why I thought I had Him. I wasn't actively pursuing God. But something He had planted told me, "This is my way out of this."
And, so, I first went to him in brutal confession, and the second thing I did is I went to my husband. And I think that the repentance, truly, the repentance, the turning around. You're going to stop where you are, and you're literally going to change direction, the only way I knew how to do that was to start telling the truth, and it was brutal.
And as I did that, that began the path toward forgiveness with my husband. But also, then, where I would describe shame coming into the picture is, primarily, in my external life. Because this sin is the cardinal sin, it's the bad one and, also, you don't hear very many women talk about this. So it's this extra measure of, "How could you?" And very shaming things.
And, so, I took on this layer of shame to the extent that, Alison, I would not look anyone in the face. And I didn't realize I was doing it at first, but I'm big on eye contact. That's how I like to connect really with people, in the form of eye contact. I like face-to-face communication. And I think that the Holy Spirit pointed out to me at some point, that it had been six months since I had made eye contact with anybody in my life.
Alison: Wow.
Alli: I was so deeply ashamed. And it was at that point that I realized, "Oh, this process of removing shame is something a little bit different than believing you're forgiven."
Alison: Oh, interesting, yes.
Alli: Because I believed I was forgiven by God, and I was, at least, in the process of pursuing forgiveness with my husband. But I describe shame as the enemy's last-ditch effort. You know that you're forgiven, and you're trying to pursue healing, and you're trying to pursue wholeness. His last ditch effort to keep you oppressed in a heavy, heavy layer of shame.
Alison: Yes, I agree with you.
Alli: Because then it keeps you from owning your story. It keeps you from talking about it. I still have to fight that instinct, 20 years later. Shame is this deep instinct to hide.
Alison: Yes.
Alli: And every time I talk about my story, now it's like a little jump over a stone. It used to be I would have to crawl up a brick wall and throw myself over because I was so deeply ashamed. And I finally began to realize, "Okay, this will not lead to the life that God has for me." Because I was turning toward God and I have a smile on my face because He almost began to entice me with, "Hey, there's something a lot better than what you're living. If you would come closer, I could show you what that was."
So as I started to pursue God, shame just began to be totally inconsistent with the life that He has for me. And, finally, I had to realize, "Oh, my gosh, when I do tell my story when I do interact with people, their shame goes away. There's a freeing effect on others." And that began to be just too good, it was too good to pass up.
And, so, I started to realize that shame... a counselor that I saw, said that, "Three times, if you tell your shame story three times, there's a significant loss of impact upon you. That if you can bring yourself to three times telling a new person your story, that you're so ashamed of." A safe person.
Alison: Yes, a hundred percent.
Alli: She was of course giving me guardrails for you don't just talk to people about your stuff, not just any old person. "But if you can get to three, the grip significantly loosens." And I never forgot that, and that was very helpful for me, as I began to realize, "Okay, getting free of shame is something totally different."
Alison: Yes, I love that. Thanks for pausing there because I know, listeners, we talk a lot about shame. And we talk a lot about the things you're saying, "Turning toward God." And I always quote Curt Thompson, in his book The soul of Shame, he calls it "Evil's vector" which is what you're saying. It's the way the enemy wants to keep us, and what I love about what you're saying is you knew you had God's forgiveness. You even had your husband's forgiveness, and shame still-
Alli: Would not let go.
Alison: ...and exactly what you're saying, we know it to be true, that shame thrives in isolation. So tell me, Alli, so now you have your husband's forgiveness. You have God's forgiveness. You're working through your own shame, but then we get back to this foundation.
So how do you then, because also I can hear people listening, or if someone's been through this, or I see this in my own practice, "So great, I've got all this forgiveness. Great, now, I'll just go back to doing the same thing I was doing." We forget so easily.
Alli: Yes.
Alison: So how did you build this healthy foundation? How did just change your day-to-day, decision-by-decision way of being in the world? That's what's harder, in a way.
Alli: That question is exactly what I write about in the book. Because what I discovered during this period of time, where everything felt like it was crumbling down around me. And I reached for God, I genuinely did. And I began to uncover what I, now, see as three, very simple, daily things that I started doing during that time. And I just didn't know, "Oh, my gosh, this is going to be helpful. This is actually going to rebuild something."
And, so, that that is what the book is based upon. The first one is, we've already discussed, it's coming to Jesus. And if you look at coming to Him in Scripture, if you look at the people that he would say came to Him. Or His invitation when He says, "Come to me." Which He says a number of times.
This act of coming to Him is wholehearted, it's mind, body, and soul coming. It's laying everything down at His feet. It's the moments where you look in the mirror and you tell yourself the truth. It's the moments where you confess something you didn't think you would ever say out loud, because you know that He wants you to.
It's the moments where you come to Him in joy, and you want to share your joy and thank Him in gratitude. It's these genuine moments between you and God, and you can't fake that. You're either coming to be with Him relationally or you're not. And you and God are the only two that know the difference.
Alison: Amen.
Alli: And, so, the practice of coming to Jesus starts this whole thing. But the middle one is where I will never stop saying this for the rest of my life. What I accidentally did during this period of time in my life, which started to rebuild a foundation, was I got deeply into His Word.
Alison: Mh-hmm.
Alli: I had for weeks on end, I took some time off work, and for weeks on end, I had a husband who didn't want to be with me. I didn't have any children. I had lost a bunch of friends, it really was me and God. And I started reading His Word again, and I didn't know what I was doing. I wasn't a Bible scholar. I was just a person with a Bible, that was it.
And I would talk to Him, and I would read His Word, and I would try to understand it. And that really is the second one, which is to hear His Word. And the reason I get so excited about this one is because you really start to hear His voice.
God begins to be real to you, in moments when your Bible is not sitting on your lap. Because the word of God is alive, and active, and present. Because Jesus is the Living Word of God. I mean, that's what we even call Him. So as we fill ourselves with the written word, the Living Word comes to life around us, and in us, and through us all the time.
