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Choose a category to narrow your search
What if the reason you feel stuck… isn’t because something is wrong with you, but because different parts of you are pulling in different directions?
We all know that feeling—one part of you wants to follow through, while another part resists. And often, one side takes over… leaving you with regret or confusion afterward.
In this episode, Dr. Alison is joined by IFS therapist and best-selling author Jenna Riemersma to explore what’s really happening beneath that inner conflict and how to respond differently.
Because the goal isn’t to fight those parts of you.
It’s to understand them.
Together, they walk through Jenna’s simple, practical framework that helps you move toward yourself with curiosity and compassion instead of shame or control.
If you’ve ever felt stuck in cycles of overthinking, self-criticism, or reacting in ways you later regret… this conversation will help you understand why and what to do in the moment.
You’ll explore:
- Why the parts of you that frustrate you most may be trying to help
- What keeps you stuck in the same inner battles again and again
- The surprising shift that can calm the conflict inside
- How to know when to share what’s happening inside you—and when it’s wiser to protect yourself
- What real relief can look like when you stop fighting yourself
This is a simple but powerful shift: You don’t have to control or silence parts of yourself to change.
More Resources:
Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram
Want to go deeper with parts work? Join 80,000+ soul tenders in our email community and receive weekly reflections and gentle practices on parts work here.
Connect with Jenna here.
Get Jenna’s new book, Move Toward.
Get her free Guided Meditations and Journaling Worksheets here.
Want to hear more like this? Start here:
Episode 160: When You Feel Unwanted—Meeting the Parts of You That Long to Belong with IFS Therapist Tammy Sollenberger
Episode 108: Inside Out—Internal Family Systems, Therapy, and High-Performing Protectors with Jenna Riemersma
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
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TRANSCRIPT
One part of me wants to eat all the Oreos and another part of me wants me to go to the gym and
those two parts of me are at war with each other. What happens is one part of us will take over and
we will react from that part of us and then afterwards we'll have regret or remorse.
And it turns out that just like with a friend, when we listen to them and find out what they want
us to know and find out if there's anything they need from us, they calm down and they feel
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to this week's Deep Dive episode of The Best of You. I'm Dr.
Allison, and I'm so excited about today's conversation. If you've been around this podcast for a
while, you know that I talk a lot about the work of Understanding what's happening inside of us,
the inner conflicts, the tension, the parts of ourselves that sometimes pull us in completely
different directions. And if you read my book with Kimberly Miller. Boundaries for Your Soul.
I know many of you have. I know that's a book that has brought many of you to this place. So you
know that making this inner work practical and accessible is something I care a lot about.
It's a big part of why I do what I do here on the podcast and in everything I do. So when I come
across others who are doing a similar kind of work and doing it beautifully, I get really excited.
And this is exactly what my guest today has done with her brand new book. My dear friend and fellow
therapist, Jenna Reemserma, is back on the podcast today. And I have so been looking forward to
this conversation. I can't wait to share it with you. If you've caught... previous episode,
you know that she is just such a warm and grounded voice in this space. She has this gift of taking
concepts that can feel really clinical or overwhelming and make them feel like something you can
actually do. Today, in the grocery store line, in the middle of a hard conversation with your
spouse, she meets us right where we are. Jenna is a licensed professional counselor. She's a
certified IFS therapist. That's Internal Family Systems, which is the model that has deeply shaped
both of our work. And she's also an IFS-approved clinical consultant. She's a certified sex
addiction therapist supervisor, and she's trained in EMDR and somatic therapy. She's also teaching
faculty for the International Institute. Trauma and Addictional Professionals. Jenna is just a
wealth of wisdom and helpful resources and insights, as you'll hear today.
And she's also a bestselling author. Her first book, All Together You, is an integration of IFS
with Christian spirituality, and then All Together Us, which looks at how IFS connects with other
therapeutic and community modalities. And today, we're going to talk about Jenna's brand new book.
Toward, a simplified IFS therapy tool to welcome all parts of you. And I want to tell you,
I work in this space. I read a lot of books in this space. And I read a lot of books on inner work,
on parts work, as you can imagine. And this is one of the most accessible, most practical I've come
across. Jenna has distilled the IFS model down to three simple steps that she'll walk us through
today that you can actually remember and use in real time when you're activated,
when you're triggered, when a part of you has taken over and you need something now in this moment,
not next week in your therapist's office, but now. And what I love about this conversation is that
we don't just stay in the theoretical. We get into how this work changes, the way you show up in
your marriage, in your past. in those relationships where things feel stuck or painful or even
unsafe. Jenna talks about what to do when the person across from you is safe.
enough to be vulnerable with about what you're feeling, about what you're learning inside.
And she also talks about what to do when they're not safe, right? When you actually need to protect
yourself. And this is such an important distinction because I hear from so many of you who are
navigating all kinds of relationships, right? Some that are safe and healthy and you just want
better tools for communication, but others of you who are navigating relationships where it's not
safe to be super vulnerable. right? And Jenna walks us through both. So whether you are brand new
to this idea of having different parts of you in her parts work, or whether you've been doing this
work for years, and you just want a simpler, quicker tool to reach for, or maybe to share with
someone you love to let them know about this work that you've been doing, this episode has
something for you. I am thrilled to bring you my conversation with Jenna Reemserma.
Well, I'm so thrilled you're here. I love these chances to have you on the podcast. So thanks for
being here. Thank you for having me. I love getting to be with you and to talk about these
wonderful topics. I know. It's always such a treat to get to have people from my real life world on
the podcast who are doing such great things. And so one of the things I love about what you do,
Jenna, is you make this whole world of inner parts work so accessible.
And this new book is one of the more accessible books I've read.
So for my listeners, if you're new or even if you're just wanting to really understand what is
actually happening inside of us as we connect to these parts of ourselves, this is such a great
resource. So to start, I want to just kind of start at that very top level.
When you're feeling conflicted inside, which is, I think, something a lot of us relate to.
When I'm feeling pulled in different directions, I can't figure out, you know,
kind of sometimes it feels like I'm spinning or I feel like I'm just stuck or overwhelmed, but, you
know, just this inner tension. What is actually happening beneath the surface?
I love this question because this is such a universal experience. I probably experienced this 10
times a day where one part of me wants to eat all the Oreos and another part of me wants me to go
to the gym. And those two parts of me are at war with each other. And it's very,
very common and normal to have different parts of ourselves that have different perspectives,
different goals for us that are at war with each other. Maybe we have a child who is in a baseball
league and the coach is being really hard on them. And we think, gosh, there's a part of me that
really wants to let that coach have it and tell him to get off my kids back. And another part of
me, you know, wants me to not say anything and not create any waves and those two parts are really
at war and very often what happens is one part of us will take over and we will react from that
part of us and then afterwards we'll have regret or remorse so if we might you know the part of me
The part of us that wants to let the coach have it might take over, and then later there might be
regrets. Or the part of me that wants to eat all the cookies might take over, and later the part of
me that wanted me to go to the gym is pretty mad about that. So this is a really normal experience.
And rather than either letting those parts just take us over and run our lives and then having
regrets later or trying to fight against them, which is really common.
If we try to fight against the parts of ourselves or of others that we don't like,
they tend to fight back. that which we resist as Carl Jung said persists.
And so the harder we try not to eat all the Oreos, drink all the wine, buy all the shoes,
the more we tend to do it in the long run. And so fighting against these parts of ourselves only
makes our suffering worse. And it turns out that a really counterintuitive way of helping this
inner battle is to do the opposite. to move toward these parts of ourselves with curiosity and
compassion. I love it. So this frames kind of your unique approach,
sort of your distillation of this internal family systems model that you and I both have been so
shaped by. The name of the book is Move Toward. And so talk to us a little bit about what do you
mean by move toward and move against? That's kind of what you were just describing. Go a little
deeper into that. What are we, what does that look like in real life when you're in the middle of
that, which is so relatable, right? You know, I'm locked in this and, and you're exactly right. I
just, I just want to hate the part of me that wants to down the bag of cookies. That feels like the
right thing to do, right? That's a bad part of me, you know, and just beat myself up for it, right?
That feels like, you know, the righteous, you know, action. Why would I move toward that part of
me?
What we need to do in those moments, what does that look like? Yeah, well, when we move against or
fight against a part of ourselves that's feeling or doing something that we don't like,
it tends to, as we said, fight back. And I've really seen this a lot in my other area of clinical
specialization, which is addiction. And when our approach to addiction work is to fight against or
move against the part of our client that's engaged in the addictive behavior, what tends to happen
is maybe they get sober for a period of time. And then that part tends to come roaring back.
If that's the only thing we do is just fight against it, try to lock it in the basement. Just don't
drink. Just stop it. Stop doing that. And it tends to take back over with ferocity.
And that's why relapse rates are so high with addiction. One of many reasons,
but I think that's a key one. And this really transformed my practice when I became trained in IFS
and began to realize that actually fighting against these parts of our clients,
it was exhausting. It wasn't really working. It wasn't successful. And it was actually making their
suffering worse because the more we fight against ourselves, the more shame, the more regret,
the more powerlessness we can feel. It's the sort of I'm only going to ever eat.
lettuce leaves uh for for the rest of my life and that lasts for about three hours yeah and then
the part that wants to eat all the oreos takes over again and then we feel more and more shame and
more and more powerlessness and when we realize all these parts of us actually are much more
effectively healed and transformed when we actually get in relationship with them,
as C. Sykes would say, when we get in relationship rather than in control.
That, which is really consistent, I think, with biblical themes in particular of being in
relationship and that the relationship heals, that is transformational. And so moving toward these
parts with curiosity and compassion to understand what their story is. How did they first start
trying to help us in this way? That's not very helpful. How do they feel about having to do this
job inside of us? Is there anything they'd rather be doing? And it turns out that these parts of us
have their own unique stories, their own unique history of why they're doing the thing they're
doing. And when we get curious and even compassionate about that. they soften,
they take us over less and we gain access to that divine sort of our highest self inside of us,
the God image inside of us or our highest self. And we can then lead and engage in our lives from
that place rather than different parts of ourselves taking us over and driving the bus. I love it.
You know, it's funny that the longer I've done this work, you do see such the parallels in
parenting real life kids, right? And I love the example of addictions. And I'm thinking about, you
know, when we lock in a power play with a child, it never works. It just escalates.
It's exactly the same principle, right? And it's the same with the part of ourself.
It just escalates the tension, escalates the stress versus when you hold steady,
when you hold space, it deescalates. The the part of you or the child or the other person that is
is upset or acting out. So I how do you we're going to get there for the listener.
We're going to get to how we bring this into our real lives, because I think that's a really
interesting part of this this book. But before we get there, how do you help someone,
Jenna? I'm imagining someone listening who's like, I get this in concept. But in the moment,
how do I really show compassion to myself when I'm behaving in a way I hate?
What's the bridge? How do we bridge to compassion? There's a huge difference,
and I love that you're highlighting this, between how do I show compassion to myself versus how do
I show compassion to a part of me? that is feeling or doing this thing that I don't like.
And amazingly, it's a very powerful tool just to recognize.
And the three simple steps that I offer people in the Move Toward book are simply notice,
know, and need. And we can walk through that in a moment. But that first step of just noticing,
if we're triggered, if we're activated, if we're feeling a battle inside, noticing.
wow, I'm noticing there's a part of me that's activated that wants to eat all the cookies.
And I'm noticing there's another part of me that is pretty activated as well that has a lot of
negative judgment about eating all the cookies. And suddenly I can realize that neither of these
are who I am. These are parts of me at war. And that noticing allows them to kind of separate their
energy from us or their emotions, their thoughts, separate out so that we can reconnect to that
core, our highest self of who we truly are. And the curiosity sort of spontaneously emerges when we
do that. But it's not easy. It's simple, but not easy. So in my book. because I know people get
stuck on this a lot, I've included a little quick reference guide for the most common ways that
this gets stuck for people. And so if you're trying to notice a part of you compassionately...
really stuck, you can just reference that. And it tells you exactly what to do with illustrations
and step-by-step guidance. And so maybe we have a dissociative part of us that has taken over.
We're kind of checked out and we're trying to notice it, but there's nothing to notice. Well,
that's one of the common. common challenges. And I talk you through how to notice that.
And the way that we do that is to notice the not noticing, to notice the nothingness.
And so just some simple things like that, that help us with these hard moments of noticing with
curiosity. And it's also important to say that when we notice a part of us with curiosity,
we can go back to the example of working with addiction. We're not saying that what that part of us
is feeling or doing is okay. Yeah. Most of the time it's not.
What we're saying is the most effective way to help it transform is to get in relationship.
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I love that you made that distinction. We're not saying... And I think in our culture and I think
sometimes in the TikTokification of therapy, you know, it can feel like I'm saying just notice and
validate everything. It's not notice and validate. It's just, but you're so right. I love that you
said that. It's almost noticing, oh, I'm checked out right now. And it just opens the door to
awareness and in a powerful way, just being able to notice something.
I love that you start there. What's the second one, Jenna? The second step, once we've been able to
recognize this isn't all of me, this is just a part of me, and we feel a little bit of curiosity or
compassion toward it, then the second step is no, K-N-O-W. And from our higher self,
we just... kind of get curious with this part of ourself and just kind of internally check in,
what do you want me to know? Part of me that wants me to eat all the cookies, what do you want me
to know about you? And it's not weird. We're not hearing voices or, you know,
talking to ourselves, but we're just simply offering a question as we would if we were getting to
know anyone. Hey, Allison, what would you like me to know about you? I'm not going to ask you that
question and then say, you know, I think what you want me to know is that you're an amazing
podcaster, an incredible bestselling author, phenomenal therapist.
I would not do that. You'd be like, excuse me, you, you, you happen to be right, but you asked me a
question. Let me answer. And that's really what we're doing. We're getting to know this part of
ourselves. So we just kind of ask like. cookie eating part of me, what do you want me to know? And
just sort of wait. And what we'll notice is some images or thoughts or just a general awareness
will usually begin to emerge. So we might suddenly get an awareness. Oh,
wow, I was needing some soothing. There was a lot of stress in my life just now.
And this cookie eating part of me is taking over trying to provide a little bit of soothing,
a little bit of comfort for me. And we can just kind of start to get a little bit of information
about these parts of ourselves that really expands our compassion for them because we begin to hear
and know how they're trying to help. So that's step two is really,
really witnessing these parts, really getting in a conversation with them in a sense,
hearing what they want us to know about themselves. I love that because when you use the
illustration of a map, like even with me,
And just to pause on that power of that question, what do you want me to know about you?
When you just said that kind of as I was like, oh, what do I want her to know about me?
Tap something really deep inside and you're giving yourself that gift.
What do you want me to know? And not imposing it. And I just love how you linger there.
and again it leads to this deeper self-knowledge because we have all these ideas about ourselves
right we have all these ideas about why we're eating the cookies and usually they're negative
because i'm not disciplined because i'm you know i can tell you know i get through all of mine you
know like all of my inner critical but it's like when you really just like you would with a friend
what what do you what do you want me to know because it's always a younger part you know And I love
that. It's just like how you would ask a friend that. Give yourself that same kindness. Exactly.
We want to befriend these different parts of ourselves rather than fight them. That's really key is
transformation doesn't happen through battle and battling ourselves.
It happens through connection, care, and relationship. And no matter how negative the behavior that
the part of us is engaged in, when we begin to understand how it's trying to help us,
not saying what it's doing is good. A lot of times it's not, but it is usually trying to help in
some way or carrying some longstanding pain. And when we get to know the story of this part of
ourselves, all of a sudden we see how exhausted these parts of us are, how long they've been stuck
in these roles. The cookie eating part of me has been stuck in that role since I was being pretty
significantly bullied in high school. And every night, every day after school on the drive home,
I would drive past a little treat store. And if I stopped after making it through the entire day of
really intense social situations on the way home, I could stop and get a little something sweet.
And that part of me. learned in those moments gosh that worked for a hot minute when there was
nothing else that felt sweet in my life and no one else showing up in a sweet way for me and this
part of me took on that job and it turns out it's exhausted it doesn't actually like doing this
because it only works for 10 seconds and then it feels worse that is so powerful That is just such
a powerful connection to the past, right? They're there for a reason. So this leads us to the third
N, which is need. Correct. So what does this part of you now need?
Yes, this is a really, really powerful question because when parts of us take over and act out in
certain ways, so the cookie eating part of me takes over and makes me eat all the cookies. Well,
the cookies are not the need of this part. What this part needs is comfort.
And so once I hear this part's story, and so I've noticed it, I've asked this cookie eating part,
what do you want me to know? And then I ask this part, what do you need from me?
That is my highest self, not my spouse or my parents or my next door neighbor or the boss,
but what do you cookie eater? need from me to feel a little less activated,
a little more comforted. And again, we ask and we wait and we make it a sense.
We make it a sense of exactly what the part needs. And the need is usually something very
important. For example, the cookie eating part of me, when I asked that question,
what it needed was for me to deal with the overworking part of me. that was creating so much stress
in my life and as all of this overworking was creating lots of stress the cookie eating part would
get activated and jump in to try to create some relief and so it really helped me to gain insight
that the cookie eating would slow down if I could also do notice no need with the part of me that
was overworking these these parts of us are actually interacting in a system C.
Sykes, a wonderful IFS trainer, she says it's a system, not a symptom.
And I think that's really important. We often treat things like they're symptoms and we fight
against them. And that makes our suffering worse. When we recognize this feeling or behavior is a
part of a system. And we can move toward all parts of the system with curiosity and compassion.
It helps everything to calm and settle back and ultimately lays the foundation for their
transformation. Wow, I love that. And those needs, again, just to underscore and highlight,
I think often we impose what we think the part needs. And again,
that's like, and we've all had this happen to us when a friend's like, what you need is, and you're
like, well, I mean, even if it's true, that doesn't feel that great. You know, like what you need
is to like, just speak up for yourself. And it's like, well, yeah, I probably do. But like, and
it's kind of what we do to ourselves. And there's this, it's such a difference. I love how you're
saying that, like to wait for a minute and notice what comes up because it's often surprising to
your point. Right. It's like, well, actually, I, you know, I need a little more space from all this
overworking or whatever. And I'm always surprised by what the need is.
And I love that. That's that's a really lovely, just simple way to kind of just listen just as you
would, again, to a friend. Exactly. And it turns out that just like with a friend,
when we listen to them and find out what they want us to know and find out.
if there's anything they need from us, they calm down and they feel cared for and they feel seen
and less likely to become really activated. And the same is true in our inner relationships with
these parts of ourselves. It's very counterintuitive, but very powerful.
And it is the reason I tried to make this very simple, very clear,
very easy to remember is because Like you, I'm an IFS trained certified therapist.
I do this for a living. I know the IFS model cold, the internal family systems approach.
But when I'm out in the grocery store and all of a sudden I'm triggered, I can't pick up the phone
and call my therapist and do the entire model, even though this is what I do for a living. I need
something quick, something easy to remember, something accessible so that in that moment when we're
triggered. And an enraged part of us has taken us over or a dissociative part or a part that wants
to eat all the cookies or drink all the wine. I can immediately go, oh, notice no need.
I can do that. And I can help that part calm down, get a little clarity,
understanding of why it got triggered, how it's trying to help and what it actually needs so that I
can have more leadership of these inner battles that rage.
This is so good. Okay. So I love the image of being in the grocery store lane and how we're doing
this in real time. So in the book, you also spend some time talking about how this inner work
begins to change how we show up in our relationships, in our life, in our world, at our church, in
our marriages, in our culture, right? The whole world around us. And I think that's powerful
because the work doesn't just end inside of us. What are some examples of how you've seen this
inner work change how you showed up in a relationship?
And hypothetically speaking, I might know a friend who used this a lot in their marriage that was
incredibly transformational. This is strictly hypothetical. I can't relate to this whatsoever. But
a friend of mine said that when they would get into conflict.
I'll just out myself. It's me. Thank you. Hello. When I get, I've been married 30 years.
So, you know, when you've been in a relationship with someone for a long time, your parts know
their parts. Like when my husband shows up with an angry part, I get a appeasing part.
And our parts have relationships with each other. And that didn't used to go so well. When we are
reacting out of different parts of ourselves that take us over and try to run the show,
it doesn't. end well. And we wind up further away from our goals and not closer to them.
So what we do is first, we always do move toward, we always notice what is coming up in me.
Oh, I'm noticing a part that wants to appease, a part that's pretty mad, a part that feels
vulnerable, and a part that just wants to pretend there's nothing wrong so we can get past this.
Okay. So we notice, know, and need with all of our own parts. Then if we're in a largely a
goodwilled, you know, generally positive relationship where the other person,
you know, has connection to us and can offer some degree of listening,
we can say, whew, can I just, I just need to take a minute. I'm noticing that there's a part of me
when I sense this energy in the room between us that wants to take me over,
that wants to pretend like everything's fine. There's another part of me that just wants to do
whatever you want me to do so that this conflict will go away. There's another part of me that's
pretty mad that doesn't like that it's I'm always in the power down position and you're in the
power up position when you get mad. And there's a part of me that feels really actually vulnerable
that your anger could hurt me. And that feels really scary to this vulnerable part of me.
So that's what I'm noticing in me. What's coming up in you? And that's a very different approach
than all these parts taking us over and we're reacting out of them.
