Science-backed tools.
Spiritually-based wisdom.

This week we're digging into intelligence. And believe me, it's not what you were taught! If you've struggled with comparing yourself to others, feeling inadequate, or unsure of your unique gifts (and that's pretty much all of us), you don't want to miss this episode!

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Here's what we cover:

1. What is intelligence?

2. Why it's different than what you were taught

3. 9 different types of intelligence

4. 2 toxic consequences of comparing ourselves to others

5. 9 ways to connect with God

Do you have questions for Dr. Alison?⁠ Leave them here.

Want to receive free bonus content? ⁠⁠Sign up for my free weekly email here.

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Resources

• ‍The Best of You on Youtube
• Episode 3: What Is Self-Love And Should I Really Love Myself?‍
• More on Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences
• ‍Sacred Pathways by Gary Thomas
• ‍John 20:24-27
• ‍Romans 12:1
• ‍Resources for support

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Thanks to our sponsors:

• Go to ⁠www.organifi.com/bestofyou⁠ today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
• Get 35% off your first order of Sundays. Go to SundaysForDogs.com/BESTOFYOU or use code BESTOFYOU at checkout.
• Order Aundi Kolber's new book, Strong Like Water today!

Music by Andy Luiten

Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik

While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.

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Transcript

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Alison: Hey everyone, and welcome back to today's episode of The Best of You podcast. I am so glad you're here. We are in a new series on my favorite psychology tools and I like to think of that word, psychology, that prefix psyche. Traditionally, historically, it was always interpreted as soul. So psychology is literally the study of the soul. 

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Now, in the 20th century, psyche came to be more understood as the mind. But I really like that translation of the soul, where we're talking about all of the elements. The mental, the emotional, the spiritual, and even the physical. Including the nervous system and the body in that study of the psyche, insofar as it helps us understand ourselves. 

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Now, on this podcast, if you've been around for a while or if you're new, I always bring that study of psychology into partnership with something from the Bible, from theology, from religious studies. Because I believe we don't really know ourselves fully unless we are also, intimately, connected with the One who made us. And, frankly, you could also add into that, insofar as we are also connected to the people around us. There's this trinity of relationships between the self, God, and others, all of which contribute to who we are. 

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As a psychologist, I tend to emphasize this relationship with the self. Trying to understand who you are, your individual needs, your individual differences, your individual makeup. But, again, we understand that much more fully in the context of understanding the God who made us and understanding other people in our lives. 

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Now, before we get started, if you have questions for me that you want me to answer. Please locate the question Doc in the episode Show Notes, right here wherever you're listening to your podcast. 

Or you can go to the episode web page on my website that's at dralisandcook.com. You'll find the full transcription of every episode, as well as all the links to resources I mention in each podcast episode there. And you will find that Question Doc link and you can leave me questions there, and I'll answer some of them in future episodes. 

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Finally, you can also listen to this podcast now on YouTube. It's still just audio. I don't have the capacity right now to do video. But if you're someone who doesn't really like apps, you can find The Best of You podcast on YouTube, and just play it and listen to it right there. 

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Today we're going to talk about intelligence. How it's measured? What it is? How you cultivate it? How you care for your cognitive life? Which is really important because we want to be able to process all the data that is flying at us. We have so much data coming in to us, through nonstop news streaming, and social media, and the Internet. We have so much information coming at us, that we don't often stop to think about how we're thinking about things. How we're arriving at conclusions. 

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So, today, I'm going to give you more of a bird's eye view of differences in types of intelligence. As well as how those may impact our spiritual life and how we relate to God. And then next week, I'm going to get into cognitive distortions, and ways that our thinking can betray us and start to lead us astray. And how it's actually fairly simple with some intention to restructure and reframe our thought life. 

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So I want to start off by defining the term cognitive function. Which refers to those mental processes and abilities, that are evolved in processing information. Storing information, which is memory. Focusing on information, decision-making, problem-solving, even creativity. 

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It's the M in that MEPS. If you go back to episode three, where I talk about self-love. I give you a MEPS exercise, which can be a daily check-in where you check in with your Mental, Emotional, Physical, and Spiritual health. Because we have all of those dimensions operating on any given day. This is a focus on that M. What am I thinking about? 

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Do I feel clear?

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Do I feel foggy? 

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Do I feel scattered? 

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Do I feel distracted? 

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Is it hard for me to make a decision? 

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And do I have a problem that I can't figure out how to solve? 

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And these cognitive functions impact our emotions. When we're stuck with a complicated problem, we can feel really frustrated. We can even get depressed or, conversely, if we're feeling depressed, we can have a really hard time accessing our cognitive function. 

So our mind and our emotions are, intimately, tied together. They are also, intimately, linked to our nervous system, to our bodies, and to our spiritual lives. So we're trying to parse out, today, that mental piece. The cognitive piece of that holistic self.

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Intelligence is a really complex idea. It's all about how you learn and acquire knowledge. It's about understanding new ideas. It's how you reason and problem-solve. How you adapt to new situations. It involves a lot of the brain. It involves memory. It involves an ability to focus. It also incorporates our emotional intelligence. It incorporates our creativity. 

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So, in the past, intelligence was often measured by IQ tests, and still to this day it is, although, it's not as popular as it once was. And it's also often measured in all of these tests that our kids are given. College entrance exams such as the SAT, the ACT, graduate school entrance exams. All of these standardized aptitude tests. But the truth is, these tests have a lot of limitations. 

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There is a theory of intelligence that I really like that I'm going to introduce to you, today. That theorizes there are actually nine different forms of intelligence. The idea of multiple intelligences was first proposed by a Harvard psychologist named Howard Gardner, in the 1980s. He suggested that there were multiple types of intelligence, and he tried to broaden the way that we think of intelligence. 

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So I'm going to go through the nine types of intelligence that he theorized. As you listen, just think about how this resonates for your own life, for your kids, for family members. And how rethinking intelligence is a helpful way of maximizing our individual differences and our individual strengths? 

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So, number one, he talked about linguistic intelligence. This is the ability to understand and use language, both in written and spoken words. These are folks who like words. They are very verbal. They might be considered highly articulate. This is often measured in the verbal portion of standardized tests. If you have friends who are just really good with words or can write well, you might consider them to be high in this linguistic intelligence. 

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Number two is what he called logical-mathematical intelligence. As the name implies, it's a type of intelligence that involves the ability to reason logically and to use mathematical or numeric concepts effectively. So if you're strong in this, you are pretty good at analyzing and solving problems using either logic or quantitative methods. 

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Folks like this might be more linear and sequential in solving problems. They might excel in math, science, engineering, maybe coding, or accounting. They might be really good at strategy or analyzing problems. These are the two traditional types of intelligence. These are the ones that are most commonly measured in standardized tests, such as the SAT. Where we look at verbal and mathematical intelligence, as it relates primarily to school. These two types of intelligence are often highly correlated with how well we do in school. 

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In the past, often, the discussion of intelligence stopped here. But, again, Gardner expanded beyond just those two categories. 

So, third, he talked about spatial intelligence. This is the ability to visualize and manipulate objects in the mind. When you think of someone who's a visual person or a visual thinker. 

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Maybe you might have someone in your family, or you might be someone who sees in pictures more than words. These are folks who navigate well through physical spaces. This is someone who would be high in spatial intelligence. And, sometimes, if you're high in spatial intelligence you may not perform as well on a traditional vocabulary or mathematics test. 

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However, it's a really unique skill set where you can manipulate objects in a three-dimensional space, and you might be really good at art, or architecture, or design. You might also be good at interpreting diagrams, or imagining, or seeing, in your mind, how different things fit together. And, so, you're skilled at using different parts of the brain than folks who are high in other types of intelligence. 

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Fourth, he talked about bodily or kinesthetic intelligence. Now, this is the ability to control one's body movements and handle objects skillfully. And, again, we talk about folks who just have really good eye-hand coordination. Or you think about elite athletes where a lot of it is training and they've learned to control their body, in that way. And there's just a natural ability to know how to move the body. 

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If you've ever seen a dancer, even when they're not dancing there's a fluidity to their movement. There's a real intelligence about their body, and they just know how to manipulate or move their body in space in a way that is really heightened. 

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Number five is musical intelligence, the ability to understand and create music. It might include rhythm, an inherent understanding of rhythm. Melody of how to create harmony. And, again, someone who has this type of innate intelligence, has access to a part of the brain in a way that someone else might not. And, again, this may not test out in school or on an aptitude test, but it's a very sophisticated use of a certain part of the brain. 

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Sixth, is interpersonal intelligence. The ability to understand other people, to relate to other people. To perceive and understand the emotions of another person or even the motivations of another person. If you're high in this, you have a knack for just knowing what to say in a given moment or knowing what someone needs to hear, in a given moment. 

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You read other people very well and that just comes naturally to you. And if you look back, you have a sense of "This is something that I've just always been pretty good at. Again, it doesn't, necessarily, test out on a standard intelligence test but it is a type of intelligence. It's a way of accessing a part of your brain that allows you to be really smart, as it comes to relating to other people. 

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Seventh, is intrapersonal intelligence. This is the ability to attend to one's inner life. This is very similar to what psychologists call interoception. It's the ability to pick up on the cues coming from inside of you, to regulate your own emotions. To be aware of your own ah thoughts, your own beliefs, to be cognizant of or conscious of your own behaviors. These are folks who really understand themselves, intuitive, and are really deeply connected to themselves. 

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Number eight, Gardner talked about naturalistic intelligence. Which relates to your ability to recognize and understand patterns and relationships, in the natural world. For example, with plants, or flowers, or animals. People who are high in this type of intelligence, are able to really observe and classify different aspects of the natural world. 

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They're really attuned to the natural environment. They might have a deep appreciation for nature. The classic example is you might think of somebody who's really good at gardening. Folks who say, "Well, I just don't have a green thumb." Versus folks who really excel at just being in the garden and knowing how to work, closely, with plants, so that plants thrive. 

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And, lastly, Gardner talked about existential intelligence. Which is really the ability to grapple with deep philosophical questions, primarily, about meaning, about purpose, about life, about existence. People who are really comfortable and gifted about understanding hard, abstract, topics like death, the meaning of life, even concepts like God. 

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So, Gardner's theory of intelligence suggests that individuals have different strengths and different weaknesses in each of these areas. That intelligence isn't just one, single, unitary concept. But rather that there are lots of kinds of intelligence, each one using different parts of the brain, and different people are gifted at different types. 

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< Music >

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Alison: There are a lot of implications for understanding the different types of intelligence. The primary being just understanding yourself better. It reduces shame when we understand, "Wait, I'm really good at this thing. My brain just does this naturally, but I'm not as good at this thing."

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So we begin, again, as we said in last week's episode on personality, we begin to work with the grain of who we are. We begin to maximize our strengths and also appreciate the differences in other people. 

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But, today, I also want to talk about how these different types of intelligence influence our spiritual lives. Because as we have preferences, as things come more easily to us, and we're more natural at certain things. It no doubt bleeds into other areas of our life, including our spiritual life. And one of the things I've noticed is that we naturally gravitate to different types of spiritual practices based on our gifts, and based on where we excel, and there's also no shame in that.

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I would argue that each of these types of intelligence could be used as an avenue to understand God better. To comprehend God better. To relate to God better. To bring together the way that God made you with who God is. Because, after all, if God made each of these different types of intelligence and gave us these different gifts. Doesn't he want us to use those gifts and honor those gifts in our spiritual practices? 

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I've long been a student of a lot of different denominations. A lot of different types of worship. A lot of different faith communities. And one of the things I notice, as a psychologist, who's always got that lens on, is how fascinating it is that different people are drawn to God in different ways. And just to name that, and put that out front, not let that be accidental. 

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Because sometimes what happens is if we're not somebody who fits, especially in America. Where there are certain ways that church is done, that really do cater to just a couple of these types of intelligences versus all of them. We can feel like there's something wrong with us.

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If we're going to a church that's really heavy on emotional music or emotional language. And we're somebody who really values logic, or reason, or even numbers and math, and we like things orderly and tidy. We can feel like there's something wrong with us, that we're not appreciating that service. That we're not getting a lot out of that service. Maybe we leave that service, that worship experience, feeling empty or cold. 

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We can feel like, "What's wrong with me?" Or we could go to the other extreme, which is judging, "What's wrong with these people? Why are they doing it this way?" We can either shame ourselves or judge others. Instead of saying, "Oh, that's so interesting. Here's what they're doing, they're really focusing on that particular form of communicating with God, of using their minds to worship God, and the way that I do it is a little bit different." And there's room for all these differences. 

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So, toward that end, I'm going to draw heavily on a book by Gary Thomas, who's a Christian author, called Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God. And he actually describes, in this book, nine Sacred Pathways. 

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Now, they don't map on exactly to these different forms of intelligence, but there certainly are some overlaps. Enough so that it got me thinking that, "Is it possible that some of our inherent giftedness, the way that God wired us to excel? To use our brains in a way that just comes more naturally to us, might map onto a different sacred pathway. A different way of understanding God."

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And, so, I want to touch on those nine pathways that Thomas lays out, in his book. And use them as a way of creating examples of how you could use your innate intelligence, your innate giftedness, as a tool for you to connect more, intimately, with God. The very first one that Gary Thomas talks about is the naturalist. And this reminds me of the naturalistic intelligence that Gardner talks about. 

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These are people who experience God best through nature and through the outdoors. I have a number of these in my own family. Where they would rather be in the mountains, be in the wilderness, be hiking, be fishing, be studying flowers, be with animals. Whatever it is outside than almost anywhere else on this Earth. There is so much appreciation for the beauty in nature, and that can become a sacred pathway, as we begin to name it. 

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Now, I'm not suggesting we replace a church service with that. But I am suggesting that if you are somebody who says "Being inside, sitting in a stuffy building for two hours just doesn't do it for me. But, man, when I am in the mountains and I see the trees, and the flowers, and the river, and my heart sings with praise to God." 

That is a form of worship that you get to name and own before God, and God understands that. And maybe you still go to church because you believe that it's important, and there are other things that you get out of it, and you want to be part of a community and you want to be a contributing member. And, also, please be sure that you continue to honor, and express your gratitude, and your worship for God as you see God's handiwork all around you, in the natural world. 

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Number two, Thomas talks about sensates. These are people who experience God through their senses, primarily. They might enjoy incense, for example. You might go to a liturgical church where they have incense, where there are the smells, there's beautiful, sacred, music. Maybe the Eucharist is really important because it's this concrete way that you can actually experience the body. 

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These are folks who are going to really experience God through their senses. Through what they can see, taste, feel, and touch. It reminds me of Doubting Thomas, who wanted to touch Jesus's hands. He needed to actually see the hands and put his fingers on it, and touch it to believe, and Jesus honored that. Jesus allowed him that opportunity. 

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Number three are traditionalists. These are people who experience God most through rituals, often in a structured church setting. They want this really traditional, they might like the old hymns. The traditional church service with the sermon and the Scripture reading, and there's a way in which the order and the structure of that service really matters. 

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They might like the liturgy. If you go to a liturgical church, an Anglican church or a Catholic church, everything in that order of service is thought out completely, and that structure is maintained consistent, over time. There are folks for whom this is very comforting. This really helps them connect to some of the logic of the faith. Sometimes I think of logical folks where they want a logic, they want an order to things. Things should be laid out in a certain way. 

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And then Thomas talks about the ascetic. These are people who experience God more through solitude, through simplicity, through self-discipline. They're going to be engaged in some of the disciplines of fasting. Things are going to be quieter. They might be more intra-personal than interpersonal. 

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Meaning they like that solitude, that simplicity, that spaciousness, to attune to the contents of their own soul. And that is a form of inviting God in, and that's more intuitive and more natural for them than being around a lot of people. And a lot of American churches and a lot of Western churches are very extroverted in nature. They're very people-centric, where the aesthetic might want to pull apart and spend a lot of time in quiet contemplation. 

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Then we move really to the opposite of that which is the caregiver. And these are folks who really connect to God through caring for others, being with others, serving others. These are the folks who might be more interpersonally inclined. They pick up on the needs of others. They pick up on the cues of others. If you are someone like this, and you're at a church service or in a room full of people and you're aware of where the needs are and you intuitively know how to meet them.

And, so, you're able to use that intelligence, that form of giftedness, that God has given you, to serve others more easily. Now, that's not to say that the ascetic doesn't also need to serve others but it might look a little bit different. They might get overwhelmed in a large group. They might not know how to pick up on the needs of others, without being taught what those needs are. But it doesn't mean that they don't also have ways to serve others. But it just may look a little bit different. 

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And then we move to the enthusiasts; these are the people who experience God through emotional, lively, worship. There's a lot of passion in the way that they relate to God. These are folks who might be musical, who want to express their love for God through music. These could be folks who are kinesthetic, who want to express their love of God through dance. Or these could be people who are very visual, and who want to express their love of God through creating beautiful spaces. 

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Regardless, they are wanting to experience God through an expression of sorts. Whether an expression of voice, of movement, of beauty. And then we move to the contemplatives; these are folks who, Thomas describes, are people who experience God more through quiet. Maybe through prayer, through reflection, through contemplation. 

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These are folks who are perhaps, again, more intrapersonally focused. They might be more introspective. They might not be as comfortable with the external expressiveness of some church gatherings. They may prefer to be quietly reflective. They may appreciate forms of mindfulness. 

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Mindfulness is the practice of paying attention to your own thoughts, to your own emotions. It's healthy for everybody. But folks who are more contemplative may excel more at this intrapersonal ability to reflect on the states of their internal lives and they need more quiet in which to do that. 

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And, lastly, we have what Thomas called intellectual pathways to God. These are people who experience God through their intellect. They enjoy studying, learning, and analyzing spiritual truths. These might be folks who are more inclined toward those logical or even those linguistic types of intelligence. Where they're wanting to read commentaries, dissect Scripture, talk about ideas, even write out ideas to try to make sense of them. And they're using those particular gifts to help them understand God better. 

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The bottom line is that there are a lot of ways to honor God with the minds He has given us. Whether you are somebody who loves to analyze, and logic, and reason. Or whether you are somebody that prefers an emotional experience, or an embodied experience, or a musical experience. Or maybe you're somebody who really sees the face of God in the people in front of you. Whether it's your own children, a neighbor, a friend, or the people who you minister to. 

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Whether you're somebody who likes to be alone, for long periods of time, so that you can really deeply attune to your own soul, and that's what brings you into the arms of God. Or whether you're somebody who finds yourself by a lake, or in the mountains, or in a meadow, and you are just brought to your knees in awe of this God who created all of these things. 

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You might be somebody who's more philosophical. You ask the hard questions, and your pathway to God is to engage in hard questions and seeing lots of different sides of the coin of different Christian beliefs. Whatever it is you honor God as you turn toward what is good, what is beautiful, and what is pleasing to Him. As Paul writes, "In view of God's mercy, offer your minds, your bodies, your souls, as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - This is your spiritual act of worship. 