So, Alison, I would get these ideas of things when I wasn't reading my Bible. And I would just be like, "You know what, I think I need to go do that thing." And I would just do it. I was at the point where I had nothing to lose. If I thought it was even, maybe, God, I would do it. Because I had nothing to lose.
And, now, I look back on those moments where I truly didn't have anything to lose, and I was willing to experiment. I was willing to say, "I think this might be you, God, I'm just going to go with it." And, so, that brings-
Alison: Mh-hmm, can you give me an example?
Alli: Oh, sure, like, there was some stuff in my house that I had gotten during the time of the affair, and it was still there. And I was like, "Why do I still have these things? They need to go." And I just had this constant feeling like, "I got to get rid of this stuff." It was just a few random things. It was like a pair of earrings, and a book, and it was just some random stuff.
Alison: That reminded you of that period.
Alli: Yes, that represented that period of time, whatever. And I just, again, I felt this little nudge, "Get rid of that stuff. Just get rid of it."
Alison: Yes, it sounds almost like you went through this process. Because, without going into the details, what I hear is that there was a season, there was a period of time, where your husband was upset with you, and you were on your own.
You went through this own self-with-God deep dive, where you're saturating yourself in God's Word. And this is the language I would use, and through that, through completely immersing yourself in God's Word, in the ocean of the word of truth, of Jesus, you came into contact with the best of who you are. The person that God really wanted you to become.
And, so, that wisdom, what I'm hearing is the beginning of like, "Why would I have this stuff?" It's not necessarily what we hear from God, but what I'm hearing is there was this impulse, this thing inside of you, which I would say comes from that Spirit-led place inside of you. That's now feasting on goodness, that's feasting on God. That's going, "Why would I want this stuff in my house that reminds me of this? I need to..." It was a very practical, concrete, way that you were detoxing, that you were cleansing.
Alli: I had this other moment where I got in my car, after work one day, and there was a Christian radio station on and I swear, Alison, I have no idea. It was almost like I nudged the dial before I got out of the car in the morning or something. I had never listened to this radio station before. It truly was like a flip of the dial when used accidentally, and it would. I know that's usually not how we tune our radios anymore.
Alison: I'm with you.
Alli: It was on a Christian radio station and it caught my attention. I had never listened to Christian music before. And in that moment, I felt the Holy Spirit. Again, I felt God's presence and He was like, "You need to fill yourself with something different." And from then on I couldn't help but hear, "What else would I be filling myself with?"
It was like, "Oh, songs about bad relationships and terrible childhood, and awful breakups, and terrible sexual scenarios." And just you name it, whatever all the songs are about. And just in that one little moment, I felt like He grabbed my attention and went, "Why don't you just try filling yourself with something else? Why don't you just try filling yourself with something that's the truth, my truth for you." And that was very much how I would practice hearing His Word during that.
Alison: Yes, it's a practice of hearing.
Alli: Yes, and then slowly it began to seep out of me. I always tell my kids, now, "Whatever you put in it's eventually going to come out, it just is." There's no way around that kitchen logic. What you put in there is what will eventually come out. But the last thing, which really served me well in a space where I didn't have anything to lose. And this is where the final practice, I talk about my book, I think is where a lot of people bail.
I think a lot of people will genuinely come to God. I think a lot of those people are willing to hear His Word, and believe it's the truth, and the last practice is where a lot of people bail because we do have things to lose, we do have lives. And the last thing is we actually have to do it.
We actually have to follow through on what the Word says to do, and it requires a lot of courage. It requires sometimes loss. It requires sometimes things that we're afraid of, and confessing the affair is a great example of that because I knew I needed to confess. Because nothing could ever be real without it. I couldn't live in that dissonance. But try confessing that, you know, what you're putting on the line. You know what you're putting on the line.
Alison: Oh that had to be so scary.
Alli: You know that you're putting everything that you said you cared about, and you're putting everything on the line. So, luckily, God loves it when we practice in smaller ways, too. We don't always have to be confessing affairs. But in order for your foundation to actually get firm, you must not just hear the Word, you actually have to do the word, and that's, I think, where a lot of people bail. And there's nothing magical about what I'm saying in this book.
What I'm doing is I'm repeating the words of Christ. Because He calls us to hear His Word and follow through on it. Not just be "Hearers of the word but doers of the word," I think is what James writes. And that is where, actually, I look back on my story and I think, "Man, it was a gift to be in a space where I had very little to lose. Because I was willing to be courageous because I was desperate." And, to be honest, it seems like a gift now.
There are listeners who will listen and go, "I am desperate." And, to you, I would say this is actually a beautiful place to be. Because you have the advantage of you can go all in on something, that other people will hesitate about.
Alison: I love that. I agree with you, that's the gift of the hitting rock bottom, in a way.
Alli: The broken.
Alison: Yes, I hear you. As painful as it is and I don't wish it on people. But it is this weird gift of a radical invitation, to completely change your life in the way that we should all be changing our lives every day. Which brings me to this question of, how do you continue to do this work when the stakes aren't that high?
So, now, you're a teaching pastor, you're a mom, you're in a church. How do you keep yourself from going back to that, "I'm a good person." Again, it's more subtle, you would never theologically go there. But just that, I'm going to see it myself that bent toward entropy, that bent towards the path. How do you keep yourself, now, that you've built? Now it's been, I don't know, 20, however many years-
Alli: It's been 22 years or something, it's been a really long time.
Alison: ...that you've been living on a solid foundation, and I still think there's an invitation there. So there's the person that's at rock bottom and that's hard.
Alli: No doubt.
Alison: And there's that person that's "Mm, I'm doing okay, how do I keep solid?" And even just sometimes, I think, kind of passivity, or the path of least resistance, which still isn't doing this work. So what are you doing in your life?