And it's called speaking for our parts. rather than from them. And it's pretty transformational
when we are in a largely goodwilled, generally safe and healthy relationship situation.
That, of course, is not every situation. And I speak to other ones in the book, but this can be a
game changer in our marriages and our parenting in so many different things.
And you can just feel the difference when you're speaking from that place versus yelling at the
person or escalating. Jenna, I'm thinking of the listener.
What do you suggest for folks who are listening, who are maybe doing this work or have some
understanding of that, but they are in that sort of toxic situation, whether it's a marriage,
whether it's a friend, whether it's a community, where it wouldn't be safe? to be that transparent.
How do you coach people like that how do you walk people like that in the book this is really
important because many relationships don't have that essential goodwill safe container and it
actually would not be wise when we're in a situation where there's toxic energy or boundary
violating or any type of danger in any way to sort of be that transparent and represent all these
different parts of ourselves it does open up a certain degree of um of intimacy that isn't wise to
offer to everyone. So an example that I see frequently clinically is working with betrayal trauma,
where a client may come in and their partner, their spouse has been compulsively using pornography
or acting out sexually in some way. They are suffering from Betrayal trauma.
Maybe they've just had a discovery or, you know, they're kind of trying to figure out what do I do?
And let's say they've confronted their partner and the partner is non-repentant.
They're not interested in working on it. They're gaslighting, blame shifting. Well,
if you were more sexual, I wouldn't have to look at pornography or, oh, don't worry about it.
All people do this or in whatever way, they're not really taking any ownership. They're deflecting,
blaming and refusing. to take responsibility or accountability.
And let's say that's been going on repetitively. Maybe there's been lies told, which is very common
in that work where the first discovery happens. I promise, I promise I'll never do it again.
Then the next discovery, then the next discovery. And so there's this chronicity of betrayal trauma
and the layers. So clients will often come in and say, what kind of boundaries do I need to have?
And this is key because in a situation where you no longer have the safety and genuine goodwill of
the container of the relationship because the person on the other side of the relationship, while
they may love you and you may love them, they're repeatedly lying,
blaming, and engaged in betraying behaviors. then what often happens with betrayed partners is they
react out of one part of themselves. So when they're in the therapy room, they'll say,
or when they're in the heat of a conflict with their partner, if you ever look at pornography
again, I'm leaving you.
Invariably, the person looks at pornography again. And another part of the betrayed partner shows
up. and actually is terrified of losing the relationship. And that part of the betrayed partner may
actually even want to go be more sexual with the betraying partner in an attempt to not lose that
attachment relationship. And so we've got, it's very common to have many different parts at war and
people are often very challenged. Like, why can't I hold boundaries? This is a situation where I
would say, Probably not the best thing to freely speak for your parts to your partner because
they're not able to safely be present for that. But you want to take a personal internal inventory.
You want to get internal consent from all parts of you and hear from the angry part that says,
if you ever, I'm gonna. And the part that says, but. I can't make enough money to support myself
and the children. What about the holidays? We got to listen to all the parts of ourselves that have
opinions around this. And then from that place of our highest self, as the leader of this group of
inner parts, we can make the wisest possible choice in the moment. That isn't perfect,
but it will be a boundary that we can state. with clarity and courage and follow through on.
And this would be an example where there isn't that genuine safety and goodwill.
And it might not be wise to speak for our parts, but it's very critical to listen to them and then
take our next step in the boundary from a place of that highest self leadership.
I love that. I think that's so wise. I want the listener to really hear that because often I will
hear from people, I'm sure you do too, sort of a self-criticism or an anger that they can't take
the action they feel like, a part of them feels like they should take. And what you're saying is so
important. It's that inner consent, inner witnessing of all the different layers.
There's a reason oftentimes people don't leave a marriage, don't leave a church, don't leave a
relationship, don't leave a... Because there's a lot at stake.
There's sometimes a high cost. And so I love what you're saying.
It may not at that point yet be about telling the other person all those different feelings,
but it is really honoring all of it within because that process will inevitably allow you when it's
finally time to take action, to do it with your whole self. which means it will be more
sustainable, more resilient, more, I love that. That's a really powerful, powerful way to,
it may take, you know, I know Kim and I said in Boundaries for Your Soul, and it always has stuck
with me. It's a slower way to where you want to get faster, right?
It's slower, but you actually get to where you want to be. Exactly.
Yeah, exactly. And when we throw out threats, or attempts to control someone else's behavior from a
part of ourselves rather than a true boundary, which is about managing our own choices,
our own behavior, not someone else. Then we don't wind up disempowering ourselves because when we
throw out a threat that we're not going to follow through on. We disempower ourselves.
We actually train the other person to ignore our words even more. This is true in parenting.
This is true in betraying relationships. When we throw out a threat, if you don't do your homework,
you're grounded for the next year. And that's not what all parts of us are in consent with,
nor is it. necessarily a wise choice. We are disempowering ourselves because then when we don't
follow through, the person on the other end says, well, I don't have to listen to what my mom is
saying, my dad is saying, they're not going to follow through. They're just throwing out threats.
And we wind up being a much less effective parent, a much less effective self-advocate,
a much more dysregulated. individual in our interpersonal relationships.
So this skill turns out to be fairly transformational. Wow,
that's, that's such a helpful, hopeful view.
What if you are in a relationship with, again, we're back to this fairly healthy,
good, you know, enough safety, good enough safety? But the language of parts hasn't either
connected with that other person. So it's been super helpful to us. But that that.
It's almost like we're speaking a different language. How do you encourage people in those
situations where the language maybe is a little bit of a barrier? I love this question because this
comes up a lot. I think it's very important. And it's part of the reason that I specifically wrote
this book to be very accessible. I wrote the book very casually. So it's like I'm sitting down with
the reader having a cup of coffee talking about these things. And there's... examples that will
walk you through how to do this. I've got scripts, I've got journaling or group discussion
questions after every chapter so that there is a really, there's a little bit of this is what it
looks like and then here's how you do it, let's practice. And I think that's so important because
this issue of the language of parts comes up often when people don't like that language.
Sometimes some people really resonate with it. Some people really don't prefer it. And some people
think it's pathologizing. Like, are you saying I have what used to be called multiple personality
disorder? No, not at all. This is normal. We all have lots of different parts of ourselves.
It's just normal. So what I say to encourage someone in that situation is it doesn't matter what
language we use to describe this inner experience. We can. Call it anything we want.
So I say, let's use the language that feels most comfortable. So we might say something like, let's
say we love inner parts work, but our partner is really triggered by the word parts. Then we can
say, okay, can I take a moment? I'm noticing there's an energy in me that feels really enraged
that's trying to help protect me from this conflict. I'm noticing there's another energy in me that
wants to sort of caretake. And there's another energy in me that feels really vulnerable right now.
We don't have to use the word parts. It doesn't really matter what we call it. We're reflecting our
inner experience in a way that can be heard and received. That's great. That's great, Jenna.
I love that. I was having a conversation with, I don't know if you're familiar with John Acuff. He
does a lot of coaching. He has a book called Soundtracks. And I had a conversation with him a few
weeks ago. And he was saying, we were kind of talking about that. And he was saying a lot of the
men he works with really, would never respond to this idea of an inner voice.
But when you talk about a soundtrack that plays, they're right there with them. And I was like,
that's interesting. It's okay. We don't have to be literal about the language in our real life.
Just find something that works, that's a shared language for both of you to name these inner states
that we all have. I think that's really helpful. That's a really helpful naming.
Yeah, I really love that because that was sort of the heartbeat behind my very first book years
ago, Altogether You, that integrated IFS with Christian spirituality.
And there was a lot of challenge for people of faith to connect with parts because there was a lot
of translation that needed to be done. For example, that our highest self or, you know,
that essence that IFS would call self with a capital S. Most people of faith have a very visceral
response to that that's quite negative. That word self often connotes sinfulness.
So it's like the opposite of what IFS is calling it. And just helping people to make a translation,
well, actually, that's just the image of God inside of you. Don't use the word self, use image of
God. Like if we're talking about the same thing, we could call it concentrated awesomeness. It
doesn't matter. Whatever works for you to understand the essence of what we're describing,
then let's use that. I love that. Just as we're winding down here,
for someone listening who's newer to this work, but wants to take a step forward,
what would you say is, just even today, what's the first small step someone could take to begin to
do this work today.
I love that. So that's the whole last chapter is like, what are my next steps for how to apply this
in my life? So I think this is so important because sometimes it can be conceptually a great idea.
And then if we don't know kind of how to implement it, it can just be an interesting idea. And I
think that the first step, which seems simple and it is, but it's not at all easy, is beginning to
practice the art of noticing, which is step one.
noticing when a part of ourselves has gotten activated and taking us over. And that can be
challenging because we often are taught to think of ourselves as just one thing. So if an angry
part of us gets triggered and takes us over, what we tend to think is I am so angry. or if an
anxious part of us has gotten activated and we're feeling its anxiety, we'll think,
I am so anxious. And so this art of just step one, of just noticing,
ah, an anxious part of me is here. ah, I'm noticing an angry part of me is here.
Even just that can be pretty transformational because all of a sudden, just with that awareness,
just with that gentle noticing, we get a little bit of separation between the energy of that part
of us, whether it's anger, anxiety, whatever it might be, and ourselves. And we begin to realize
how multifaceted. how beautifully multifaceted we are inside and that is a powerful first step so i
would say even just beginning to practice notice notice notice and also noticing what is it like
when we are not taken over by parts noticing that calm that clear-mindedness,
those moments of clarity, of courage, of compassion, when parts haven't taken us over.
Because that's a different place, that connection to the image of God or the highest self inside of
us. And noticing that can be really valuable as well. Like, oh, that's actually in me.
Because sometimes we think, oh, I've done so many bad things or so many awful things have happened
to me. I don't actually have that inside of me. That's a common thought. There's no image of God
inside of me. There's no highest self. I've done too many horrible things or I've endured so much
trauma in my life. There's nothing good inside of me. And so noticing when we're not overtaken by
parts and that actually there is. this beautiful essence inside of each and every one of us,
that's very powerful as well. I love that. I love that. Jenna, you're just such a wonderful light
of... such clarity and the way you distill this, what can feel overwhelming into such simple,
usable skills. It's just so wonderful. I'm so grateful for all of your work. You've written a
number of wonderful books. We'll link to all of your past appearances on the podcast because I know
those have been among my listener favorites. But tell us where they can find this current book and
how to get in, what all that you've got going on now. Oh,
thank you. Well, this new book is just released at the time of our recording, and it's available on
Amazon, Kindle, audiobook. I had a fun time recording it in the studio. If you'd like me to read it
to you and you're an audiobook person, enjoy that wherever books are sold.
And I have lots and lots of free resources that I offer to people because I know this can be a very
different approach and people need some help and guidance. So if you come to my website,
which is JennaRiemersma.com, but if you're like... 99% of the people and you can't spell
Remersma. Not a problem. Some days I can't spell my last name, but if you also come to movetoward
.com, it'll get you to the same place. And I've got free downloadable journaling worksheets.
I've got free videos where I actually guide you through this process for a variety of things.
So I've got move toward for anxiety, move toward for addiction, move toward for betrayal trauma,
move toward to just check in with your parts, move toward for triggers, all kinds of things. So
lots of free resources there as well as on the Insight Timer app.
So please feel free to take advantage of this. So they go to Jenna Remersma on Insight Timer.
Is that how they find you? Correct. And I've got a whole ton of free audio guides there that are
moved toward guides. And I even have one now that's a video. InSight Timer has just released videos
that teach us speaking for our parts rather than from them. So lots of ways that you can connect
with this if it interests you and you want to try it out. Please take advantage of all of those
free resources and try it out and see what you think. because it's really been life-changing for
me. And I'm so grateful to get to share this important and I think just really simple tool with
people. Well, Jenna, I cannot recommend your work, what you offer enough.
You are a trusted voice in this space and we are so grateful for your time and for what you're
putting into the world. Thank you for all the resources and just the gift of your wisdom. We're
really grateful. Thank you so much for having me back on the podcast. I always love being with you.
And I'm so grateful to have this conversation with your listeners. Thanks.
Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you
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Episode Show Notes
When a diagnosis, chronic illness, or unexpected health challenge enters your life, it can divide your story into a before and after. And often, we don’t have language for what’s happening beneath the surface.
In this episode, Dr. Alison and Dr. James C. Jackson explore the concept of medical trauma—and how it impacts not just your body, but your identity, your relationships, and your sense of meaning.
Because medical trauma isn’t just about what happened to you physically.
It’s about what it begins to reshape internally—your sense of safety, control, and who you are.
If you’ve ever felt disoriented, overwhelmed, or like life doesn’t fit the way it used to… this conversation will help you understand why and what healing can look like.
You’ll explore:
- What medical trauma is and why it’s often overlooked
- The psychological impact of diagnosis, chronic illness, and navigating healthcare
- How suffering can reshape your identity—and how to gently reframe it
- The role of community in healing and why support matters
- What it means to live in the “both/and” of grief and hope
This conversation offers a compassionate path forward—helping you learn how to live with what’s hard without letting it define all of who you are.
More Resources:
Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram
Want to go deeper? Join 80,000+ soul menders in our email community and receive weekly reflections and gentle practices on parts work here.
Want to hear more like this? Start here:
Episode 64: Women’s Health—Menopause, Hormones, Depression and How to Advocate for Yourself Through Your Body’s Changes
Episode 19: My Stroke, A Process of Healing, and How I Began to Write The Best of You
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
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TRANSCRIPT
When people are properly supported When they are steeped in resilience, when they can find a
purpose, they can endure hugely difficult things and they can come out on the other side,
not only surviving, even thriving. We don't get to decide for somebody else what is traumatic.
In the medical arena, those can develop in everything from getting a difficult diagnosis to being
in the ICU to struggling with a chronic illness to other things. I wanted to affirm people and give
a name to what they were feeling and then... for many is medical trauma.
Hey everyone and welcome back to this week's Deep Dive episode of the Best of You podcast. I'm so
glad you're here with me this week for this conversation. Today's episode is for you if you've ever
found yourself facing something you didn't choose, something that changed your life in ways you
didn't expect. It might have been a diagnosis or a long season of unexplained symptoms,
or it might be walking alongside someone you love through illness or recovery.
Whatever it is, there's this moment where the life you had before and the life you have after no
longer feels the same, and it rocks your world. a little bit. It's disorienting. It's confusing.
It's uncertain. We don't always have language for what happens to us psychologically and
emotionally in those moments. We call it stressful, or we call it anxiety,
or sometimes we just try to minimize it or shove it away. But often, the right kind of name for it
is actually trauma. It's something we don't always have the skills to process in the moment.
And I've had moments like these personally, moments where something medical entered into my life
out of the blue, out of nowhere with no explanation. And suddenly there was a before and an after
the event. And this is exactly what today's guest, Dr. James C. Jackson,
is gonna share with us all about today. It's his area of expertise. He calls it medical trauma
because so often when we're dealing with a health issue, whether it's chronic symptoms or something
major that enters in unexpectedly, it creates not only a trauma in the body, it often creates a
trauma in the soul. That phrase alone, medical trauma, was so powerful to me when I first heard it
because it names something so many of us experience but don't always recognize at first. It's not
only going through the illness, it's navigating the medical system, the healthcare system, or even
receiving a minor diagnosis that changes our daily habits that shapes us emotionally,
psychologically. And yet so often we're expected to get through it, to stay positive,
to be resilient, to get back to normal, or to only focus on the physical aspect of healing,
as important as it is. But I want to talk today with our guest about how to move through painful
changes to our health or to the health of loved ones with intention and kindness.
and gentleness, and to ultimately learn how to live with what's hard without letting it define
everything about us. And this is where we're going today. I'm joined today by Dr.
James Jackson. He's a clinical psychologist and researcher, and he serves as the director of long
-term outcomes at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He focuses on helping patients recover,
not just physically, but emotionally and psychologically from critical illness, ICU stays,
and chronic conditions. He's worked extensively with veterans, with ICU survivors, and all kinds of
individuals like you and me navigating these complicated medical challenges.
What I appreciate so much about Dr. Jackson's work is that he brings together this deep clinical
expertise with a profound respect for the reality of human suffering. He's not here to offer us
quick fixes or to minimize pain or to rush us past the hard parts. Instead, he's helping us do
something much more meaningful. He's helping us learn how to live fully, alive,
the way God wants us to live, even when. It's hard. Jim is the author of a powerful new book,
Reclaiming Your Life from Medical Trauma, Recognize the Symptoms, Find Treatment That Works, and
Heal Your Brain and Body. He offers a practical, compassionate guide for navigating the emotional
aftermath of illness and finding your way back to a life that holds meaning and purpose and hope.
Today, we're going to get into what medical trauma actually is and the surprising and maybe not so
surprising ways it might be showing up. What happens psychologically when you receive a difficult
diagnosis? How to develop resilience in these unique situations?
And most of all, we're going to get into how to hold on to your identity when life changes in ways
you didn't choose and how faith factors into that, how you can rely on faith without bypassing
pain, but to enrich your experience of life in the way that God wants for us.
There's this phrase Dr. Jackson uses throughout today's episode that I want you to listen for. It's
this idea of both and. You can be facing something incredibly hard and still build a meaningful,
purposeful life. You can feel grief and still experience so much joy in your day-to-day
encounters. You can experience something that feels so unfair and still hold on to a sense of
goodness. and beauty and hope. I am thrilled to bring you my conversation today with Dr.
James C. Jackson.
I am so thrilled to have you today. You've spent over two decades or more walking with people
through really hard diagnoses of all different types.
We can talk about that a little bit more. I'm curious, just as we get started to frame the
conversation what have these experiences of walking with people through these life-altering
situations taught you about how suffering shapes us as people yeah it's a really good question and
you're right it has been two decades it's been almost 25 years of this work and it's taught me a
few things it's taught me certainly that We shouldn't be too casual about throwing around Bible
verses like Romans 8.28, right? It's taught me that, right? It's true that all things work
together for good. It's true. But in the process, people really suffer. And life with a chronic
condition, with a critical condition, it can be hugely difficult. So I've learned not to be casual
or flippant or... unserious or overly optimistic about how easy this journey might be.
I've learned that. I've also learned that when people are properly supported, when they have the
support they need, when they are steeped in resilience, when they can find a purpose,
they can endure hugely difficult things and they can come out on the other side,
not only surviving, but beautifully. even thriving. I've learned that. I witnessed that.
And that doesn't happen by accident. But it's a vision that I cast for my patients.
And it's a vision that many of them realize. And I've learned that people can thrive in the midst
of really difficult things, shockingly hard things. It's amazing. You use the phrase in your book,
medical trauma. And I thought that was a powerful naming. We talk a lot about trauma,
healing from trauma on the podcast, but this is a specific kind. A lot of people don't even realize
that illness of all different kinds of variety in and of itself, right? A diagnosis can become a
trauma. What do you mean by this term and how does it show up in people's lives?
It's a really important term. And I think where I started to think about it really.
was in my work at the Department of Veterans Affairs at the local VA hospital, where often trauma
is framed correctly in the context of combat,
PTSD after service in Iraq, after service in Vietnam, long ago after World War II.
Of course, that's trauma. But as I heard such strong emphases on trauma at the VA,
it occurred to me... that wasn't a term that we were using at all in the medical world writ large.
It was not a term we were using. And as I engaged with patients, I realized that even though they
hadn't been in Vietnam, even though they weren't in a foxhole in World War II, they had a lot of
the same symptoms. They were anxious. They were chronically hypervigilant. They were avoidant.
They were emotionally activated all the time. often by things that were quite profound,
profound birth trauma, major operations, but often by things that were easy to overlook,
often quite traumatized by things that we might not think would be that significant.
And I think that's how trauma works, right? Like we don't get to decide for somebody else what is
traumatic. There are things that are profoundly traumatic to me. that people seem to manage very
effectively and there are things that at a glance don't necessarily seem that traumatic and they're
hugely derailing. And in the medical arena, those can develop in everything from getting a
difficult diagnosis to being in the ICU to struggling with a chronic illness to other things like
being routinely dismissed by a well-meaning provider. I think that can be hugely traumatic.
So I really cast a broad net.
Everything difficult in the medical arena that happens, of course, is not traumatic. But many,
many things are. One of the reasons for the book was I wanted to affirm people and give a name to
what they were feeling. And that name for many is medical trauma. Gosh, just as you were going
through that list, I thought even in this day and age, working with health insurance companies can
become traumatic. Yes. Deeply, creating financial trauma and stress. And ironically,
the trauma then, especially, I mean, whether it's psychological or medical, it's all intertwined,
right? Because all of that cortisol and anxiety can also then interact with what's going on
medically. Yeah, absolutely.
so many contexts. But where I see it a lot is in avoidance. What I see is someone has had a bout
with cancer or perhaps they had a parent who had a bout with cancer and so they decide not to get a
skin check because they're afraid that that mole might be melanoma because their mother or father
had melanoma. So the painful irony is that by the time they've waited five years to get that skin
check, it's very likely that that actually might be the melanoma. And now they've got a brand new
challenge that they didn't have before. And then that makes them even more avoidance.
So that'd just be one example, that avoidance that has real world implications,
it can really derail people. That is such an interesting, right, that byproduct of a familial
situation. It makes a lot of sense. And we see this. Talk to us a little bit about...