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< Outro >

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Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you'd take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts and click the Plus or Follow button. That will ensure you don't miss an episode, and it helps get the word out to others.

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While you're there, I'd love it if you'd leave your five-star review. I look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.

Exciting News! This week marks the launch of our brand new series, My Favorite Psychology Tools, and we're kicking things off with a deep dive into the fascinating world of personality types. With so many fads and trends out there, it can be hard to know what's actually backed by research. That's why we're here to separate fact from fiction and give you the inside scoop on what personality really is and what the latest research tells us about it.

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Here's what we cover:

1. What is personality and why we're so fascinated with it

2. The benefits and pitfalls in personality tests

3. The 5 most researched personality traits

4. The mysterious H Factor and why it's so important

5. How personality traits show up in the Bible⁠

Want to receive free bonus content? ⁠⁠⁠Sign up for my free weekly email here

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Resources

• Episode 1: What Is Narcissism Really?
• Info on Myers Briggs
• ‍Please Understand Me by David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates
• ‍Think Again by Adam Grant
• Read more about the Big 5 Personality Traits
• ‍O-C-E-A-N
• ‍H-E-X-A-C-O
• ‍Quiet by Susan Cain
• ‍H factor of personality
• ‍1 Corinthians 12:12-31
• ‍"Understanding is the basis for care." -Dallas Willard
• ‍Resources for support

‍

‍Thanks to our sponsors:

• ‍‍Go to ⁠⁠⁠www.organifi.com/bestofyou⁠ ⁠⁠today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.  
• Order Aundi Kolber's new book, ⁠⁠Strong Like Water⁠⁠ today!
• 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.

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Transcript

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Alison: Hey, everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am so glad you're here. I love preparing these episodes for you and your feedback, and your comments, and your emails mean so much to me. I loved hearing from so many of you about what you are hoping I will cover in this brand-new series, which starts today.  

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I am so excited about this series because I'm a little bit of a geek when it comes to all of these different assessments, and inventories, and tools, and lists, that we have available to us from the field of psychology. These are the kinds of tools that help us understand ourselves better, and therefore help us understand the people that we love better. 

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Today we're going to talk about personality. And I'm going to share with you the six most researched personality traits in psychology, and why I think it's helpful to understand these different traits, and what I think the pitfalls can be. We're also going to touch on how they correlate, loosely, and in an unscientific matter, with some of the spiritual gifts that we see described in Scripture. 

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I remember the very first time I was introduced to a personality test, back in the day, it was when I was in college. I went to the Career Counseling Center, on my college campus at Dartmouth in Hanover, New Hampshire. They had me take a personality test, and this was a long time ago, it was the MBTI, which many of you know as the Myers Brigg. 

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It's a very popular test to this day, although, it's actually not very reliable as an assessment, as it turns out. So I'm actually not going to cover it today. But it does create some really interesting categories that are helpful for discussing our differences. And, sure enough, in my case, when I took that test, it was like all the lights went on. 

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I think this was the moment, in time, when I realized I was destined to be a psychologist because I just got so excited about it. I started figuring out how to give it to everybody I knew. If you were a family member, if you were a friend of mine, I was having you take this test or a variation of this test, that's actually in a book called Please Understand Me. You can take a sort of form, it's a little bit different, it's a variation on the MBTI.

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But at the time, I was having everybody I know take that test. And, in particular, what really spoke to me from that experience of taking a test, at a college counseling center, probably, I was 20, maybe 21 at the time, long time ago, was that last category. And if you know the MBTI, you'll know what I'm talking about. 

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But there's a category on it that gets at how we make decisions and it's a J versus P category. Judgers test out to be people who tend to really like planning. They're very decisive, they're very organized, they like structure, they like schedules. They make decisions in advance so they can plan for them. And people who are perceivers tend to be in the moment. They tend to not like too much certainty. They tend to be more flexible and spontaneous in their decision making and lifestyle. They tend to be more in the moment. 

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For example, a perceiver is someone who will say, "Well, I don't know what to do until I get there." If you're married to a perceiver, if you are a perceiver, you'll understand what I'm saying. If someone says to you, "Well, what do you want to do next Friday night?? You are like, "I won't know until it's next Friday night." That's a perceiver. 

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Whereas a judger would say, "Here is the plan. Here's what we're going to do Friday, and here are the ten steps we're going to execute to prepare us to do that on Friday." It's a really different way of making decisions. But at this moment, at this particular time in my life, as a young 20 something year old student, I tested out as a perceiver. And when I saw that on the test, what I began to realize is that, oh, my gosh, something I had thought was bad in myself. 

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Something I had been judging in myself; I'm a procrastinator, I wait till the last minute. Here I was, a fairly high-achieving student. I knew how to get things done, but I did things a little differently than most of the members of my family, than most of my peers. Than most of my friend group, and I'd been shaming myself for that. I'd been judging myself for that. 

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And when I saw in the test, "Oh, my gosh, I'm just different, I'm not bad." It was this whole new way of looking at the world and looking at myself. Just that simple designation of "Oh, my goodness, there's a category to describe how I am, and therefore I can begin to accept how I am, and build on that to grow. Versus shaming myself, or blaming myself, or even hating myself, for a certain way of being in the world." 

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It really popped open everything for me. "I'm not bad. I'm just different." And I began to realize there's a lot of flexibility, a lot of spontaneity. There are good qualities, and sometimes some indecisiveness, that can also drive myself and other people crazy. 

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But I began to be aware of the value in understanding basic human differences, where we're different from each other. And it was my very first glimpse into this idea of what it feels like foundational to everything I do, which is a non-shaming way of naming something that is just simply true. And this illustration is the best of what I think these kinds of personality assessments can do. 

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Now I'm going to get to the pitfalls for those of you who are a little skeptical, stay with me. But let's talk about what is helpful about these kinds of personality assessments. Number one, they help us understand ourselves better, both our strengths and our limitations. They help us not to judge or shame ourselves. But as we describe some of these personality traits, it leads to greater self-acceptance. And, as I've said numerous times, self-acceptance is actually the soil in which we can grow, heal, and change. It's not self-condemnation. 

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And, so, these are tools to just help us name things so that we can begin to accept them. So that we can then begin to grow in healthy ways. Because, as Dallas Willard said, "Understanding is the basis for care."

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Number two, these types of personality assessments can help us begin to ask for what we need in our relationships. Instead of getting annoyed at someone else for being different from us, for not understanding our inherent needs, and our inherent preferences, and our inherent ways of being in the world. 

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We can start to name things together, "This is how I tend to function. This is how you tend to function, let's come together and figure out how to optimize and maximize how we can bring the best of who we are together. Instead of me trying to get you to change or you trying to get me to change."

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We can start to say, "Hey, I want to honor the way you are and I need you to understand that it works a little differently for me." And, then, lastly, that leads right into our differences help us work better together. 

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Adam Grant, who's a Wharton organizational psychologist, has a great book called Think Again, and I love this book. He talks about how important it is for us to intentionally put people around us who are different from us, who challenge us. Who help us see things from different perspectives. 

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So the more I understand myself, and I'm confident in myself, and I'm not shaming myself. The more I actually am grateful for the way that you see things that is different, 

or the way you make decisions, or the way you approach the world, or approach this relationship.  And I can start to value that and incorporate elements of that in my approach. 

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This just dramatically impacts the health of our friendships, of our marriages, of our communities. When we begin to name, and see, and honor our differences versus trying to get everybody to be a "Yes" man or a cheerleader for the type of person we are. 

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We have more confidence the more we understand ourselves to invite in differences. So this is one of the things I love about psychology assessments. It's one of the things that I'm just going to geek out on throughout this series. But I do think this understanding of individual differences, is one of the gifts the field of psychology has brought to us. 

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Now, there are also some pitfalls to focusing on individual differences in personality. It's a relatively new phenomenon, we really only started studying personality as a psychological construct in the last century. And while there's so much helpful information, from the field of psychology about individual differences, there can also be pitfalls. 

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So this is for all you cynics out there, but also just for everybody to remember, we have to hold these things always in tension. So number one pitfall, is what I would call hyper individualism. This is an extreme form of individualism; where individuals prioritize their own interests, their own needs, their own preferences, their own need for self-expression above all else. Including the needs of others and the needs of the collective or the community around them. Whether it's a family, a church group, a community, or even a nation. 

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This form of hyper individualism prioritizes personal freedom, autonomy, and self-expression so much that we almost reject the idea of collective or shared responsibility. Of coming together as a community, of our social obligations. Of this idea of being a good citizen for the whole of our society. 

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So if we swing too far, imagine this as a pendulum and you can think, historically, where it was like we looked at the good of the group. We needed the community, we needed the whole. And then we swung, and I do put psychology a little bit to blame for the swing toward hyper individualism. Where we emphasize or prioritize the individual so much above and beyond the group. That it's almost impossible to come together and that is not healthy either. 

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While we want to understand the individual, and the individual's needs, and the individual's preferences, we also have to be able to set aside some of who we are for the good of the greater whole. The greater community in which we live. 

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Hyper individualism can lead to more isolation, more loneliness, less community. Because we are so focused on becoming our individual selves, we forget how to move toward each other in our relationships. So it's so important to strike a balance. We only want to understand ourselves, insofar as we can bring more of who we really are into creating healthier relationships with other people. 

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Number two, focus on personality traits can lead to stigmatizing. We can take a personality trait, label somebody, and sometimes weaponize it. And I talk about this in the very first episode of this podcast, episode one on narcissism. The importance of describing patterns of behavior versus labeling individual people. And number three, we risk oversimplifying complex behaviors and situations. 

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So, for example, when we talk about personality traits, we also need to understand that traits develop in the midst of our cultural environments. They develop in the midst of our traumas. They develop in the midst of specific situations, all of which have an impact on how we behave. So we don't want to reduce people, simply, to a personality style, without understanding all of the factors that go into making us who we are. 

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Remember, the goal of learning more about ourselves is not to become entitled, to glorify the individual self. It's not to label other people. It's not to oversimplify complicated situations. The goal is that as you begin to understand more about yourself, you become more whole inside yourself as an individual, as the person God made. You actually become healthier in your relationships. You become a healthier contributor to your family, to your community, and ultimately to this world. 

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< Music >

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So what is personality? Well, psychologists define personality as "A set of enduring traits and characteristics that make you individually unique". Your personality includes your patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that are relatively consistent over time, and across a variety of different situations. So when someone has a fairly stable personality, which is what we look for in a healthy person. You can predict, a little bit, how they're going to react in different situations over time. 

If you think about your kids, or you think about your spouse, or you think about your friends, there's not a lot that surprises you. You could have some ability to go, "That's how they're going to act when that situation happens." There's a way in which people just are who they are. God created each one of us to be so extremely unique, and I think that's just so beautiful. That there's no one person that is the same as another person. There's no one who is exactly like you, and it just gets at the amazing creativity in our God. So it's a beautiful thing to understand. 

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Personality is influenced by a variety of factors, including your genetics. Some of this is just your biology. Some of it is your upbringing, your family of origin, this is the nature versus nurture. Psychologists have really come down squarely on it's both. It's both your DNA, your genetics, your nature, and also it's the environment in which you were raised your family, your community, the environment around you. 

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Personality is also influenced by our larger cultural environment. Cultural studies are very interesting. For example, how does it shape us to be raised in America? And I think this is why it's so important to get outside of this cultural American mindset, that can get so myopic. And place ourselves, whether through studying, or reading, or understanding, or physically going to a different culture and realizing, especially, as Christians, "Oh, my gosh, so much of who we are and what we believe is shaped by this overlay of our Americanism."

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If you've had trauma, if you've been abused, if you've experienced racism, misogyny, bullying. If you've been marginalized, if you've grown up in poverty, these things have an impact to some degree on how your personality forms. So, again, it's really important not to oversimplify these personality traits. They are influenced by a number of factors. With that being said, I want to get into what are what psychologists call the big five traits of personality. 

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So this is a well-researched theory of personality that originated in the mid-20th centuries, that hypothesizes there are five basic dimensions of personality. And actually there's a 6th dimension that has surfaced in the last decade that we'll also look at today. These dimensions of personality tend to be reliable, over time. They tend to be reliable descriptors of different traits that most people across cultures have to varying degrees, and they tend to be discrete. Meaning these tend to be discrete from each other. You could test high in one and low in another. 

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So these big five personality traits tend to be universal. One study looked at people from more than 50 different cultures, and found that these five dimensions could be accurately used to describe personality, and they exist on a spectrum. And, so, this is where the big five, sometimes it's called O-C-E-A-N or H-E-X-A-C-O, if you add in that six factor, these are acronyms to explain these. 

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While you'll see similarities, if you're someone who's familiar with the Myers Brigg, you might see similarities in these traits. But here's one of the big differences is these exist on a spectrum. So, for example, if you take a Myers-Brigg Type Indicator Test, you're going to test out as either an introvert or an extrovert. 

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However, if you use one of these O-C-E-A-N or H-E-X-A-C-O assessments, it's going to put you on a spectrum. And I think about human behavior, it just makes more sense. 

You're not either an extrovert or an introvert. You might be more inclined toward extroversion and less inclined toward introversion. But you could look much more similar to an introvert if you're 52% of an extrovert than you might look like someone who is an extreme extrovert. 

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So I like this way that it measures things on a spectrum. And, then, lastly, these are not prescriptive they're descriptive. And what I mean by that is if you find yourself testing high in one of these personality traits that you don't really like, it doesn't necessarily mean this is the person you're going to become. 

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So, again, these are descriptive. So if you find yourself testing high on a personality trait that you don't really like or don't wish that you had, it doesn't mean that it's telling you what kind of person you have to become. There are lots of different kinds of people in the world and lots of different ways of relating to these different traits. It's just helpful, again, to name, "Okay, wow, I'm not someone who's really high in this quality, I'm lower in it. So what does that mean for me and the kind of person that I want to become?"

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That's what I mean by it doesn't prescribe the kind of person that you have to become. That's between you and God, and the choices that you make, and the people you put around yourself. But it does describe a little bit of where you are now and what this is going to look like for you, and that your journey is going to look a little different than my journey. 

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Because we start out at a different place. We're starting out on different paths. And if you think about that mountain we're both trying to climb of becoming a more whole, beautiful version of the person God made us to become. Your path is just going to look different than mine. 

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They're going to take different winds, and different turns, and we're going to go up different, treacherous parts, and you're going to go through different valleys because of your starting at a different baseline. But we both have to go down that path of growth. We both have to go down that path of becoming more of the person God wants us to become, and we're both going to hit different landmines.

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So it's descriptive, not prescriptive. You're going to go down this path, and your path may start looking great, and you'll see what I mean when we get into these traits. Like, "I've got this easy path, I'm a really agreeable person." But, oh, my goodness, you are still going to hit some valleys. And my path may look treacherous at the start, it's like, "Whoa, this is really hard for me, this particular trait. This part of my personality, is just I came out of the womb this way, this is going to be hard for me."

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But guess what, you're going to hit some beautiful oasis that I may never taste. So we don't want to compare our different journeys to each other. So what are these big five personality traits? So we're going to use this O-C-E-A-N acronym, number one, Openness to experience. And if you imagine this spectrum in front of you, someone high in openness is very creative, very imaginative, inventive, very curious. 

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They like to try new things. They're open to new ideas. If you imagine that path, this person's going to be someone who's like, "I'm so excited, let's see where the path goes." And they might not really wait to run down the path. That's what it looks like if you're high in openness. 

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Now, if you're lower on the openness scale, you're someone who tends to be more concrete. You don't like change. You're not super creative, maybe, you're more literal, you're more into facts, more into data. 

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You may be looking down your path going, "What are these types of flora and fauna in front of me? I want to understand them." You're not just going to race down into the adventure. You're going to understand the concrete details and data in front of you before you even take any steps, and when you do start to take those steps, they'll be very cautious and measured. And I'm sure you're already imagining people that where they maybe test out on this scale. 

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Number two, the C is Conscientiousness. This is a dimension of personality; everybody has an orientation to conscientiousness. It refers to a tendency to be organized, responsible, and reliable. Someone high in conscientiousness might be more efficient, more organized, more able to get things done. They tend to plan ahead. And, so, what's really interesting is imagine someone who tests high on conscientiousness and high on openness to experience. 

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So they might be very creative and simultaneously very organized. So we're complex. Or if you're someone really high on openness and low on conscientiousness, that's the person that's just going to run down that path without putting on a backpack, without getting prepared, without thinking about what they're going to eat. And, again, the beginning of that path might look amazing, but they're going to hit some landmines that they got to learn to work through down the road. 

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If you're someone lower on conscientiousness, you might be a little bit more careless, a little bit more extravagant, maybe more free spirited. People low in conscientiousness tend to dislike structure and schedules. They might procrastinate. They might wait till the last minute to complete tasks. 

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Now, remember, there are other factors that go into why each person has some of these traits. So let's take, for example, if you have a child who tends to be very careless. They can't find their homework to save their life. They're always getting, on their report card, that they're disorganized. They turn in things late. It might be tempting to say, "Well, they're not conscientious, they're careless." Which can sound stigmatizing. So remember, we are not using these traits to stigmatize, they're descriptive, not prescriptive. 

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Instead, when you describe, you say, "Wow, okay, I have a child or I have a spouse or me, I am someone that scores fairly low on this test. I have a hard time staying organized. I don't really like it, people have described me as careless. I wonder what that's about, and is there a moral undertone to it?" Sometimes there is, sometimes we just don't care about other people. But it could mean there's an underlying neurological issue, such as ADHD, or another neurotypical diagnosis. 

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Now, I'm not saying everybody who's careless has some sort of neurological deficit. What I am saying is it's an opportunity to get curious. What's going on that's contributing to this? And then at the end of the day, even as you become the best of who you are, you may well be someone who struggles a little bit with disorganization, for whatever reason. 

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Again, the goal is not to shame ourselves; the goal is to name, understand, describe, get all the data as to why this might be true for you. And then just move the needle of growth just a little bit, as you're looking down your path, the trail you have to blaze. It's like, "Okay, I'm someone that's going to lose things on this path. I'm someone that's going to have a hard time staying organized. And, so, what do I need to do to equip myself so that I stay safe?"

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Again, the beginning of that path might feel a little bit more fraught because there's going to be a little steeper learning curve for you. Maybe you need to ask other people, say, "Hey, this isn't my forte, this isn't my strength. Can you come alongside of me?" 

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Again, this is where it leads us to community, not away from community. When we begin to name and tame these things. We say, "I need a buddy, I don't want to go down this path alone because I'm going to lose things. So can you be my buddy, that helps me stay organized because you're great at that." So this is how these kinds of self-awareness, self-understanding, can help bring us into healthier relationships with other people. 