Alli: Okay, here's what I do, I'm so glad we're talking about this. Because the same thing that will rebuild you from the deepest, darkest hole is exactly the same thing that's available to you today if you're doing great. And what I would say is you need to take risks on God. You need to take risks on God.
If you cannot name the last risk that you took on God, on His Word, on what He says, on who He is, on what He does. Then that is, ultimately, a succinct way to say, "This is your everyday invitation."
And you could be doing great right now, and there will still be a risk on God in front of you. And if you take those risks day after day, and we can talk about what some of those are. If you take those risks, day after day, you will end up on a solid foundation.
Alison: Interesting answers. So give me some examples, I'm curious about this, about what you picked.
Alli: Okay, here's one you could take this week, actually, take a day of rest. I know very few people that do that, and it's a weekly invitation that we have to trust that God will keep things moving. That He has your back, that you don't have to be a slave to your work.
That no one is going to hate you if you don't answer them on social media for a day. No one is going to deny their friendship with you if you turn your phone off for a few hours. But we don't actually live like we believe God.
Instead, we go, "I don't know, I'll try to take a nap on Sunday." This is the daily, the weekly invitation that we have for a day of rest, is a great risk to take on God.
I'll give you another one, money. What are you doing with your money? Are you actually giving generously? God gives us a 10%, a tithe standard. I believe firmly in the tithe because I don't even think that's mine. I think a tithe is God's, He asked us to return to Him what is His. And are you actually doing with your money what He has asked you to do?
Are you taking that risk on God?
Those are two, I think, that we are so used to thinking about as rules that we don't look at them in the context of our relationship, it's actually a risk.
Alison: I like how you're reframing that. It's not the legalism of it, it's not the rules of it. You're actually saying how we continue to build that foundation is to take a risk on the promises of God. It might also be having that hard conversation with somebody.
Alli: Definitely, oh that's a good one.
Alison: It might be saying no to somebody. It might be believing God that the lies shame is telling us, and going and telling somebody about that struggle that we're having. But I love how you're reframing that as not because of the legalistic, it's because we're betting on God, in a way. And we're keeping ourselves, there's a way in which you phrase that when you say, "Take a risk on God." It helps me, it's energizing. It's energizing our faith versus sliding into that slippery slope of whatever.
Alli: Here's another great one, I try to do a lot. If I think of a positive word for someone, if I have an encouragement for you, I just believe that you need to hear that and I tell you, immediately, if possible.
And if I lay my calendar, in front of God, and I pray over it, and there's something that feels weird about something on my calendar for the week, I get rid of it, immediately. And I say to God, "I believe this is you, if I get it wrong, who cares?"
That's why I smile when I talk about this because this is when you find out what you need to know about God. Because I think, Alison, just like people, we deserve to trust God in a way that we know He's there. I don't think He wants to be some Santa in the sky. Where we have to close our eyes and go, "I just hope you're really there."
I actually think He wants to give you a set of personal experiences with Him, where your questions about Him are answered. Where you get to interact with Him in a way that convinces you of who He is. He is so good and so gracious to us. That He will personally convince you of Himself, and He does not need to do that. He does not need to do that.
Alison: It's so interesting because we say these words, "It's a relationship." But if you think about any relationship that stays vital, that stays alive, a friendship, a marriage, you have to work at it. You have to come back and say, "We need to do a date night. We need to take risks. We need to keep the vitality in it." And why would it be any different with God? I love that.
I know sometimes I'll go through a period where I maybe I feel a little less connected to the vitality of that relationship. And inevitably, one of the things I'll do, I'll make a list of questions that I can't figure out the answers.
What am I supposed to do with this part of my life? Or how am I supposed to...? And I'll make a list of questions that I'm like, "I'm going to just keep..." It's like the persistent widow, "I'm going to keep going to God with these questions."
Rarely, for me, do I hear a like lightning bolt in the sky. But, inevitably, if I keep at it, if I chip away, and I read, and I point myself toward trying, inevitably, God shows up in some way, usually, in a surprising way.
But I hear that what you're saying. I like that idea of it's never how I expect or sometimes it is, but it always makes me laugh. There's always that inside joke with God, it's like, "Oh, right, there you are God." But that's the fruit of the long game with God.
Alli: Yes.
Alison: You take those risks, strategically, and I love what you're saying. You're saying something that's really nuanced here, it's not that we're testing God. It's not that we're expecting God to be a genie in a bottle. It's, "I might be wrong, I might take this risk." And maybe God is like, "Actually, that was stupid, you shouldn't." But then that's going to course-correct too, it doesn't matter.
Alli: Yes, it doesn't matter if you're right or wrong. Here's the beautiful thing when you say to God and I've done this, this is how I talk to Him sometimes. And I will say to Him, "Hey, I think this is you, and I got to move on this in the next three hours. So I'm going to do this thing and if it's not you, I'd really appreciate you intervening before then but I'm going. At 3 p.m. I got to go."
And, so, I will deal with Him the way that I would with anyone else, trusting that, number one He can intervene anytime, anywhere He wants. And number two, if I get it wrong, guess what? I'm going to get the same set of information about God that I would have gotten if I got it right.
Alison: Yes.
Alli: What I'm going to do is I'm going to meet God in the middle of whatever goes down here, and that's what I want.
Alison: That's right.
Alli: That's what gets you to the foundation.
Alison: That's right, that's the relationship. And you'll also, my guess is, you're going to, for the most part, stay within your wisdom. And we're not saying go and buy a lottery ticket.
Alli: Yes, we're not talking about Vegas roulette kind of risk here. We're talking about a risk where you go, "I know your character. I understand your Word, and to the best of my ability I am going to follow, and here's what it looks like and I'm just going to move."