When someone does find their way to you and they've received a serious diagnosis,
right, or they're facing a major health crisis, what do you typically see? So this is a person who
has faced, you know, for whatever reason, they've had to come face to face with this really hard
news. What typically happens psychologically in those first moments, those first weeks,
those first months? What's the trajectory to kind of normalize? Because oftentimes I think some of
this just isn't normalized, right? It's not normalized. And often what happens is people feel
incredibly out of control. I think that's the first thing. They feel incredibly out of control. So
there's a lot of value in simply saying, we've seen this before.
You know, people have had this experience before. And there are predictable, there are thoughtful.
There are data-centered ways to help you. And we're going to engage those, right?
We're going to engage those. We're going to help you regulate your emotions. We're going to help
you lean into social support. We're going to help you realize that there are ways to accept this
uncertainty that can be really empowering and beautiful. And there are ways to find meaning in
this. You certainly don't want to lead with, let's find some meaning in this, right? Like this is
hugely difficult. Let's find some meaning. I think that would be a very cruel thing to do.
And yet, down the road over time, people who tend to do well in the context of medical trauma,
they find a way to make some sense of it. They find a way to make some meaning of it. And people
who do well find a way to realize.
that that there is a I'm going to call it there is a both andness to things and that is people
begin to realize I can both have a chronic illness and I can live a really fulfilling life I can be
grappling with a frightening diagnosis and I can learn to be present with my family both and and I
think that piece is particularly important because on the heels of a trauma It's very easy to move
into this place of my identity shattered. My life is over. You know,
my future has been blown up. And those things might feel true. They aren't necessarily true.
And it's important to say to people, let's take a step back. Let's take a few deep breaths.
Let's reflect on what's about to happen. And let's find a way to embrace the both andness of
things. Yeah, I love that. I think you're saying something so important there. Maybe it's not the
first meeting. There's a lot of kind of normalizing and containing very real emotions initially.
Yes. But it's not where you have to stay. You got to feel that. You got to go through that. I'm
sure there's a lot of grief. There's a lot of processing. But eventually that process,
when you do it and you don't bypass it, we talk a lot on the podcast of what I think of as.
spiritual bypassing, right? And sometimes as believers, as folks who are people of faith,
we can too quickly get to the good news without first walking through,
this is hard. And that makes a lot of sense. So just to normalize, this is hard stage before we get
to the meaning and hope and future. Yeah, I think that's right. I love the poet Robert Frost among
all poets. I love poetry. And Robert Frost had a lot of quotes.
but to me, the quote that has landed most powerfully over the years has been, the only way around
is through. The only way around is through. No shortcuts, there's no magic elixir, the only way
around is through. And that process, that process of finding meaning in suffering,
that can take years, and often it does. For me, in my own life,
and I talk about this in my book quite a bit. I was diagnosed with OCD as a 50-year-old, late in
my life, 50 years old. And when I went to see my psychologist, I had one goal in mind.
And that was, let's get rid of every single OCD symptom that I have.
Let's just burn it down. Let's heal it. Get it done. And she said,
I'm not so sure about that. Jim, you're normally, I think, pretty thoughtful. You're a
sophisticated guy. You should know. can't just pull this out, you know, like a weed. And I said,
other people maybe can't, but I want to, right? I will.
And the way I was framing this, Allison, was that I needed to get rid of it because until I got rid
of it, I couldn't be okay. Nothing would be okay. That's the way that I framed it. And either or,
right? Exactly. Either is gone or I'm, yeah. Exactly. So I leaned into this therapy really hard.
And we talked about acceptance, acceptance, acceptance. We talked about living with it, all of
that. And I've got, you know, a lot of tools, I think, internally at my disposal. And it took me
about two years, two solid years, to even get to the place where I was willing to consider the idea
that I could have OCD and I could be fine. I could be okay, right?
And so sometimes I think... In the Christian arena, we're in a little bit too much of a hurry to
convince people that the Holy Spirit is about to make them a little more accepting or transform
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It's such a paradox. It really is. And it really is. I appreciate you sharing your personal story
because it does shape how we understand suffering. And when you've been through it, this idea of
suffering, you know, it's not the most popular trending term that we want to. But the paradox,
I'm thinking of my own life in the last few years, just. And I love how you're, as you were
describing trauma, it's big T or little T. I know for me, some of it has had to do as a woman with
coming to the terms with, I got caught in sort of this trap that's all over the headlines with
menopause, like how that affected me and how it affected my body. And it wasn't a major thing,
but I got trapped in some of the current conversations that.
negatively affected me, right? That have lasting effects, right? And so even at smaller scale or
larger scale, I hear your point and I felt it too, where it takes a while to wrap your mind around
the implications, what it means, who I'm becoming. And at first that can feel like a loss,
but it really is the path. to that freedom. The truth will set us free.
And I want to move into that a little bit, both from your own journey and from your patients,
because you talk about how the difference between people who somehow find the resilience,
find the meaning, find the health. And I've tasted that these last few years. You know,
I've tasted the front end of going, oh, my gosh, I was failed by a medical system. In my case,
this is really painful because it had real implications for me. Right. To a couple of years later,
making peace with it, not in a passive way, but in a very proactive way. Sounds like you've also
gone through that. So what what is the difference for those folks who are able to do that versus
those who really, to your point, you use the word identity and that kind of it steals their sense
of identity? Yeah, it's a great it's a great question. And I'll make a comment before I lean into
that. And that is that I think. the mental health system, psychology and psychiatry.
I think we have failed some patients, frankly, by communicating, and I don't think we've done this
deliberately, but by communicating that every problem can be nicely solved,
right? Like we'll improve your depression and we'll improve your anxiety, we'll improve your PTSD.
I think that's a lovely aspiration. And there are many people for whom that's not their story,
right? Like their mental health symptoms, they don't get better as thoroughly as they might like.
And for those folks, I think it's a little bit of setup sometimes because it's easy to think,
as I noted, that the only way things will be okay is if all of your symptoms go away.
So I think a better approach is to say, you can be okay if your symptoms go away.
You can be okay if your symptoms don't go away. And of course, that takes a long time. This issue
of resilience, how people get it, who gets it. It's a complicated question.
You know, I think that's probably the holy grail, which is how do we turn people into resilient
folks, right, who can walk through a fire, right? They can survive difficult things.
How do we turn people into resilient people? And I don't think we know the answer to that exactly.
I don't think we know how. But I do know that this quality of resilience...
happens, I think, much more effectively when people are surrounded by other people,
when they are in communities of people that are holding them up, that are challenging them,
that are bolstering them, boosting them. This is hard work we're talking about,
living with or recovering from trauma. And there aren't many rules, there aren't many axioms in my
work that I think are always true. But one of them that I see in this medical trauma space is that
when people are walking this medical trauma journey alone, they do less well.
And when they're walking it with others, they do better. And so one of the first things I think
that we want to do when we're helping support people in the context of medical trauma is we want to
try to move them from isolation to engagement. And it's not always so easy.
Sometimes it's more aspirational than something that can be realized. But I'm a big believer in the
idea that healing really occurs in the context of community.
We were made for community. And I think it's a little bit of a fool's errand when people believe
that they can manage these difficult things on their own. It's too much.
And so that's why at Vanderbilt, one of the things that we... really emphasized over the last five
or six years is support groups. We have a medical trauma support group. We have a long COVID
support group. We have a family members of ICU survivors support group that is meeting right after
this podcast. And it's because there is healing in community. And in this moment that we're living
in, people are pretty isolated. There's a great book that I love called Bowling Alone by Robert
Putnam, sociologist. And he says in that book, More people are bowling. That's great.
I grew up in Michigan, love bowling. But tragically, more people are bowling alone. And our goal
with these patients is let's stop bowling alone. Let's join arms and let's learn resilience by
watching, listening, seeing the stories of other people who are engaging in hard things and
believing that we can too. Yeah. That's powerful. I think that's such a word. I love that that's
the one axiom that kind of holds across. Here's a related question,
and I'm curious even how this has played out in your own journey,
if that's a fair question. There's the resilience question,
and then there is this identity question. um of figuring out who am i now and i think that does
happen a lot in community as you're kind of wrestling with um how did that play out for you that
that sense of what does it mean that this is now part of who i am versus i'm i've got to get rid of
this to be who i am yeah it's it's a really interesting question and i do think identity um is so
important it might be the single most important thing in the context of these issues, because often
these illnesses come on very suddenly. And for people, there's a,
there's a huge before and after dynamic where they look wistfully on their old life.
Right. And sometimes they frame it as more perfect than it was in contrast to this,
this, this field of destruction, which is my new life. And then they see this Delta.
And they feel like a failure. They feel broken as a result. So for me, when I was diagnosed with
OCD and began to battle OCD, I had a hard time integrating the pre-OCD Jim Jackson with the post
-diagnosis Jim Jackson. I moved quickly from I'm a person that I like. I'm a person that I respect.
I'm a person that I think can thrive in the world. To feeling like I was being knocked around by a
mental illness. And that was what defined me. I took on that mantle. Oh, wow. And it was really
hard for me. In time, I began to realize that two things were true. That I had OCD.
And that the things that always had been true of me were still true of me. I managed to find a way
to hold those together. And I think one of the really important things.
that I do with my patients in support groups or individually is to say, you know,
there's one John Jackson, there's one Bob Nelson,
there's one Beth Swanson, it's one person, right? Like let's push back against the strict
conceptualization of, hey, this is you before, this is you after. It's all you,
you know, it's you. So let's integrate this. And let's embrace this development that you have
cancer now, that you have Parkinson's disease now, that you have dementia, that you have a brain
injury, whatever. Let's embrace it as part of your story because it is part of your story. Let's
honor it. But let's really resist the tendency to make it all of your story.
Because it's not all of your story. Let's vigorously push back against the idea that it's all of
your story. Because I think if you... if you embrace it as all of your story, all of the
limitations that you associate with that are limitations that you begin to wear like a suit of
clothes. And that's really problematic because, in my opinion at least,
you're likely not as limited as you think you are. So let's integrate these identities and let's
resist believing that this is all of your story because you're more than your...
my case, OCD. That's really powerful. You don't want it to become your new identity.
Right. You have to integrate it with. You have to integrate who you thought you took yourself to be
and who. And at some level, that is the journey of life because we're all going to bump into some
of these things. But at that really heightened level of a tough diagnosis, you're figuring out how
to. Honor it. I love how you said that. Honor it while still honoring the person you still are.
Exactly. And that's what takes some time. Yeah, it takes time. And often what I've noted is on the
heels of a new diagnosis, in my case, OCD, but again, we can come up with 101 examples.
On the heels of a new diagnosis, often that new diagnosis and that identity is pretty thoroughly
embraced. And often that's a function of... Simple things. Now I'm spending all my time at the
cancer center. Right now I'm surrounded by cancer patients. Now I'm getting chemotherapy. It's easy
for that to become a huge part of my identity. But typically the process we would want is let's
shift you from making this 99.9% of who you are in the direction of something a little more full
-orbed. And most people can do that. But some people get stuck. Some people get stuck in this place
of this is the beginning and end of me. This is who I am when I wake up. This is who I am when I go
to bed. And I think it's incumbent on us as mental health providers or for that matter as pastors
to invite people, and this is important, invite, to invite people to think about it a different
way. It's not helpful to insist that they think about it another way. It's not helpful to try to
pull their jaws open. force feed them with these insights, but to gently invite them to even
consider the idea that this isn't entirely who they are. willing to even consider it,
I think we can work with that. So it almost sounds like there's some real practical ways in the
sense of almost what you're saying is when you're dealing with, you know, my own experience with
different things, if you're dealing with a diagnosis or an illness. Even just for the sheer fact of
you've got to be at the doctors a lot or you've got to, it's part of your weekly rhythms. It's kind
of a path of least resistance to build your life around it. And it almost sounds like you have to
work to an impractical level or it would be wise or invite yourself to the extent that you can to
continue to do some of the things that you used to do and not let it completely.
Maybe have conversations. And this is the thing about support groups, right? You want to find
people who can. identify with what you've been through, understand it in a way that nobody else
does. And I could imagine it might also be wise and in many instances to have a couple of people
who aren't part of that world. I mean, that's just one example. But I've kind of noticed that even
like sometimes you want folks who aren't talking about it or who are doing something completely
different because it kind of reminds you of the other side of yourself. Yeah, no, it's a really
that's a really astute point. And there's some research, by the way. that shows that the
underbelly, if you will, of support groups is that if not done properly,
they can reinforce some things that are unhelpful, which are,
this is where I start. This is where I stop. They can become an echo chamber.
And to the extent that they do that, I think it's really unhelpful. So it is about keeping that
tether to who you've always been. and recognizing that that's still true and i'm not a i'm not a
cognitive behavior behaviorist per se but but it it is recognizing you know what this is still true
you have a tether to who you were yeah even if it doesn't feel true right like even on the days
that you don't feel like you're the same person let's embrace the idea that in so many respects you
are and also i i think this is important sometimes when people have had a hard trauma they um they
look wistfully back on the good old days and sometimes they can inadvertently make the good old
days a little more perfect than they were yeah and that can kind of deepen the rift between who i
was and who i am and and certainly with trauma that can introduce brand new challenges and it's
true that there was never probably a time in your life when things were totally perfect. So this is
a new challenge, but it's not necessarily the case that it's the only new challenge.
Yeah, we can romanticize the past. Yeah, I love the both and, right? There's such a both and that
we're balancing here of acceptance, grieving and accepting. And let's talk a little bit here about
the spiritual component. of healing and doing this integrative work.
And I think it's such a resource, you know, to folks. We've talked about how we can spiritually
bypass, how it can be misused, but it is also such a resource. What kinds of spiritual questions do
you hear from people facing just really hard diagnoses or ongoing illnesses or,
you know, what kind of spiritual questions come up and how can our faith become that?
that scaffolding that resource for us it's a great question i mean the first thing i would say is
that many people and this is this is regrettable i think um many people in the throes of medical
trauma will tell me that nobody has really engaged spiritual questions with them at all right and i
think um i think it's unfortunate because uh that's a bit of a swing and a miss right like when
when people encounter trauma, certainly people in the South where I live, but in the Midwest,
really all over the United States, all over the world. It intersects with spiritual beliefs.
It intersects with their religious faith. I wish my colleagues would be a little more willing to
jump in the deep end of the pool with people, even if they don't know the answer and recognize
there's a spiritual dimension to this. And I think the spiritual dynamics in the lives of patients
can unfold. a few different ways obviously some people can be angry with god about such things as
timing and intensity and i didn't deserve this and all of that and i think um that's really
appropriate to affirm i think um i have grown in the context of this medical trauma work i have
grown in being very comfortable with um with mystery with with the idea that There aren't
necessarily any good answers to be had, right? That, again,
both and. It feels unfair. And at the end of the day, I believe God is good.
You know, it feels really strange. It feels horrible. It is really hard.
And I believe God is good. So helping people hold those things together and creating the space for
people to struggle. as much as they want and again um not trying to force feed them um this notion
that hey we're going to redeem this by making some meaning but trusting trusting that the holy
spirit has a plan and that he's going to get you to that place where you're going to find a way to
find some meaning when you need to you know in the in the religious tradition that i grew up in uh
went to a little kind of a fundamentalist Bible church in the upper Midwest.
And in that tradition, there was never much willingness for things to take some time.
You know, the idea was you better get saved today before you walk out of the building,
because if you don't, you might get hit by a car in the parking lot. And we know how that's going
to go, right? There was a lot of pressure on us. To do God's work is the way I would put it.
And in the more reformed tradition that I have been in in a while or for a while,
there's this idea that that God's sovereignty is at work. Right. And things will unfold as they're
going to unfold. And I don't have to drag a person along to get them to where I think they should
be. Instead. I can trust that the Holy Spirit is going to nudge them and help them get there.
It takes a lot of pressure off of us, I think, whether we're psychologists or pastors,
whatever role we're in. And so I try not to get ahead of my patients,
and I try to acknowledge, sometimes I'm pretty vulnerable about it related to my own story,
that these traumatic experiences, they don't just shake your faith.
your physician or your nurse practitioner or your insurance company, they often shake your faith in
God, right? They shake your faith in God. And giving people the space to struggle with that,
I think is so important. And in particular, avoiding sanitized,
easy answers that I think are not satisfying to anyone,
right? And doing what Job's friends... were willing to do with him, right? which is I'm going to
sit next to you in this ash heap, and I'm not going to say anything, and I'm just going to practice
the gift of presence with you, and we're going to walk down a winding path together,
and sometimes we're both going to shrug our shoulders and say, what on earth is going on? Do you
know? I don't know. Do you know? No, I don't know. But just being willing to sit in it, I think
that's quite a gift. i love that it it working at the pace of the spirit because we don't know and
that i love that both and of i think that's worth really double clicking on that both and of um i i
don't like this this feels unfair this does feel like more than i can handle this isn't okay and
god is good which is such a job that that is sort of the template we see in joe where it wasn't
that he didn't suffer. He, he was really not okay. And he was honest about that.
And I, I, God, you are God, you know, and, and somewhere in that the spirit finds its way and it's
such a paradox. Um, but it is, and I would, I would say this if I can,
you know, very often, well, for example, in the past five years or so,
a lot of my work has been in the long COVID space and in that space, There are huge numbers of
people that don't look that sick, but they really are that sick, right? They're hugely sick. And so
their family members, well-meaning, will say, I think you need to work a little bit harder,
right? Like, I think you need to eat a little healthier. Maybe you should exercise more. They're
very oriented, in a way, to what in the church we would call works righteousness,
right? Like, you've got to pray a little bit more, right? got to lean in a little more and so so
it's easy for that message you've got to do more to translate into people feeling like you know if
i just prayed a little more if i just went to confession a little bit more if i was just a little
better maybe god would hear my prayers a little bit more and i would stop struggling with fill in
the blank right this illness that won't go away and and um the truth is it's just not that simple
right it's not that simple And sometimes we don't have answers. And instead of throwing our hands
up and running away from the fact that we don't have answers, I think a better approach is to lean
into the fact that we don't have answers and find a way to make peace with that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
It's a delicate. It is. Again, even that's the both end of doing what is within my control.
It always goes back to that serenity prayer, like what is within my control? Of course,
I'm going to try to do what is within my control to the best of my ability and release a lot that
is not within my control. And it's a balancing act,
I think, of figuring that out. As we close here, Dr. Jackson, I'm thinking of the listener who's
really feeling this. Maybe they've been in a long journey of holding something that's really hard,
whether it's physical or mental. What is one small step they could take just today,
that next step to move toward that reclaiming of life,
reclaiming of goodness, reclaiming of identity in what's true and good and not only in what's hard?
What would you say to that person? It's a great question. I think the one small step,
therapeutically at least, the one small step that I think for most people could be achieved and
could be helpful is to begin to even be open to the possibility that you can live a full and
meaningful life with fill in the blank, right? With ongoing birth trauma,
with... challenges related to cancer,
with challenges related to ALS, post-intensive care syndrome, whatever it is,
that with that, you can live a meaningful life. And I don't think people can get there overnight,
but it starts with being open. As you're aware, there's this approach called stages of change
theory, right? And in that theory, you go from pre-contemplation to contemplation to action to
maintenance. So you start thinking, I'm not ready to give up cigarettes.
I'm not even ready to think about it, but I'm ready to think about thinking about it, right? That's
pre-contemplation followed by now I'm thinking about it. I'm still not ready, but I'm thinking. So
what I would say is let's start with, I'm not ready to accept this.
I'm not ready to even think of accepting it. But I'm ready to think about the idea that one day I
want to think about it. Right. Because then I'm on the path. I'm not ready to consider that I can
live a meaningful life with long COVID. But you know what? I'm going to begin to think about the
possibility that maybe I could consider that. Yeah. That's a starting point for me, because if you
start there, then the dominoes start to fall and you move in a beautiful direction where eventually
you can see. Hopefully you can see the beauty in some things that you didn't ask for and you don't
want. And that doesn't make your life perfect or easy, but it does make your life meaningful.
And if you can find a way to make your life meaningful, Katie, bar the door.
All bets are off. You can find a way to really thrive. I love it. Wow, that's a great note to end
on. I love that. Just opening to the possibility. And I love the emphasis on meaning. Maybe it
won't be easy, maybe it won't be perfect, but I can find meaning. Tell my listeners about your book
and about where they can find it and any other resources that you have. Sure. It has quite a long
title. I'll just call it Reclaiming Your Life from Medical Trauma. It is in bookstores on April
28th.