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Number three, the E is Extroversion. Now, extroversion is less about how much you talk or how outgoing you are, and more about how you derive energy.  Extroverts tend to derive energy from external stimuli, especially social activities. Extroverts tend to go to parties, engage with a lot of people, and come back more energized. They feed off the external energy. It doesn't mean you're the loudest person in the room, necessarily, but it does mean that you gain energy from other people. 

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On the other hand, if you score low on this continuum, if you score closer to introversion, you gain more energy through solitary activities, through being alone, through being in nature. You might have to ration how much you are with other people because it depletes you. It doesn't mean you don't like other people. It doesn't mean you're not good with other people. It just means that being with other people and being with a lot of external stimuli is depleting for you. Again, it's just really helpful to understand and to not shame yourself. 

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There's a wonderful book about introversion called Quiet by Susan Cain. It's been a bestseller for years because she just named some of the really unique challenges for introverts, especially, in our world and, especially, our country here in America, that tends to value extroversion. It's a great book, I highly recommend it. 

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Number four is Agreeableness. Someone who scores high in agreeableness tends to make other people feel good. They're easy to get along with. They value harmony. They want the good of the group, sometimes above their own individual needs. They tend to be warm, empathetic, and sensitive to the needs of others. If you score high in agreeableness, you might struggle with people pleasing. 

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At the same time, people who are high in agreeableness tend to get along well with others. So there are ways in which people who are high in agreeableness, if you're looking at their path that they're ready to hike. It may look like, "Man, they have it so easy, people just naturally like them, they're just walking through a meadow."

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However, folks who are high in agreeableness are also going to have to figure out how to manage that. So that they don't disconnect from their own needs, from their own convictions, from their own values. Folks who score lower on this scale tend to be more what, in this framework, is called disagreeableness. They might be a little bit more critical. They might be more willing to be direct, to state what they really see, to speak up in a contrary manner. To not go along with the group, to point out flaws. 

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Now, I want to be very clear here, there is a need for all types of people. And, again, Adam Grant, in his book Think Again, talks about how we need some of these quote-unquote "Disagreeable people" in our lives. 

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We need to have people in our lives who don't just like everything we say and do, who don't just agree with everything we want. But who are willing to stand up and say, "Hey, I'm not so sure about that." So, again, wherever you score, on this spectrum, there are pros and cons. There are temptations and benefits, God uses all kinds of people.  

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Number five is Neuroticism, and that's just a word that they use for this trait which is really related to emotionality. If you score high in neuroticism, you're likely more emotionally volatile. You're more susceptible to getting taken over by emotions, especially, negative emotions. You're more sensitive to stressors in the environment. You might have a greater tendency toward anxiety. I think sometimes of that word melancholy, you're just more aware of what's negative around you. 

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There's a tendency to maybe be a little bit more prickly about life. And if you think about folks where we say, "All those things just roll off their back", the opposite of that as well. If you're a little prickly things stick to you, it's harder for you. And, again, this isn't a great example, if you're somebody who scores higher in neuroticism.

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It might be tempting to look down your path and go, "Oh, man, all I see is the forest and the dangers and what's going to be hard, and that person over there is just prancing down the path. They're scoring low on this, they are more emotionally stable. They don't tend to take things too hard. Emotions tend to roll off their back. Man, why is this so hard for me?"

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But, again, it takes all different kinds of people. What's important to know is "This is how I am, it's not bad or good. What is my journey going to look like? And what do I need from God, from the people around me, to help me thrive on my journey toward wholeness?"

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The truth is there are just some people for whom life hits a little harder. There's a little bit more emotional volatility. There's a little bit more of that susceptibility to the negative. And it's just so helpful to know yourself, not to shame yourself or wish you're somebody you're not. And to begin to live this life God has given you with your unique personality and your unique makeup. 

Now, I want to touch on this 6th trait that has surfaced more recently. I love this. This is such fascinating research, to me, it's called the H Factor. And this H Factor refers to Honesty-Humility. And what is so interesting about this factor, this dimension of personality, is that these two traits really go together. It's considered one trait Honesty-Humility.

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They're intimately linked honesty and humility, think about that for a second. From a psychological perspective, they tend to exist on one dimension. That means they're hard to measure, separate from each other honesty and humility. I mean, this just amazes me and brings delight to my soul at the wonder of how God made us, and how it's reflected in science, and in psychology.

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It's hard to be an honest person and not be a humble person. It's hard to be a humble person and not be an honest person. And I think as followers of Jesus, that just makes so much sense. If we are really honest about ourselves and honest about who we are before God, there's just no way around humility. 

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But if we're deceiving ourselves and we're deceiving others, and we're lying about who we are. And we're denying aspects of who we are which also means we're going to end up exploiting, mistreating, and using and abusing others. Folks who are high in this Honest-Humility dimension tend to be sincere, honest, fair, not greedy and unassuming. They're not full of themselves. They don't try to puff themselves up. 

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On the other hand, folks who are low in this factor, in this Humility-Honesty factor tend to be more interested in their own status and power. They tend to be more willing to engage in lying, or manipulating, or trying to exploit other people to get ahead. They tend to have a sense of entitlement about their own self-importance, as if they deserve or are owed certain things. 

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Now, here's the thing about this scale. If you are someone who is aware of your own sense of entitlement, of your own propensity to ego, of your own self-centeredness, you are going to be further up toward that Honesty-Humility scale. It's such a paradox. The more we know ourselves and the more we see our ego, our self-centeredness, our pride, our entitlement, the more honest and humble we become. 

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Humility about our areas of deceptiveness, of arrogance, of self-centeredness, is the beginning of health. What's more scary are folks who cannot face the truth about our own sinful, toxic, propensities.   

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< Music >

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As we close, I want to touch on some practical takeaways. As well as an insight from the Bible and how we can think about these personality traits. So I want to circle back to why it's important to understand ourselves on these different spectrums. 

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Number one, when we understand ourselves, "We name it to tame it," as Dan Siegel says. For example, I am someone who's fairly high on this neuroticism scale. My emotions are pretty volatile, I feel them. They go up and down, for whatever reason, things do not just roll off my back. That's how I am in my marriage. That's how I am as a parent. That's how I am as a friend. And you know what, I'm going to stop shaming myself for that. I'm going to name it. I'm going to try to understand it. 

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What are the factors that contribute to that? 

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What are some of the contributing factors? Is there some trauma in my life? 

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Am I someone who's just naturally an HSP, a highly sensitive person? 

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Am I somebody who has more of a just biological predisposition to anxiety? 

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What are the different factors that contribute to this? 

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Where are areas that I can heal, that I can work on? 

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What are areas that are just out of my control? This is just the way God made me. We begin to go down a journey of self-investigation, to arrive at healthier and healthier degrees of understanding of ourselves.  Are there certain cultural experiences that have contributed to this? 

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Did I grow up in poverty? 

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Did I grow up in a racist environment? 

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Did I grow up in an environment that taught me to be anxious because it was completely unsafe? 

Okay, help me understand that, God, what are some of the things I can do to heal? 

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What are some of the things I can change? 

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What are some of the things I cannot change? Because if you test out fairly highly on this scale, you're not going to be able to turn yourself into an emotionally phlegmatic person, a laid back person. You will be able to move the needle a little bit. You will be able to grow, but more importantly, you're going to be able to help put the people around you. You're going to be able to equip yourself, as you head out on this journey that God has put before you. 

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You're going to be able to ask for what you need from the people around you. You're going to be able to stop shaming yourself. You're going to be able to equip yourself with tools to stay healthy. For example, because I am a more anxious person, some of these X, Y, and Z activities don't work for me. 

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Maybe they work for you and that's great, but I have to be careful with my energy. I have to be careful with my time. I need to be careful with where I expend some of my energy. Because I need to stay healthy; and the best way I can be a parent, or a spouse, or a friend, or a community member is to really stay healthy myself and I'm just going to claim that.

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We stop condemning ourselves. If you're someone who tests really high on this emotionally phlegmatic, things just don't get to you scale. It's helpful to know that not to take pride in it, but to go, "Wow, what does this mean for me? What do I have to contribute to others? And how do I need to ensure that I'm not bypassing certain negative situations, that I actually also need to face?" So you've also got a journey toward wholeness. 

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So understanding where you begin is not just a, "Hey, this is great, life is good. I'm just going to coast through life for the rest of my days."

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No, it means I have to go, "Hey, Lord, this is a gift and it's also something I need to be mindful of. How do I honor others with this gift? And, also, how do I ensure that I'm not just putting my head in the sand, and not facing situations that need to be faced."

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We stop condemning ourselves and we start accepting these traits in ourselves, as well as in others, and we begin to work together for the good of everyone. Number two, we stop projecting our own needs and issues onto other people, and start taking responsibility for our own selves. And, so, what I mean by projecting is we stop saying to other people, "You're just so uptight."

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You're just so careless."

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When really what we mean is, "Things don't really get to me." Hear the humility in that. "Things don't really get to me, but I know that they really get to you, and that's okay. Let's both just name that as a dynamic in our relationship. I'm pretty laid back, things don't roll off your back, and there's no better or worse than that."

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So we stop projecting onto other people. "What's wrong with you that you don't want to go to all these parties with me? That you don't want to sign up for all these social events with me? What's wrong with you?" And, then, maybe, we even moralize it, "You're not Christian enough, that you don't want to go to all these highly extroverted church activities." 

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When what we really mean is, "I love these social activities, they're fun for me. I get energized by them." And the other person is like, "Yes, and they exhaust me, and if you want me to be a healthy partner, or a healthy parent, or a healthy friend, I can't go to all of these." So we begin to own and take personal responsibility for our side of the street, instead of projecting and criticizing onto others. 

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Another one is, "Why do you have to be such a contrary and always picking me apart, always telling me what's wrong with me? If I bring to you an idea, can't you just say, 'That's great, I love it.'" This is a classic example of a difference between somebody who's high in agreeableness and someone who's more disagreeable. And there's a way in which you can begin to label dynamics in your relationships, without criticizing, shaming, or projecting on the other person. 

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So, for example, in that dynamic, you might say, listen, "I'm someone, when I bring you an idea, it would just mean so much to me in this context if you just said, 'That's so interesting, tell me more.' That's a way you could love me. And I know that I'm not going to act on it, and I'm not going to go do something foolish. I know that it's important to you to pick it apart and analyze it from every different angle, and I want you to do that at a certain point. 

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But today, in this conversation, I just want to raise this and have you go, 'That's so fun.'" And you can start to coach a partner or a friend along to understand you. And that person who's more critical, who likes to pick things apart, can say, "Listen, this is how I am. This is how my mind works. I see something and I just start to shred it. 

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I just start to see it from all different angles and I can't help myself. I'm not trying to be a jerk here and I'm working on it, and sometimes when I do this, it's not personal. So let's work together on this and on how this dynamic affects our relationship so that we can each support each other."

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So we start to be able to help each other work with the grain of who we are and, simultaneously, we're no longer demanding that people just accept us exactly as we are. We are the ones in the right, "My way is the right way. Well, you just have to accept me because this is who I am."

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Neither of those extremes works. Trying to get somebody to change doesn't work, and it also doesn't work to become entitled that "This is just how I am." Instead, as we name these dynamics, these variables, these traits, and we tame them and we look at all the nuances of them, we begin to come together, and we each become a healthier version of our God-given selves.  

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Finally, I want to talk about how this relates to some of the spiritual gifts that we see in the Bible. I love how Paul speaks about this balance that I've been describing throughout this episode in 1 Corinthians 12:12-27, and I'm going to read this from The Message version. I like this version for this audio because it's just fresh. It's less familiar to most of us. 

Here's what it says; "I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn't just a single part blown up into something huge. It's all the different but similar parts arranged and functioning together." This is Paul, I love this.

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"If foot said, 'I'm not elegant like hand embellished with rings, I guess I don't belong to this body,' would that make it so? If Ear said, 'I'm not beautiful like eye, transparent and expressive, I don't deserve a place on the head,' would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where He wanted it."

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But here's the rub, as Paul goes on, he cautions us toward the other extreme. So he's saying this makes us more significant, not less. More valued, more worthy, more important to the whole, not less. But then he goes on to caution against the other extreme. Here's what Paul says; "But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of."

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I'm going to read that again. "For no matter how significant you are; it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn't be a body, but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine eye telling hand, 'Get lost; I don't need you.' Or head telling foot, 'You're fired, your job has been phased out.'"

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He goes on to say, "You are Christ's body." That's who you are, you must never forget this. Only as you accept your part of that body does your part mean anything. Paul then goes into a list of a lot of the different spiritual gifts that different parts of the body have. And I thought it was interesting as I was reading this, in light of these personality traits we've gone through in this episode, today. 

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So this is not scientific, but I want to propose this to you as we close. As you think about some of these biblical gifts that Paul describes. Number one, think about the apostles. Maybe they scored high on this extroversion scale. They liked people. They were constantly among other people. Maybe this allowed them to get energized out of their work. I don't know, I'm just imagining, I'm creative, I'm being high on the openness scale right now. 

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Think about the prophets; it's possible they might have been considered quite disagreeable in their time. I'm just saying these guys were not well liked when they would come along and point out all the negativity, all the hard things, all the things no one else wanted to see. And, yet, how beautiful and critical they are in the body of Christ and how beautiful they are to God, 

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Think about the healers and helpers, maybe, they're highly agreeable. They know how to bring empathy and healing balm to the souls of other people. The organizers, the administrators, that Paul describes, those who are perhaps highly conscientious. Those who pray in tongues, Paul talks about, maybe, these are the folks more open to these creative, innovative experiences that make some other folks uncomfortable. 

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We see it right there in Scriptures, there is a place for everyone and every type of personality in the body of Christ. Our goal is to learn the part we can play and play that part well. And as always, considering the example of Jesus in His honesty, in His humility, which I think is that dimension of who we are that is the most ripe for the transforming work and power of God's spirit. 

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< Outro >

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Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you'd take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts and click the Plus or Follow button. That will ensure you don't miss an episode and it helps get the word out to others.

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While you're there, I'd love it if you'd leave your five-star review. I look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.

Gosh, it can be hard to live in a body, let alone learn to love it. We have so many demands that compete for our attention, not to mention all the mixed up messages we get as women- how in the world are we supposed to take the time to honor these bodies God has given us?In today's episode I share with you more about my own journey of learning what it means to be an embodied person.

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Here's what we cover:

1. Why so many of us bypass the body

2. 4 insights from psychology about tending the body

3. 3 ancient heresies that sneak into our modern thinking

4. The difference between what the Bible calls "flesh" and "body"

5. How to start to honor your body as a daily practice

6. How I am learning to dance again (but definitely not in public)

‍Want to receive free bonus content? ⁠⁠⁠Sign up for my free weekly email here⁠

‍

Related episodes:

• Episode 11: How to Start Loving Your Body with Christy Joy
• Episode 19: My Stroke, A Process of Healing, and How I Began to Write The Best of You
• Episode 36: An Update on My Social Media Detox & How to Create Boundaries With Toxic Distractions, Numbing, & Unhealthy Coping Tactics
• Episode 44: Why Anger is a Surprising Friend, What Happens When You Avoid It, and How to Create Space for Healthy Expression of Anger in Your Family

‍

Resources

• ‍Boundaries for Your Soul Series
• ‍Try Softer, by Aundi Kolber
• ‍Strong Like Water, by Aundi Kolber
• ‍Somatic Therapy
• ‍John 14:15-17
• ‍1 Corinthians 6:19-20
• ‍Matthew 10:28
• ‍Luke 24:13-32
• ‍John 20:19-23
• ‍2 Samuel 6
• ‍Ecclesiastes 3:1-4
• ‍Psalm 149
• ‍Footloose Clip
• ‍H-A-L-T
• "The body is the envelope of the soul, which it serves to carry and to manifest. It is also the instrument of the soul, which it uses to effect whatever it desires. . . . Therefore, let us cherish the body as the divine workmanship that it is, and let us not defile it with impure thoughts and actions, but rather let us make it a partner in our spiritual life." - St. John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith
• ‍"We are not angels, and our bodies are not separated from our souls; indeed, our Lord Himself has told us that we are not to kill the body. So we must try to make it holy and capable of serving God, so that, when it is united with the soul, the two will make a perfect dwelling-place for our Lord." - St. Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection
• ‍Resources for support

‍

‍Thanks to our sponsors:

• This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at ⁠betterhelp.com/BESTOFYOU⁠ and get on your way to being your best self.
• Go to ⁠⁠www.organifi.com/bestofyou⁠ ⁠today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.  
• Order Aundi Kolber's new book, ⁠Strong Like Water⁠ today!

Music by Andy Luiten

Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik

While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.

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Transcript

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Alison: Hey everyone, and welcome back to today's episode of The Best of You Podcast. Where we are in part two of a two-part series on Loving Your Body as a Spiritual Practice. Before we get started, I want to remind you that I do send out an email newsletter every week, with bonus content related to each episode. Almost, always, when I record one of these episodes, I realize that maybe a phrase or a word came up that didn't get explained clearly enough. So what I do in the weekly email is create some bonus content around some of those topics. 

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So in order to subscribe to that, it's free, it comes out once a week, you go to my website dralisoncook.com, and you'll see the Free Newsletter button right there. As my gift to you, for signing up, you'll get two free eBooks one on boundaries, and one on comparing ourselves to others. As well as a guided prayer reflection, that takes you through those steps that we covered in The Boundaries for Your Soul series. So you'll get those three free gifts, when you subscribe to my weekly newsletter. 

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My goal with this podcast, with everything I do, is to provide affordable resources to as many people as possible that brings together the best of what psychology and science are teaching us, with Christian faith and practice. So all of this is free for you, that's why we have advertisers on the podcast. For those of you who ask "Does advertisers help cover the cost of some of this work?" So I appreciate that we have this way of getting these resources out to you. 

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All right, so, today, I want to talk about living in a body. It can be hard to live in a body, even a healthy body, even a body that you love. Our bodies require our attention, they require work. And, frankly, I don't know that many folks, especially, women that have a really healthy relationship with their body.

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There are some, but so often our relationship with our body is fraught. Even when we don't have a clinical diagnosis, even when we are, for the most part, maybe, even relatively healthy physically or medically speaking. We still tend to have a pretty complicated relationship with our body. And here is the thing about these bodies that God gave us. This is going to be sort of a love letter to our bodies, in today's podcast episode. 

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Our bodies carry so much. Our bodies carry our pain, they carry our joy, they carry our anger, our rage, our frustration, our tension, our stress. They carry our fragility, they carry our tenderness, they carry all of our bad habits. 

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Sometimes we don't treat our bodies very well. We don't feed our bodies very well. We don't move our bodies in the way they need to be moved and, yet, they continue to show up for us every single day.