And many of us drop off at that point because what we've been taught to do, as good Christians, in many cases is, "Wait for confirmation." We're going to pray and we're going to wait." I am pro waiting, if that's the season that I'm in. There are seasons of waiting, there are times when waiting is appropriate. But I would say most of the time, where you interact with God is as you go, and we are so afraid to get it wrong. We are just so afraid to get it wrong.
And I'm telling you when I've screwed it up, I've learned to laugh. And I've learned to appreciate the wisdom that I get in those times I take risks, and I'm like, "I guess that was just me." I wrote about a couple of them in the book.
Alison: You're touching on, it's so interesting, Alli, again, this is sort of where you and I are two sides of the same coin. Because this is where in The Best of You, in chapter 10, I write about this idea of spiritual co-dependency where we want to hide. We want God to give us big bold letters in the sky, and really what I'm trying to say it's a partnership.
We step out with God and that's what you're saying. It's like, "I have some wisdom, it's a little bit scary." It's living courageously from the best of who God's made us to become, bringing God with us, though.
I have a quote that says, "God directs a person in motion." And that's what you're saying, that's the taking a risk part, taking a risk on God. And what I love about what you're saying is it might be taking a risk. I'm thinking about, there are times where to be honest with God about how scared we are, or about how crummy we feel about this thing we have to do, that kind of thing.
There are so many ways that works out, but I love what you're seeing there is a lot of movement. There's some pragmatism to it, there are some actions, some concrete steps. And, again, what I sense in you, and I can see it in your face, and I can feel it oozing out of you is this freedom.
And that's like there's freedom, it's like, "I can't lose. How can I lose? Because, regardless, I'm going to learn about God, I'm going to learn about myself." And that's the fruit of that solid foundation that you're talking about.
Alli: The picture of maturity, to me, in a Christ follower is the ability to use freedom. Because, ultimately, God calls us to be free and He tells us to keep in step with His Spirit,
and He wants us to use His wisdom. And what He wants us to live, and work, and move, and be in relationship with you as you live in the fullness of who He is.
And so, for me, the perfect picture of maturity in Christ is actually the ability to use the freedom that you have in Christ. And because part of that, it goes back to the second practice, is we submit to His Word. Because freedom does not look like you do whatever you want, whenever you want.
Freedom is somebody who understands there is a God who loves me, and who has a way that He has designed life to work. And if I willfully step outside of that I can use my freedom like that, or I can use my freedom to actually bind myself to Him.
And then in that, I get to do some incredible things that I never thought possible. Because then I get His life, and I get His power, and I get His love for other people. And I get to do and be things I never thought I could do or be.
Believe me, Alison, when I was 23 years old, crumbled up in a heap, I never imagined I would be courageous. I never imagined I would describe myself as a true Christ follower. Again, I thought I had given up that right to even call myself a Christian. I thought I was totally unworthy and definitely marked for life.
And I will say to your listeners, who are anywhere around that space, I know that there have been people that have come to you and they've actually told you those things. And it makes it that much harder to believe that you could ever be something else, and I'm telling you, you can absolutely be something else. And not only that you have a God who's anxiously awaiting your restoration.
And, so, I love being able to, in a very simple, practical life-giving way, say to other people, "Hey there, there is a living God, and there's actually a way that you can interact with Him that will make your life strong and make it work."
Even if that means periods of pain, and periods of weakness, and periods of failure, and all of that kind of stuff, too, you are with Him in it. And, therefore, your life has a strength, and a gravity, that you can never access without Him. That is my deepest heart for this book is to make the way plain, because I don't think it's hard. I think when we come to Jesus when we fill ourselves with His Word, and we actually do what it says.
Suddenly, you become someone new, and you look back over your shoulder and go, "What in the world? I'm different than I used to be." And I don't know anyone with a faith that I love and respect, who even if they use different words, doesn't actually practice these three practices.
Alison: Yes.
Alli: That doesn't actually do these three things.
Alison: I love that, Alli, it's such a great message, you do such a good job of weaving this realness into it. This realness of your own life. It's called How to Stay Standing, tell our listeners how to get a hold of the book, and how to Get a hold of your resources? Some of the things that they can find when they look you up.
Alli: Yes, so you can find How to Stay Standing anywhere that books are available. There will also be an audiobook, so if you don't like to read visually, you'll be able to get the audiobook as well. And if you go to my website, it's theallipatterson.com or you follow me on social media. I often post other Bible studies I've created, free resources like prayer guides, audio guides.
I love creating resources to help you connect with God through Scripture. I love doing short studies that are really easy to digest and easy ways to connect with God, through Scripture and prayer. There are lots of things that are super accessible, if you check out my website or follow me on social, there's always stuff there.
Alison: Your energy and your vitality is just super infectious. And there's a living witness to what you're describing with words, so I appreciate that. I appreciate you coming here. And I want to just close, Alli, with these questions that I ask all my guests. What or who is bringing out the best of you right now? And what needs or desires are you working to protect?
Alli: Okay, similar answer on one front to both. What brings out the best of me is when I carve out time to be alone. I desperately need silence. Sometimes if I sit in the quiet, I feel silence is healing. It ministers to me in a way that nothing else does, and that brings out the best of me, and I do have to fight for that.
As you might imagine, I'm a mom of four kids, and I have a job, and I have a book, and all kinds of other things going on with that. So I have to fight for that, and I have to protect my need for that. And I've learned to stop apologizing for that. I will not apologize for needing that.
And who brings out the best of me? For sure, right now, it is my husband and my four kids, because I cannot look at them and not be grateful to God for what He's done in my life. I mean, as you might imagine, my marriage has had bumps because of our early days. It is not an easy road; we have not traveled an easy road. You don't go through a story like that, and get out unscathed.