In Barnes and Nobles, it's on Amazon currently. It can be pre-ordered. We talked about the word
practical earlier. And I think one of the really nice compliments that has happened as I've written
this book, as you know, you send a book to people and they provide you blurbs. You hope they'll
provide you blurbs, right? Some do, some don't. But the blurbs about my book that were really
meaningful to me were, Hey, this is accessible. This is practical, right? It's a practical guide
for people who are struggling with medical trauma. And I think it will take people in the direction
they need to go. I think it will be compassionate and hopeful without being all about rainbows and
unicorns, right? Like this is really hard stuff. And there are reasons to be hopeful. We have a...
have a research center at Vanderbilt. They can contact me there. I have a website,
jamescjackson.com. They can contact me there. They can send me an email. If you send me an email,
if I get 1,000 emails, it might take a while. But if someone sends me an email, I'll respond, and
it will be a privilege to do that. And if your listeners need a referral, if they need some
guidance, and I can, I'm happy to provide it. That's amazing. Thank you so much. We'll link to all
that in the show notes. I continually hear stories of folks who listen to an episode and it just is
exactly what they needed. And it's all over the country. And I just love that you're willing to
come on here and share these resources with us. And for someone out there, I know it's going to be
for many people out there. it's going to be a huge help. So we really appreciate your time and just
thank you for your work and blessings to you and all that you're doing. You're very kind and thanks
for the good work you're doing. You're thoughtful and delightful and people benefit because of the
work you do. So thank you. Thank you. 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,
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Remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true
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What if procrastination isn’t about laziness… but a disconnect between who you want to be and what you actually do?
So many of us carry goals we care deeply about: habits we want to build, changes we long to make, ways we want to grow. And yet, we find ourselves stuck in the same patterns, circling the same resistance, wondering why it’s so hard to follow through.
In this episode, Dr. Alison Cook and goals expert and New York Times bestselling author Jon Acuff explore what’s really happening beneath procrastination and how to finally begin moving forward.
Because procrastination isn’t a character flaw. It’s a gap.
A gap between your intentions and your actions.
And over time, that gap can quietly erode something deeper: your trust in yourself.
If you’ve ever felt stuck, overwhelmed by your goals, or caught in cycles of starting and stopping… this conversation will help you understand why and what to do next.
You’ll explore:
- Why procrastination isn’t about laziness and what’s actually driving it
- The hidden impact of broken self-trust (and how to begin rebuilding it)
- How your “soundtracks” (repetitive thoughts) shape your actions and results
- The real reason discipline alone doesn’t work and what does
- The 4 key places people get stuck in the growth process (and how to move forward)
This conversation offers a practical, compassionate path forward, helping you close the gap between who you want to be and how you’re actually living, one small step at a time.
More Resources:
Make sure to grab Jon Acuff’s latest book Procrastination Proof: Never Get Stuck Again and then claim $97 worth of free bonuses.
Take Jon's free procrastination profile here.
Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram
Want to go deeper with Dr. Alison? Join 80,000+ soul menders in our email community and receive weekly reflections and gentle practices here.
Want to hear more like this? Start here:
Episode 199: How the Body Teaches the Soul with Justin Whitmel Earley
Episode 157: Braving Change—3 Ways to Get Unstuck and Transform Guilt and Regret
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
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TRANSCRIPT
Procrastination is just when your actions don't match your intentions. When there's a gap between
who you say you want to be and who you actually are. A goal is never just a goal. A goal is a
promise you made to yourself. And every time you break it, it gets easier to break the next one.
The things you think become the things you do become the things you get. And so there's a lot of
times where we over-focus on the results we want, but we never change the underlying thoughts so
we don't get new actions. Like, what does it look like for you to give yourself permission?
permissions that we found were the most valuable in this order were permission to dream,
permission to plan, permission to do and permission to review.
Hey everyone. And welcome back to this week's deep dive episode of the Best of You podcast. I'm so
glad you're here with me today for this conversation. Today's episode sits in a part of the growth
journey that I think is so important. So often here on the podcast, we talk about healing by
looking beneath the surface, by trying to understand our patterns, our pain, our stories,
the ways we've adapted in the places where we still need healing or repair. And this work is so
important.
truth about where we've been and what has shaped us. And it's all toward this wiser way of being
human. And there's also another part of growth that matters. It's equally important.
At some point, we find ourselves asking, now what? How do I move forward?
How do I make a change? How do I stop circling the same patterns, the same resistance, and actually
take a step toward the life I wanna live? We sort of move from the inside into the action. And
that's what today's conversation is about. I often get asked about the difference between therapy
on one hand and coaching on the other. And while there's absolutely overlap, between the two,
they're generally doing different kinds of work. Therapy is often about understanding our symptoms
and patterns and pain and relationships in the deeper context of our lives. Coaching,
on the other hand, tends to be more focused on goals, on action, on momentum, and helping you move
forward in a practical way. And both have incredible value. I think both are important and both can
serve us at different seasons of our lives. And part of wisdom is knowing which kind of help we
need in a given season. That's why I was thrilled to have John Acuff join me on the show today.
John Acuff is a New York Times bestselling author. He's a speaker, a coach, and an expert on
overthinking goals and getting unstuck. He's written several books, including soundtracks,
where he explores the repetitive thoughts that keep us trapped. And he has a brand new book out
this week. It's called Procrastination Proof. And if you're anything like me, that procrastination
topic really resonates. What I appreciate about John is that he brings a lot of practicality to
this conversation. He's thoughtful. He tells great stories. he's really observant about human
behavior. And his work is so helpful in just helping us figure out how to take that next step.
Because the truth is, insight matters. Understanding your story matters. And sometimes you also
need tools. You need structure. You need language for why you keep putting something off. You need
help noticing the thoughts that are tripping you up. And you need help getting into motion again.
That's where today's conversation goes. We talk about John's own story of procrastination and what
led him to write this book. We talk about goals, what makes a goal meaningful, and how to think
honestly about the difference between a life-giving goal and one that might be driven by pressure,
perfectionism, or even fantasy. We talk about the inner scripts we repeat to ourselves,
the soundtracks, that's what John calls them, these soundtracks that keep us stuck, and what it's
like to start rewriting. these soundtracks. And toward the end of the episode, John shares really
personally about how he's rewired his own brain to think differently about God. So with that,
please enjoy my conversation with John Acuff.
All right, well, John, I am thrilled to have you here today. I've followed your work and feel like
we have these overlapping circles with your background in Boston and Nashville. So thanks for
joining us. Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it. I want to just start kind of with your
personal story. Your book is so practical. It's about procrastination,
but it comes out of your own personal journey with procrastination. Would you start just helping us
understand your own relationship with procrastination and how things kind of shifted for you?
Yeah, a friend of mine who's a comedian said, I saw your new topic and I was like, oh, geez, this
guy, what does he know about procrastination? He's always getting things done. And that was a funny
statement because it meant he didn't know me the first 34 years of my life. I mean, I knew in the
third grade, speaking of Massachusetts, my... third grade teacher at Doyon Elementary School in
Ipswich laminated some poems. I knew in third grade I wanted to write a book, but I really was like
a lot of other people, pretty lost in my 20s, pretty aimless in my late 20s, pretty distracted and
frustrated in my early 30s, had a very up and down career, probably had six jobs in eight years,
like real jobs. pretty average marriage out of shape. And in my mid thirties,
I really started to tap into what mindset can do, what you can do with goals,
what you can do when you embrace this. really unpopular phrase in our culture called personal
responsibility. And I started to dial this in. And so I couldn't have written Procrastination Proof
as my second book because it wouldn't have been true yet. It would have been an arrogant 37-year
-old going, no, maybe this is the way. But on book 11 at 50, I feel pretty good going,
hey, I figured this thing out. And you don't have to wait to do the things you're called to do. And
there's some specific things you can do. So that's why I wrote it as somebody who had...
years, for decades, kind of started, stopped, started, stopped, tried a different thing, tried a
different thing, and never really gotten any traction. And so the last 16 years, I've released,
again, 11 books because I learned how to deal with what I would consider a mindset issue like
procrastination. Interesting. So how do you define it? How do you define this term procrastination
that so many of us are familiar with? Oh, yeah. My favorite definition that works for me is
procrastination is just when your actions don't match your intentions. When there's a gap between
who you say you want to be and who you actually are. And the flip of that, you know,
the opposite to me is a remarkable life. And that's when your actions overlap with your intentions.
Where there's almost the Venn diagram is so close that it's almost an eclipse. And so who you say
you want to be is who you actually are in a consistent, ever-growing way. And so,
yeah, procrastination is when there's a big gap between those two things. And an example of that
would be, according to the New York Times, 82% of Americans want to write a book. And if you look
at publishing records, less than 1% do every year. So 82% have this intention,
1% do the action. That's a massive gap. And so I like to use this book to close the gap with
people. Oh, that's such a great – this is what I love about your work. You take these sort of terms
and bring a depth to it because there's almost an integrity in what you're saying, right? There's
an integrity. Yeah. Yeah. I love that you use that word. I always tell people a goal is never just
a goal. A goal is a promise you made to yourself. And every time you break it, it gets easier to
break the next one. And you don't want to beat yourself up for breaking it, but there does become
this kind of residue and distrust. You start to distrust the person you spend the most time with.
And that's a really difficult place to be. Yeah. Yeah. You're building that, which is one of the
things. So on the podcast, we talk a lot about trauma and healing. And one of those very basic
building blocks is learning to rebuild that trust with yourself. So you went exactly where I want
to go. Before we go deeper on procrastination, let's back it up into goals. Because I think
sometimes we can beat ourselves up, right? And so we have a goal. We're not achieving it.
And a lot of times, I think what fills in the gap is shame. Right? Oh,
yeah. Which doesn't help at all. You know, I just beat myself up that I'm not the person I wish I
was. So talk to me a little bit. You're really big on goals. How do we,
and I know this ties into procrastination, so take this where you want to go, but how do we begin
when we've got a, you know, you talked about how you kind of had this pile of things you weren't
proud of. And I think sometimes we can get overwhelmed if we set the goal as,
something that we're not going to achieve. And then, then we feel more shame. Like, how do we just
start? How do we get out of that stuck place? Yeah.
A lot of my work is kind of the opposite of what's popularly said right now,
meaning like people go, go big or go home. But I know through experience with helping a million
people with their goals, most of them go home. And so a lot of what I do at the outset with
somebody is where they go, I want to change every part of my life. Or I want to run a marathon.
I'll always go, have you ever run a half marathon? Have you ever run a 10K or a 5K? Even just a K.
Get like a tiny little medal. And they go, no, I heard an Eminem song. I'm inspired. I bought a
carbon fiber bike. I'm going for it. And I know that's not sustainable. And so sometimes it starts
from a good place, like wild optimism. Or you see somebody online that tells you, you should 100x
your sales. And you go, well, I have to do it this way. And we feel like the little things don't
count. the little steps, the little progress. And then we do get into that shame where we're so
unfair to ourselves. I'll give you an example. I was talking to a real estate agent and she was
saying, I'm just not doing as many sales as I used to do. I'm not crushing it. And I said, well,
has anything in your life changed lately? Is there anything different? And she said, no, not
really. And I kept asking. And eventually she said, well, I mean, I am taking care of my dad who
has early onset dementia for about 20 hours a week. And I said, that's a massive shift.
The soundtrack that I gave her, and soundtrack is just a phrase I use for a repetitive thought, was
new seasons deserve new scorecards. New seasons deserve new scorecards. You're in a new season and
you're judging your current results against the season a year ago when you didn't have a dad that
you were trying to take care of. And it's the same with young moms when they have kids and they go,
yeah, I'm just not performing the way I want to. And I go, yeah, you have twins. You have two,
three months old. That you're wearing clothes is amazing. Like we're going to have to change the
bar. So I do spend a lot of what I do helping people. Be kind to themselves,
not beat themselves up, you know, not regret that they haven't made faster progress.
But it's just I've never met somebody whose tool for long term sustainable change was shame.
Like it's just not it's it's not a good like you can whip yourself into shape temporarily.
It's a really interesting conversation about. I meet CEOs and executives who used anger as a fuel.
Yeah. And the problem with anger as a fuel, it will get you some places. It will. It'd be silly to
not say otherwise, but it's kind of like when. When they launch a rocket, they have a certain type
of fuel that helps it break through the atmosphere. But then once it does that, they drop that fuel
because that fuel is not sustainable. It's too dangerous. You can't steer it. You can't actually
use it. They have to use a more stable fuel. And so I try to get people to go like, I get that
you've used this fuel to get somewhere. I'm just telling you. it's long-term,
it's going to ruin your marriage. Long-term, it's going to ruin your health. Long-term, you're
going to get some rewards, but you're not going to even enjoy them because you've burned yourself
up. I love that. You've got to meet yourself where you are as you're rebuilding that trust.
And I think that, and this ties into the procrastination conversation. I think a lot of people
think, to your point about the real estate agent you were working with, think that procrastination
is laziness. Oh yeah, no. What is actually going on beneath it then?
The people I know that work the hardest deal with procrastination the most. And the reason I say
that, like I always tell people that listen to podcasts like yours, by the way, congratulations,
you're a high performer. You're a high performer. They always go, no, that's other special
different people. And I go, no, low performers don't listen to podcasts like this. They don't even
know this category exists. They don't read books like these. That you're even in this conversation
means you're already. trying to change something. And so the people I know who go, Hey,
I want to do more. I know I'm capable of more are often doing a lot already. They just need to
tweak something. So no procrastination isn't a laziness problem and therefore hard work won't fix
it. Like discipline won't fix it. The big thing for me with discipline, I still haven't met
somebody who changed their life just because meaning they said, John, today I got up and decided to
have grit today. I just decided to have sacrifice or willpower. It's never that. It's usually one
of two things. There was a desire or disappointment. One of those two things got loud enough to get
their attention. There was something they wanted or they didn't like where they were. Like no one
willingly leaves the comfort zone. And you shouldn't. It's comfortable. The only reason people
leave the comfort zone is something outside of it is worth being uncomfortable for. And then you
go, oh, so for me, desire always leads to discipline, not the other way around.
And if you think work harder, if I just work harder, if I buckle down, I got to get my life
together. Like if you kind of try to wipe. knuckle that change, it's not sustainable. You don't get
the real change you want. So this really does, everything you're saying leads into this last book
you put out. I feel like there's a part one and a part two here, which was this, right? I mean, I
don't know if that's how you're thinking of it, but the soundtracks, which you mentioned, it's what
you're thinking. So tell us what you mean by soundtracks, because what I'm hearing and what you're
saying is your soundtrack matters to your motivation. Oh my gosh.
Yeah. So mindset's really easy. We've made it kind of woo woo in our culture where you think you're
going to light a sprig of sage in a drum circle and kind of manifest the universe. Like there's a
lot of like woo woo language around it, but mindset's very practical. Your thoughts turn into
actions. Your actions turn into results. The things you think become the things you do become the
things you get. And so there's a lot of times where we over-focus on the results we want, but we
never change the underlying thoughts so we don't get new actions. So for me,
mindset and goals are kind of like peanut butter and jelly. They just go together. And so what
you'll see is often somebody will do a couple different actions, but they haven't changed their
underlying thought, and then they don't actually perform the way they want to. And sometimes it's
they inherited an old soundtrack. from a family of origin. Sometimes it's they were told a certain
thing and believed it. Sometimes it's because they had never taught how to think. I was never
taught how to think. Like in eighth grade, I didn't have a mindset class. In high school, I didn't
have a, here's how to think about yourself in stressful situations so that you don't add shame to
the feeling of stress. You know, thoughts were something outside of us that just showed up on their
own. And then the older you get, hopefully you start to go, wait a second, I think I can control
what I think. I think I can renew my mind, if you will. I can take every thought captive.
I can think of what's noble and true and beautiful. And what if I actually did that? What would the
results be? And so for me, that's... That's what's really, really fun because then you can take
some simple steps. And here's a simple exercise every listener can do. It's my favorite when it
comes to mindset. All you have to do is, number one, write down a goal. And it can be any goal. It
can be I want to lose 10 pounds. It can be I want to write a book. I want to move to Boston. I want
to know my kids better. Any goal. Write down the goal. And the second step is listen to your first
thoughts about that goal. Listen to your reaction to that goal because every reaction is an
education. It's educating you about what you really believe. And then just say, Are they positive
or negative? When I wrote that I'm going to start my own podcast, what are my first thoughts? Oh,
you should. You've got so many interesting things to say. There's not enough podcasts yet. You
should do it. Or were they negative? Who are you to think you could do a podcast? You don't know
anything about the technology. You already missed the boat. And what you find is the majority of
those first thoughts are often negative. I still haven't met somebody whose problem with
overthinking is they overthink kind thoughts about themselves. Where they go, yeah, my main issue,
John, is I'm too nice to me. I'm too... I'm so quick to forgive myself that it's a real hassle.
And so then you go, okay, well, once you identify some negative broken soundtracks, you can do
something about them.
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Okay, this is so good. You are just speaking the language we talk a lot. My background is in parts
work. And so right, these are these parts of us this inner family of voices we have where one part
of us really wants to make this change. And I love what you're saying. Another part of us still has
this broken, you use the word soundtrack, this broken record. And the first step is just to notice
that. You're speaking right out of the therapy playbook. It's just that awareness, right?
It's not to... that. It's to notice it. That's what I'm hearing you say. Just to start to see how
common it is. I mean, even just in conversations with my wife, I told somebody, my marriage is so
easy when I don't add you idiot to the end of sentences my wife is saying to me. So when she says
like, hey, did you remember an umbrella? And I overreact. And I go, of course I have an umbrella.
I'm the king of umbrellas. I've always bringing umbrellas. I've added to her sentence, you idiot.
are forgetful you're not detailed you're gonna get wet you're gonna look whatever and her intent
was really just hey We both are going to get wet if we don't have an umbrella. But for me to notice
that and go, oh, wow, I just overreacted to a thing that didn't require that amount of energy, that
amount of emotion. And so for me, self-awareness is a superpower.
And so the three steps of soundtracks, it's very simple. I just teach people, retire your broken
soundtracks, replace them with new soundtracks, repeat those new soundtracks so often they become
as automatic as the old ones. So it's retire, replace, repeat. And it's been so fun for therapists
to reach out. I've had so many therapists go. Soundtracks, the book, is such an easy on-ramp to
conversation with people because it's really simple. It's really funny because I use a lot of
humor. Like I just know if I had named the book Soundtracks Inner Voices, men wouldn't have read
it. They just wouldn't have. Like because men don't want to admit they have an inner voice. But
I'll speak to 1,000 plumbers. I do 50 events a year. It'll be 1,000 plumbers, 98% male room,
and they'll admit they have soundtracks because the – allows them to talk honestly.
Okay. Ladies who are listening. This is for, that's a good tip for your husband who won't take the
therapy speak, but might take the soundtracks. That's a really, it's wild. I talked to 4,000
cattle ranchers the other day. I was at a cattle con, the world's largest beef event. And it was 4
,000 ranchers and they were willing to go on this, like, Oh, why am I holding on to my ranch and
not turning it over to the next generation? What's the broken soundtrack that I have about that?
That's holding me back from allowing my son or my daughter to step into this. And again, And if I
had named it inner voice, it would have been a non-starter. But because it's soundtracked, it's a
really easy conversation. I love that. So I heard you on a podcast share some research that just
stopped me in my tracks. And I'd love for you to share it with us. It had to do with some research
you ran across when you were researching soundtracks about improving at free throws. Oh,
yeah. That's crazy. It's crazy.
And there's so many studies like this. When you start to dig for them, there's just so many. So
this is Research Quarterly did a study where they had – on college students because it feels like
we're always testing things on college students. And so they wanted to test could you improve free
throws by just thinking about getting better at free throws. And so they had two different groups
and one – actually practiced. They went to the court, they shot free throws,
they held a basketball, they did all the things. And one just thought about improving their free
throw. So they'd imagine, okay, I'm shooting a free throw. Oh, I missed that one. Let me, let me
try again. Oh, let me change the arc. And at the end of the 21 day study, the group that had
actually used the balls improved by 24% and the group that had just thought about it improved by
23%. And, and so there's so many, and I mean like the other study that I sometimes reference is,
There was two student groups where they were supposed to form sentences out of a word bank,
like come up with some sentences, and one group had words related to being old, so retired,
slow, bald, Florida. And so they do this test for 45 minutes, and then they say the second part of
the test is down the hall. Please walk into the hall. And the scientists secretly timed how long it
took each group to walk to the end of the hall. And the students who had read the words about being
old physically acted old. They walked slower than the other group. And so you just see that over
and over and over again where the things you think are very important.
And then you go, why don't we talk about this enough? Like, why don't we have practical tools?
Why don't we, like... know, again, every eighth grader, every ninth grader you think about because
they pick these soundtracks up and we'll carry them for 30 years. Yeah. And then it's really hard
to kind of change them in your 60s, your 70s. But like, what if we could learn along the way? Yeah,
it is. It is a sort of mental rigor. And it's not like you're saying,
it's not magic. We are rewiring those neural pathways. And even as you are older, it is possible.
It's like you said, it's I'm thinking of the listener that, you know, it's like catching those old
messages of I'm not good enough or I'll never X or. Or your labels.
Yes. And just it's not magic. It's not. Sometimes I think we think of it like an incantation, like
you're saying. It's like building a muscle. And the neuroscience,
you know, you're genuinely kind of... slowly sometimes, but you're repaving a new neural pathway.
Wait a minute. There's that. I just went down that path. What if I took a right turn? What if I am?
And a lot of times I notice with folks who have them, they're really deeply ingrained. Sometimes
it's just what if I'm right? Just what if there's a possibility that I can,
you know, it doesn't even have to, I don't even have to be totally bought into it yet, but I can be
open to.
Well, and it's a practice too. That's the other thing. Like you have to see mindset as a practice.
I mean, that's why, you know, the third step for soundtracks is to repeat them. Sometimes like I
remember. When the book came out, 48 hours after it came out, people would email me and say, hey,
John, I retired my broken soundtracks. I replaced them with new ones, and it's just not working.