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Our bodies are amazing. We can neglect them; we cannot treat them right, we can discard them, sideline them, bypass them, as we talked about in last week's episode, on spiritual bypassing. We can ignore them and they still show up for us every single day. Our bodies matter. They help us metabolize our emotions. They help us pray. They help us honor our own limits. They help alert us to danger. They're a critical piece of this holistic life God has given us. That includes our mind, our emotions, our spirit, and our bodies. 

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But so often we disconnect from our bodies. We climb up into the safety of our minds. Where we can analyze, and criticize, and stay out of our bodies. But when we do that, we miss out on the beautiful embodied life God wants for us. 

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Now, personally, today's episode hits very close to home. Because over the last five months, I have been on a journey of learning how to care for my body. I wasn't expecting this process. Ever since I had a stroke, if you go back and listen to episode 19, I talk about how I had a stroke out of the blue, in the fall of 2020 with no known medical conditions. And as a result of having that stroke, and a lot of medical tests, and not finding anything wrong with me. There was still some mystery around what caused that. 

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Now, prior to that time, I'd never really paid that much attention to my body. I've been someone, to be honest with you, who has taken my body for granted. It's much easier for me to live a life inside my mind. I can crawl up outside of my body and just mentally talk myself out of anything that my body is feeling or bypass my own body, my physical limitations. I've known that I've done that. But up until I had that stroke and some serious medical issues, I didn't really do the things I know I've needed to do to care for my body.

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Well, fast-forward to fall of 2022, and I just started to notice some things that didn't feel quite right, I was tired. It didn't feel like the tired of, "Oh, I need a good night's sleep." My body wasn't working quite right. And, so, I decided to go off social media in November. That was what I thought was going to be my big detox. 

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I knew I needed some time away, just some time to step back. Again social media, it has some good things, I've talked about it in the last few weeks. It's how I've met some really neat friends. There's a lot of good about it, but it's very disembodied. It's by nature very addictive. It's just such an easy way, especially, at night, or especially when we're stressed, or we're tired, or we're emotionally down, or sad, or feeling anyway that we don't want to feel.

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It's such an easy way to pick up the phone and look for that dopamine hit from social media. And I had fallen into that habit a little bit. I've had pretty good habits with it in the past. But during this season, I had fallen into that habit a little bit. So I thought, "I'm going to just cut that out for a while, get back into some of these good habits."

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I thought it was going to be a quick fix, and it really ended up being much more involved. It, literally, was just the tip of that iceberg. And I began a journey, over the past five months, to completely change how I relate to my body and it's been a pretty intense process. I'm still in the middle of it. It's learning how to honor my body, as a spiritual practice. 

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And, at some point, I'll share more with you what that looked like in my life. And how I'm learning to incorporate the care of my body as an act of honoring God, as an act of worship, as an act of living out an embodied faith. It's been surreal, it's been intense, it's changed my life. 

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And, today, I want to share with you some of the psychology, of why our bodies are so important to our mental and emotional health. 

And I also want to share with you some theology, about why the body matters to God and some of the heresies that we unwittingly fall into. When we bypass, or sidestep, or minimize the importance of our bodies. 

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So I want to start off by talking about the field of somatic psychology. Which has done a lot to help us understand the relationship between the body, and the mind, and the emotions. It's a field of psychology that recognizes the body, not just as a physical entity. So like over here is our body; we need to eat well, we need to sleep well, we need to exercise, all these things that our medical doctors tell us. And then over here is our mind, and our spirit, and our emotions. And we do other things over here to help stay emotionally healthier, to stay spiritually healthy. 

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Well, what we now know, from psychology, is those two things are deeply interconnected, and I talk about that a lot in Episodes 45 and 46, with Aundi Kolber. And her new book, Strong Like Water, has a lot of information about that connection. 

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Here are some of the key principles that we have learned from psychology, as it relates to the body. Number one, it's the role of the nervous system and how the nervous system is this key part of us, that connects the mind, the emotions, the gut. Which gets at what we eat. What we put into our bodies that, literally, sends signals all day long back up to our brain. Which then influences our emotions, which then influences how we sleep. All of these things are interconnected. 

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Number two, somatic psychology talks about the importance of paying attention to physical sensations, that give us information about our external world. So, for example, tension in your body is a cue that you're tense. And that sounds obvious, but think about it for a minute. If you're going about your day and you're disconnected from your body, and then suddenly you notice that your shoulders are really hunched. That's a cue that you are not only disconnected from your body, but there's something that's bothering you. 

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And, so, instead of trying to beat yourself up because you're not feeling well, or you're in a bad mood, or maybe you're lashing out at your kids, or maybe you are feeling grumpy or off. What somatic psychology says is notice where the tension is in your body. And then maybe roll those shoulders that are tense, or maybe shake out those hands, or maybe wiggle those toes, or stretch out those legs. And as you begin to release the tension in your body, start to notice what happens emotionally, and I'm telling you, it'll be surprising. 

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I've been on a deep dive into this journey, in the last five months. You might notice tears start to come. You might notice "I don't want to do that because then I have to face the fact that I'm actually angry." So your body is holding that tension, or that discomfort, or that pain, or that emotion on your behalf so that you don't have to consciously feel it. This is what I mean when I say our bodies are amazing. 

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But our bodies also wear out. They need the rest of us to come online. They need us to work with them, not against them. And, so, as you start to notice where you hold tension in your body or pain in your body. Maybe it's pain that comes from a medical diagnosis. Maybe it's pain that comes from stress or tension, it could be either one. 

But either way, your body is telling you something. Your body might be telling you, "I need you to slow down. You're pushing me too hard." And you don't want to face that, and you don't want to name that. 

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But your body needs you to pay attention, and it's giving you a signal through that pain. And instead of beating on yourself, which I have done so often, more often than I like to admit, and saying, "Come on body, let's just get in line. Let's just give you some pseudo comfort by way of sugar, by way of comfort food, by way of a dopamine hit from social media." 

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Whatever the thing may be, "To whip you into shape instead of giving you the real comfort, the real help, the real nourishment you need. Body. I'm giving you a fake hit of something that only makes it worse, in the long run." How often do we do that to our bodies? 

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Instead of listening to them when they tell us, "I'm tired, I need you to slow down. I need you to move me in a kind and tender way. I need you to provide me with actual nourishment instead of a quick hit, that's not what I need from you." My body says, "I don't need that quick hit from you, I need real care."

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Number three, what we've learned from somatic psychology and psychiatry, is that trauma is stored in the body. Traumatic experiences that don't get metabolized. And what I mean by that is traumatic experiences that don't get witnessed, and cared for, and where the emotion is allowed to flow through the body. In a healthy way that is proportionate to the pain and the stress of the traumatic event, it gets stuck in the body. It's stored there. And this can affect not only our physical health, but our emotional health. 

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So we have to learn to work with the body as we heal from trauma that's been stored there. For example, it can be stored through tension, and imagine years and years of storing pain through habitual physical tension. It can be stored in our nervous system. 

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Where, again, you're constantly living out of that state of fight/flight. Instead of experiencing the homeostasis or the balance of a nervous system that is at rest, that is calm, that is able to be regulated, and restored to that home base. Where the body is restored to where it's not constantly monitoring the environment and living out of a stress response. 

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Trauma can disrupt bodily systems like digestion, like your immune system. There are so many ways, that psychiatrists and medical doctors are seeing the impacts of trauma on the ways in which these systems function.

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And, so, we have to pay attention to the body, sometimes, as one method, not only to relieve and alleviate some of the medical issues, but also to begin to tap into some of the emotional pain. This is why trauma-informed work is so important. If you've got a history of trauma, if you've got a history of unhealed pain, to work with a therapist who understand a trauma-informed approach. 

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And, finally, somatic psychology has taught us some very clear interventions for how to improve that connection between our mind and our body. Now, again, I always recommend Aundi's work on this. Both her first book Try Softer and her second book, Strong Like Water. 

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She's got some very practical interventions that help you begin to mend that connection between your mind and your body. But simply beginning to pay attention. To take all that energy of your mind that wants to avoid noticing what's happening in your body or bypass what's happening in your body, and beginning to pay attention to your body as a spiritual practice. And at the end of this episode, I'm going to walk you through some of the things I've been doing as I've begun to pay attention to my physical body, as a spiritual practice. 

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Before we get there, I want to just briefly mention why this is all part of Orthodox Christian theology. This is not some woo-woo, new-age thing. This idea of somatic psychology. This idea that our minds, and our emotions, and our spirit, are all connected to this body that God gave us. This is as ancient as the days. This is not some new idea. Orthodox Christian theology has always taught that the body is an integral part of the human being. It is not separate from the soul or the spirit.

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We see this in numerous ways in Scriptures. We see in John 14, where Jesus promises the coming of the Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit would dwell within us and we would no longer relate to God only as an external being separate from us. But that the Spirit of God would come to live within our bodies.

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We see this in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 when Paul talks about the body being a temple of the Holy Spirit. 

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Now, often we think about that in terms of morality, in terms of sexuality, that's the context in which Paul is talking. But I would argue that it goes beyond that. And I would say we see it most clearly in the life of Jesus.

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I mean, how amazing is it that God became a human body? Jesus is God in the flesh. Jesus lived in a body. And here are just some examples from early church fathers and mothers that show that this is not a new idea. St. John of Damascus, a Christian monk, from the eighth century wrote this beautiful phrase about the body, and I love this. 

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He said, "The body is the envelope of the soul, which it serves to carry and to manifest. It is also the instrument of the soul; which it uses to affect whatever it desires." So it goes both ways, he's saying. The body is the envelope of the soul; it carries the soul. It's such a beautiful love letter to the body, that it carries our souls for us. 

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What a gift! We couldn't be on this earth without it. What a gift, our bodies give to us. 

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And then, secondly, it's also the instrument of the soul. So as the mind wills, it acts through the body. And, so, we work together, all of these parts of us, in harmony with each other. And he goes on to say, "Therefore, let us cherish the body as the divine workmanship that it is. And let us not defile it with impure thoughts and actions, but rather let us make it a partner in our spiritual life." I love this. 

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And then St. Teresa of Ávila, a Spanish mystic and a Carmelite nun from the 16th century says this, "We are not angels and our bodies are not separated from our souls. Indeed, our Lord, himself, has told us that we are not to kill the body. So we must try to make it holy and capable of serving God. So that when it is united with the soul, the two will make a perfect dwelling place for our Lord."

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So, again, it's the body coming together as the envelope of the soul and the two working together in this dance of harmony. To both honor God and affect change in this world around us. So we need to honor this body, even as we want this body to help us do the work of honoring our minds, hearts, and souls. 

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Jesus spoke about the body in several occasions, in the gospels. In Matthew 10:28 He says, "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. Rather be afraid of the one," meaning the enemy. "Who can destroy both soul and body in hell." Now, oftentimes, this verse can seem as if we're saying the soul is more important. 

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So better to lose your body because your soul is actually more important. But that's not actually what Jesus is saying here. He's not saying that the body is not important. He's saying that the body will end, at some point. But we also know, from the life of Jesus, that His very body was also resurrected. And there are a lot of really smart theologians that have a lot of thoughts on what it means to have a resurrected body, and it's complicated, and it's mysterious. It's hard to understand what it will be like to be reunited with our bodies, for all eternity. 

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You think about the kinds of questions that kids ask, and I love these questions when they say, "Well, what age will I be, when I have the resurrected body? What age will I be?" It's hard for us to understand because we are so limited to these finite minds and these finite bodies. It's hard to understand the concept of eternity. 

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But there are a couple of things we do know Jesus lived in a body. Jesus died in a body, and Jesus was resurrected in a body. According to the New Testament, when the disciples first saw Jesus, in His resurrected body, it was clearly still His body, when they were on the road to Emmaus. When they encountered this man that they didn't quite recognize, so we know He didn't look exactly the same, there was something different. This is Luke 24:13-32. 

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Then it says in John 20:19-23, later that same day, "He showed them His wounds." So it was the same body, even though it looked a little different to them. He was in a body. And then on the Ascension, when He goes up to heaven, His body goes with Him. So there is some sense that the body is still a part of the picture, even after Jesus dies and is resurrected. 

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Which would suggest that our bodies will still be a part of the picture with us, not just for now, but for all of eternity. And, in fact, there are several heresies that emerged about the body in those early years, after Jesus died and rose from the dead. 

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History talks about a couple of heresies, one is called Gnosticism. And Gnosticism which showed up in those first few centuries, is much more similar to modern, new-age spirituality than what I was just describing to you we've learned from somatic psychology. Gnosticism believed in this idea that the material world, anything physical, including the human body, was inherently corrupt.

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So the goal of the spiritual life was to escape from the confines of the physical body, and live on the superior spiritual reign where you're above the limits of the body. You can transcend the limits of the body. And I'm telling you, if you spend any time in any new age spirituality, you will hear a lot of this language, and it's very insidious. 

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That could be a whole episode in and of itself, to begin to discern some of these Gnosticism heresies. That are especially prevalent again in some of these new-age spiritualties, but that are seeping into some of our Christian spirituality, too.

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And I want to underscore this idea that this is not a new idea, this paying attention to the body. Augustine spoke out, vehemently, against this idea that the material world, that the physical body, is evil and corrupt. The body was created as part of God's design. When you were created in the image of God and God called you good, that included your physical body. Adam was the first Adam. Jesus is called the second Adam; He came in a body. There's something about our bodies that matters.

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Now, there's a second heresy that surfaced during this third century, in the early, early parts of our Christian Church history called Manichaeism, and Manichaeism was what we called dualistic. And what we mean by dualism is that it divided the body from the spirit. And, again, not unlike what was going on with Gnosticism. They believed that the human body was inherently evil and that the spirit was inherently good.

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And, so, we're in this battle between good and evil. The spirit is good, the body is evil, and the two are fighting and combating. And this is really subtle, when you sometimes hear people talk about the battle between the spirit and the flesh. This is why I don't like to use that language, although, I understand, theologically, that that is a different thing. But when we talk about that battle between this spirit and the flesh, what sometimes makes me squirm a little bit, and I don't like it, is it's we do not mean that there's a battle between our spirit and our literal body. 

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When we talk about the battle between the spirit and the flesh. By the flesh we mean the sinful part of us, the sinful nature. We do not mean the physical body. I was often confused by that, even though I knew a lot of this stuff intellectually. I studied Augustine quite a bit in college and in my doctoral program. 

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There was a part of me that I'd taken up this insidious idea that, essentially, the body is inferior, the spirit is more important. We really need to focus on the spirit. It was a little part of me that I wouldn't have claimed, it was very subtle, very insidious, but, man, was it wreaking some havoc in my life that I've had to undo. 

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When we talk about, again, the battle between the flesh and the spirit, we do not mean our literal bodies. The flesh is just the part of us that continues to be our imperfect human nature. It continues to be where we carry woundedness, where we continue to sometimes want to go our own way away from following Jesus, away from following God. It's not our physical bodies. 

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Again, Augustine who was a Manichaean, himself, before he converted, spoke out vehemently against this idea that the body is inherently evil and that we should escape it. He argued for the goodness of the physical world, including the human body that God created. Remember that God called you good before sin entered in. God called us good as human bodies. 

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And then there was a third heresy called Docetism, which denied the actual humanity of Jesus. Jesus only appeared to have a physical body, but in reality, he was really spiritual, which again is a heresy. And we may be like, "No, we don't believe that. We know that Jesus had a body, He bled, He died, He did all these things that we did." 

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But it's really important that Jesus had a body. It's really important because it shows us that the body, this envelope of the soul matters. It matters as much as our mind and our emotions matter. It is the container for all that God gave us and created good. We may not like our bodies. We may not like caring for our bodies, and we may bypass our bodies without even realizing it, as I have done, in the name of superior spirituality. But this is not what God wants. 

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Learning to honor your body, learning to live in your body, learning to care for your body is a deeply important part of your spiritual practice. It's not only good for your physical health; it's how we honor the God who made us mind, emotions, body, and spirit. 

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So how do we love our bodies as a form of spiritual practice? I am going to be honest with you, today, I am a newbie at this. There was a time I could have probably waxed on about this from a purely intellectual standpoint, without really understanding it in my own day-to-day practices. And I'm just so aware of how human we all are, that I would rather be honest with you about that than pretend otherwise. 

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I am a newbie at this and it all started, for me, last November when I went off social media. Now I've been off for about five months, and as I mentioned, that was the tip of the iceberg. It launched a whole journey into the depths of paying attention to my body, at the cellular lived experience level. And I'm nowhere near done, yet, I am barely beginning.

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But I am starting to build trust with myself again. To the point where I'm, very gingerly, taking baby steps to see if I can integrate what I have learned about paying attention to my nervous system. Paying attention to what my body, actually, needs in the moment versus the pseudo dopamine hit that I would rely on in the past.

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I am practicing, now, in fumbling, uncomfortable, like riding a bucking bronco, ways, what I've learned these last five months, bringing that into my life. When, to use that ever so helpful acronym — H-A-L-T — whether I'm Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired because that's when we're most vulnerable to doing these things, that our bodies don't actually want or need. 

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What I want to share with you are just some very basic practices that I'm leaning into right now. To ensure that I care for this beautiful, of all beautiful gifts that I do not always think is beautiful, but I am learning to cherish the body that God has given us. 

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Number one, the first thing I do, when I wake up in the morning, is to remind myself I have a body. I have a body. I am not a walking mind. I am not a walking task machine. I am not a walking caretaker of other people. First and foremost, when my feet hit that floor, I have a body. And I say it to myself as a way of saying to God, "God, I have a body this morning. That body needs things from me. And the best way I can honor you right now is to check in with that body; is that body hungry?"

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I cannot tell you how many years of my life I have skipped breakfast. I do not give my body breakfast. I give everybody else in my life breakfast, but I got things to do. I got to get going. I got thoughts to get down. I got work to do. And, then, somewhere around the middle of the morning I'm like, "I'm starving." I didn't feed my body. So this is a radical new practice for me, to hit the ground in the morning and go, "I have a body. What does that body need?" This is a spiritual practice. This changed everything for me. 

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This is not, "I need to go right into my prayer life."

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This is, "God, I am honoring you first thing this morning by checking in with this body you've given me." This is not separate from my spiritual life. "Is my body hurting? Is it sore? Did I get sleep? Does it need food? What food does it need?"

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And, then, a process of "What does my body want to eat first thing in the morning? What is healthy for it?" Not just grabbing a fistful of something and calling that food or nourishment. This takes time, this takes attentiveness, this takes attunement. There are lots of parts of me that do not like this. I want to jump right into the work. I want to jump right into the caretaking of others. It takes space away from, instantly, jumping into caring for other people to say, "I first need to care for my own body." This is hard for us, as women, and it's so basic and it is so not basic. 