But when I think, "Wow, I love him and we have fun together, 23 years later, this is incredible." And the kids are just the fruit of that as well. And, so, I think when I am around them, I'm usually bathed in gratitude for it because I'm very clear that I didn't actually deserve it. That it all came to me by the grace of God and He is responsible for that. So that's how I feel when I'm around them. So they're my favorite humans and they, definitely, bring out the best of me.
Alison: I love that. Again, the gift of rock bottom is gratitude, and when we turn toward God and allow Him to reshape and reclaim our lives. So what a beautiful way to end.
Thank you so much, Alli, for just sharing your story, sharing your wisdom, creating these resources. I so appreciate you and all that you're putting into the world and look forward to just all the ways you're going to minister to and bless so many people.
Alli: Thank you. Thanks for having me on. I treasure our friendship, so I really appreciate you. Thank you
Today on The Best of You Podcast, we're talking about detoxing from the false beliefs that keep us stuck in unhealthy patterns of relating to other people. These hidden messages are sneaky. They might sound true in the moment, but they keep us from the healthy two-way relationships we need. I also answer your questions, and provide sample scripts for communicating in healthy ways with other people.
Here's what we discuss:
1. Examples of toxic thinking
2. How it contaminates our relationships
3. An example of toxic thinking from the Bible
4. How to re-frame toxic thoughts
Plus, I answer your questions:
How do I communicate with other people about what I'm going through?
Can spiritual bypassing become a form of numbing?
Thanks to our sponsor:
- Organifi -Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order 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.
Resources
- For more on The 7 Red Flags of Friendship and Spiritual Bypassing, see Chapters 8 and 10 of The Best of You, by Dr. Alison Cook
- Episode 1: What Is Narcissism Really?
- Episode 2: What Should I Know About Gaslighting?
- Episode 35: Change is Hard–Why We All Need to Detox From Unhealthy Dependencies From Time to Time
- Episode 36: An Update on My Social Media Detox & How to Create Boundaries With Toxic Distractions, Numbing, & Unhealthy Coping Tactics
- 2 Samuel 11-12
- John 14:15-17
- Galatians 5:22-23
- Philippians 4:7
- Resources for support
Today's episode is a real-time update on my own social media detox and how what started as a pause revealed a deeper need. I also lay out a practical framework for you to use in sorting out the distractions, numbing, or unhealthy coping tactics in your life and how to replace them with the life-giving, soul-nourishing things you actually crave.
Here's what we cover:
1. What my own detox revealed about my use of social media
2. A roadmap for how to pinpoint areas in your own life that might need a detox
3. Healthy ways to escape, soothe, or find comfort
4. What is the difference between a fast and a detox?
5. Can I find a healthy balance with certain distractions?
Thanks to our sponsors:
- Organifi -Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
- Brooklinen-Visit Brooklinen.com today and use code BESTOFYOU to save.
- Hiya Health-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.
Resources
- Also in this series: Episode 35: Change is Hard-Why We All Need to Detox From Unhealthy Dependencies From Time to Time
- For more on how to "Start with Yes" see Chapter 6 of The Best of You, by Dr. Alison Cook
- So Worth Loving
- 1 Corinthians 10:23
- Matthew 4:1-11
- My Tech-Wise Life, by Andy Crouch
- The Tech-Wise Family, by Andy Crouch
- Psalm 16:6-8
- Resources for support
Transcript
Alison: Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Best of You podcast. I am so glad you're back and that we get to continue this conversation, about how to detox, specifically, how to detox mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. When we've cluttered up our lives with sometimes even good things.
So, today's episode is a first for me, but I need to share with you a real-time update on my own detox, from the last few months. It directly relates to this topic, and I want to share that update with you as an example, as an illustration, of what can happen if you decide to remove something, from your life, that you suspect might be causing, unnecessary, clutter, noise, even toxicity in your own nervous system, in your own mind, in your own heart, in your own soul.
So I've got a real-time example from my own life, and then I'm going to give you some really practical resources and tips for you, as you seek to, potentially, detox from something. And, more importantly, move toward the life-giving, nourishing good things your heart, mind, and soul need.
All right, so here's my update. Sometimes a detox is a brief timeout to reboot and reset, and then you pick that thing back up.
So it's an opportunity to hit the reset button so that you can gain clarity or wisdom, about how you use that thing. But then you pick that thing back up from a healthier place; with moderation, with perspective, with healthier boundaries around it.
However, sometimes a detox reveals a deeper dependency, that it's going to need a more substantive shift. It becomes less like a reset, like a pause, "I paused, I got some perspective. I got some clarity. Now, I'm just, basically, going back to my life as it was, but it was really helpful to have that time away from that thing."
It's less of that and more like a shift. And when I think of a shift, I think of a ship, like a big ship, out on the ocean where it's been going in one direction. And ever so slowly and ever so steadily, it actually needs to shift the entire body of that ship to move in a different direction.
And this is what I mean by a more substantive shift, that suddenly this detox revealed a dependency. That actually once you remove it, it's going to change the whole way that ship had been going. Such that even if it's a tiny degree, it's not like it's doing a U-turn, it's just changing a couple of degrees to the left or the right.
It requires a more substantial change all the way through, again, your mind, your heart, your soul, and your nervous system. And you may not have even known it going into that detox. You're going to need, completely, different boundaries with the thing from which you detoxed. And that, it turns out, is what the case is with me. As I mentioned in last week's episode, episode 35, I started a detox from social media in November of 2022, about six weeks ago.
This was an information overload detox. I was noticing that when I went on social media, nothing really good was coming from it. Instead, I was just noticing this clamor, this din in my heart, soul, and mind.
So I took the time off, as I discussed last week, and really did notice a change. Noticed a slowing down, a calmer nervous system, just a lot of health that came from that time away. And I was super grateful for it, but I still wasn't considering the possibility that I wouldn't go back on. I just assumed that once the six weeks were up, I would resume my regular practices with social media. That had been the plan.