And I would say, well, the book's only been out for two days, so I know you haven't had a chance to
repeat them. Yes. And we want fast progress. So one of my soundtracks I tell people, because what
will happen in diets is people go, this exercise isn't working. I'll say, well, how long have you
done it? They'll say three weeks. They'll say, how long did it take you to gain the weight? They'll
say three years. So you gave the problem three years to develop, and the solution only. three
weeks. That's so unkind to yourself. Never give the problem a year and the solution a week. So like
some of this stuff does, and some of them can disappear in a, in a day. Like there's some that can
just unravel of course. Um, but there's some that like, One of my core broken soundtracks is around
the idea that the true test of talent and ability is to just be able to do things immediately.
No prep, no planning. Planning is cheating. Like the prodigy kind of, like I had this broken
soundtrack of like, we love the underdog story. Like there's a reason why Susan Boyle's audition
for Britain's Got Talent has 50 million views and Carrie Underwoods only has,
you know, a million. Because she didn't fit the mold and we all want to be like, oh, here's this
underdog story. And so I had to learn as a writer, like, no, planning is good.
It's actually good because every time I spend a lot of time on something, I would hear this broken
soundtrack to go, you must not be talented. If you're talented, this would be easier. You wouldn't
have to prepare. This is cheating. Like you really, you shouldn't, it shouldn't take this long. And
I thought, oh, that's interesting. And my definition of talent includes no prep. Boy,
you don't get to run a good business with no prep. Instant success. So the soundtrack that helped
me, and it's not my own, Keith Cunningham said it this way. not smart enough or talented enough to
be unprepared. And that really helped me. Like I'm not smart enough or talented enough to be
unprepared. So now I'm kind enough to myself to give myself preparation time so that I can perform
at my best. But I had to first notice that. You and I are both from... new england so we can bring
up tom brady but i think that's part of why we love the tom brady story is it wasn't an oh yeah
success barely drafted yeah yeah he was you know we he was he had to work he worked for everything
he has i mean obviously a lot of talent too but so let's bring this all back to procrastination
right when someone says because i we've kind of so i i do think a lot of what's underneath it is
our soundtracks are You know, there's more to it. But so so what how do you if someone is kind of
listening, going, I have these things I've wanted to do, you know, whether it's like you said,
you know, whether it's be a better parent, whether it's in the work arena, whether it's in the
relational arena or even just self growth. You know, I want to I want to get out of this stuck
place. And they're not seeing that. What are some. First steps,
what are some, what are you finding really can help us get into the,
out of the just can't get started phase? Yeah, I mean, it's what we've talked about for centuries,
I feel like. It's the small start. I think part of the pressure we put on ourselves, especially
around New Year's resolutions, is that we commit to doing something for a year we've never done for
a day, which is like marrying the person you just met at speed dating. And so I always tell people,
maybe just audition something. Like let's just do a small audition. Let's take all the pressure
off. So if you found 15 minutes a day for the next seven days to try something, let's see what
would happen. And maybe you love it and you double down at the end of the seven days or end of the
two weeks. Or maybe you realize, no, I really don't care about this. Like I've been carrying around
an old goal like some sort of baggage. I have to write a book. And you go like, no,
I tried writing for seven days. I didn't enjoy any of it. Turns out I don't need – and now you're
freed from this thing that – started from a good place, but it's become this anchor around your
neck. So I always try to get people to kind of start small. And then the book,
the core of the book is about how do you give yourself permission? Like what does it look like for
you to give yourself permission? And the four permissions that we found were the most valuable in
this order were. Permission to dream, permission to plan, permission to do, and permission to
review. So when I sit down with somebody, I try to get a pretty quick sense of like, where are they
stuck in that process? Because it's not complicated. So if it's, is it dream? Like they got so many
dreams, but they don't know how to pick one. And they're afraid if they pick the wrong one,
something terrible will happen. And so they're kind of frozen there. Or is it planning? Like they
need to do a little bit of planning and they don't know how to do that. Or is it the doing? And so
that's where I try to get people like, and we have a quiz that does that. It's at johnacoff.com
slash quiz, which is a couple of questions to go, Hey, which of these four spots are you going to
get stuck in? And what can you do about it? I love that. It's, it's deeper than just name it and
claim it there. There's a process. Oh my gosh. No. Yeah. I am so practical. I,
my favorite thing is to simplify complicated things and to add action to things that are kind of
like fuzzy and name it and claim it. is very fuzzy.
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I'm curious about that review step, not to give away everything you've – because I almost hear when
you're describing the start small and you're describing this process, a little bit of mindfulness
in it. Stay mindful because your goals might shift. I know I found that to be true in my life. I'll
have a goal, and then I'm kind of into it, and I'm in the right direction, but I'm like, the goal
changed. Actually, I don't want that thing. It's evolving. Is that something you run across?
Yeah, and it takes the pressure off. like perfectionists are worried that once they commit they
have to commit for the rest of their life i have to do this until i'm dead yeah and so what the
review does is it gives you a pause to go is this still the direction i want to go am i getting the
results i want to get is this still worth the time? Does this still serve me,
this particular goal? So yeah, the path is really, really easy. It's just four different people get
stuck. Dreamers get stuck in the dream stage, obviously. They have a thousand ideas, zero actions.
Perfectionists get stuck planning. They're going to change the world just as soon as the plan is
perfect. I just need a little more data. And there's no end to the data you can get right now,
unfortunately. The hustlers are who get stuck in doing. Hustlers hate a plan and they hate to
review. They just want to go, go, go. They never want to look up. They want to skip right from
dream, right into doing. Sales teams are amazing at this. Sales teams I work with will say things
like, I don't have time to fill out this paperwork. And the leadership will go, it's three fields.
We need to know the name of the customer you sold the product to. And they're like, get me back in
the streets. I'm a salesman. I just want to hustle. And then analysts tend to get stuck in review.
They overreview the mistakes from the past and predict failure in the future. And so they're really
good at going. That's not how we do things here. We tried that before and it didn't work. I'm
hearing that a lot right now with leaders in AI. They'll go, oh, we already tried AI. It didn't
work for us. And I'll go, when? And they'll go, four years ago. And I'll say, for how long? And
I'll say, about a week. We told our most technical guy, Gary, at the office to explore AI. It's
just not for us. And I'll say. it's changed a lot. Maybe we need to do a deeper review and figure
out what to do. But yeah, it's super simple and super fun, but the review is very valuable.
I almost hear in those different types. I think, again, there's a lot of freedom in that,
recognizing we're different kinds of people. I almost hear Enneagram types a little bit, or kind of
our predispositions. We're going to get stuck for different reasons. And so I love that idea of
kind of finding yourself in those four. Where do I tend to get stuck? I had a friend tell me, she
was more of a perfectionist and also maybe a little bit of a doer, but I'm trying to place her in
that. But she was telling me recently that she wrote a paper and it was like a perfectly formed
paper. It was like perfectly laid out, but she got a, it's graduate school. She got a bad,
you know, the teacher said, this is a perfect paper, wrong topic. So essentially she was
formulating all these ideas in the wrong direction. And maybe that's a doer thing where you're
working really hard, but you're not actually going for the thing you want. Yeah. You're making tons
of progress right off a cliff. You're running. There's tons of momentum. There's tons of –
I would say I have friends that I would call success voyeurs,
meaning they'll tell you the 20 leadership podcasts they listen to, but they don't change their
life. They'll tell you the 30 books they read by CEOs of billion-dollar companies, but they're in
debt. And it's their –
guzzling leadership content, but not changing their own life. And so it looks like hustle on the
out. And where I got in trouble with that is one year I read a hundred books and I realized at the
end of it, oh, I did that because I like to tell people I read a hundred books a year. Like I did
that for like the wrong, that's the wrong reason. And two, it was easier to read other books and
write my own. And so I was using a lot of outside on the looking hustle to avoid something that I
really needed to focus on because it was easier to be like, no, I'm just such a great reader. Like,
look at me go. And so that was a form of avoidance for me that actually looked like a lot of
effort, but it wasn't getting me to where I wanted to go. Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, I think we
even see that in therapy culture. We talk about on the podcast where you can have a ton of
knowledge and a ton of insight. But that doesn't always translate,
which is part of why I wanted to have you on the podcast. At the same time, we can have all of
that, and we still have to put one foot in front of the other toward rewiring the soundtracks,
right? Toward taking the steps. We still have to do the work. And you can get caught in all of the
knowledge that we have access to in this day and age. So that makes a lot of sense to me,
what you're saying. Yeah. It can be pretty, it can be, it's a good, it's a very, we call that a
noble obstacle. Like I've just have to finish. I have to master this before I change some part of
my life, which is like saying I have to read 10 books on swimming before I get wet. That's never
how it, like if you've read five books on difficult conversations, but you haven't started a
difficult conversation and like, it might be time to, to start some degree of difficult
conversation. Yeah. How do you, as we're kind of winding down, John, how do you,
see all of this work in your own life and the fruits of it overlapping and intersecting with
spiritual growth and spiritual formation oh yeah I mean my faith is my most important thing to me
so you know the I think there's a lot of people that when they read my books,
will recognize things like, oh, this is renewing your mind. Yes, that's what I hear. Yeah,
and so for me, they're hand in hand. They're not really separate in any way.
I can tell when I've forced an idea versus received an idea.
Meaning, you know, like I feel like writing is an act of worship for me. Figuring out these ideas
is an act of worship. And so I love when something shows up that I don't have to go.
I don't know where it came from. I'm just like, oh my gosh, God, you're so generous. Like what a
fun idea. Or like a very small example that would be the prodigal son story is probably one of my
favorite stories in the Bible. Absolutely love it. And I've read it probably 500 times. And one
time I read it and I realized that the father never talks to the son. And I'd never heard anybody
mention that. So if you read it. The son asks for his inheritance, and if you haven't read this
story, it's about a son who asks for his inheritance, blows his life up, and still gets
forgiveness. Son asks for his inheritance. Father doesn't say anything, just gives it to him. Son
comes home. Father hugs him and says to the servants, go get the robe, go get the fatted calf,
doesn't talk to the son. And so often as a believer, when God feels quiet, we think he's mad,
he's disappointed, he's frustrated. But what if he's just busy planning your party? He's got you
embraced, and he's busy. planning your party. And that kind of thing, I go, oh, that was a really
fun idea that I feel like I received from a generous God who loves giving ideas.
And so, yeah, for me, writing is a big part of that. But yeah, this is, you know...
It's fun to see the fruit of the work, and it's fun to also see the celebration when things happen.
The other parable I love is the talents where there's five, two, and one given, and then... they
double them and come home and there's a celebration and there's a lot of hangups I had from my
faith background about success. Um, that success was evil. Um, and that,
you know, Jesus rode a donkey, like your, your car should, should be, you should have a terrible
car. You should be, you should live in abject poverty because that's the only way that Jesus loves
you. And so over the years to see that I can be successful and still be generous,
that can be successful and not idolize it, that I can be successful and use my gifts to the full.
extent that I have them, that's been very eye-opening. And of course that fits in with personal
development and goals and numbering my days and having a clear vision and all the things that I
feel like God tells us again and again and again. Well, what's so interesting is everything you
just shared is a little bit of a changing a soundtrack.
Oh yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. I use them in my own, like that's what I don't think people
understand. I'm a very negative person by nature. Like my natural bent is pessimism,
cynicism, sarcasm. And I always say it's because I grew up in Massachusetts and we're wicked cold
people. Like when Noah Kahn said that he's mean because he grew up in New England, the singer
-songwriter, I was like, I get it. it dude so am i um but over time what happened was i learned
that positivity has a better roi than negativity yeah like when i'm positive i have more friends i
feel better physically i'm a better husband i'm a better dad i make more money so now i just
practice positivity and a big part of that practice is soundtracks. We made a soundtracks card deck
because I was carrying cards around in my pocket so much that said the soundtracks I wanted to
remember. I don't want my brain to have to remember to be positive or to remember this.
So like when I plan my week, I plan my soundtracks. I go, hey, I got a tough meeting on Tuesday and
it's going to be easy for me to roll into that meeting with that person as if they're my
competitor. Like I'm frustrated and when I'm frustrated, I make people my competitor. not my
coworkers. So I need a soundtrack on a post-it note that says, Brian and I want the same thing.
Brian's on my side. Brian is not my enemy. And I'll put it by my laptop. Like as I do the Zoom,
because I'm not going to hope I kind of sort of remember, I'm going to have that reminder and I'm
going to practice that repetition. And the meeting is going to go so much better versus me coming
in as like, I've already got my guard up and I'm fighting this person versus like, no, what's true?
What's true is this. Okay, well, let me remind myself of the truth in easy ways. That makes it so
much easier on me. I love that. And again, I'm also hearing in that.
We can't. You could do that. You could almost substitute for Brian, God.
Oh, my gosh. Yeah, yeah. Totally. We could retrain the soundtracks we have spiritually.
Oh, I thought God was a jerk for most of my life. Like most of my life. I was like, he likes,
he loves me, but he doesn't like me. Like he, he loves me at an obligation. Like we have a
contract. He's kind of a jerk. He wants the worst for me. Like, oh my yeah.
Name a bad soundtrack about God. And it's like, and then you add other people's like to the money
thing. I had a musician, I live in Nashville and I had a Christian musician say, if you buy a,
$90,000 Chevy Suburban. People go, good for you. It's a family car. Good for you. If you buy a $90
,000 BMW, they go, hey, the church probably needed that money. Wow. What's it like to worship
Mammon? Same amount of money, different perception. So then of course you go,
oh, well, success must be bad. And I always tell believers, the enemy only wins one of two ways,
when you abuse your gift or you don't use it. And so when you abuse it, you're achieving things
that like, it's not, they're not meant for you. You're hurting people, but not using it as just as
toxic out of a false sense of humility of like, I'm really good at this thing, but I don't want to.
And like, mine is like a big part of my mission is like, let's grab a shovel. I think you buried a
talent. And I think God's way better. Like I saw a guy wearing a shirt once at Costco and it said,
God's in a good mood. And that stopped me in my tracks as like, Oh, I don't. I don't know if I
believe that right now. Like I think he's kind of, kind of grumpy. And so that,
yeah, it's been a long process of that without a doubt. I love it. I have to say on a personal
note, because I love the sort of New England curmudgeonliness. I grew up in Wyoming as we were
talking. And when I first moved out there, even when I went to college, I went to college up in New
Hampshire, in New England, all the way from Wyoming. And I would just walk around smiling and
waving and greeting people by name. And people just kind of like look at me like, you're weird.
They don't want that. Just culturally so. different but over time what i learned is there's also
this um just this uh and again it's sort of a changed soundtrack right of like but gosh if someone
says they're going to show up they show up You know, right. So you don't have as much of the
superficial kind of smiling and let's get together and let's be best friends. Not, you know, but
but you have that real there's it's a different kind of integrity.
So I think that's interesting context for your own story, because who I think most people know you
to be is very positive, very forward looking. But there's that cultural thing that shapes us.
I can't lose it. Like when I'm in New England now, I'm still smiling. And I just it's part of how I
small. you know, Wyoming, you know, everybody by name, everybody's your friend is part of me.
I've had to actually learn a little bit, not to make go negative, but like, oh, you can't trust
everybody. You know, I've had to learn a little bit of healthy skepticism,
not hopefully cynicism, right, but just healthy. And almost in the opposite way,
you know, you've had, you know, some of that stuff is. it's, it creates those soundtracks, right?
You have to just, um, but, but I think that's interesting. It does. Yeah.
You've done it for years. Like that's the other thing is like, give yourself grace. Cause you've
practiced a certain way of thought for 15 years, for 20 years. My situation was the reverse. I grew
up in Massachusetts and then I went to school in Birmingham, Alabama. And nobody, nobody told me
like, Hey bro, that is not the South. That is the deep South. And I loved it.
But that first year was really hard because people would say to me, like, how's it going today? And
I was kind of like, what's it to you? Because in Massachusetts or New England, the stop and shop
cashier doesn't care how your day is. No, she's not going to ask. But like you, what I realized is
in New England, there's a townie. there's a townie loyalty, like your townie friends will be your
townie friends forever. And they'll link arms with you. They'll get through stuff, stuff with you.
So it's not that one is bad or good. It's just, they're so different. And yeah, I, that was a real
like whiplash for me. Um, but again, like the point being, you're really good at the things you
practice. And I'm just saying, I think you can practice something else. So like you can practice
permission, like giving yourself permission to go like, you don't have to like perfectionism. Great
example. I always preach the day after perfect. A perfectionist really needs to be deliberate on
the day after perfect, meaning they had a streak going, and it was amazing, and they missed one
day, and that'll wreck three weeks for a perfectionist. That'll wreck a month because the streak
ended. They start to beat themselves up. They're like, I can't believe I forgot to do blank,
whatever. I'm like, no, the day after perfect is coming. What permission are you going to give
yourself on that day? The permission to start again? The permission to go like, oh, okay. You know,
like back on the horse, like, oh, man, I wonder how long the next street can be like that. That
permission matters for that type of person. And it's OK that you practice the other way a long
time. Let's just practice a different way. I love it. I just think it's so helpful. And where can
my listeners, you know, I think a lot of. A lot of my, you know, it's like, how do we take that
next step? You have so many resources. As I think everybody's heard today, there's just a lot, a
wealth of wisdom, of practicality, of spiritual anchoring. Where can people find you?
And what kinds of things? I love the quiz sounded really interesting. Where can people find you and
get connected with what you're doing? Yeah, so the quiz is just joanacop.com slash quiz.
It's a free, super easy quiz. I have a podcast called All It Takes a Goal. The thing I'm really
passionate about right now, too, is we're doing small, intensive events in our office. We have a
beautiful office now in downtown Franklin for people who want to be speakers and writers. Because
for years, people have said, hey, I want to figure out how to do that. I want to do that more. So
we've got small events we do around that. And then, yeah, the new book is Procrastination Proof.
It's out everywhere books are sold. and I read the audio book and there's tons of bonus content in
it. So yeah. And then LinkedIn, I mean, everywhere that there's other than like Etsy, I'm not on
Etsy. I'm not doing anything on Pinterest right now, but other than those two things, if you type
in John Acuff, I'm probably doing something. Well, this is fun. Thank you so much for doing this.
Thanks. having me 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 youtube or wherever you
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the best of who you are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.
Episode Show Notes
What if the health of your relationship is shaping more of your life than you realize?
We spend so much time focusing on our individual growth—our healing, our self-awareness, our inner work. But at some point, that work has to find its way into our closest relationships.
And that’s where things often get complicated.
In this episode, Dr. Alison is joined by Dr. James Cordova to explore what it actually looks like to build and sustain healthy, connected relationships over time—and why it’s so much harder than we expect.
Because the truth is, relationships aren’t neutral.
They’re either strengthening and supporting your overall well-being…
or quietly eroding it.
If you’ve ever felt close to someone you love… and also strangely disconnected, this conversation will help you understand why.
You’ll explore:
- Why relationships are more foundational to your health than you might think
- What actually happens as intimacy shifts over time—and why it’s not a sign something is wrong
- The “porcupine dilemma” and why closeness and hurt often go hand in hand
- How small, everyday moments either build or erode connection
- What it means to respond to bids for connection—and why they matter more than you realize
- How mindfulness and presence shape the quality of your relationships
- What to do when you feel stuck, disconnected, or like you’re the only one trying
This conversation offers a compassionate and practical reframe:
Healthy relationships aren’t about avoiding conflict or getting it right all the time.
They’re about learning how to stay present, stay curious, and stay connected—even when it’s hard.
More Resources:
Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram
Read Dr. James Cordova’s book: The Mindful Path to Intimacy: Cultivating a Deeper Connectin With Your Partner
Check out Dr. James Cordova’s book: The Mindful Path to Intimacy: Cultivating a Deeper Connection With Your Partner
Get a relationship check-up at https://arammu.com/
Want to go deeper? Join 80,000+ soul menders in our email community and receive weekly reflections and gentle practices here.
Want to hear more like this? Start here:
Episode 115: 4 Ways to Transform Your Relationship—Expert Tips to Heal Pain Points and Deepen Intimacy
Episode 148: Dan Allendar on Healing, Intimacy, and Hard Fights
Episode 137: The Mindful Marriage with Ron and Nan Deal
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
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TRANSCRIPT
The quality of your relationship is either helping, it's either the rising tide that raises all
health boats, or it's hurting. It is never neutral. At the heart of mindfulness.
is this idea that attention is the most basic form of love. And whatever we're paying attention to
is the thing that we are nurturing. You're busy doing your thing and I walk in and I'm like, hey, I
was thinking about this thing. That's a bid. Hey, let's be here together in this moment. And when
you can show up in that moment with me, then that waters those seeds of connection.
The challenge is that if most of the time when I show up in bid, you either ignore me or you get
mad at me because I'm interrupting you, then I stop doing it.
Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's Deep Dive episode of The Best of You. I am so glad
you're here today because this is a conversation I am so excited to share with you. I hope you'll
send it to your spouse, text it to someone you love, listen to it together on a drive. Because what
we're talking about today isn't just for you, it's for both of you. We spend so much energy and
time working on ourselves, our own healing, our growth, our inner life. And this is all good and
important and necessary. But at some point, all of this inner work has to find its way into our
closest relationships. And this is exactly where today's conversation is going. My guest is Dr.