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Number two, when, throughout the day, I notice myself reaching for those seemingly innocent go-to's pick-me-ups, pausing. And it's not just about inhibiting an impulse, or a compulsivity to reach for a phone, or reach for a sugary snack, or whatever it is. Whatever the food is, whatever the thing is in that moment that feels good, that we all know isn't actually what we need in that moment. It's more importantly, "What is my body saying right now?"

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A lot of times, in my case, it's, "Oh, my goodness, I have not literally moved my body from my computer for three hours." That is not only not healthy for my circulation, for a body that has, literally, had a clot that turned into a stroke. 

So it's not only that, it's my body wants to move and then I'm learning what does my body want. Because, again, it's not willing control over the body from the mind, which is how I have perceived it in the past. Which is "I should exercise."

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"I should now take a walk around the block."

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It's, "Hey body, what do you want to do?" And my body often wants to have some fun. It's like "I've been sitting here, holding you up for two hours. I want to move around; I want to stretch" Sometimes my body wants to dance. It wants to put on some music and wants to do a little five-minute shakedown; get out the tension, get out the anxiety, get out the frustration. It's been really fun to realize that my body likes little mini-solo dance parties, throughout the day, just shake it out. 

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Rowena talked about this in episode 44 on anger. When she talked about, in her family, when her kids are getting angry, they shake it out and have a little anger dance party, and just get the frustration out. Put on some music. This has been really interesting for me to notice, throughout the day, that so often when I'm unconsciously reaching for something, the real need is that my body needs some attention. It needs to move, it needs to stretch, it needs to work out or metabolize some emotion that I'm having. 

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Other things that my body likes, stretching, taking a walk when it's sunny outside. I'll look out the window and I'll just notice this longing in my body to just go be out in the sun with the dogs. Running around the yard, playing with them, throwing the ball, having some fun out in the sun. My body really likes that. Sometimes it wants a hot shower. Sometimes it wants to go to the gym where it can just bake out, sweat out, some of what it's been feeling.

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Breathing, again, not just because my psychologist's brain has told me, "This is what you're supposed to do. You are supposed to take deep breaths." No, actually, feeling in my body what it feels like to slow down my breathing, and release some of that tension, this takes time. It's like a body time-out. 

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Another thing that's been really fun is to think about kids. What do kids do? If you think about children. Watch your children how they're wriggling, and moving, and dancing, and tussling, and wrestling, and on the ground, and they're throwing their head back in laughter. Or they're pounding their fist, or their hand on the table because they're so upset, they physicalize all that emotion. And, so, reminding myself, "What did I do as a kid?"

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And remembering some of that in my body to let the body get some of that out. Not just for the purpose of, then, I can do my work better, or then I'll be healthy, or then I'll have checked the box of being a healthier person. No, because there's joy in it. There's joy in honoring this long-suffering body that I have, frankly, taken for granted, and have not treated very well throughout my life.

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I thought a lot about David, and I'll be honest when I think about David, I cannot help but think about that beautiful scene of Kevin Bacon, in the original Footloose movie. I went back and watched that scene because it's just so etched in my memory, and I'll link to it in the show notes. Because he talks about all three Scriptures that I often think about, when I think about this movement of the body as a form of worship, as a form of honoring God. 

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And I'm going to close today by reading these Scriptures to you. 2 Samuel 6, "So David went to bring up the Ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the City of David with rejoicing. When those who were carrying the Ark of the Lord had taken six steps, he sacrificed a bull in a fattened calf. Wearing a linen ephod, David was dancing before the Lord with all his might, while he and all Israel were bringing up the Ark of the Lord with shouts and this sounds of trumpets."

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I've heard that verse my whole life, but only now have I begun to glimpse and taste what it feels like to dance before the Lord. Not always in joy, sometimes in anger, sometimes in sorrow. But that physical action of honoring God with my whole body.

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Ecclesiastes three, again, I've read this one before, but I love it. "There's a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to uproot. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance."

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And then Psalm 149, "Let Israel rejoice in their maker. Let the people of Zion be glad in their king. Let them praise His name with dancing and make music to Him with timbre and harp." 

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There's so much to this spiritual life that we have. There's so much joy in it. There's so much, yet, to be discovered. I have been doing this work a long time and there are some areas of this journey of healing that I am such a newbie, and it means that life is never boring. It is always an adventure. I'm learning how to dance and how to move my body, as a spiritual practice before the Lord. And I pray for you, on this day, that you too will begin to love this body God has given you as a form of spiritual practice.

This week on the podcast, we're kicking off a mini 2-episode series on loving our bodies as a spiritual practice. Today, I dig into the problem of over-spiritualizing and how that does harm to ourselves and to others.

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Here's what we cover:

1. What is spiritual bypassing?

2. Does every problem have a spiritual solution?

3. How we spiritually bypass ourselves

4. How not to be a "friend of Job"

5. The antidote to spiritual bypassing

6. An example of spiritual bypassing from the Bible

Want to receive free bonus content? Sign up for my free weekly email

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Resources

• See Chapters 2 and 11 of The Best of You, by Dr. Alison Cook
• Episode 46: People Pleasing as Survival, How Jesus Regulated Emotions & the Problem With Toxic Positivity and Spiritual Bypassing with Aundi Kolber
• John Welwood on Spiritual Bypassing
• ‍Job 20 and Job 22
• ‍Matthew 23:4
• ‍Job 42:7-8
• Isaiah 53:4
• John 11:33
• Matthew 5:3-5
• ‍Matthew 25:34-40
• ‍Hebrews 11:1
• ‍Romans 8:28
• ‍Resources for support

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Thanks to our sponsors:

• Go to ⁠www.organifi.com/bestofyou⁠ today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
• Order Dr. Amen's new book, Change Your Brain Every Day today!
• Hiya Health-Visit hiyahealth.com/BESTOFYOU and get your kids the full-body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults.

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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.

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Transcript

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‍Alison: Hey, everyone. I'm Dr. Alison, and I'm so glad you're here to discover what brings out the best of you. This podcast is all about breaking free from painful patterns, mending the past, and discovering our true selves in God. I can't wait to get started as we learn together how to become the best version of who we are with God's help.

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Hey, everyone, and welcome back to The Best of You podcast. I am so glad you're here. I'm so glad you keep coming back, each week, for these conversations that are just so important. As we navigate all the challenges that we face in our families, in our relationships and, frankly, in this world. There's just so much turmoil, so much chaos, all around us. And, so, I so appreciate this time each week to center our hearts, and to just pay attention to what is happening inside our souls, our minds, our bodies, and to invite God into that process together.

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Today and next week, we're going to do a two-episode miniseries called, Loving Your Body as a Spiritual Practice. I have been in a, pretty intense, process of learning what it means to honor the body that God has given me, as a form of honoring God. 

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This is something I do not think comes naturally for most women, in particular. And it's not something that we hear a lot about in our faith communities. I do think that message is changing. And, so, in today's episode, I want to talk about this phrase - spiritual bypassing. We touched on it in my episode with Aundi Kolber, last week, episode 46. And several of you wrote to me and said, "Can you talk more about that? What did you mean by that?"

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And, so, today, I want to get into what is spiritual bypassing. And then I also want to touch on what does it mean to bring our whole body. And by our whole body, I mean our mind, our heart, our spirit, and the body, the physical body that contains our mind, our emotions, and our spirit All of those things into our spiritual practices. 

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So to get started today - what is spiritual bypassing? Spiritual bypassing, essentially, means using spiritual concepts, platitudes, or spiritual language to bypass or over-spiritualize the real struggles that we face. And one of the ways I like to think about it, it's saying that every single problem, every single struggle of life, can be solved with a spiritual solution. 

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And I want to pause there, and I want you to think about that for a minute. Because I think a lot of us might agree with that. We might agree or have even said, or have even heard, in a sermon, that every problem has a spiritual solution. And I'm going to challenge that just a little bit today. 

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So spiritual bypassing, this phrase, was actually introduced, it's credited to this Buddhist psychotherapist, actually, his name is John Welwood. In the mid-'80s, he began to see a trend in the clients that he was seeing, that they would bypass their pain or bypass the reality of their problems. By using, vaguely, spiritual language like, "It's all good."

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"I'm just going to follow my bliss."

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"I'm just living my truth."

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His clients would just repeat these positive-sounding phrases, that really didn't allow them to get into the heart and soul of what they were really struggling with. And if you remember, again, in episode 46, Aundi talked about how there's a secular version, which is called toxic positivity. Which is using positive phrases to cover over pain or suffering. 

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But there is also a Christian version of this and it's using Christian phrases, Christian platitudes, even Bible verses, to cover over pain and struggling. Instead of owning it, naming it honestly, and bringing it into the light, where God can actually bring the healing. And, also, sometimes the practical, very embodied resources that we need. 

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So here are some examples of spiritual bypassing and how it might show up in a faith community. So maybe you've shared a hard situation with a small group or a member of your church community, and you've heard a version of the following response. So, for example, if you share "I'm really struggling with depression." And someone tells you, "Oh, you don't need to feel depressed, God has given you so much."

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Or "You should just pray more. You should just ask God, if you pray more, god will take that addiction or that relationship problem away."

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Or if you're struggling with forgiveness and you really are carrying resentment towards someone who's really hurt you. Someone might say to you, "Well, God just says you should forgive. You just need to turn the other cheek." But there's no real acknowledgment of the complexity of what that means. 

And, listen, sometimes we do this to ourselves. We constantly tell ourselves, "If I would just pray more, if I had just been in the Word more. If I was just walking closer with God, I wouldn't be having these problems, I wouldn't be struggling. Everything would just, magically, fall into place."

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We tell ourselves these things all the time and we beat ourselves up with this form of spiritual bypassing. "If I was more holy, if I was more faithful, if I was a better Christian, I wouldn't be having this fight, flight response and lashing out at my kids. If I had just spent more time in the Word, today, I wouldn't be behaving in this way."

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Now listen, I don't want to suggest that it is not important to spend time in the Word, to spend time in prayer. To ask God, constantly, for help, meeting us where we are in every detail of the day. That is part of the work of growing in spiritual formation, of allowing God to form us on every level. 

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Some of these things are true. We do need to forgive. We do need to pray more. We do need to be in the Word more. But here is what I want you to hear me say, God meets us in every pain and every problem that we face. 

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But that does not mean that every problem, every heartache, every challenge has only a spiritual solution. I'm going to say that again. God meets us in every pain and every problem that we face. But that does not mean that every problem, every heartache, every challenge, has only a spiritual solution. 

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Some of our problems need very practical solutions. Some of our problems need us to attend to a jacked-up nervous system. That has gone into fight-flight response, as a result of trauma or as a result of stress. And we have to learn how to calm that nervous system through physical intervention. 

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Some of our relationship problems require the help of a therapist or a third party, to help us untangle the knots that have come into that relationship. And it's going to take more than just prayer. Or perhaps the way God is going to help us answer those prayers is to teach us how to bring the problems we are facing in our relationships into the light. Where people who are trained can walk us through it very practically. 

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Sometimes our addictions are going to take medical interventions. We're going to need doctors to help us. We're going to need support groups to walk us through it. These things don't, magically, get solved through prayer or through reading the Scriptures. 

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Now, again, I am not saying that we don't need spiritual solutions. What I am saying is that we limit God, if we assume that God only shows up in spiritual ways. That God cannot also show up in very embodied, physical, ways. 

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Think when we only hear about the spiritual solutions, especially, in our faith communities. We can start to beat ourselves up if those spiritual solutions are not solving the problems that we face. 

In fact, when spiritual bypassing is used as a prescription, oftentimes, it can make us feel more alone in the problems that we face. Instead of sticking close, by you, in the uncertainty or the complexity of the situation you're facing. When someone spiritually bypasses you, in a way they're blaming you for what's happening. 

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"If you were just more spiritual, this wouldn't be happening to you."

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Instead of helping you ask questions or getting curious about the situation that you're facing. Spiritual bypassing minimizes the struggle in the name of a superior faith. And, to be honest, it's what we see in Job chapters 20 and 22. It's what the friends of Job were doing. 

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They were looking at Job sitting there, in all of his pain, in all of his torment, after losing so much. And you just get the picture of these friends coming in with their little spectacles, and being academic, and being like, "Well, you must have done something wrong to be hurting in this way."

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Or, "You must not have been doing enough of your praying, and fasting, and spiritual disciplines, or God wouldn't be letting this happen to you." And they're coming up with all of these platitudes to explain away Job's problems. Instead of setting aside all their certainty, all their spiritual-sounding language, and going down into the pain with Job, and just sitting down next to him. 

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And saying, "Hey, Job, this is hard; we don't get it either. We know you're not perfect, but we also know you're a really good guy. And, frankly, I know I'm not perfect either. And, so, frankly, I know that whatever you're going through, there's no reason why I'm not going through it, because neither of us has it all together. 

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So I'm just going to sit here with you, in that pain, because I don't really get this. And I don't think it's really fair that you're going through this, and I don't really understand it. But I know I can enter into it with you. And I know that together, we can beseech God for mercy. We can ask God for help because I don't have all the answers." 

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But you know what, Job, whoever you are, whatever your name is, and the problems that you're facing, I can enter into it with you, and I can sit here with you. I can bring my whole body, I'm not going to sit here above you, and float above your problem, and analyze it or dissect it or spiritualize it, from a safe place, far away. Where I don't have to be tarnished by the pain that you're feeling. I can stay safe outside of it." That's not real friendship. 

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Instead of floating above your pain, I'm going to come and literally take my whole body, and I'm going to sit next to you, and I'm going to even put my arms around you, and I'm going to hold you. And I'm going to say, "I don't get this either but I'm here with you. I'm going to help you ask questions. Together, we're going to try to find our way through this. I'm not going to leave you alone. I'm going to bring you the literal, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual presence of my whole body. I'm not going to leave you alone."

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That's embodied comfort, that's friendship. That's coming alongside someone from a position of "We are all in this together." And, man, whatever you are facing, maybe, I'm not going through it quite the same way. Maybe my life looks a little less complicated on the surface. But I have enough humility to know that my pat answers are not what you need right now. Because I don't fully understand either. 

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And maybe I will need to speak some words of truth, as I sit with you in this. I start to notice some things, and I can hold up a mirror, and in great humility and with a lot of grace, say, "Hey, I'm wondering if you've thought about it this way." But I'm doing that with humility. And I'm first coming alongside of you, and I'm sitting with you in the dirt, and in the mud, of your pain. 

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I'm not floating above you with all of these easy answers, that do nothing but make you feel more alienated. That's what spiritual bypassing does. It makes us feel alone in our pain. It makes us feel like "If we were just to be better Christians. If we would just pray more. If we would just be more faithful, we could just float up out of our pain and walk around with this numbed-out bliss." And it doesn't work, and it's not the example that we see in the gospels and it's not the example that we see in Jesus. 

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Instead of entering into the pain of a hurting soul with compassion, humility, and the gift of loving presence, or frankly, of practical help. We minimize, we spiritualize, and we make faulty assumptions. In effect, we are wounding the already wounded. 

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We're saying, "If you were a better Christian, you wouldn't be feeling this way. You wouldn't be going through this." We're blaming others in the name of our faith. And we become the very people Jesus rebuked when He said, of the religious teachers of His day, this is what He said about them. Matthew 23:4 He said, "They tie up heavy, cumbersome, loads and put them on other people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them."

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They're not willing to go down into the mud, in that pain, in the heartache, in the challenge, of that other person's trauma. Of that other person's pain and actually get in the mud, and get dirty, and say, "Hey, I'm in this with you. I don't have easy answers for you, but I'm here."

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Instead, they stay up out of it and just scold, just judge, just spout out easy, feel-good platitudes that do not meet other people in their pain. We tell the hurting person to be more spiritual instead of doing the holier embodied, more important, work of sitting beside them in their pain. 

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Sometimes we do this to ourselves. Instead of seeking to understand our painful emotions or, frankly, even our reactions to other people that we don't really like. Again, those fight/flight responses, where we lash out. We just ask God to remove them or to work a miracle in our life. 

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And, listen, there's nothing wrong with asking God for a miracle. But what I've learned, living a few decades on this planet is we don't always get the miracle and we're still responsible to do the work.

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Sometimes God answers us with a miracle and sometimes God says, "This is going to be a daily practice." Sometimes we get that miracle of healing. More often God says, "Partner with me to take brave steps each day." You have a part to play. 

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I cannot even tell you, and I'll get into this more in next week's episode, how much God has been teaching me that lately. I so desperately want the miracles, the quick fixes, the easy way out. And, so, often God is saying, "I'm healing you. I'm here and it is not the easy way."

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It is the way that requires digging deeper and facing the truth of what's hard. Facing the truth of what I don't often want to see about my own self, and taking tiny, brave steps every single day. Floundering a lot, sometimes seeing a glimpse of grace, but all the while holding tightly to the hand of Christ.

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Who says, "I am with you as you walk through it. I may not pick you up out of it, but I will not leave you as you walk through it." Spiritual bypassing, we do it to other people, we do it to ourselves, and it's not what Jesus does to us. Jesus walks with us through the valley of the shadow of our lives. 

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< Music >

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Alison: Spiritual bypassing is not what Scripture recommends. Jesus welcomes the beat-up, downtrodden, hopeless, and even doubting souls He encounters. See Job 42:7-8, Isaiah 53:4, John 11:33, and Matthew 5:3-5. Jesus does not exile those people who are hurting and in the messed up middle of their lives. 

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He doesn't say, "Go get yourself cleaned up and then come back to me." He says, "I'm here with you now. I'm sitting with you here at this well. I'm sitting with you here at this pool of exiles. I'm coming to you right where you are."

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I think of the words of Jesus when He said, in Matthew 25, and these words bring fear and trembling to us. Because they apply to all of us and I do not always get this right. Please hear me say that, I know I do not always get this right. Here are the words of Jesus. "For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison, and you came to visit me."

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And then, again, He goes on to say, "Truly, I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."

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What are we doing for people when they're hurting when they're suffering? 

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Are we slapping pat answers on them? 

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Are we telling them to pray more? 

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Are we slapping Bible verses on them? 

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Are we saying, "Hey, what do you need? Do you need food? I'll bring you a casserole and I'll sit with you, while you grieve."

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"Do you need something to drink? A cold glass of water? Maybe you need a break. Maybe you need me to take out and just listen while you share with me what you're struggling with. And I won't judge and I won't try to solve your problem. Let me just take you out, and be with you, and listen to you, and bear witness to your pain."

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And maybe I'll offer some insight, sure. Maybe I'll say, "Have you thought of this?" Sure. But I'm going to be with you and I'm going to listen. And I don't have all the answers, but I'm not going to leave you alone. Maybe you're lonely and you just need some company. You just need someone to show up in your house, and not try to solve your loneliness problem. 