So last week I scheduled my first post. It was in conjunction with the last week's podcast episode. I scheduled it through a third-party app that I use. I work with two amazing women through an organization called So Worth Loving. They design my words, it's my words but I am terrible with design, as I've mentioned on this podcast.
I'm great with words, not so great with making things pretty. So they take my words and make them pretty and post them through this app. So I don't have to go on social media to create the post and schedule it.
So I'd scheduled the post, and I knew that it was coming out on Thursday. I had deleted all of my social media apps off my phone.
And every day, leading up to Thursday, knowing that post was going to come out, I could not bring myself to put those apps back on my phone. I just couldn't do it. Nothing in my body wanted to do that. So the post went out Thursday morning, many of you saw it, but I still had yet to download the apps and go back on social media myself.
Now this created some tension inside of me and I want to pause here, just as a side note. A lot of people, especially bigger names and brands that have hundreds of thousands of people following them. A lot of those people pay other people to post for them. They may use a service to post for them, it's very common. That's not an uncommon thing.
Typically, you might think you're interacting with a celebrity or even an author, but a lot of times it is someone else. And some people disclose this by noting, in the comments, that they're writing on behalf of the person, that they're part of their team.
Sometimes you don't know. There's nothing wrong with that per se. I've just never done it that way. I've pretty much done it myself. So if it's me on there commenting or interacting with you, it's me, and that feels important to me. That's a part of me feeling authentic. So it felt very weird, to me, to have a post out there and not actually be on the app.
And, again, it's a minor thing, I don't think anybody has a problem with that. But, to me, that brought up some tension inside because that's not how I've ever done it. But I could not get myself to download those apps. I just didn't want to go back on.
It was fine with me that the scheduled post had posted. I wanted people to know about the podcast episode. I want to use that as a place for people to know about the work that I'm doing. I'm excited about that. I want people to listen to the podcast. I want you to share it with friends. I want it to be available to people. I believe in it. But I just couldn't get myself to download those apps.
So, finally, I decided to test it. I went in through my browser, on my computer, instead of through the app. So this is actually a way that I had created, sort of an obstacle for myself. I'll talk about that more later in the episode. But when you have a square on your phone. Your phone is with you all the time. It's just so easy to click that square, you're immediately in that portal. There's no obstacle to it.
But by not having the apps on my phone, I had to go to my computer, log into my browser, put the URL on my browser to get the feed up on my screen. It's a lot harder to do, and that's one of the ways that I have created boundaries with it in the past.
So I used my browser to log on, on Thursday, to test it out. Talking myself through it, this inner tension, a part of me being like, "I need to be on social media, I said, I was going to go back. But do you really have to go back? Why do you have to go back?"
There was all this inner noise inside of me. And the first thing I saw was a picture of a friend. Someone I love, someone I have only positive feelings toward.
And I instantly noticed my nervous system amp up. It felt like a hit of adrenaline, and all that noise started to swirl back into my mind. The clamor, the comparison, the criticism, the competitiveness, just the noise.
And I just immediately got back out, I couldn't continue. I tried it again, later that day, this time I saw someone whose podcast I listened to. I don't know this person in real life, I love their podcast, listen to it almost every week. But just seeing the post on social media, it was like my whole nervous system just froze. It's like, "I can't do it. I'm out."
Something about just the level, the sheer level, of noise, of information, of data. The dancing swirling lights of all that comes with the Feed, with the social media Feed, just obliterated that sense of calm in about 30 seconds or less by just simply looking.
And other deeper voices started to emerge. "I don't want that."
"I don't need that."
"Why do I need that?"
"Do I have to have that?"
"Do I have to be here?"
"Why can't I just say no?" Now, spoiler alert, my word of the year, this year, is no. I need to give myself permission to say no to things. It's not a word I like to use. In fact, I have friends who tease me that if I say, "Maybe" that means no. I hate saying no. So I'm learning how to say no. All of this was stirred up inside of me, Thursday.
And as much as every part of me was like, "No, I don't have to do this." Other parts of me were nervous. When you're an author, you're supposed to show up online. You're supposed to have a presence.
But where was that pressure really coming from? It hasn't come from you all, my listeners. Every time I've talked about boundaries I've needed to set or every time I've posted about needing to take a break from social media. The people who follow my work, you all, this community, people who are on my email list are nothing but supportive saying, "I get it."
"Me too, I've had to go off social media."
"Good for you, do what you need to do."
Nobody in my real life or in this community has given me pressure to be on social media. But somewhere in my mind was this idea of "This is what I'm supposed to do. I'm an author, I'm a podcast host, I should have a presence on social media."
And I began to realize that this particular detox was not a simple reset. This was going to have to be a shift. It was going to create more change than I originally thought. And I began to think about new boundary lines.
Now, this is real-time, this happened in about three days, but I began to take my own advice. I talk about it in chapter six from The Best of You, "When you realize you're going to need new boundary lines, to start with, 'Yes'". And the big question that I needed to be able to answer yes to is what can I say yes to?
I want to stay connected with people. I want to stay connected with the people who follow my work. I want to stay connected with friends. I want to stay connected with colleagues, with other thought leaders who I enjoy. I want to stay connected. That was a clear yes. But on the other hand, my body is saying, "No, I cannot do this scrolling." And it really was very clear. It was just the dancing, blaring lights of all the information overload that I had to say no to.
So over the course of the few days, what became very clear to me, and it was really a result of the whole two months, was, oh, my goodness, what I learned was, I love this podcast. I love hosting it. I love preparing for it. I love engaging your questions that you send me through the Doc, through comments, through emails.
I love the private book club community we just started on Facebook, it was life-giving to me. I enjoyed logging on. It was easy for me to set healthy boundaries for it. I have some help doing it. It didn't feel like information overload. I love reaching out to friends I've actually made online, personally. I have other ways that I can get to those people. I could still stay connected in all of those ways.