James Cordova. He's a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at Clark University,
where he directs the Center for Couples and Family Research. For decades, James has dedicated his
work to one of the most important and most neglected areas of human health, the health of our
intimate relationships. And what he's discovered and what I think will genuinely shift something in
you, I know it has for me, is that the quality of our relationships is never...
neutral. It's either the rising tide, as James says, that lifts every other area of our lives,
or it is quietly pulling asunder. There is rarely an in-between. I hear from so many of you about
how to apply this work into your most intimate relationships. And James is the author of a
fantastic book. It's called The Mindful Path to Intimacy. How to stay connected through the
challenges of life. It's a really practical book that brings together mindfulness and relationship
science in a way that is accessible to all of us, to anyone who is trying to love someone well over
the long haul. And here's what I love about the way James thinks. He doesn't believe that
struggling in your relationship means something is wrong with you or your partner. He believes,
and I think he'll convince you of this today, that intimate relationships are inherently,
unavoidably challenging. That we are all... every single one of us, what he calls porcupines.
I related to this so much when he shared this. We are soft and warm and desperately wanting
connection, but we are also covered in quills that we mostly don't mean to use,
but often do. And so the question isn't whether we'll hurt each other. We will.
The question is whether we have the skills, the awareness, and the support to stay close to each
other anyway. We talked today about what healthy relationships actually look like,
why mindfulness is one of the most powerful tools we have for intimacy. We talk about the small
everyday moments that can either build or erode our connection over time and what to do when we're
stuck, when the DIY approach just isn't enough and we need a little outside support. This is one of
those conversations that I found myself nodding along to from start to finish. It just struck as so
profoundly wise about the reality. of the both and of relational intimacy. We need it.
It's how God designed us. It's beautiful. And it's also incredibly challenging.
So I hope you'll listen in and grab your person if that would be helpful to you, or at least plan
to pass this one along. Please enjoy my conversation with Dr. James Cordova.
James, I'm so thrilled to... this conversation, so many of the questions I get from listeners are
around relationships. And as we were talking before we started recording, a lot of my audience has
a built-in understanding of the value of marriage, of being partnered,
of loyalty, and yet intimacy. And connectedness is in many ways a much different thing.
From your perspective, what is a healthy relationship?
Why are relationships so important and what are they forming in us over time?
Ah, such a good question. You know, part of what we are really focused on in the work that I do is
the significant. impact that our relationships have,
not just on our day-to-day happiness and general sort of psychological well-being,
but the important impact, the measurable impact that the quality of our relationships have on our
physical health, on all the dimensions of our mental health, on the outcomes for our children.
You know, we tend to Even when we really value it, we tend to think about relationships in terms of
it's almost like they're the icing on the cake. Right. Like if you've got a satisfying,
happy making, intimate relationship, like that's the cherry on top. Yeah. But it's not necessarily
like we don't tend to think about it as a significant part of our overall health system.
We don't treat it like we treat with the same. with the same seriousness in some ways that we treat
our physical health, even our dental health, right? And so one of the things that I really am
intent on emphasizing in my work is the quality of your relationship is either helping,
it's either the rising tide that raises all health boats, or it's hurting. It is never neutral.
Oh, that is so good. That dental analogy, immediately, I just thought,
right. And we regularly check in on our dental health and maintain it and take for granted when our
teeth are working well. But man, when they're not, it's painful. Right, right. Exactly.
In the state of what I'm now calling relationship health care, the state of relationship health
care at the moment is either do it yourself. DIY or emergency medicine,
you know, where like it's couples therapy after a relationship,
a marriage has been suffering for years or, you know, good luck out there,
you know, do your best on your own. And, and what we are, what we're discovering is that,
and what we all sort of know from our own experience, right. Is that intimate relationship that.
close emotional mental physical proximity is by its nature extraordinarily challenging and and so
to go to the dental analogy again like if taking care of our dental health was entirely up to us
and the only access we had to dentists was after our teeth had been hurt for a while you know we
wouldn't have so many teeth yes uh and and leaving our relationship health entirely in that diy
column i think is a significant part of why the the you know for decades now regardless of what
we've done and tried the divorce rate hovers around 50%.
Yep. Because we don't have a way of thinking about relationship healthcare as something that we can
seek skilled professional help on.
in that sort of regular proactive way that we do with our physical health and our dental health and
honestly nowadays even with our mental health yes that is such a revel i love that relational
health care and i'm hearing a couple things in what you're saying one we need these intimate
relationships they're not fringe they're not side notes they're foundational i think i hear you
saying just as our physical health is but we have no skills no training and no mechanism to
maintain them because they are complicated I heard you say they are inherently challenging. It's
really interesting. The skills,
the attitudes, the ways of being in the world that are really beneficial to long-term relationship
health, we don't come by them naturally. Yeah. Right?
Interesting. And we don't learn them in school, for sure. Right.
And so we're all just sort of entering into this really complex human experience.
You know, with whatever we learned on the street corner, you know, like just just doing our best.
Right. So it's a little bit like having never, you know, lifted the hood of a car before.
Yeah. We're just like, I can probably figure this out.
That is, and then I want to take us to the beginning. And also, so often we're doing this when
we're still pretty young and hardly formed ourselves, right? So I'm thinking of folks I know and
all the weddings I was in at 25, 26, 27. I didn't get married till later.
And in some ways, I've thought about that as a huge advantage in the sense of just knowing myself a
little better and my husband knowing himself a little better. But that's not always the case. But
especially if we add him. You're young. You fall in love. You don't even know yourself very well
yet. And then you've entered into this bond with this other person. So talk to us a little bit
about that lifespan. You know, if we're thinking about intimacy, when we first connect, it can feel
effortless. It can feel like, oh, I can handle this car. You know, this is easy.
It's easy to drive. It's fun. There's no issues. It's brand new. You know, we don't have any miles
on it. So it's driving great, you know. Three thousand miles. They're amazing.
So so what's happening in that phase? Why is it important and what inevitably shifts?
I think, you know, the way that I think about long term intimate relationships is that that sense
of deep connection, that sense of warmth and and and love and affection and acceptance and and.
just comfort, you know, is rooted in our shared vulnerability and how we care for each other,
you know, how we care for each other's vulnerability. We are, by our nature, vulnerable.
And in an intimate relationship, you know, you're the person that I'm most vulnerable to.
And so when we first form our relationships, you know, we are putting our best foot forward.
Yeah. Right. We are on our best behavior. Right. And oftentimes in those first few moments
together, those first few meetings, what we're experiencing is somebody who seems to like us.
Yeah. Somebody who's into us just for who we are. Yeah. Right.
That first blush in the relationship feels like, oh, I think I finally maybe found somebody who's
going to like me just the way that I am. And there's an incredible, we call it intimate safety.
There's an incredible blossoming of this sense of opening, right? That,
oh, I can be myself. Yes. This person thinks I'm funny. They think I'm good looking.
They want to hang out with me. Yeah. Right. And that is such a heady and intoxicating moment for
both people to just fall into that experience of feeling treasured just for who they are.
And then because vulnerability never becomes invulnerability,
it starts to get complicated relatively quickly. Interesting. The metaphor that I've been loving
recently in this spot is called the porcupine's dilemma. And the story of the porcupine's dilemma
is like, we're all porcupines. You're a porcupine. I'm a porcupine. Our partners are porcupines.
Everybody out there that is a human being is a porcupine. Which is this really interesting animal,
right? We're mammals. We got this nice soft sort of fuzzy underbelly. You know,
we like to be close. You know, we need to be physically close to each other. And we're covered in
quilts. Yes! Oh, that's so good! Right?
So when you get close enough to feel the warmth.
You're also inside of quills distance by necessity. And so we are going to both experience all the
warm fuzzies of being close. And we're both going to quill each other, mostly by accident,
on a relatively regular basis. That is the dilemma, right?
Because by our nature, when we're hurt, right? Like if I catch a quill...
if and mostly like it's almost always true, like you didn't mean it. Right. But whatever,
you were in a grumpy mood or I was in a grumpy mood or or, you know,
I'm tired, I'm hangry. Right. Whatever it is, you know, like like you accidentally catch a quill.
Our natural reaction comes out of our ancient past. Right. Like like we we were,
you know, when we're hurt, we respond with either fight or flight. Yeah. And and that was,
you know, in our in our in our history as a species. Right.
That was in the service of not getting eaten by bears. Yes. Yes.
Very functional. So, yeah, very functional out in the world of lions and tigers and bears and
enemies and, you know, disaster. But it, you know. It's so not functional.
It's like anti-functional in an intimate relationship, right? If you quill me and I respond with
fight and quill you back, now we're both hurt, right? And now both of us feel a little less safe
being our vulnerable, authentic selves with each other. If you quill me and I flight,
right? Like I pull back into stone cold silence. Right. Or I like, you know, turn my back on you or
just get, you know, just get quiet, you know, and withdraw. Then then, you know,
in a way it's its own quill. Right. So now, you know, now I'm turning away and and and missing that
connection and that warmth. And and again, neither one of us are are feeling.
as safe or as connected with that vulnerability. And my worry is that like,
I'm going to go back to the analogy, like if we aren't going to the dentist on a relatively regular
basis to get the plaque that grows up that we can't get at with a DIY approach removed,
then you're going to have trouble. You're just going to lose teeth.
And most people, most of us, I would say it's quite common,
extraordinarily common, that we respond to the dilemma of being porcupines by pulling just outside
of Quill's distance. So that we're close, but we're not too close.
Right. Like I'm trying to live with you. I'm trying to raise children with you. I'm trying to pay
bills with you. I'm trying to have a life with you. But I'm trying to also not get hurt by you and
not hurt you. And I've just just by living sort of discovered that I have to maintain a certain
amount of distance from you in order to do that. And so we're in these long term family loving
relationships, but we're lonely. Because we haven't been, we haven't acquired the skills to stay
inside of Quill's distance, to even move inside of Quill's distance on a regular basis,
right? We're trying to keep ourselves and each other safe by staying in this place that feels safe
-ish, but kind of cold.
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Wow, that is such a powerful way to understand sort of that ongoing challenge of living with
another porcupine. I think that is such a valuable metaphor. It's just we I am one and you are one.
And this is just our reality. How do we navigate it? So this brings me to your work in particular
focuses on mindfulness.
which is something we often think of as an individual practice. We had on the podcast for my
listeners, you'll remember Jud Brewer, who is an expert on mindfulness out of Brown University, our
neighbor down the road, who kind of talked about it from a, you know, more of that traditional
sense of being in the moment, paying attention. How do you see it as one of the essential tools of
relational intimacy?
The the at the heart of mindfulness is this idea that attention is the most basic form of love.
Attention is the most basic form of love. And whatever we're paying attention to is the thing that
we are nurturing. Yes. And and for most of us, we are.
Let's say they're plants that we're watering, seeds that we're watering. And for most of us, most
of the time, the seeds that we're watering with our loving attention are seeds of like anxiety
about the future or regrets about the past, right?
Or just, you know, worries, fears, resentments that we're carrying,
right? And what we are missing. is the opportunity to really nurture and be nurtured by the
vividness of our life in the present moment, right? By the gift that is what is here right now.
Wow. That, you know, one of the ways that I've begun to think about this is I'm always struck by
this. quote from Meister Eckhart, who is this Christian mystic.
He says, if the only prayer you say in your entire life is thank you, that will be sufficient.
Like that will suffice, right? And the thank you for what is arising and being created in the
moment is what we are cultivating with the practice of really just...
very deliberately anchoring our attention, practicing bringing this loving attention to the present
moment. And that's obviously inclusive of these ought to be treasured moments between ourselves and
others. Interesting. And so... talk about these small,
everyday interactions. Is that kind of what you're getting at? So when I was listening, I was
thinking about if I'm kind of stressed out about something or worried in the future,
I'm not present. So I am stressed out, but I'm not really present to,
oh, I'm tired right now or I'm stressed right now. I if if say my spouse comes in and interrupts me
and I'm frantic and I'm in that kind of adrenalized like I got to just get things done because I
got too much going on and I'm worried I might kind of snap at him for not understanding hey don't
interrupt me right now which is a porcupine quill versus and so it seems as if mindfulness both is
is it's a two-part process it's I have to be present enough to go I'm anxious so then if he comes
into my space my my attentiveness both to my own self a lot of what we talk about my backgrounds in
parts work so if i'm attentive so for my listeners right this is where the parts work comes into
the intimacy right if i'm attentive and can be present to i'm anxious in this moment if my spouse
comes in i can receive that as i can then be present to him And maybe even invite him into that
with me. I'm anxious. Thank you for I'm kind of just thinking, like,
how does this it's like when I'm in when I'm all tied up inside, often that's when I quill,
basically, is what I'm trying to say. Exactly. Regardless of what my spouse does, it might be he's
trying to do something nice. It might just be that he needs something. Right. And mindfulness
enters into that as I'm both present to myself and present to something that he's trying to offer
in that moment.
Am I kind of making sense of that? Exactly. And this is the most powerful gift that we can give to
ourselves and each other is our presence. Yeah. And what you're highlighting is that we're often
not present. You know, we're often so caught up in what's going on inside our own experience,
inside our own mind. And again, that's often about things that aren't actually happening right now.
Things that aren't actually fully present, right? And the way that we nurture our connection is
with that presence and that attentiveness, that loving attentiveness to each other.
So you probably... heard about and even talked about on on your podcast about this idea of
responding to bids yes right yes i love the bids which is which is that's what it is you know like
when when you know in the moment you know like you're busy like you're saying you're busy doing
your thing and i walk in and i'm like hey i was thinking about this thing and that's a bid for like
hey let's be here together in this moment And when you can show up in that moment with me,
then that waters those seeds of connection. And that's that's essential for the long term health of
our relationship. The challenge is that, like, if most of the time when I show up in bid.
you either ignore me or you get mad at me because I'm interrupting you, then I stop doing it,
right? I start to go do something else with my time because it's a quill, right? Like, oh, that
sort of stung. And so I'm going to do a little bit of a flight thing by moving away. And that can
calcify, right? So that I just don't bid. And I'm not even maybe even consciously aware that I'm
not doing it anymore. You know, it's just that something has grown up in that space between us.
And now it's like plaque, right? That we're not really able to remove ourselves sometimes.
That's so good. And that bid could be tiny. It could be as simple as your spouse or your
significant person entering the room and asking something insignificant.
But I love how you say that. That is a bid for attentiveness and inviting you into that present
moment. So I'm sure you get this question all the time.
Sure.
I have to ask because I can hear in my listener, I sometimes get, this is the email I get. I'm
trying to work through my own kind of quilling, my own triggers.
But maybe my partner isn't either also doing that,
right? Maybe they're not as aware. They're not as able to connect.
Which is, you know, how do we what do we do when that feels like there's a mismatch in my growth in
trying to be more present and trying to notice those bids? But then my partner maybe just takes
that noticing and runs with it and doesn't also offer me the same in return. I'm not sure if I'm
asking that well. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's such a common.
It's such a common experience that we have, right? Like, I feel like I'm trying, you know,
I'm giving attention, I'm giving generosity, I'm giving love, I'm giving kindness.
And I feel like I'm trying, right? And my partner's not responding in the way that I wish they
would.
You know, the place that I sort of always want us to start is in recognizing that you know,
we're all kind of doing our best here, right? You know, that we can,
you know, the answer is a kind of like love them anyway, right?
And, you know, for me, one of the things that's often true that I attend to when I'm working with
couples is that partner that's a little bit quieter, that partner that's a little more turned away,
that partner that has in some ways, just fewer relationship skills,
fewer relationship behaviors, like that, that came to them relatively naturally,
right? Like a lot of us are actually, you know, like vulnerability is vulnerable for all of us,
but a lot of us are especially punished for doing the things that reveal ourselves as vulnerable
for doing the things that are, um, connecting and risky in a relationship and and it can seem on
the on the surface of it like a hardness or a coldness but it's actually a protective layer and if
we can uh like see through that protective layer to to touch what's on the other side to really
treat that person as though we know that they're vulnerable, we know that they are suffering,
we know that they need love and care, we make it safe for them to express their authentic selves
with us, then that will grow. So let me give you an example.
It is not uncommon for me when I'm working with a couple, you know, they'll come in and and,
you know, the wife will often be like, OK, so let me tell you what's going on. You know, these are
our problems X, Y and Z. And these are the ways in which, you know, like he's misbehaving and I
wish that he would be better. And then I turn to him and say, so tell me a little bit from your
perspective about, you know, what's bringing you to couples therapy. And he'll say, well, I guess
mostly just what she said. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like, like, I guess I'm just here to get yelled at by
the principal. Right. And, and when I can respond with empathy for what it's like to like,
I mean, I can imagine that it's challenging to feel like. I'm doing my best in this relationship.
She seems really unhappy. I'm not sure what I can do to make her happy.
I feel like I'm a good husband and I know she's asking something of me,
but I can't quite seem to make her happy. And I just feel like I love her and I want to feel
connected to her, but I feel stuck. And like, I just wish I was receiving more.
affection and affirmation and admiration and i just don't know how to get back there does that seem
like part of what you're experiencing and then you know this sort of like emergence of yes that's
exactly what it's like and i said well tell me a little bit more about that and then he goes on for
minutes and then to have the wife toward towards him and turn towards me and say that's the most
he's said in the last 17 years that we've been married right and it's like it's not magic it's
empathy it's caring it's compassion right you know it's not well i'm upset with you and so i'm just
going to try to get something soft out of you by quilling you right it's you get to be you like
tell me what it's like to be you let me be curious about you and not meet that with argument,
but meet that with, I get it. And when we feel like, oh,
it's safe for me to be angry, right? It's safe for me to feel resentment. It's safe for me to feel
like it's not fair. And that still gets met with like care.
Then we really open up.
Yeah, it's so good. We don't create softness through quilling. Right.
Even though it makes sense. Because I want something, so I'm trying to get it. Yeah, exactly.
And I think it goes both ways because I can imagine in that same moment, then the other spouse
could be heard in, I just feel like I'm carrying. We talk about the mental load with women.
I just feel like I'm carrying so much. And it's not even that I...
i just need someone to see that you know it's oftentimes then you can see that kind of come out
it's like i don't mean to come at you with it but and and i think this is where james i'm curious
your thoughts on this where we we we can't want our and i and i want to be clear i guess that we're
not talking here about extremes of pathology where there's no no narcissism where there's abuse you
know this is not what we're talking about we're talking in the realm of two people who are doing
their best is that fair to say yeah yeah absolutely so it within that it's often not that i so
often i'll speak for myself i want something from my spouse that in fact what i really want is just
that primal attachment i want to be seen i want to be heard i want to be and and i get that we're
different people and yeah when my better self comes on i'm like i'm so glad because we have
different skill sets right i sure i am so grateful i did not marry another therapist right that is
a good thing there are things he offers me that i do not so just in my own case and and so there
are things that i I think all of us, whatever our dynamic is, there are different skill sets and
different strengths. And when we get overwhelmed, it's like, I just want something I don't even
know what. And that's kind of why we're quilling. Yep. And I kind of hear you saying the whole
trick is to get underneath that and just see each other for how we each are in that moment.
Right, right. And to stay, to be able to breathe. into it to breathe through it to stay present
even when it's hard when it's uncomfortable when the when the thing that you're telling me i don't
really like the thing that you're sharing with me i wish you weren't sharing this with me right
yeah right but i'm gonna stay and that's one of the key for me that's one of the key gifts of a
contemplative practice that's one of the key gifts of of mindfulness contemplative prayer however
we practice Being fully present in the moment, regardless of what's going on with us,
because it helps to create this this resilience, this this this sort of like courage or,
you know, benefit that I know I can feel these feelings.
I can feel uncomfortable. I can feel upset. Like I can feel the quill and not respond with
reactivity, not respond with fighting, not responding with flight. But I can just feel it.
I can host it with grace. And that doesn't come to us naturally.
That capacity to be present with. discomfort without becoming destructively reactive takes practice
it and it takes that kind of i can just be here with it practice wow and and we don't give
ourselves a lot of opportunity to do that to just like you know sometimes in my own practice the
most the most like productive uh practices that I've had have been just when I'm sitting down with
like, this sucks and I'm just going to sit here and be with it. Wow.
And after a few minutes of just allowing it to feel the way that it feels, something softens,
something opens up and a greater, it's a greater kind of like kind maturity that I think takes
root. Wow. Yeah, this is where the parts framework is really helpful to me. It's like a part of me
is like, I don't need to hear this story again. But another part of me can come online and say,
but I love this person and I'm going to stay present. Right. And when you said take a breath,
right, that's that's the it's the both things can be true. And I can I can honor both.
I don't have to both can be true in this moment and I can be present in a different way.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And that and that is that is the allowing.
I love that. It's the allowing for more than one thing is happening. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like like
something's going on between us that feels a little hard. Yeah. And and there's a part of me that
wants to fight back. There's a part of me that wants to defend myself. There's a part of me that
wants to shut down and run away. All of that gets to just be there. Yeah.
simultaneously, I know that the best thing I can do for myself and for my partner is to stay kindly
present and to just offer my attention and my sort of compassionate curiosity.
What I often, the mantra that I often teach to my couples is just tell me more.