But just show up every once in a while and say, "Hey, I'm here. I'm Christ in the flesh. I'm not perfect, but I am bringing my embodied comfort to your doorstep. Can I come in and just sit with you for a minute? Not to solve anything, just to take your loneliness away for one moment."

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What if we went to the friends who are struggling with addictions, with really hard challenges, and said, "Hey, I know you're in a rough place. I don't have all the solutions for you. Could I go with you to a support group meeting? Could I drive you?" And imagine, for just one moment, if that's how we all were with each other. 

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When we share about our own struggle with depression, or anxiety, or we share about our own marriage challenges. Or we share about something our kid is going through, or we share about a hard situation at work or a really hard financial situation. And the very first thing that we were met with were the words, "Tell me more about that. I care, I'm here. I want to learn more about what you're dealing with."

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What if we first started with that? 

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What if we first started by entering in and saying, "I'm here."

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And what if that's how other people met you, in return?

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I can just imagine this way that we are actually starting to be in a community together. We're actually sitting together and listening to each other, and absorbing each other's pain. And guess what, shared pain is half the pain, right there. We're not solving any problems. We're not, necessarily, fixing all the things. 

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But right there is the miracle. Right there is the miracle of sitting with each other in an embodied way. Saying, "I'm here, I hear you. I'm listening, I'm with you. You're not alone." And that same person is going to do the same thing for me when it's my turn, and when I'm struggling. And, all of a sudden, there's so much trust, and there's so much safety, and we're coming together. And this is what I believe it means when we are confessing one to another, "Hey, this is the real truth of what I'm struggling with."

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And it's the other person saying, "I hear you. I'm with you. Yes, me, too, I struggle with these things over here." And, collectively, we are connected to each other and we are becoming a body, an actual body. 

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I just had an experience, recently, with a few friends where we lived this. We came together for a weekend and we just could not stop sharing, confessing, opening our hearts and souls to each other about everything that we were dealing with in our lives. With our kids, with our relationships, with our work. With all the things that we all deal with. It was a holy weekend and it was holy ground.

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We weren't solving each other's problems. Nobody went away going, "Oh, yes, I prayed more and therefore my solutions were solved." We were just living prayer in an embodied presence with each other. We were the body of Christ for each other. 

Before we close, today, I want to talk a little bit about what I believe the antidote to spiritual bypassing is. It's what I call embodied faith. It's a faith that includes our hands, our feet, our nervous systems, our mind, our emotions. It's holistic, it's heart, mind, soul, body. And I want to turn to Hebrews 11:1 to just close out on this idea of what is a healthy faith. Because we do believe that God is in all of our problems, in all of our pain. That God is, ultimately, the one who cares the most about us when we're hurting. And that God is the one who leads us through the valley. 

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So if we look at Hebrews 11:1 "Faith is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It's our handle on what we cannot see." That's The Message version. I want to say that again, "Faith is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It's our handle on what we cannot see."

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Now, there's a lot in that verse, and that is not a verse that encourages spiritual bypassing. Even though we are understanding faith as the foundation of everything, even all the pain that we are dealing with. If you think about it, this definition of faith, in Hebrews, brings together two contradictory ideas. 

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First, faith is said to be like a firm foundation. Foundations are solid, often concrete, literally, concrete. When you pour the foundation of the house, it's usually concrete. You can see, feel, and touch a foundation. There's no question it exists. 

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In fact, every time you walk into a building or enter your home. How often do you think, to yourself, "Oh, I'm walking on a firm foundation? There's a firm foundation under my feet." But you know it's there. You just trust it implicitly. You just trust, for the most part, that that foundation is not going to crumble out from underneath you. That's how sure our faith in God can be no matter what we are facing. Faith is that firm foundation, that God is there no matter what. 

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But here's the second part of that verse. "Faith is also getting a handle on what you cannot see." Getting a handle on something means to grasp something complicated, something puzzling, something uncertain. You try to get a handle on a difficult situation. You try to get a handle on a challenging personality or you try to get a handle on your anger that you feel.

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It's unwieldy, it's wild. It's like, "I don't know what to do with this. I'm trying to get a handle on it, it's outside of my grasp. I don't quite have control over it." So when you're trying to get a handle on something, you're often wrestling with it a little bit. You aren't certain of how to proceed. You don't know exactly what's happening, but you know you need to stick with it. And that is, also, how faith is, it's a firm foundation under everything. It's also getting a handle on something we can't quite understand, we can't quite see. 

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Faith in God is a firm foundation. It's a fact God is there; we can trust Him. Faith is also getting a handle on stuff that's really hard to see, that's elusive. Where God feels mysterious, where we have to feel our way through the dark. We're not sure exactly what this wild thing is that we are facing, that we are dealing with. It's scary, it's outside our control, we can't easily grasp it, and that is also faith. 

Both are true, faith is a fact and it's a work in progress, it's a wrestling. Faith is a firm foundation, and faith is a feeling our way through, sometimes, one tiny step at a time through a long, dark, tunnel. When life is going well and things are working, faith tends to be more like that firm foundation. 

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We can almost take it for granted. We understand that these good gifts come from God. The foundation feels solid, we're good. And it's in those seasons that it is very tempting, from our safe place, way up high, to look down on others, who are suffering and say, "They're not on that firm foundation."

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When in fact our brothers and sisters, or sometimes us, when we are going through the valley, we are just as much in faith when we are feeling our way through that dark tunnel. Where our steps are wobbly and uncertain, and we do not know. And for every step we take forward, we might be taking half a step back, we are also walking in faith. 

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What does it mean to get a handle on faith, when it feels like the foundation is crumbling underneath you? 

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When you're trying to find your way out of an abusive relationship?

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When you're trying to find your way through a challenging set of issues, with a child?

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When you're trying to find your way through a betrayal, in a friendship?

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When you're trying to find your way through a faith community that has hurt you?

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When you're trying to find your way through a job that you absolutely hate and that might even be toxic, but that you need to stay afloat, financially?

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When you're trying to find your way through loneliness and you can't get a handle on it?

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That is still faith. Faith is still a foundation underneath you, even when you can't see it, when you can't feel it, and you can't find those easy answers. In fact, I would argue that is an embodied faith that is even more pleasing to our God. The faith of fumbling. The faith of I don't know what in the heck is happening, God, but I'm getting up this morning. I'm going to try to eat my breakfast. 

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I'm going to try to read the Bible, even though, right now, I don't know exactly what it's trying to tell me because I'm confused. I'm going to pray to you, God, even though I don't know what you are doing in my life. I'm going to turn my kids over to you, even though I can't see how you are helping them. I'm going to turn this relationship to you, God. 

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And then guess what, I am going to keep walking through this day. I'm going to keep nourishing my body with the food that it needs. I'm going to keep seeking wise counsel from people who I trust and I'm going to keep turning away from counsel from people who are minimizing or spiritually bypassing my problems. 

I'm going to take one step, today, to nourish my body, to try to get a good night's sleep. To maybe move my body in a way that releases some tension, that releases some stress. I'm going to reach out to a friend to take a walk. I'm going to listen to some music that calms my nervous system."

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And guess what, I'm going to continue to turn away from those voices of people, who are telling me that if I just prayed more or if I was just more spiritual, I wouldn't be having to struggle like this. Because, in fact, these very acts of taking care of my body, of taking care of my mind, of what I put into my ears, of what I put into my heart. 

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Of taking care of my emotions, of giving myself space to grieve, of giving myself space to be angry. Of giving myself time with healthy friends, who maybe even make me laugh a little bit in the midst of the pain, and who take my mind off of my struggles, that is me living out my faith. That is me trying to get a handle on it, God, and you understand that. You see me here struggling my way through, wrestling my way through, and it's not always pretty, God. It is not always pretty. 

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Sometimes I'm angry and sometimes you're hearing it from me, but I'm still talking to you. I'm still talking to you. I'm still caring for this body. I'm not giving up on myself. I'm still here with this child of mine who's hurting. I'm still here, hanging in by a thread, with this marriage. I'm still here alone because I've had to leave the relationship and a lot of people have abandoned me, but I'm still here, God. I'm not giving up on you and I'm not giving up on myself. 

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And, today, that act of faith might simply be that I woke up this morning and I said, "Hey, God, I'm here. I'm here today, I'm going to live this day." And that is my radical act of embodied faith. The antidote to spiritual bypassing is embodied faith and embodied faith is lived out every single day. 

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Every single day you get up in the morning and you say, "I'm here, God. I haven't given up on myself, yet. And I haven't given up on this person, yet, and I haven't given up on you, yet. I don't know what that's going to look like by the end of the day, but I'm not giving up today, I'm here. And that is my radical act of faith."

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And I will tell you, good and faithful servant, your God is pleased with you. Your God is pleased with you when you keep showing up every single day. And maybe your life isn't that firm foundation, of just feeling all great about your faith, and about God, and about your life. But when your faith is that feeling your way through, trying to get a handle on things, trying to wrestle it through, and you're not giving up on it every single day. You are in the heart and center of a God who loves you, and of a God who walks with you. 

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Whether you feel it or not, He is right there with you in that faith. He is right there with you. Because when we are faithful to this work, of getting up every single morning and not giving up on ourselves, and not giving up on God, He is faithful to us. And I can't promise you that'll come in a really clear solution today, but I can't promise you that He is pleased with you. That He is pleased with you and that you are not alone in your pain. And that your pain will not go unnoticed to the God who loves you and turns all things for good, for those who love Him.

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< Outro >

Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you'd take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts and click the plus or Follow button. That will ensure you don't miss an episode and it helps get the word out to others. While you're there, I'd love it if you'd leave your five-star review. I look forward to seeing you back here, next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.

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Phew! Buckle up. Part 2 of my conversation with Aundi Kolber is out today, and it is absolute fire! We set aside the script and got real about our own experiences, including. . .

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1. How people pleasing becomes a survival response

2. The shame we feel when we start to change

3. Alison's unexpected experience of comfort in a crisis

4. Jesus and the Nervous System

5. Did Jesus ever get "activated"?

6. The problem with toxic positivity & spiritual bypassing

Check out Aundi Kolber's new book, Strong Like Water anywhere books are sold!

Want to receive free bonus content? Sign up for my free weekly email.

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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.

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Resources

• Connect with Aundi Kolber at www.aundikolber.com or on Instagram or Twitter
• ‍Purchase Strong Like Water, by Aundi Kolber
• Purchase Try Softer or The Try Softer Guided Journey
• ‍Listen to Part 1 of our conversation: Episode 45
• ‍Learn more about the Fawn Response: Episode 14
• ‍Learn more about Trauma: Episode 4
• ‍John 2:1-11 Jesus turns water into wine
• John 11:35 "Jesus Wept."
• ‍James 1:17 "Every good and perfect gift comes from above."
• ‍Matthew 21:12-13 Jesus overturns tables in the temple
• ‍John 10:10 "I have come that they may have life to the full."
• ‍Pete Walker, MA, MFT "Codependency, Trauma and the Fawn Response"
• ‍Dr. Arielle Schwartz "The Vague Nerve and Your Health"
• ‍Deb Dana Rhythm of Regulation
• ‍Resources for support

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Transcript

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Alison: Hey, everyone, welcome back to The Best of You, Podcast. I am so glad you're here today. I can't wait to share with you this second part of my conversation, with my friend Aundi Kolber. It's a special week. This is the week her brand new book, Strong Like Water, is out in the World. I'm sure many of you have already gotten your hands on it. It's an incredible book about the power of strength and really the nuances of strength. That there are different types of strength. That it's not always what we think it is on the surface. 

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And today we get into some really interesting nuances of the conversation. Including a conversation about the fawn response, which is a way of pleasing others, or winning others over, that emerges as a form of a trauma response. And we also dig into a really fascinating discussion about Jesus and the nervous system, and how He models resilience and this flow of strength. So please enjoy my conversation with Aundi Kolber. 

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< Music >

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Alison: We tend to think of activation, or we tend to think of this situational strength. My sense is we might tend to think of it more, obviously, as when I'm in that fight response. Or I'm in just a high, anxious, my body is tense, my stomach's in knots. All those ways in which cues that we are now in that situational strength. What about that fawn response? 

What was so confusing, for me, is my situational strength is pleasing people. That's how I am surviving, it's the fawn response. And how do I become aware of that? 

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Because that seems like a nice, good Christian thing to do. And, for me, with that particular one, because it's so interpersonally linked, I almost need, in that one place, other people to remind me, you being one, of, no, safety doesn't feel like me setting myself aside to make someone else feel okay. Safety doesn't mean playing small so that I don't threaten anybody. Tell me how that piece of it, for those who are listening, whose situational strength is just playing really small is just disappearing.

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Aundi: Yes, thank you for bringing that up. And like we talked about in the other episode, how I led with the fierce part, and then there's the stalwart part. You and I have talked about how much I also resonate with the fawn part, and that is very much a part of my story and my strategies, as well. 

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And, so, I just appreciate you bringing that up. Because this is definitely the nuances where people get missed or where, particularly, in Christian culture, there is this sense of praise, particularly, for women who are living from the fawn response. And that is a very confusing place for the person themselves. Because whereas if someone is in the fight response, you might get interpersonal feedback like, "Whoa". Or if someone's leaving, you might get different feedback. 

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So with the fawn response, there are many things to say. And, honestly, I find the fawn response fascinating and, also, at times, a little bit infuriating, but fascinating. And what I mean by infuriating is just because it's also part so much of my story. So with the fawn response, I really conceptualize it similarly as a place of you're leaving. If we're thinking of it as self, there's a sense in which the self is disconnected from. Or if it's the other language I use, you're leaving the window of tolerance and you're either going to a place of hypervigilance like, "How can I help?"

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"What else do you need?"

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"Oh, can I do that for you?"

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"Oh, but can I take care of that?"

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"Oh, hey, can I just crawl on the floor in front of you?" You can feel the energy in my voice, with the hyper-vigilant fawn response. And then what I would say, because I think there's really more research that's needed with the fawn response. 

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But my understanding, and this is really from consulting with Dr. Arielle Schwartz, which she's done some great work around different nervous system responses. But that it can also go into more of a dorsal-vagal fawn response. So what that means is that, again, it's still situational strength, but it's more from that place of the hyper-vigilant like you've, "Oh, I want to help you. I want to do this." And, then, it's almost the submission piece. Like now it's just, "Okay, go ahead and just walk all over me, I'm good"

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Alison: I'll just roll over and play dead."

Aundi: Yes, "You can just take whatever you want from me." And that's a different energy. And it's important when we're talking about the nervous system, we can track how different states are experienced in our body. The reason why both of these are fawn, and that's not a dissociative response is that the goal there, Pete Walker coined this term fawn response. And it's really about over-accommodating and pleasing, or submitting, to neutralize the threat. 

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It's important to say it's really adaptive and it's a very complex response. This is not something that most people just do, the first time they are in a situation that someone wants something from them. Most folks learn it because, over time, they've learned fighting doesn't help. Fleeing doesn't help. Just playing dead, just dissociating, maybe not enough. 

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What they've learned is, "If I spin myself in circles and give you every single thing that you want, and walk on eggshells around you. And then not say anything, maybe, I will be able to navigate the threat." And, so, that's situational strength 100%.

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Alison: And I love that, again, because then there's no shame because we do shame ourselves for that. And it's, no, that's how you learn to survive, it worked. And even if you find yourself in it, one of the things I've learned is that is probably a cue, there might be some unsafety around me. 

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I want to circle back to this because you touched on this, and you started to talk about how when there's a lot of it. When someone has been living almost only out of situational strength. In that moment of beginning to recognize we can feel shame. Before we immediately go to the compassionate resourcing and we start to see ourselves, we start to observe ourselves. And when we start to observe ourselves when we start to see ourselves. I remember this vividly, for me, when I began to witness and observe that fawn response in action, there was shame in that.

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Aundi: Yes, I love that you named that. And, I mean, from the perspective that I often work, it's like saying, "If shame is showing up, the question becomes what function is shame playing in that situation?" And it may be that in the past it wasn't safe for me to access the resources I needed. So shame may have actually kept me in the situational strength and in the cycle because something in my body was like, "If I don't, there is nobody for me, there is nowhere else to go."

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And, so, I want to be clear in saying, I'm not saying shame is necessarily where we want to live, but we can have compassion for the role that shame has played. And perhaps how it's kept us in the survival mode because it communicated, in some way to us, it is not safe to come out of survival mode. 

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And, so, part of this work, and I talk about this a lot in Strong Like Water. Sometimes people might even feel like it's too much, but this is just my own journey of really wanting people to pace themselves. That pacing ourselves, it's that growth that feels doable. It's the bite-sized pieces where we're not trying to do so much at once. That it, paradoxically, might even be too much for the nervous system to digest by doing so much at once. 

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And, so, I say that even with shame. Even if we can just begin to think about thinking that's it. Maybe we aren't ready to have compassion, yet. Okay, that's fair. 

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Maybe we are not ready to have compassion toward the fawn response yet. Okay, that's fair. 

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First, if we can even just develop the capacity to notice it and just to be with it. "Oh, there you are; I see, from a functional standpoint, here's what you've been doing for me." Over time, what can begin to happen is we may begin to develop some respect for "Oh, the fawn response actually helped me navigate an extremely abusive system."

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Oh, okay, "I wonder what would have happened had I not fawned. How much worse would it have been for me?"

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And, so, again, in our culture, we're not always good at holding that nuance. But I think it's this place where we really honor the role that it has played for us.

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Alison: Yes, I love that. Shame, it's not telling us the truth, it's not where we want to live. And also, I've learned when it shows up, there's a reason. It's a cue to just say, "Okay, hello there, shame, I see you." It doesn't help me to shame myself for the shame. 

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Aundi: That's right. 

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Alison: It's just a cue that there's a wound there, that there's a pain there. And often it's just a matter of letting it run its course, but it's part of this journey. The biggest thing to remember is it doesn't mean that you've done something wrong. It might mean you're doing something really brave. 

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You talk a lot about this idea of becoming flexible and adaptable as this key to strong like water. So give us a little bit of a reminder of what you mean by that. And then I loved this idea that Jesus is actually this beautiful example of that. So tell me a little bit about that.

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Aundi: Yes, the nervous system flexibility that I'm talking about, when we go back to this flow of strength idea. Part of how I conceptualize healing is not that we're always living in integrated strength. Because, honestly, that's not necessarily possible. And, frankly, there are just times that our body needs to be able to not even have a conscious thought before it reacts. We actually need that to exist in this world that we live in. 

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And, so, one of the ways that I conceptualize healing is that it's moving toward our body,  our self, and our nervous system, accurately responding to what is in front of us. Now, this really, for me, I could just camp out here and we are going to talk about Jesus with this. But what, I think, is so countercultural here, I mean, this is not only secular culture, this is also Christian culture.