None of those things stirred up the same noise, the clamor, the dancing lights of too much. It wasn't the people or the community. It wasn't the ideas, it was the scrolling Feed, that never ending dancing, blaring lights, ping, ping, ping, so much overload to my system.
It's just too much for the way God has made me. It's too much for the way my nervous system is wired. There are good things about being someone who's highly sensitive, highly intuitive, highly empathetic. Highly responsible to the information I take in. Those are good qualities, and they are not super conducive to a really active social media Feed. It's too much for me.
My body wasn't saying no to the good aspects of connecting in various ways. But it was saying no to the cacophony and clamor of noise in my Feed. Of getting all that information in one blast, without any boundaries. On when I could receive it, and pace it, and be fully present to the information I was receiving in a way that honors both the other person and honors me. That allows me to show up, authentically, in the way that God made me.
I had lunch with a friend, over Christmas, and she said it much more simply. She's not someone who's on social media a lot, but she said one day she realized, "I often have this ugh feeling in my mind, heart, and soul. And when I took time to trace that, ugh, feeling back, so frequently, it went back to something I saw on social media. Either something that just triggered me or something that I now knew that I didn't have any ability to help with." Yes, that was me.
There's a lot of hard things in life we've got to learn to respond to wisely, that we don't have control over. This was something I do have control over. So I'm making a shift, the shift in real time is that you'll see posts from me, on social media, from time to time, much less frequently. These posts will relate to this podcast or things I've written that I want you to know about.
But I won't be hanging out on my Feed personally.
This simple boundary, it's small but it's something that will, exponentially, improve my own emotional, mental, and spiritual health.
Healing work is almost always boundaries work.You figure out what you want to say yes to. And that backs you into the very clear thing that you can set a boundary with, to keep your own emotional, mental, and spiritual health intact.
[00:17:10] < Music >
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[00:19:43] < Music >
Alison: I want to walk you through a map for how you might engage your own work of detoxing. Especially in this technology information stuff category. Just this stuff that clutters up our hearts, souls, and mind. Last week I taught you to ask yourself the question, "What is the cost?"
Whenever you are trying to make a change in your life, what is the cost?
This week, as you think about getting specific about how to slow down your nervous system. How to detox or declutter some of the noise in your life, that is keeping you from calm, clear, grounded, brave ways of showing up in your everyday life. I want to give you a framework; number one, name it. Name the thing that you suspect, at this moment in time, is keeping you distracted, cluttered, even in some unhealthy ways of coping.
Now, when you name something, you do so without shame. You name it without shame. For me November, early November, it's social media, I see it. Every time I hit that app, nothing good happens. So name it without shame.
Get really granular about it. Is it the app on your phone? Is it a habit of buying things? What is the portal into this clutter, this distraction? This dependence on something else that's taking you off or away from this beautiful life God has for you?
Imagine that ship, that's just a little bit off, maybe, it's not even a U-turn. But it just is a little bit off, what's that thing? Just take a moment, reflect on it, pray about it, and name it. What is that thing that is stirring up any of those three Cs of clamor, of comparison, of criticism, of yourself or others, of competitiveness in an unhealthy way inside of you?
Number two, frame it. So we're going to name it, then we're going to frame it. And when I think of framing it, I think of the four sides of a picture frame. We're going to try to get the big picture here, to get some context on this thing. And the four sides of that picture frame are four question words. Number one, why? Why do you depend on it?
Maybe you're bored, tired, sad, needing a legitimate escape. Maybe you're feeling stressed, overwhelmed. And, so, it's so easy just to grab that quick fix, instant feel-good thing. Why do you depend on it?
Number two, when do you turn to it? That'll also give you a clue to your why. Is that at night; when you're tired, when you're lonely, when you're stressed, when you're worried? When are you turning to it? So there's the why and the when, and see if that'll help you frame this thing that you're wanting to detox from.
Number three, how? How do you access it? Is it an app? Is it technology? Is it a phone? Is it a store that you go into? Is it a friend that you call that isn't actually healthy? We're going to get into that next week, unhealthy relational dependencies.
How does this come up for you?
Is it a location?
Is it a group that you're a part of? That you're just noticing stirs up a clamor, a cacophony inside of you, that isn't helpful to you.
And number four, this is key, what healthier option might be available to you? Because, as we discussed last week, these things, these distractions, these numbing devices, these coping strategies are serving a purpose. We need something, and parts of us have learned to rely on this thing to meet that need. But there might be a better way to meet that need.
For example, over the past two months when I was not on social media, my body started to shift, almost, imperceptively to me. I've noticed it far more in the last week. When I've realized I don't want to be scrolling because I've discovered, oh, my goodness, so much more life-giving beautiful, healthy things for my system, instead of scrolling mindlessly.
I began to recover a joy in books, imagine that reading a book before bed. Good movies, I hadn't watched a movie in so long and a really good, beautiful, well-told story that could transport me for an hour, 90 minutes, when I needed to decompress. When I needed my mind to log off in a healthy way, I could lose myself in a story through a movie, through a book, that actually gave me that escape that I needed.
I began to remember the way that I used to rely on thinkers, from time to time. By getting their book, or by listening to a podcast, or watching a documentary. I can pace the information intake in those ways. I could both hear and be heard, with friends, when I picked up the phone versus engaging them through social media. And I began to think about, and I want to offer this to you today, three primary categories, for this question of what is a healthier option available to you?
The first is beauty, movies, art, nature, music. These are all forms of beauty. We need beauty. We need to be transported into other places in our minds, sometimes. Animals are another thing that can be beautiful, I've put animals under nature. Those of you who get outside with animals, with horses, with dogs, whatever it is, these nourish us and they give us healthy escape.