So so this thing happened at work. Tell me more. There's this thing that you're doing that's
driving me crazy. Tell me more. Right. You know, like, oh, there's this thing about you that I love
you that I love about you. Tell me more. Right. Like, just tell me more about what it's like to be
you. And when we feel like somebody cares to know, that's the greatest gift.
Not fix, not not make better. Just be with. Yeah.
Yeah. One, I feel like we might need to have a part two because I want to honor your time because
I'm going to throw out a question here at the end that really is a toll episode. So what about when
I love this and I know for my own work that this is truly does lead to to change and growth.
It's not you're not saying and I want the listener to hear this. This isn't saying just just.
deny your own needs or just take care of this other person. It's much deeper than that.
It's deeply formational. And you're great with metaphors, but in my mind,
it sort of creates an environment where this other person may also feel that shift.
And we just know that quilling doesn't create change. So trying curiosity,
trying presence. And then that does lead me to
What if there still is that rupture? What if that other person, there does need to be a change.
There comes a point where I do need to say, hey, you're not listening to me. Or I'm still feeling
like this thing you're doing. And I know this is a different skill, is my guess. Sure.
But can you touch on those moments when we do need to have a confrontation or we do have a rupture
and we need to address it?
You know, again, there's these two there's these two domains. One is how much of this can I do
myself? How much how much is it? How much of this can I address in that DIY way?
Yeah. And and sometimes we can. Right. With the right attitude,
with enough, you know, grace and forbearance and and forgiveness and,
you know. relationship mindedness right we can we can call out to our partner and invite them you
know from the place of our own yearning right it's not like you're doing it's not like you're being
bad you're not a bad person I'm yearning for something and I'm inviting you to like care about that
and I know that you're yearning yearning for something for me and I want you to tell me what that
is so that I can care about that as well that that we can practice in our relationships and then
there's this other domain which is like nobody can be their own dentist Right. You know, sometimes
it's and I would say for all of us, there are going to be those moments when we just need a little
help from somebody who's spent their lives specializing in helping couples move past places of
stuckness in a relationship. Right. And with, you know, you know, my whole career has been trying
to find ways to lower the shame, the embarrassment, the expense.
the time commitment, all of the barriers to just like get, even if it's just little bits of
professional care on a relatively regular basis, right? Because we can't, we,
I mean, again, just look at the divorce rates. We clearly can't do it all on our own. That's just
the divorce rate. And then the percentage of couples that are unhappily married,
but still together is also like. We say like at any one point in time,
20% of all marriages are significantly distressed. So one in five, like that's an epidemic.
And, you know, even. So for example, the thing that I specialize in,
which are these regular relationship checkups, even just one session, one or two sessions is often
for couples. That's all we needed. We just needed somebody to help massage out this one stuck spot
for us. You know, not everybody needs sessions and sessions and sessions and sessions of couples
therapy. Some people do, but most of us just need somebody who's got an outside perspective and who
specializes in working with couples to spend an hour with us. That is profound.
I really appreciate your sharing this hard-earned wisdom with my community because I do think it
can feel so overwhelming. And I, again, just going back to the car, you know,
sometimes you need an oil change. Sometimes you need to take out the transmission, but both require
a little maintenance. And I just, I really appreciate,
I think it's, I just kind of, Clinician to clinician, I almost only work with individuals because I
think couples work is challenging because of everything you're saying. Most of us providers are
scared to death of couples therapy. Yes. And I really respect and I'm grateful for,
it's so important as to your point, this is a huge, we are not created and designed to be alone.
Right. We are, there's something inherently. beautiful about intimacy and togetherness and in all
of God's creatures. It's really fascinating. So tell my listeners where they can find more about
your work, your book, and what you provide. Absolutely. So the easiest place to get a hold of me
and the folks that I work with is at our website, which is aramu.com,
A-R-A-M-M-U.com. Aramu is... As far as we can tell from our Google searches,
ancient Sumerian for love. And Aramu is a spot that we are,
that's where it's a relationship healthcare clinic. And it's also a spot where we train providers
to both provide regular relationship checkups and do couples therapy.
So we train providers and we provide. relationship health care to couples. That's amazing.
Well, we will link to all of that in the show notes. So grateful for your time and your wisdom and
just sending, you know, so much, so many blessings to you and your important work. Really grateful.
Thank you so much, Allison. I really appreciate it. Yeah. 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
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Episode Show Notes
What if love doesn’t wait until you’re ready… but meets you right in the middle of the mess?
This week, as part of the Holy Week series on The Best of You Every Day, Dr. Alison offers a deeper dive into one of the most intimate and unsettling moments in the story of Jesus—the night before everything changes.
At the table, surrounded by people who will betray, deny, and abandon him, Jesus doesn’t withdraw. He doesn’t wait for clarity or understanding. He offers himself anyway.
If you’ve ever struggled to receive love… especially after being hurt, this episode will help you understand why.
Let’s explore:
- Why does love sometimes feel hard to receive when you need it most?
- Why do you find yourself pulling back, shutting down, or questioning love?
- What’s the difference between protecting yourself… and closing yourself off?
- Why doesn’t healing always feel comfortable in the moment?
- What does it actually look like to take one small step toward receiving love?
This conversation offers a gentle, faith-rooted invitation to slow down this Holy Week—to sit in the tension, the confusion, and the not-yet—and to begin receiving love right where you are, even if it feels unfamiliar, imperfect, or hard to trust.
More Resources:
Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram
Want to go deeper? Join 80,000+ soul menders in our email community and receive weekly reflections and gentle practices here.
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
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TRANSCRIPT
When you're sitting there after heartbreak, after the end of a marriage, after the loss of a hope,
the loss of a dream, what are you really believing about yourself in that moment? Heartbreak has a
way of revealing the toughest, nastiest things that we think about ourselves. And until we can tap
into that and confront that and begin to work on changing that, as soon as we become aware of
things, that's the only place we can start to kind of dust them off and begin to work with them.
Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I'm so glad
you're here with me for today's deep dive conversation. This is for anyone who's ever known the
ache of heartbreak, rejection, or disappointment, and especially for those of us who know what it
is to take these experiences deeply into our bodies and our stories. I want to begin today with
this simple, beautiful reminder from Psalm 34, 18, the Lord. is near to the brokenhearted and saves
the crushed in spirit. I love this verse because it doesn't rush us past pain.
It doesn't minimize heartbreak or ask us to tidy it up too quickly. It simply reminds us that when
our hearts are broken, when we feel crushed in spirit, God comes near.
Maybe you've had a relationship end and found yourself not only grieving the loss, but also
wrestling with that deeper question underneath it all. What does this say about me? Maybe you've
been betrayed, overlooked, misunderstood, or left holding a pain that seems to reach far beyond the
moment itself. And maybe if you're honest, you've found yourself carrying not just the sadness,
but even shame. Maybe self-blame. confusion, that sense that something painful out there has
somehow turned inward on yourself. If that resonates, I think today's episode is going to meet you
in a really powerful way. My guest today is Dr. Pisa Mahdi, and this conversation was so rich
because she brings both her incredible professional wisdom and a deeply personal honesty to the
subject of healing. Dr. Pisa Mahdi is a psychology professor, speaker, coach,
and mental health expert. She's the author of numerous books, including her brand new book.
It's called The Wholehearted Way, Finding Peace After Life's Heartbreaks, Disappointments,
and Rejections. And it is exactly that kind of book, one that helps us understand why rejection
cuts so deep, how old wounds can shape the stories we tell ourselves, and how healing begins not by
pretending the pain isn't right. but by letting it reveal what's been living underneath the surface
all along. What I really appreciate about Dr. Peace is that she writes and speaks from that rare
place where clinical insight, faith, and her lived experience all meet. She understands that
heartbreak is never just about what happened right now. It's also about where heartbreak has
touched us in the past. The beliefs it exposes, the old wounds it often awakens.
The parts of us that begin to wonder, am I too much? Am I not enough? Am I somehow the reason this
happened? And in today's conversation, that's where we're headed. We're going to talk about
rejection wounds, shame, self-blame, nervous system responses, and the way heartbreak can
sometimes become an opening into deeper healing all the way back to the past. We also talk about
faith, what happens when pain doesn't just shake your trust in other people, but begins to shake
your trust in God. And Dr. Peace offers such a grounded, compassionate vision of healing.
She's so real. I loved this conversation. She doesn't give us a neat and tidy formula or a forced
kind of happy ending, but she wants us to learn to hold the truth of our pain alongside the
possibility and the hope of peace and healing and even more goodness. I know so many of you will
feel seen by this conversation as I did. So whether you are in the middle of a heartbreak of your
own, whether you're trying to make sense of an old wound that still gets touched, or whether you're
simply longing for a more compassionate and whole way of walking through disappointment, I'm so
glad you are here with me today. Please enjoy my conversation with Dr.
Peace Amadi.
Well, I'm thrilled you're here. And I would love for you to open this conversation in the way that
you open this beautiful new book, The Wholehearted Way. I love the title, by the way. I want to get
into how you landed on that. We have so many overlaps in our interests, and you're just bringing
such a beautiful lens to this conversation. You start the book with a pretty vulnerable story about
sitting on a plane after experiencing betrayal. Would you tell us about that moment?
Kind of what... were feeling in your body, what was going on in your mind, how you were kind of
sitting with that in that moment as it was happening? Yeah. Going back to that place in my body,
I was feeling shame. I was feeling shame in my body. I was feeling panic.
I was feeling immense fear about...
it meant that the person I thought I would be spending the rest of my life with,
that was no longer the case. I was feeling self-blame because the type of relationship we had,
it was two things. He was really good at making everything.
feel like my fault, every problem in our relationship. you know, be my fault.
And because I already had, and I'm sure we can talk about this more, a rejection wound,
it was easy to just accept all of that. Accept that there was something about me that made you
betray me. And this happening at, you know, what I say,
a big age. I was in my 30s. It just felt like this was the end of my...
story it was my fault and this was the end this was the end what i wanted love which is you know so
fundamental right all we want is love um it wasn't gonna happen this was done this was it it was my
fault um And so on that plane, and I share the story that I had just come off of delivering mental
health goods. I was a keynote speaker for this conference and helping people through their story.
And literally at that conference learned that he had been unfaithful and was on my way home.
And yeah, that's panic, fear, shame, blame.
And I love it. So first of all, you are a psychologist. You're an expert. Well, yeah,
by training, but a psychology professor by work. Yeah. Yes. Right. So this is your field,
right? And I love this because I feel the same. Like, this does not make us immune from,
in many ways, the illogic of shame. Because, P.S., I just, I listen to this. I'm like, you were
betrayed by someone. He was unfaithful. And in that moment, what your body,
I think the first word you said was shame. This must be my fault. I mean,
isn't that amazing? We it doesn't matter what we know. It's what if anything,
and I don't know if you experienced this, if anything, if anything, it can sometimes feel like
even. an additional level of shame because it's like us as the professional how did we get here how
did we get to the point where all this knowledge we don't prevent these situations yeah that's a
good point so it almost adds an extra I should have seen this I should have seen this coming yeah
so I want to flip into your expert hat here for a moment.
Why does rejection so quickly turn into shame and self blame? You talked about your own rejection
wounds. I want to use your own story, use your expertise. I'd love to kind of unpack that. What is
it about rejection or betrayal, which is a form of, you know, extreme form of rejection?
Why does it so quickly turn inward? Yeah. So I'll say two things to that.
Well, first, I mean, we are meant. We are designed to be accepted,
to be loved, and to be embraced. Those are our fundamental needs, as you know. So rejection is
going to be painful for us because we're not supposed to experience that in a way.
We're not designed, we're not built for that in a way. But as someone who has a rejection wound,
I talk about how that's always going to add an additional layer of pain because we're already so
sensitive to it. Does that make sense? Yeah. So tell me a little bit about what you mean by
rejection wound. Yeah. So rejection wound is a kind of origin wound.
kind of like our our first experience of pain it is it was a time as you already know like but you
know for the listeners it's a time in our life where we are being imprinted with a global
experience this is what the world means this is how i like to explain orange orange and wound as
well it's an imprint It tells us about the world in one incident. And early in my life,
I experienced several rejections that made me see the world as the world rejects me and I am
rejectable. So every experience that I go through that could be ambiguous,
that somebody else could look at it differently. I, because of my rejection wound, I,
because I've been imprinted with this kind of global, interpretation of what life is and what that
means for me, I'm going to interpret everything as my fault because I am rejectable.
Interesting. So that makes sense. So you answered the question, why does it hurt? There's two
things. The first is it hurts all of us. It's universal. We're not designed for rupture,
for rejection, for betrayal. But when there's that extra layer of an imprint,
I love that word, where you've Your body has learned to see through that lens of I am fundamentally
rejectable. There's that extra layer of this is my fault. This has to be about me.
And when did you first become aware of that? Because I think if you're not aware of that,
you might believe the lie. Like for you, the moment in the plane is you then can notice that,
do the work of. anchoring yourself to reality but when was there a moment when you began to realize
oh my gosh I have this lens through which I see things yeah for sure you know it's funny that I
think I first started realizing that I was reading things in a different way when I would share
stories and not this particular story of the betrayal with the guy but I would share other
situations and how I felt and apparently by what I would say,
like, oh, I'm so stupid. I'm, you know, if this is, I should have done this better or whatever the
case may be, whoever I'd be talking to would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
That's, that's a little, that's a little strong piece. Like I wouldn't have necessarily thought
about it that way. Yeah. Yeah. That hurts, but I don't like your. going really hard on yourself and
you're making yourself the the entire center and the entire core of this problem and so hearing
that feedback i'd be like oh i maybe i am thinking about this in a way that i don't have to and
then it was further confirmed in therapy when i started my work years ago you know my therapist was
actually the one to start giving me um some additional terms in what I'd learned in school,
like rejection sensitivity. That's like a newer term, rejection sensitivity, a global sense of
rejection. And I was like, oh, yeah. But it was first in conversation with friends,
comparing experiences or hearing them say, whoa, girl, calm down.
And it was just a normal way to talk about myself and a normal way to think about. myself. This is
I'm rejectable. Yeah. This is this is my script. This is my play.
Yeah, this is about me. I want to kind of touch on this rejection sensitivity.
I only recently became aware of that term in the therapeutic space. And it was interesting.
Because I noticed, you know, we've talked about highly sensitive, the highly sensitive person,
that's kind of the language I've, which is different. They're two different things. But I as I've
thought about that lens and I'm curious it tell me a little bit what you mean by it but it's kind
of helped because it's like I'll see other people even to this day able to take a rejection or take
an insult or take a criticism and just kind of they don't like it but they kind of just either clap
back easily or move on and that has never been me. I take it in.
Is that kind of like, tell me a little bit about what does rejection sensitivity mean?
And it sounds like there's some sense of it's of nature and nurture. There's some sense of it
that's part of predisposition and wiring and then probably paired with some painful experiences.
Some experiences. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So that wounding is about. Interpreting rejection where
there may be room for another explanation. I think that was one big revelation for me where,
you know, even in ambiguous situations, even in situations where another interpretation of why
things happened, like in my case, he's a narcissist, you know, where another interpretation could
work. My immediate. you know, interpretation was, it's me.
I'm, I'm rejectable. I'm rejectable. There's something wrong with me or, um, it pains it.
The pain is, as you just said, not something you can easily bounce back from.
It is something that sits with you, stays with you weeks, months, years. It starts to write your
story. When you're experiencing rejection like that, you're talking about something a little deeper
than the, you know, my feelings are a little bit hurt, but it's okay.
I'm going to keep it pushing and go to the next one. There's some of us who, because of our wiring,
like you said, and because of our wounding, wiring and wounding. are going to respond a little bit
differently it's going to be a little bit more elevated a little bit more heightened and of course
that doesn't you know we all have our stuff but for those of us who have that little origin that
little wounding rejection takes kind of an additional toll on us
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It makes so much sense and I so appreciate your being willing to talk about it and anchor this
wholehearted way because it gives hope, I think, to know, oh, it's not just me.
It's not just me. I'm not the only one. You know, when I was like, gosh, I... Even to this day,
I've thought, why am I so sensitive? That kind of thing. Why was this so hard for me? And then you
start to realize, no, no, there's a lot of us out there for whom this is just very real.
And it is true for everybody, but a subset for whom there's an even greater.
And my guess is that there's a. I always think with any of these kind of sensitivities,
there's a strength on the other side. I don't think it's an accident that you're in a healing
profession with a lot of empathy. I think those two things sometimes go on the same two sides of
the same coin.
Absolutely. Yeah. The sensitivity we have for other people, the almost kind of superpower I feel
like we have in reading other people's. pain. I think it's kind of this, that's,
you know, my, my therapist would always say, you know, there's, there's, there's the gift of it.
And, you know, I don't want to call it a curse, but there's the gift. And then there's the, there's
the burden, you know, if you will. Yeah. And, The feedback I also get from friends and family and
loved ones and people in my care is just, I can get to their pain and feel their pain quicker than
anybody else in their life.
I do think that's connected. I think there's a sensitivity there. a reader there we have of our
world and of our loved ones that, you know, they depend on.
But, you know, when we're going through our stuff, it's hard. It sucks. And it can feel
embarrassing, even though it's human, you know. But yeah, absolutely.
So this leads me to then for someone listening, if we keep returning to relationships or
environments where we feel unseen or kind of almost heightened that it's almost like we're trying
to get that healed. What longing might be driving that pattern?
Because I can see how, again, when there's that old wound,
as you say, that rejection wound, there's often that subconscious drive to get it healed.
And maybe that even is drawn toward people who replay the pattern. Yeah. Oh,
absolutely. I believe in that. I believe that we are unconsciously drawn to the very things that
hurt us because unconsciously we're seeking another way to get it repaired.
Or even if it's starting to... to repair then it's almost like we need to continue testing it like
let me just make sure i am truly accepted let me just make sure i am truly okay let me just make
sure i i am you know beloved and it's not that easy to just fall away from me because i feel like i
have done a lot of work in my life personally and that there's been a lot of repair but i find in
relationships and especially in you know my most intimate relationships that there's a part of me
that still wants to test that like let me just you know let me just make sure that we're still good
here and I'm I've I have seen patterns of being drawn to people who have temperaments or
characteristics that make it easier for me to want to test that.
And, you know, at some point I want to sit down with God and be like, why did you like, why is it,
why did you do that? Like, why is it this way? But I can tell you for sure that I've consistently
seen that pattern in myself and in the various ways that I've worked that we at least unconsciously
are seeking for a chance to continue to fix and to continue to find assurance in,
in, in those same ways around the theme of rejected. Are we truly accepted? Are we truly lovable?
Can people stick? I think that's like another word that I've sat with.
Can you stick to me? Or is there something I can do, you know, unintentionally to make you leave
me? So it's, yeah, I've seen that pattern.
I've seen that pattern in myself. You know, in the book and in my work, I talk about the things we
can do when we are. kind of in that cycle, but it is something to continually be aware about and
something that I personally have to be intentional about and sort of suss out when I feel myself
feeling that shame and panic and fear again. Yeah, it's a cue. And you talk about one of the things
you say is that heartbreak can become an opening. So the pain of that actually becomes your
invitation. And I want to get into that, the healing part of it. Before we go there,
I have a question I like to ask other people in this field. Because I think when people reach out
for help, when they start to recognize something's off here, I'm feeling more shame than I want to
feel, or I'm blaming myself for something that's not my fault, or I can't get out of a pattern,
they reach for support. And you've talked a little bit about what was helpful with your friends
kind of naming. I think you're taking on too much here or your therapist helping you name things.
I also kind of like to flesh out, did you, were there things that weren't helpful? Because I also
think it's helpful sometimes to name, like these were the kind of messages that weren't. helpful to
me for example one you know that i've talked about a little bit is you know pray it away you know
like just just pray more and that that can be so self-defeating because it's like well it's a
nervous system issue that is going to take And many moments of practicing,
just to your point, practicing a new way, it won't magically go away necessarily. And so that can
feel so self-defeating if someone says, just pray it away, because then when it doesn't go away,
it's like, am I a failure of faith now too? So that's one example. I was just curious if,
and if you don't have any, if there's, but if... there was advice that wasn't helpful or hasn't
been helpful or wouldn't be helpful, just to alert the listener if they're hearing that, it's okay
to go, oh, that's not going to take me where I am. to go here yeah oh absolutely so anything in the
name of like well just just get over it just you know just shrug it off just dust it off like it's
it's not that deep it's not that serious like anything that was said that sort of um made it how do
i say this made it that wasn't congruent to what it felt like to me wasn't helpful. So if I'm
telling you, this is breaking my heart. If I'm telling you, I don't know my way out of this thing.
I don't want to show up again. I don't want to continue. And I don't know why. And you're telling
me something that feels incongruent to how deep and serious it feels. That wasn't helpful.
It was helpful to hear. That's a different response that I that I,
you know, like if a friend was saying, wow, I wouldn't have arrived there. That was helpful because
it showed me there was something to look at, but it wasn't helpful to be invalidated.
Because when you talk about nervous system, we don't just flip a switch and have our body respond
in a different way. You know, I love that. That's such an important I want to.
double click there for a second because that's a nuanced difference where a friend who says just
that's stupid you're fine get over it versus a friend who says that's interesting it maybe if you
know I don't know that I would respond that way or it does feel like you're being a little hard on
yourself right there that's a nuanced difference that really matters we it's not that we have to
validate everything that our friends tell us or that we feel like I know I've come to a point in my
life, even again, I'm, you know, I'm an empty nest, you know. like old, you know, but it's like,
oh my, and I just, I, to the, to the point we were talking at the top of the episode about humor.