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In a way, secular culture's version is toxic positivity; "Put on a happy face, just smile, everything's going to be fine." And then from a faith perspective, spiritual bypassing might just look like "Just pray a little bit more. Just believe."

It's not to downplay, like what we talked about, we are holistic beings. It's not that faith is not a resource; faith very much can be a resource. But if we have to disconnect from ourselves to our experience, our faith, that is spiritual bypassing. And I would say it's a form of potentially situational strength.

Alison: Say that again.

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Aundi: If we have to disconnect from ourselves in order to function. In order to experience our faith, then we are almost likely going into spiritual bypassing. Which I would say is a form of situational strength.

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Alison: Okay, I'm sorry, I have to pause because I've never really thought about it exactly like what you just said. Which is disconnecting from the nervous system, disconnecting from those cues to go to faith resources. It's not that the faith resources in and of themselves are a problem. There are times when I am connected to myself and I'm connected to my body, and the Word of God is flowing through. It is changing me, transforming me, and beautiful, same with prayer, same with all the things. 

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There are also times in my past when I'm totally disconnected. I'm totally in whatever mode of fight, flight, whatever, activation, situational strength. And I'm trying desperately to remember that Bible verse, and it's another form of anxiety. It's another form of striving, and it's soul-killing. And, so, you're saying, in fact, that is potentially another form of situational strength, it's survival. Not all bad, again, no shame in it. 

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That helped me understand, after I had my stroke, Aundi, in the car, on the way to the ER, I was so activated in my body. And the spiritual part of me was grasping for promises of God, grasping for prayer, and it was not soothing me. It doesn't mean it was bad, but it was confusing to me.

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I was like, "That was interesting." Because in a moment of almost feeling like I was going to die or not knowing what was going to happen to me. Those resources were there but not comforting. And what was comforting was when I got to the CAT scan and the nurse put her hand, I said, "I'm so scared." And it brings tears to my eyes, put her hand on my arm and said, "I know it's scary, honey, it's scary." That's what soothed my nervous system, that embodied comfort and safety. 

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And it wasn't that all those things I was grasping for weren't true. It's just that was a situational strength response, in that moment. And, again, not bad, not good. Just not exactly what I know to feel as that deep sense which I felt after that of God with me.

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Aundi: That's right.

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Alison: That is so interesting.

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Aundi: Yes, I think that's such a good weaving together, that's exactly right.

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< Music >

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Aundi: It's just understanding that there have maybe been times for folks when spiritual bypassing has played a role for them. That they may be, again, like all situational strength, have needed. There was something about that that it didn't feel safe to maybe go to God, for example. So they couldn't bring themselves to God. So they disconnected from themselves and in a way dissociated toward God. 

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And, so, we can honor the function while also naming that, ultimately, that's maybe not really getting us where we want to go. Which is bringing it to our full self. Which is allowing faith, as a resource, to be experienced as a true resource. 

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And not as a way to suppress the body, the nervous system, or the sensations we're experiencing because in that way it can be harmful. And in that way, it may mean, "Oh, I'm going to have to come back to this thing later to process." Because our body is not experiencing the support needed to metabolize the distress that's happening.

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Alison: Yes, that's so good. I'm so glad we're continuing this conversation because I think, man, in that moment I had to come back and go, "What God? Because God is with us when we're in situational strengths, we know that baseline, God is there. But our bodies are not experiencing that and parts of us are scrambling to experiencing that God is there. 

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But that experience, for me, that was the biggest piece I had to process. I was like, "I spend a lot of time with God, why in that moment did I not feel the comfort of God? Is there something wrong with me?" And that's I think something a lot of people feel, and God bless you if you do in those moments feel. There are other times where I felt the comfort of God. 

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But that was fascinating to me and I had to learn to look at it "Oh, isn't that interesting? And how do I resource myself in a new way?" Because, for whatever reason, the thought of death, for me, did not bring that. And I did, I went through a journey of working that through with God and not shaming myself for it. 

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I think so many people have that experience of praying, of trying so hard. That situational strength and, again, we want to be clear, we're not saying God isn't there with you in that. But for whatever reason, that strategy is not actually what your nervous system needs in that moment. And that particular thing might not be the resource that you need to move you into that lived, felt, experience of safety with God.

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Aundi: Yes, there are certainly people who are in situational strength where God is God. So I don't want to put God in a box. It is not to say that apart from anything we do, God shows up in some way and, generally, speaking we are in that survival brain. What is first and foremost going to move us towards that compassionate resourcing and into the transitional strength, is really almost a case by case. The question, "What feels safe to your body?"

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Alison: Yes.

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Aundi: And, so, it's not to say that Scripture couldn't be also a resource.

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Alison: A hundred percent.

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Aundi: It is not to say that a prayer wouldn't be part of the resource, but if it is not, it's okay. It's okay. It's valid. And here's what I would just say, I think, a lot about the Scripture that says "Every good and perfect gift comes from above."

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Alison: That's right.

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Aundi: And, for me, I'm like, "Listen, these things that are communicating safety to our bodies, that's a good gift."

Alison: Amen, that's right.

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Aundi: That's a good gift, and there's no shame in having to use whatever resources are communicating safety. So you can have a foothold into your transitional strength, and then you can make decisions about what you need, or what people you need, or in what ways you need to experience God. 

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The other thing I would just say, that I would just communicate, is that in situational strength, probably, one of the biggest indicators is that there really is no choice. In transitional strength, you have some choices. In that survival brain, situational strength is like you got buckled into the roller coaster, and now you're going. Now, right before you get on the roller coaster, if you can be like, "Hold on, I think I want to get off the roller coaster." That might be possible. And, so, I hope, as folks are hearing this, I hope that maybe evokes some compassion.

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Alison: Yes, Amen.

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Aundi: This is not you being like, "Oh, I don't need God, I don't need support." No, this is your body doing what it is designed to do, which is to survive.

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Alison: That's right. And you know what, it also goes back to conditioning your own childhood wounds. Like, when you go into that situational strength, especially, if it's a crazy thing out of the blue, like what happened to me. You go right back to eight years old where I didn't have a felt experience. I only knew this legalistic way of relating to God. 

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So, of course, it wasn't a conscious choice, it's just where my brain and nervous system went. So tell us, Aundi, I got to have you talk to me about how does Jesus represent this nervous system flexibility? Does that tie in here?

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Aundi: Yes, absolutely. Well, before I say that, what I want to step back and just say is that one of the things that, similarly of the geeking out, that I like to do. I love and, for me, this just roots me a lot in my own faith is that Jesus, this incarnational, embodied God.

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Alison: That's right.

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Aundi: And, for me, that is so vital as I've walked through my own traumas, and healing those experiences. And walking consistently in my career with folks who have been harmed in so many different ways. It is not to minimize the other elements of Jesus's divinity and the bigness of God, those matter. 

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But, for me, it is a love letter. It is an absolute love letter, an invitation to really security and the with-ness of God. That God lived in a body. God lived in the constraints of a body. God was birthed in vulnerable circumstances, wept, and slept, and did all these things that are human and embodied. 

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And, so, I frame it that way first because I cannot overstate the significance of Jesus living in a body. There are so many things; one, we're going to talk about the nervous system in a moment. But even just from this attachment lens, which is also something that I integrate a lot. 

That instead of a God who remains far off, I think the fact that the embodiment of Jesus really communicates, in a very attachment-oriented way, the nearness, the solidarity of God with us. 

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And, so, all of that, for me, is the context in which here is Jesus, this incarnate God living in a human body. And in His life, I mean, in Scripture, we do get pictures of Jesus, but, obviously, I know that there's a lot of His life we never were privy to. 

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And, yet, I think about the flexibility of, for example, going to the wedding, His first miracle, and He is making water into wine. And that there's this sense of celebratory, there's this sense of that is a nervous system experience. You don't just do that through the lens of just like everything is perfectly calm, it's like remaining neutral, all the time.

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Alison: Yes, that's right.

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Aundi: Jesus was not vanilla, Jesus showed up as a human. When He's flipping the tables to the money changers, that's anger. One of the stories that is so sacred to me is when He shows up after Lazarus has died and He sees, I think it's Mary weeping. And just those verses, Jesus is moved and then Jesus wept.

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Alison: Amen.

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Aundi: And, for me, I mean, there's more to that story, He raises Lazarus. He does that. But I just cannot get over the fact that the God of the universe, who already knows what's going to happen first is moved and weeps.

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Alison: That's right.

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Aundi: That is nervous system flexibility. If we go back to what we said, at the beginning of this episode, we are responding appropriately to what is in front of us. Jesus, even in these examples, there is a match there. There is a match in His literal nervous system to what's happening in the situation.

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Now, I think, this is a beautiful example on so many levels. One, it is our own invitation to be matched. To have different emotions, to honor anger, to honor joy, to honor grief, among the many other experiences we might have, and Jesus had. But it could have been different. It could have been communicated to us differently. Jesus didn't have to necessarily weep. Jesus didn't have to show this anger. 

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The fact that He did not only, I think, is an invitation to us in our own humanity, but it's also an expression of the fullness of God with us, in our humanity. It's not like God just being "Okay, I guess you're human; I'll tolerate that."

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It's like, "No, I love you so much and I, too, share those experiences with you, and model that with you, and feel with you." Yes, I mean, all of that inspires me. It inspires me because what I have learned about the nervous system and embodiment. 

I'm like, "There is no true healing on this Earth if we don't bring our bodies." And, so, what a beautiful picture that Jesus shows us what it's like to be fully human and to live in a body.

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Alison: So do you think Jesus went through the whole flow of strength? Do you think He had situational strengths?

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Aundi: Yes, this is the way that, based off of what I know about the body, and just know about Jesus, and also how I viewed Jesus as being both fully God, fully human. It's that I believe He did probably access situational strength and in also the partnering of His divinity. I could see that maybe as I heal, how I'm able to move more quickly along the flow.

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Alison: Yes.

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Aundi: And it would make me wonder if that's maybe that picture. Because it's just I don't know what big, scary, animal would have maybe potentially eaten Jesus in those days or something. But there is a sense in which to be human requires situational strength.

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Alison: It's so interesting. And, so, Jesus experienced it without sinning. I mean, so often, again, there's this link when we're in situational strength is maybe when we are more inclined to lash out or do something. But, again, it gets to there's nothing inherently wrong, it's part of being inherently human. 

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Aundi: That's right.

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Alison: That's so interesting.

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Aundi: It can come out sideways and we can cause harm, and that is real. And I think that's where the language of repair matters, the language of reconciliation and forgiveness, and all those things matter. We aren't perfect, and being in situational strength is also not an excuse for harm. We have to hold the inherent value of other people even if.

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Alison: That's right.

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Aundi: Now, that doesn't mean it's always easy and God makes a way. God makes a way for repair; that's a hard tension to hold, and, yet, you're right.

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Alison: That picture that you painted of Jesus in all the different ways that He showed up in His body. It also strikes me as that picture, sort of we're closing out here, of the integrated strength. Because we've talked so much about... because so much of where we live is trying to move from situational into transitional. But I love when you were describing that picture of Jesus. It's like that's the picture that integrated strength isn't passionless, it isn't emotionless.

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Aundi: That's right.

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Alison: It's not this sort of numb, I think people conflate numb. Give us a little picture of vision, a glimpse, for people listening, of what it feels like. 

And even in your own life, thinking back to that 22-year-old that you start off with in the boo. What is your body experience strength like now, in this integrated way? Knowing, obviously, that we're not always there.

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Alison: Yes, thank you for this question. I think it's really important and you're exactly right, it's not this numb, flat way of being in the world. I think of it much more like a fullness, like expansiveness. And through my own work, I think of it as these younger parts have continued to be integrated, as my fierceness has become integrated. 

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What has happened is that it's not that the fierceness exists less. This is phrasing that Deb Dana uses it's before it was in service of my survival but now it can be used in service of my wholeness, and really the good of myself, and also the good of others. That my adult self can partner. 

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That's what the picture of integrated strength is, it's partnering. It's all those experiences, maybe those experiences that were meant for evil, maybe those experiences that were meant for harm. It's not that we have to celebrate that those happen, but do you know what we do get to celebrate? It's that we survived, that we've learned, that we've grown. The gold that comes from that, that is us.

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And in integrated strength, that feels the most accessible to us. The fullness that Jesus talks about; "I have come that they may have life to the full." And, to me, that is the invitation as often as we can access, as often as we can come back, to come back to that place of honoring all the strength. And as we are able to bring those parts of our stories, bringing those pieces of gold, bringing those woven-in pieces that have felt disparate, and allowing them to exist in wholeness.

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Alison: That's beautiful. I love that picture of all of it. I love that picture of fullness. It's the fullness of all of who you are and the fullness of who we see in Jesus. Thank you for this gift of your presence and this gift of this work Strong Like Water. Please tell everyone, Aundi, how they can find you, how they can find the book and where to connect with you?

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Aundi: Thank you so much, my friend, this has been amazing. I would love for folks to connect with me over at my website, aundikolber.com. You can check out the book wherever books are sold, major retailers like Amazon, and Barnes and Noble, and places like that. I'd love for you to connect with me on Instagram, instagram.com/aundikolber, and twitter.com/aundikolber.

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Alison: All right, everybody, grab your copy of Strong Like Water. It is such a deep dive and, again, it's also just so practical. Aundi and I talk about it, I can be disembodied, and those exercises just bring me right into that embodied variancing. Check that out, and thank you again.

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< Outro >

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Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you'd take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts and click the plus or Follow button. That will ensure you don't miss an episode, and it helps get the word out to others. 

While you're there, I'd love it if you'd leave your five-star review. I look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.

What an honor to have my friend and fellow therapist, Aundi Kolber on the podcast today for Part 1 of our two-part conversation on her brand new book, Strong like Water: Finding the Freedom, Safety, and Compassion to Move through Hard Things--and Experience True Flourishing

‍

Aundi and I connected through social media, and she has become the dearest real life friend. It was my absolute honor to have this conversation with her abut her personal story and her new book, Strong Like Water, available for pre-order now.

‍

Here's what we cover:

1. The problem with being the "strong one"

2. The turning point when Aundi discovered a different kind of strength

3. 3 Different types of strength

4. How to find safety when you need it the most

5. The difference between information and transformation

6. How Aundi has come to understand strength now

Preorder Strong Like Water here

‍

Resources

Connect with Aundi Kolber at www.aundikolber.com or on Instagram or Twitter

‍Preorder Strong Like Water, by Aundi Kolber

Purchase Try Softer or The Try Softer Guided Journey

• 2 Corinthians 5:2
• Boundaries for Your Soul, by Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller
• The Best of You, by Dr. Alison Cook
• The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk‍
• Resources for support

See Also:

• Episode 15: CPTSD—The Pain of A Million Paper Cuts
• Episode 4: What Do I Need To Know About Trauma?

‍

Thanks to our sponsors:

Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.

Visit hiyahealth.com/BESTOFYOU and get your kids the full-body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults.

Music by Andy Luiten

Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik

While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.

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Transcript:

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‍Alison: Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Alison, and I'm so glad you're here to discover what brings out the best of you. This podcast is all about breaking free from painful patterns, mending the past, and discovering our true selves in God. I can't wait to get started as we learn together, how to become the best version of who we are with God's help. 

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Hey everyone, welcome back I'm so glad you're here this week. Today, we are launching our first-ever, two-part series with my dear friend and fellow therapist, Aundi Kolber. Aundi is a licensed, professional, counselor and the author of Try Softer and the Try Softer Guided Journey, which are just beautiful, helpful, resources. 

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I recommend them all the time. Aundi brings a trauma-informed lens to everything she does. She is one of those friends who just, as much as teaches, she shows what it means to live in an embodied way. She has a new book out, this month, called, Strong like Water: Finding the Freedom, Safety and Compassion to move Through Hard Things and Experience True Flourishing.

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This book is hard-earned wisdom. Aundi has lived what she teaches others. She has an incredible mind to understand complicated theory, as it relates to trauma and make it practical and digestible. I got to read an early copy of the book. And I wrote, in my endorsement of it that "She reimagines strength as a dance of both tenacity and tenderness. Of holding tight, at times, and of learning when to release. So she gets the nuances of strength, of resilience."

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It's such a powerful book and I can't wait for you to hear this conversation with my friend, Aundi Kolber.

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< Music >

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Alison: This is so fun.

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Aundi: This is so fun. I was just thinking, as I was sitting down for this call, I was like, "What a cool job that I get to do this with my friends."

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Alison: We just get to have a conversation that we might, normally, have back and forth via Voxer only Live, while it's being recorded. Because we talk about this stuff all the time.

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Aundi: We do.

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Alison: So it's pretty cool to have you on here, and I'm so excited about Strong Like Water. I just can't believe it is here and upon us, and launching into the world, while you are near water. I love it that this journey of creating Strong Like Water mirrored this journey of you, actually, getting to be nearer the water. That I know you love so much and speaks so much to you.

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Aundi: Yes, thank you so much. It has been really beautiful because now we are closer to a lot of lakes but, particularly, Lake Michigan, which it's not an ocean, but it's not too far off. And you've been just such a huge part of my own journey, especially, the last couple of years. So it's beautiful to get to have this time with you.

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Alison: It's amazing, because, I think, it's been three years, almost, exactly, since we connected. And, honestly, for people listening, this is one of, there are all these pros and cons of social media. I go back and forth with a love-hate relationship with it. But one of the best things is I have made a couple of real friends out of it, and you are one of those very real friends. That's how we met about three years ago, I'm grateful for that.

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Aundi: Yes, I feel the same; I mirror that so much. There's definitely, still, some ambivalence, I think, valid ambivalence around some things with social media. And there is the opportunity to connect with people at times in ways that, honestly, probably, would have never happened for you and I.

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Alison: Yes, we don't live in the same part of the country. We would have, maybe, known of each other's books. But how would we have known how to reach out and connect to each other? 

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I want to dive in because you open the book with this glimpse of your 22-year-old self. And I want to go back in time to her. She's at the ocean, and she's feeling the weight of a lot of different things. There's this image of her having been super strong and perceived as a very strong person, the wise person. The person other people turn to for support. 

But there's also this foreshadowing, this sense in that story, of there was a lot inside of you that was yet to be unpacked. And, so, what did that 22-year-old you think strength meant?

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Aundi: Yes, thanks for all of the things that you said before that question. That just feels so good to me. That just means the world. But this 22-year-old me, oh, my goodness, bless her heart. I think about that age of myself with just a ton of compassion. And at that age, I had what I would call a very narrow perspective of strength. I would say I had a very rigid perspective of strength. And what that meant to me was it was a form of like, "I'm the only one. It's all on me. If I don't do it, who else will do it? If I don't show up for myself, who else would be there?" Also a sense of nobody else can. 