Category number two, connection, talking to friends in a healthy way about what we're feeling, about what's worrying us. Finding a group, it's hard when you're lonely. It's hard to get out there and do the work of finding a therapist, finding a support group, finding a small group. But maybe that's the good work that our hearts, souls, and minds need.
And then category number three, rest. Because so much of these distraction, and numbing, and coping things, that sneak in, come in when we're tired and we need rest. And scrolling through a Feed is not giving my soul, heart, and mind the rest that I need.
And I don't know what it is for you, but I do want to say this rest is not just sleeping. It's not just taking a nap. It's quiet. It's a calm nervous system. It's awareness. It's noticing what feels restful to you. It might be a slow walk. It might be dancing, moving your body in a fun, creative way. There's a million things it could be, when we slow ourselves down enough to pay attention.
So we're naming the thing that we need a break from. We're framing it; why we use it, when we use it, how we use it, and what might be a healthier option instead of it, at least, for a little while. And then number three, we're going to tame it. And by taming it, we go into action. We've done the pre-work, we've thought about it, we've named it. We have these coping tactics for a reason. So it's going to take a minute to see, and discover, what those good things are that you need.
So, now, it's time we've backed into it to remove the item for a specific period of time. Now, if you've relied on this thing for a while, go slowly, maybe just start with a day. Say, "I'm going to see what a day is like, and I'm going to do this differently." Just one day.
Maybe you start with one week. Just one week, "I'm going to see what my life is like without this thing I've named. And I'm going to experiment, and notice, and ask myself what feels different, what feels good?" It takes a little bit to notice that. And then at the end of that set period of time. You're going to ask yourself, "Is this something I can use in moderation, in a healthy way?"
Or "Is this something I need to continue to take a break from? This might be something that isn't healthy, for me, at all, and I'm going to need more time away from it."
As Paul says in Corinthians, "Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible, but not everything is edifying." This is about learning moderation, and this is also about discovering the deeper root of comfort, of pleasure, of real nourishment that our souls crave.
It's about uncovering those cheap substitutes and uncovering the goodness that we all need. It's going to be different for all of us. It's going to be different for all of us. For me, it happened to be the dancing, blaring lights of social media. It may be something different for you.
Now, I want to close today by responding to a couple of your questions. Number one, Michelle asked, "What is the difference between a fast and a detox?" And this is a great question. I'm so glad you asked it.
A fast is really a spiritual practice. It's a giving up something to remind yourself to turn toward God. Jesus fasted from food for 40 days in the wilderness. He took away a good thing, a good source of nourishment, as a way to grow spiritually deeper and deeper in His dependence on God the Father.
So when we fast, we tend to model after Jesus. Typically, it's food, different people have different ideas about that. But the idea is you remove something, primarily, to seek prayer and seek greater dependence on God. So there's an overlap there.
We want to include God in this process of a detox. Absolutely, this has been a deeply spiritual journey for me. But a detox is a little bit different; you're identifying something that's a distraction. A source of numbing, an unhealthy dependence, an unhealthy way of coping. In order to discover a healthier way of finding the comfort, the beauty, the connection, the real rest your heart, soul, mind, and body need.
So a detox is about learning to realign yourself, your whole system, so that you are moving in the right direction. Imagine that ship, that is just subtly gotten off course and it needs to reorient itself in a healthier, better way.
Another question that came in from Lisa, "When I think about detoxing, I think about cutting something out of my life entirely. But what if the thing isn't actually bad and is possibly even a good thing. But it's the way the thing is being used that is causing the problem."
It's a great question, Lisa gave the example of exercise. I know folks who can depend, in unhealthy ways, on cleaning. But it can really become a distraction for people, some otherwise good things. And I would just offer you some thoughts on moderation.
One of the tips I would offer you is this idea of just getting into that framing. The why, the when, the how. The why, the when, and the how you're using that thing? And then what's something you could turn toward instead?
So let's say you do the exercise, or you do the good thing, or maybe you're on social media. And you do that for the prescribed amount of time that feels healthy and right to you. But then you're still tempted to do it above and beyond that for XYZ reasons. What's something else you could do instead? And that's going to depend a lot on that, "Why".
Is it because you're tired?
Is it because you are sad?
Is it because you are worried?
Is that why you're turning to that thing more than you should? And if that's the case, think of those categories. What are other outlets for this worry, this stress, this tiredness, that I'm feeling that helps me to connect myself into God. Connection, do I need comfort?
Do I need the comfort of a listening ear?
And then rest; do I need to actually downshift my nervous system instead of up shifting it?
Do I actually maybe need to take a slow walk? To invite a friend to walk with me so I don't overdo it?
So, again, getting back to that framing so that you learn what is at the root of it, and what is something you could replace that impulse with? So, as we close, I want to offer you just a couple of practical tools. I recommend two books by Andy Crouch one is called; My Tech-Wise Life: Growing Up and Making Choices in a World of Devices.
And the other is his book, The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place. Those are two great resources if you are struggling with information overload, and need to set some healthy boundaries with it.
I also want to just close with the words of the psalmist who said, "The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night, my heart instructs me. I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken."
Take the Lord with you into this journey and the boundary lines will fall in pleasant places. I am amazed at what God has done in my life through a simple decision I made in mid-November. There's more to it that I haven't even scratched the surface of it, on this podcast episode.
God honors our small, brave steps. He will honor a small, brave step you take to move away from what distracts you and toward what brings you the good things, the nourishment, the comfort, the delight, the joy, the real nourishment, your mind, heart, soul, and body crave.
[00:36:02] < Outro >
Alison: Thank you for joining me for this episode of The Best of You. Be sure to check out the show notes for any resources and links mentioned in the show. You can find those on my website at dralisoncook.com. That's Alison with one L- cook.com.
Before you forget, I hope you'll follow the show now so that you don't miss an episode. And I'd love it if you go ahead and leave a review, it helps so much to get the word out. 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.