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And I think this was a reflection of the family I grew up in. But a sense of even if I want help, other people, even if I could ask for help, others may not be able to handle it. And, so, since I in some way seem to be handling it better, then, I should just continue handling it. And, so, there was this sense of almost wanting to protect other people in my sphere. Because I had internalized this belief that because, for whatever reason, people perceived me to be doing well. 

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And there's a sense in which that was true, there were things that I was doing well. But what was tricky about that is that it made it so that instead of receiving some of the care and support that I needed. That acted like a way for people to think that I didn't need that, I didn't need support. And, yes, it was very rigid. It was very, "You just deal with it. You put your head down and you just keep going."

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Alison: Is it fair to say, you and I sometimes flip back into parts language. We flip in between our different languages. It almost sounds like there was a very ferocious, tenacious, you use the word fierce in the book. Part of you strong, very legitimately strong, could get the job done. But you didn't have access to other ways, to other parts of you, that might have needed help or might have needed to understand strength in a different way. 

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That part of you was like, "This is it. This is what we got going. And, so, I'm the game, I'm the one showing up. I'm the one getting things done." This was actually your experience, too. It was reinforced. And, so, that part of you was like, "Yes, this is what strength means; it's me getting the job done." Is that fair to say?

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Aundi: Yes, that's absolutely true. And there is, probably, without getting too deep into the parts work, my guess is that there was actually even more than one. There was, particularly, very bright, fiery, fierceness and then there was more of a stalwart steadfast, keep going, no matter what. And those were like two of my main protectors, in that period of my life. 

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Part of my story is that I am recovering and have recovered, in the process of recovering from complex trauma. And, so, that means that it's complex. And, so, I say those two parts, among many, but those were very active in those years. And I appreciate what you said, that it was valid. It was not, "Oh, you know what, how can I make my life really hard?"

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It was because of what I'm facing in my family, because of the lack of support. Because of dynamics of emotional and psychological abuse. This is the safest way for me to exist in the world 

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Alison: A hundred percent, this was the way you had to survived. When did you begin to realize you might need to rethink this way of being strong? What was that moment that you began to realize, "Huh, maybe that isn't the only way to be strong?"

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Aundi: It was close to that time. That moment that I described, that 22-year-old self, is just prior to me making a huge change. Which was that I, essentially, moved across the country to Denver, Colorado, all by myself. As a 22-year-old woman, I did end up getting a nannying job. And I had one friend from high school that I knew, that I had visited, and that part of that helped facilitate some of that. But it wasn't like I had this full-on plan. 

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But I will say, for me, that's a big God moment in my story. Because there was something in me that was so deep, and so true, that knew that it was the right move for me. That it bypassed, not just bypassed, even my protectors believed that this was the right move for me. Which is saying something because I'm a cautious person. 

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And, so, all that to say, it was that move. I've experienced many of what I would think of as almost like a cracking-open moments. Of the various protective strategies and patterns, and that was one of them. Because, up till that point, the way that I had lived was I was a college athlete. I was an excellent student. I was seen in these roles as being just people could depend on me. I did a good job; I was a hard worker. There were a lot of those things which were good.

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But that was also ways that I used to suppress what was really going on for me, and when I didn't have that. I wasn't playing college basketball anymore. I wasn't on the same track, academically, because that wasn't available to me. So all these ways that had previously existed, they were not even possible. 

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And that, first of all, was very vulnerable and there was a grief to that. In addition, to the fact that I had called off an engagement. I had quit my first professional job. And both of those I'm so thankful for, ultimately, in a way, there was a wisdom to that. But just thinking about that was when I began to think, "Is there a different way?" 

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I think how I would have phrased it "Is there a different way to even be?"

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And, so, at that point, I don't think I had language for the strength part. But I just was like, "Wow, I don't know how to be who I am anymore."

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Alison: Hindsight is 2020, but it's almost like you used the strengths of those formidable parts of you to go, "I need a change; so let's just catapult me into this new setting in Denver, where I'm completely vulnerable." It's almost like this way in which using your strength, you put yourself in a situation where you would have to confront the vulnerability, almost. I don't know, that's what I'm hearing. I don't know if that resonates?

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Aundi: I think all these years later, so we don't live in Denver anymore. But this fall would have been 18 years since that. I think it was early October that I drove across the country, and moved officially. And looking back through the years, I'm grateful because it was the right decision for so many reasons. And, yet, puzzled because it was a part of my story that I'm like, "That is not me." It's me, but it's not something where you're like, "Oh, yes, here's all the times that Aundi did something like this." It's very few.

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But I think something in me like the Bible talks about, Paul writes about it, "We groan." All of creation groans. And there is this sense in which, I think, that's when I first felt that ache of "Is there something more for me?" And the dynamics in my family system were such that I wouldn't have been able to articulate it then. But I really needed to be able to differentiate from my family system. And at the time, what that felt like, to me, is "I have to leave or I will get swallowed up."

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Alison: Yes.

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Aundi: And it was a body knowing. It was almost like it was that space, and the profound sense of just peace that I really felt was God's peace when I was in Denver. And it never went away, it just was confirmed. I was like, "Yes," again and again, just I knew that. And I tried to be mindful of not spiritual bypassing, things like that. But it was such this deep anchored knowing. And that's been such a resource to me through the years. Because when you've had those moments, you're like, "Oh, that's what that's like."

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Alison: Yes.

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Aundi: When you know that and all the systems know, at least for me in that circumstance. And, so, all that to say, yes, it was this really paradoxical where something in me felt called, and led, and almost a deep knowing that, "Something has to change; and I'm not sure exactly how it's going to change, what that's going to look like, but I'm willing to try."

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Alison: I love that. In a way I'm hearing you say "I need to choose myself."

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"I need to put myself in a position where I'm away from all this, give myself a shot." And you did that in partnership with God's Spirit and you never looked back. As much as I know there's still a whole lot more to the story. That decision was, "I am going to choose a life of my own, I'm going to choose myself." And that moment was a real turning point, a real breakthrough, that's beautiful. 

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I'm curious, for you, therapist to therapist, when you land in Denver, did you start doing that internal work first or was a part of you drawn to this whole, "I think I want to be a therapist. I want to learn more about this journey of healing." How did that go for you?

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Aundi: I had never been in therapy before I moved to Denver. I had started to, and was familiar with some pieces around some of the psychological elements. My older sister is also a therapist so that gave me a little bit of a picture, of some idea, and some perspective on this. 

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I had done a little bit of work in my undergrad working with social workers. And, so, I had a little bit of a sense of some things that were interesting to me, and where I felt like I might want to be helpful. I got to Denver, and to be honest, I mean, I had no clue just the level of work that I needed, personally, to do. 

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I think even at the time, I would have been able to say, "Yes, my family's really dysfunctional, there's a lot of chaos." At that point, we had been through a couple of interventions for both of my parents. I had been through some things; I had seen some things. And, yet, I think, partly, our body does this, in my opinion, to protect us. I think sometimes we're not ready to see the fullness of our story. And I would say, for me, that was a part of it. 

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So one thing that really was a gift is that one of the people I connected with really early on, she was a therapist, but she was my mentor. So I wasn't seeing her for traditional therapy. But she was going to Denver Seminary, or she had gone there a few years before. And she just was this really beautiful person, who I knew through one other person. And she was willing to meet with me semi-regularly. 

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And, so, she began to give me some language around some of the things I had experienced. She gave me the beginning understanding of some of what I had been through. And she has remained a really beautiful resource in my life, I'm so grateful for her. And, so, even before I went to therapy, I think that relational peace remained. I think she saw some of herself in me. She had a similar story. She knew that I wanted to potentially go to get my masters.

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And, so, it was a way to support me and it made a big difference. Because, for me, really, it wasn't until I was in my master's program that I went to more formal counseling. But, honestly, I really needed even that pre-step of having that mentorship through an attachment lens was really helpful. Then the other piece that, and this can look different for different people. But a lot of my trauma is attachment related. 

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Brendan and I, my husband, we were introduced pretty, early on, set up for a date very early on when I was in Denver. 

And there was a lot of complicated elements to that because I had been through some things. And I was trying to figure out, "I want to trust myself; I don't know if I can trust myself." Just even to pick someone who would be a good fit for me, and just navigating these layers. 

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But what's so interesting, and what I'm just so grateful for now, is the role of even just a few people, who were safe for me, in my life. And how that, in a way, laid the foundation for so much of my healing. That was a lot of the beginning. But without that, I don't know that some of my deeper healing could have happened.

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Alison: Yes, it makes a lot of sense. What I'm hearing you say is that from the minute you landed in Denver. There was a way in which different people, enough people came alongside to create safety, and you talk about safety in Strong Like Water. To where you could begin to do the work of digging deeper. 

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We still weren't talking a lot about trauma. It was before that was being talked about. I'm curious, when did you begin to be able to feel comfortable with that label? When did you more, consciously, begin to say, "Oh, I need to go down this road?"

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Aundi: Yes, I would say it was a progression over time. Even through seminary, I would not have labeled my experience as trauma. Because at the time, according to the DSM, I didn't fit. And now I actually even see that a little bit differently. But, at the time, I would not have considered it PTSD.

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So this was in the early, gosh, this was 2006, 2006 through 2008. So there was starting to be, in the field, a lot more discussion. But I would say, in my particular program, there wasn't much training around that. 

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I will say there was a lot of really good, I'm super grateful. I got a chance to really do a lot of integrative work with my spirituality. A lot around understanding our stories and attachment. And, so, there was a lot that was really good. And what happened for me is that I graduated, and I was on my journey to become licensed and doing all these things. And it was like another cracking open because I went from this very structured, contained, environment. Where I was like, "I know what it looks like to achieve."

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"I know what it looks like to" fill in the blank. To being like, "Oh, now I'm going to go out in the world and I'm going to be this person. I'm already beginning to try to be a person who offers healing to other people, who create spaces where they can heal." It wasn't that during seminary, that good healing didn't happen. I think that I would say that layers of that began.

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There's a lot of professional understanding of here's what it looks like to do notes, and here are the ethics, and that's all really important. But, for me, it really was because I felt like I didn't have permission. And I think it's part of what it comes down to. Because part of what was going on, in the background, is that things with my family were continuing to get worse and worse. Now, I was quite farther away, so that created a little bit of a buffer. 

But there were several really intense, painful, things that happened just in those years, while I was even in seminary. That, at that point, now I understand I had traumatic energy, I would not have known that then. I can remember trying to explain this to my mentor, and I remember my hands shaking. And as I think about that, I just have so much compassion, I had no idea. No idea. 

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I'm like, "Oh, my body doesn't have the capacity to process the intensity of the pain that is coming up." And most people in my sphere did not understand that. Even therapists that I might be seeing, they did not have that training. And I say that it just is what it is, this has been a progression.

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And, so, it was really a couple of years, after I got out of seminary, and I had been doing some work to get my license. I was doing agency work. There's a lot of things, when you're first wanting to get licensed, that's not for everybody, but you're willing to be like, "I'll just go wherever I can." Which is great to the sense that you get lots of different experience. It's really good to feel out where do you want to work and what do you want to do. 

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But as I did that more and more I had the sense, I'm like, "Oh, wow, there are these people and they know so much about something, for example. But that knowing is not translating to their transformation." And I was seeing it all over. And it was like once you see it, you can't unsee it.

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Alison: I know.

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Aundi: And then the thing was, that was me too.

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Alison: Yes,

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Aundi: Not that there weren't some changes, there were. But some of these big dynamics, in me, I was like, "Why I can know all this information and it still not changing it?"

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Alison: The big thing at the time, for me, at that season I was, there was cognitive behavioral therapy. Where you look at your thoughts and you change them. And I was like, "I can do that with the best of them."

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"I can get rational."

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"I can analyze."

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"I can capture every thought."

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"I can change it to the truth." And it does not get anywhere below the neck. It's not getting to any emotional truth. It's not getting to any embodied truth. So it's interesting, to me, this was really before all of this trauma-informed, and what you're doing such a great job of bringing to so many people. 

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Before it had really broken through into the mainstream, I think, it's fair to say, practice of therapy. And I love what you're saying, you're like, "I could tell, I could see it, there's a lot of information here, but there's not the transformation. And I see it in others, and I experiencing that in myself."

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Aundi: Yes, and I think that's what really motivated me, for me, post-graduation, to seek out additional training. In things like EMDR, integrating somatic therapy with things like EMDR. This is right around the time, then, I think, it's 2015, Bessel van der Kolk released The Body Keeps the Score. There's all this stuff beginning. 

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And, for me, it was this blooming it changed my life. It changed the trajectory of all my work. It changed, for me, everything, frankly, because it gave me a new lens both of understanding, but of deep compassion and of understanding the necessity of things like safety. Of understanding why, I needed to be so strong, a certain kind of strong. And that there was value to that, that I didn't need to shame how I survived. That was God's grace to me, that I could survive.

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Alison: Amen.

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Aundi: And that I was so loved. I have always been so loved. And that, for me, there was an alignment of things that I had known for a long time.

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Alison: Mh-hmm.

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Aundi: Things like Henri Nouwen talks about "Belovedness". There was a sense that maybe for the first time, I could fully hold that, fully integrate that. And not to say that it was always accessible, we ebb and flow. I think in the past, I experienced concepts like that as fleeting versus it being an attachment language, a secure base. 

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Alison: Yes.

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Aundi: Like, "Oh, no, this is where I go home to. This is where I live. Everything else I do is just an extension of this place where I am secure, no matter what. No matter what comes. No matter if I have to go into a trauma response or I'm able to stay integrated, I am loved."

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< Music >

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Alison: Thank you, Aundi, for just sharing with us a little more of your personal story. I know so many people have come to trust your voice, to turn toward your expertise. And I just, as your friend, what I know to be true, more than anything, is that it is 100% embodied. Everything you say, everything you put out, whether it's social media, what you write, it's coming from a lived experience. It's coming from your authentic lived experience on the ground, in real life. You are, 100%, this person in your own life, doing your own work, as you are showing up for others. 

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And I appreciate you're just giving us a little window, and you do it a little bit throughout the book. You give us little glimpses of how close to home this work is for you. This, literally, comes out of your own experience. And it's just such a gift that you've taken all of that pain, and all of that trauma, and through your own work of healing, created these paradigms, these ways for other people to come in and do the work.

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< Outro >

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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'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.

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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.  

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Thanks to our sponsors:

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/BESTOFYOU and get on your way to being your best self.

Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.

Visit Brooklinen.com today and use code BESTOFYOU to save.

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.

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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

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‍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)

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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

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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

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‍Transcript

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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Welcome back to the podcast, Rowena. I'm so glad you are here today with me.

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Rowena: Thanks for having me back, Alison. This is a really important conversation.

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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? 

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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Rowena: Yes.

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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. 

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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. 

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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."

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"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." 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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." 

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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?"

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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. 

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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."

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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Rowena: Yes.

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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?

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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. 

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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." 

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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. 

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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." 

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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."

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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.

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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." 

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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."

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< Music >

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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Rowena: Mh-hmm, journaling can be super effective to get that ugly version out first. 

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Alison: Yes. 

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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There's two parts to this anger puzzle that are really important.

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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. 

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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."

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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.

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Rowena: Mh-hmm. 

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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. 

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Rowena: Yes.

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Alison: "I'm so angry at him. I'm so angry at her." 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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."

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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?

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What's the heartache?

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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And, so, yes, I just encourage every woman to get curious about what, for you, are the emotions that might be keeping anger stuck.

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Alison: It's so true, because on that hike the whole first few miles were, "What's wrong with me?"

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"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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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Alison: I love that.

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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. 

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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."

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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."

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Alison: So good.

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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?

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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. 

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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."

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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.

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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?

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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< Outro >

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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

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Transcript

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Alison: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You podcast. I 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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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Kimberly: Thank you so much for having me, Alison. It's always wonderful to be with you in any setting.

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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?

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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Alison: Yes, or have patience with a part of them that is frustrating.

Kimberly: Yes, it really helps with patience and also perspective.

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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.

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Kimberly: Yes, preach.

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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. 

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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. 

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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."

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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. 

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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?

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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. 

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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."

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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. 

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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?"

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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. 

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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?"

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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Alison: Yes, that's so good, Kim.

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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Kimberly: They're very scary.

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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. 

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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."

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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. 

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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?

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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." 

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Alison: Yes.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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."

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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."

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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. 

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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. 

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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"

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"My celebrated child" even, isn't that amazing?

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Alison: I love that.

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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. 

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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."

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Alison: Oh, that's great.

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Kimberly: That inner critic can just become, like you're saying, an encourager and advisor.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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."

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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." 

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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.

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Alison: Exactly.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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Alison: I know.

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Kimberly: It changed my life, so none of it would have happened without you.

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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.

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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.

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Alison: And in a way that allowed you to continue to live a productive life where there was enough relief.

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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?"

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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? 

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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.

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Alison: Yes.

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< Music >

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Part Two

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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But a lot of people know how to say, "No, I'd rather not be in that environment."

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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." 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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Alison: Yes. 

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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. 

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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." 

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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.

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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. 

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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."

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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. 

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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. 

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Kimberly: No.

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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Alison: Yes.

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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Alison: Oh, that's cool, good for you.

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Kimberly: Yes, it's just one thing a day, yes, it really helps a lot. Anyway, that's a whole another podcast.

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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. 

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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?

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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Kimberly: I love that. 

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Alison: Yes.

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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."

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And He responds. He says, "Seek my face while I'm near." 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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Alison: I love that. Tell us about any projects you're working on; how people can find you?

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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Alison: Which is kimberlyjunemiller.com, we'll link to that.

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Kimberly: Exactly, just my name. 

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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?

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Kimberly: Oh, I would say right now you are.

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Alison: Oh!

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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Alison: I love that. What needs and desires are you working to protect?

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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.

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Alison: That's always good. Until someday it goes away, which it, might.

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Kimberly: I think, less and less.

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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.

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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.

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Alison: Thanks, Kim. 

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< Outro >

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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.

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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.

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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

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Transcript

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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."

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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That sometimes sadness can remind you, "Hey, it's okay to slow down."

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"It's okay to ask for help."

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"It's okay to need support."

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Sadness can help you bring yourself back into balance.

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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[00:20:42] < Music >

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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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Who doesn't need a laugh right now? And who doesn't need some insight into some great-tasting snacks? Each episode is 30 minutes long. They release every Friday. If you are someone who loves a good snack or just enjoys listening to two great humans, have a great time together, listen and subscribe to The Snack Show it's anywhere podcasts are found.

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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

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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."

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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."

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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. 

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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. 

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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."

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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?"

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"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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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."

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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."

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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?' 

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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."

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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.

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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."

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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. 

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And it's so different than just downloading on a friend.

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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."

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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.

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And you start to care for that part of you, just as you would care for a child in your own family. 

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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."

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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.

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< Outro >

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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.

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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.

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