And I was talking about the, how you can get to a point of being able to laugh at yourself. I'm at
a point now where I can kind of go, oh golly, I am just ridiculous. Like I can't even like fire a
repairman who has botched a job because I don't want to hurt his feelings, you know, like, and it's
that, that sensitivity. I'm so sensitive to that. I don't want to impose that on anybody else. And
I'm to the point where it hasn't totally changed. But I can kind of laugh at myself a little bit,
right? Because it's just a part of me. But that's different. So I'm not validating. I'm not
acknowledging that it's not kind of an extreme response.
But I'm also accepting it, I guess. So I love how you're saying that. There's a nuanced middle
ground there that we can hold ourselves and our friends with. Absolutely. Yeah, there's noticing.
And a word that I've been loving, witnessing. There's been noticing and there's witnessing.
And then there's judging. And as my friend, I want you to notice.
I want you to witness. I want you to tell me, you know, what... looks different and you know
because you because you want me to understand myself better but I don't need your judgment and I
don't need your invalidation and I certainly don't need help feeling ashamed so you know I'm gonna
pick and choose who can notice and who can witness and who can gently hold up a mirror so that I
can understand myself and find greater fulfillment in my relationships and I'm gonna step out of a
relationship with you if I'm gonna be feeling judged and invalidated and you giving me more reason
to feel embarrassed and humiliated for literally how I'm wired, wired and wounded.
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love that i love that that's that's really um really wise i think when we think about who we're
going to walk with and who we're going to let into these tender places so i want to i want to shift
to Kind of we've been circling around it, how we heal and holding intention,
the wiring and the wounded. This isn't going to happen magically healing. What does healing look
like to you? How do you see the goal here? And I know it kind of gets to, I think,
the title of your book, but how do you see the goal here? Yeah, so I've defined wholeheartedness.
I've chosen wholeheartedness as a word. to define a process.
I call, or I define wholeheartedness as an integrative approach to healing.
And, you know, the whole book is about like the different pillars or the different aspects of what
this healing looks like. And kind of similar to, you know, I had mentioned before,
I think this was offline, that I really loved one of your recent episodes about humor being a sign
of healing, being a sign that you're healing, you know, I would say peace,
a sense of peace is a sign that you've been healing.
And so this whole book, wholeheartedness sort of break down and unpack some of the most helpful
aspects of this healing process that ultimately can lead us.
to peace not everything being fixed you know not everything being perfect again but having peace
even while we're kind of moving through the various kind of heartbreaks that life gives us i one of
the stories that i go back to is that relationship i thought i was gonna spend my life with this
guy you know but men certainly are the only people who break our heart right
Friends can, siblings can, parents can, your country can,
all of that. So wholeheartedness is what I call an integrative approach to healing that can lead us
to peace. And it begins with trying to get us to hold,
when we go through something, the opposing realities of our lives.
So in this situation, with this relationship I'm talking about, there was the reality that I was
completely heartbroken and I felt like my love story was over, that this was it.
This was the end. I was saying goodbye to a relationship and it hurt.
And pain has to run its course. But when I say embracing opposing realities in our lives,
there's that truth. I'm heartbroken. I don't see a future. I don't see another way. I don't see the
end. I'm saying goodbye to this relationship, but I'm also... saying hello to a new relationship
with myself. There was clearly, because of this heartbreak,
an ability for me to see the things that I was still believing about myself that I'd always
believed. You know, things about me that could stand to be touched by God,
could stand to be touched by, you know, love, by more internal work.
And I was able to see that. Because of that heartbreak. When I talk about heartbreak being an open
window into our soul, there's something heartbreak can do that other things can't do. And it's
reveal what's deep down under, you know, what can still stand to be healed. And so when I embrace
that fullness of it, that I'm hurting and I'm heartbroken, I'm saying goodbye, but I'm also at the
beginning of saying hello, creating a new relationship with myself. To me,
in that, that's the beginning of finding peace. There's this, but there's also this. You know,
there's this reality, but there's also this reality. And they feel contradictory. But when I can
hold them together, there's something about that that I can gain from.
That's a word. That's beautiful. I am so struck by the fact that your name is Peace.
People have been saying that. It's just so... Because that word is, you just brought such depth to
that word. It's not either or. It's holding the reality of both. Right.
That's incredible. So how would you tell the listener from the book?
I know you provide a very clear path. What are some of the first steps on the path?
Yeah. I'm always going to start with looking at your beliefs.
like in the first place, um, when it comes to healing, well, actually the first,
very first thing that I just, you know, in the name of not hinting at any kind of spiritual
bypassing is to let pain run its course. I mean, for at least a week,
maybe two, I couldn't even think like, don't, I'm not going to read a book. I'm not gonna,
I'm. I can't think straight. I can't see straight. I can't hear anything.
I can hardly pray. I think I looked up to God and I said, how, why? Those were my prayers.
How, why, you know? And my mom's spoken to me and friends spoken to me and they dropped really good
seeds, but pain has to run its course. It's like when we're bleeding, like physically bleeding,
that blood, it's coming out, it's pumping out. And we just have to like, what's the word?
Put pressure and, you know, like not die. Like the goal is not to die.
You know what I mean? When we're broken, the very first thing is try not to die.
And I know I'm being facetious here, but when we're that broken over anything, love,
the end of a marriage, the loss of a dream, you know, whatever, just. breathe,
like just try to get to the next day is the very first step. That's amazing. It's true. You know,
but after that, because heartbreak can help us tap into what's really deep beneath the service.
And a lot of that is some really messed up beliefs we have about ourselves.
The first thing I would tell people is try to grab what those are.
When you're sitting there after heartbreak, after the end of a marriage, after the loss of a hope,
the loss of a dream, a chapter in your life coming to an end and you don't know if you'll ever get
a new beginning, a new chance at it, like love. For me, in that case, was love.
What's really going down? What are you really thinking about yourself in that moment?
What are you really believing about yourself in that moment? Heartbreak has a way of revealing the
toughest, nastiest things that we think about ourselves. And until we can tap into that and
confront that and begin to work on changing that. And in the book, I name sort of like three
specific beliefs I think can kind of summarize a lot of what we all feel.
And I'll just say them, you know, I'm bad, I'm broken, and my life is beyond hope.
when we can kind of grab those and sit with them.
I mean, you know, Dr. Allison, that as soon as we become aware of things, that's the only place we
can start to kind of dust them off and begin to work with them when they become aware to us in the
first place. That's the only place they can be shaken out is when they're aware, when they're held
up to the light. And so that's always going to be my first. what do you believe what what is this
making you believe about yourself right now whatever the heartbreak and disappointment or rejection
is what is it grab that thought because as soon as you hold it up you can start to work with it oh
that's so good that's so good and therein begins the healing it's such a paradox but it's actually
allowing that heartbreak i love how you And again, in the book, you really talk about this broken
heart, you know, and in those pieces, you can actually start to see more clearly. Yes.
It's so good. It's so good. I want to just before we wind down here,
and you've talked about this a little bit, but how did your experience,
your experiences in the plural, but this experience as well, affect your faith?
You've touched on this, but I think many people can begin to maybe not only lose hope in others,
but lose hope in God and bring some of this into their relationship with God. Maybe I'm not worth
God's time.
How has that been played out in your life, and how have you seen that show up spiritually?
Yeah, you kind of named it right there. So, you know, I'm talking about the heartbreak being an
open window and open glass and to our past and to our soul and starting to see more clearly about
what's all underneath, what's all underneath this. Right. And then it finally gives us a chance to
work at it. And one of one thing that I found in addition to me feeling or realizing that I
believe, oh, I'm I'm I'm broken. Like I don't work. My love doesn't work like I.
I don't work. Something about me doesn't work. And that's just what it is, was, you know,
God doesn't work. You know, it's there's or he doesn't work for me.
You know, I believe in God. Somehow it didn't shake my belief like in God and his existence.
But it did shake my belief in like God working things out for me.
There's I feel like. For a lot of us, maybe we can, it's like saying, yeah, God is good,
but it's God good to me. God is faithful, but it's God faithful to me are two very different
things. And I realized one of my beliefs is one of the beliefs under the core was,
yeah, that, you know, God is good and God is real, but I don't know if God is good and real to me.
I don't know why he would let me go. through all of this i've i've like the story of hannah i've
been asking him for one thing it's like you know how they say you have one job You know,
I've been asking God for one thing and I've seen him do magic in all these different areas of my
life. But this one thing, what you have one job, God, and it looked like we were getting close and
nope, you know, I'm alone. You don't care. And the funny thing is,
Allison, and I want to be careful how I talk about this, because I don't know how God's going to
meet every reader that reads this book or every listener. I don't know how God's going to what God
is going to do. in their stories i believe god's going to do something um and i'll tell you that my
life looks completely different now than it looked back then and i and i've seen um there's
redemption in my story that i'm not ready to talk about publicly but i'll you know hint hint
there's there's a lot of redemption in my story that i'm celebrating now and i and i say i want to
be careful talking about it because you know, how you'll hear, Oh, they did it for this person. And
we know, and then we start, I don't know. I just, that's a whole other theological thing. I don't
want to go down. I do believe God is faithful to his children, but I,
in my story, I questioned that. And I believe it was important for me to find,
to work towards finding peace in the unknown to me was the whole point,
not, not what practically God has done for my life now, because I can't sell that to you.
I don't know what God's going to do. I know God's going to do something, but I don't know what's
going to do. But what I can sell you is that you can find peace in the unknown and you can find
peace in the unfolding of your life. Because one truth is, is as long as we're here and we're
longer still breathing, God is not done. We're not done. And there's some,
powerful things that can come out of realizing that. And I hope that for my readers and for my
listeners, they get exactly what they want. But I know what's even more important is how to find
peace in the unknown, in the unwielding, in the uncertain,
and in the unfolding that is a characteristic of each and every one of our lives.
Our stories are still unfolding. So I don't know. I think that was a roundabout way to get to
something. But that's definitely what I want to leave with. That's the heart of the book, that you
can find peace, that your life is still unfolding. It's not over. That is a lie, that it's over.
It is a lie that you're broken and that you don't work and that your life doesn't work. It is a lie
that you are bad. I believe we are good and worthy by grace. And there's some beauty to be found in
all of that.
That's how I'd answer that. That is so powerful. I love that. It's like you're refusing to tie the
happy bow because we don't know how that plays out. And it doesn't always play out the same for
everybody. That doesn't mean that we don't have that. gift that comes it's just you said that so
well Dr. Peace you are truly a doctor of peace that was a word I just felt that in my bones and it
I can tell it's coming from your hard-earned wisdom your expertise you know all the different
layers of whole I I can feel from you the wholeheartedness and that means a lot to me yeah yeah I
could feel just It's just really powerful. Where can my listeners find your work?
Because I want them to find you and your work and your book and all that you're doing. Yeah, thank
you for that question. So of course you can, right now I'm most active on Instagram, so you can
find me at itspisamadi. I'm sure you'll leave those details. But I really love people to check out
this book. I'm so excited about this book. It's not my first book, but it is my personal,
most personal book thus far. I will say that this book, you know, wasn't about establishing me as
an author, testing the waters. I wanted to write an honest book about healing.
I'm really excited for people to find gems. I believe there are gems in this.
And you can find this book anywhere where books are online. It's Amazon, Target,
Barnes & Noble. Any online retailer, go to your favorite. You can grab it. But you can get all
those links directly from my Instagram page. I'd love for you to give it a chance. I cannot
recommend it more. We will link to it in today's show notes. We'll link to it on our website, The
Wholehearted Way by Dr. Pisa Mahdi. It is well worth, if you're a listener of this podcast,
you will love this book. It is just your story and your expertise just in this wholehearted way.
It's just so beautiful. And I'm so grateful that you are sharing your wisdom with the world,
sharing your wisdom with us today. Thank you for taking the time. I am just so grateful for you.
Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Allison. This was a bucket list to talk with you and on your podcast
because I love it. So thank you for having me and thank you for sharing your listeners with me.
We're grateful. 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, YouTube, or wherever you
listen to or watch podcasts and click the plus or follow button. That'll ensure you don't miss an
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reflection to help you start your mornings with a steady dose of wisdom. 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.
Episode Show Notes
What if heartbreak isn’t just about what happened to you—but what it reveals about what you believe about yourself?
At its core, heartbreak isn’t just about loss. It’s about the meaning your mind and body begin to make of that loss—especially when it touches something older. Rejection, betrayal, and disappointment have a way of surfacing deeper questions about who we are… and whether we are still worthy of love.
If you’ve ever found yourself asking, why does this hurt so much more than it should?… this conversation between Dr. Alison Cook and Dr. Peace Amadi will help you begin to understand why—and what healing might look like.
You’ll explore:
- Why rejection can feel deeply personal… even when it isn’t
- The hidden beliefs heartbreak can quietly bring to the surface
- Why certain patterns in your life keep getting replayed
- How past wounds can shape your present reactions
- What happens to your faith when pain doesn’t make sense
- Where healing begins when nothing feels resolved yet
This conversation offers a compassionate, faith-rooted path forward—helping you make sense of what’s been stirred up within you, and gently move toward a deeper sense of peace.
More Resources:
Check out Dr. Peace Amadi’s brand new book, The Wholehearted Way: Finding Peace After Life’s Heartbreaks, Disappointments, and Rejections
Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram
Want to go deeper? Join 80,000+ soul menders in our email community and receive weekly reflections and gentle practices here.
If you liked this episode, then you’ll love:
Episode 200: Trauma, Safety, and Healing—3 Trauma Responses + 4 Ways to Restore Trust
Episode 179: Building Wise Trust - How to Protect Your Heart Without Closing It Off
Episode 188: The Healing Power of Safe People (Not Just Safe Spaces)
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
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TRANSCRIPT
When you're sitting there after heartbreak, after the end of a marriage, after the loss of a hope,
the loss of a dream, what are you really believing about yourself in that moment? Heartbreak has a
way of revealing the toughest, nastiest things that we think about ourselves. And until we can tap
into that and confront that and begin to work on changing that, as soon as we become aware of
things, that's the only place we can start to kind of dust them off and begin to work with them.
Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I'm so glad
you're here with me for today's deep dive conversation. This is for anyone who's ever known the
ache of heartbreak, rejection, or disappointment, and especially for those of us who know what it
is to take these experiences deeply into our bodies and our stories. I want to begin today with
this simple, beautiful reminder from Psalm 34, 18, the Lord. is near to the brokenhearted and saves
the crushed in spirit. I love this verse because it doesn't rush us past pain.
It doesn't minimize heartbreak or ask us to tidy it up too quickly. It simply reminds us that when
our hearts are broken, when we feel crushed in spirit, God comes near.
Maybe you've had a relationship end and found yourself not only grieving the loss, but also
wrestling with that deeper question underneath it all. What does this say about me? Maybe you've
been betrayed, overlooked, misunderstood, or left holding a pain that seems to reach far beyond the
moment itself. And maybe if you're honest, you've found yourself carrying not just the sadness,
but even shame. Maybe self-blame. confusion, that sense that something painful out there has
somehow turned inward on yourself. If that resonates, I think today's episode is going to meet you
in a really powerful way. My guest today is Dr. Pisa Mahdi, and this conversation was so rich
because she brings both her incredible professional wisdom and a deeply personal honesty to the
subject of healing. Dr. Pisa Mahdi is a psychology professor, speaker, coach,
and mental health expert. She's the author of numerous books, including her brand new book.
It's called The Wholehearted Way, Finding Peace After Life's Heartbreaks, Disappointments,
and Rejections. And it is exactly that kind of book, one that helps us understand why rejection
cuts so deep, how old wounds can shape the stories we tell ourselves, and how healing begins not by
pretending the pain isn't right. but by letting it reveal what's been living underneath the surface
all along. What I really appreciate about Dr. Peace is that she writes and speaks from that rare
place where clinical insight, faith, and her lived experience all meet. She understands that
heartbreak is never just about what happened right now. It's also about where heartbreak has
touched us in the past. The beliefs it exposes, the old wounds it often awakens.
The parts of us that begin to wonder, am I too much? Am I not enough? Am I somehow the reason this
happened? And in today's conversation, that's where we're headed. We're going to talk about
rejection wounds, shame, self-blame, nervous system responses, and the way heartbreak can
sometimes become an opening into deeper healing all the way back to the past. We also talk about
faith, what happens when pain doesn't just shake your trust in other people, but begins to shake
your trust in God. And Dr. Peace offers such a grounded, compassionate vision of healing.
She's so real. I loved this conversation. She doesn't give us a neat and tidy formula or a forced
kind of happy ending, but she wants us to learn to hold the truth of our pain alongside the
possibility and the hope of peace and healing and even more goodness. I know so many of you will
feel seen by this conversation as I did. So whether you are in the middle of a heartbreak of your
own, whether you're trying to make sense of an old wound that still gets touched, or whether you're
simply longing for a more compassionate and whole way of walking through disappointment, I'm so
glad you are here with me today. Please enjoy my conversation with Dr.
Peace Amadi.
Well, I'm thrilled you're here. And I would love for you to open this conversation in the way that
you open this beautiful new book, The Wholehearted Way. I love the title, by the way. I want to get
into how you landed on that. We have so many overlaps in our interests, and you're just bringing
such a beautiful lens to this conversation. You start the book with a pretty vulnerable story about
sitting on a plane after experiencing betrayal. Would you tell us about that moment?
Kind of what... were feeling in your body, what was going on in your mind, how you were kind of
sitting with that in that moment as it was happening? Yeah. Going back to that place in my body,
I was feeling shame. I was feeling shame in my body. I was feeling panic.
I was feeling immense fear about...
it meant that the person I thought I would be spending the rest of my life with,
that was no longer the case. I was feeling self-blame because the type of relationship we had,
it was two things. He was really good at making everything.
feel like my fault, every problem in our relationship. you know, be my fault.
And because I already had, and I'm sure we can talk about this more, a rejection wound,
it was easy to just accept all of that. Accept that there was something about me that made you
betray me. And this happening at, you know, what I say,
a big age. I was in my 30s. It just felt like this was the end of my...
story it was my fault and this was the end this was the end what i wanted love which is you know so
fundamental right all we want is love um it wasn't gonna happen this was done this was it it was my
fault um And so on that plane, and I share the story that I had just come off of delivering mental
health goods. I was a keynote speaker for this conference and helping people through their story.
And literally at that conference learned that he had been unfaithful and was on my way home.
And yeah, that's panic, fear, shame, blame.
And I love it. So first of all, you are a psychologist. You're an expert. Well, yeah,
by training, but a psychology professor by work. Yeah. Yes. Right. So this is your field,
right? And I love this because I feel the same. Like, this does not make us immune from,
in many ways, the illogic of shame. Because, P.S., I just, I listen to this. I'm like, you were
betrayed by someone. He was unfaithful. And in that moment, what your body,
I think the first word you said was shame. This must be my fault. I mean,
isn't that amazing? We it doesn't matter what we know. It's what if anything,
and I don't know if you experienced this, if anything, if anything, it can sometimes feel like
even. an additional level of shame because it's like us as the professional how did we get here how
did we get to the point where all this knowledge we don't prevent these situations yeah that's a
good point so it almost adds an extra I should have seen this I should have seen this coming yeah
so I want to flip into your expert hat here for a moment.
Why does rejection so quickly turn into shame and self blame? You talked about your own rejection
wounds. I want to use your own story, use your expertise. I'd love to kind of unpack that. What is
it about rejection or betrayal, which is a form of, you know, extreme form of rejection?
Why does it so quickly turn inward? Yeah. So I'll say two things to that.
Well, first, I mean, we are meant. We are designed to be accepted,
to be loved, and to be embraced. Those are our fundamental needs, as you know. So rejection is
going to be painful for us because we're not supposed to experience that in a way.
We're not designed, we're not built for that in a way. But as someone who has a rejection wound,
I talk about how that's always going to add an additional layer of pain because we're already so
sensitive to it. Does that make sense? Yeah. So tell me a little bit about what you mean by
rejection wound. Yeah. So rejection wound is a kind of origin wound.
kind of like our our first experience of pain it is it was a time as you already know like but you
know for the listeners it's a time in our life where we are being imprinted with a global
experience this is what the world means this is how i like to explain orange orange and wound as
well it's an imprint It tells us about the world in one incident. And early in my life,
I experienced several rejections that made me see the world as the world rejects me and I am
rejectable. So every experience that I go through that could be ambiguous,
that somebody else could look at it differently. I, because of my rejection wound, I,
because I've been imprinted with this kind of global, interpretation of what life is and what that
means for me, I'm going to interpret everything as my fault because I am rejectable.
Interesting. So that makes sense. So you answered the question, why does it hurt? There's two
things. The first is it hurts all of us. It's universal. We're not designed for rupture,
for rejection, for betrayal. But when there's that extra layer of an imprint,
I love that word, where you've Your body has learned to see through that lens of I am fundamentally
rejectable. There's that extra layer of this is my fault. This has to be about me.
And when did you first become aware of that? Because I think if you're not aware of that,
you might believe the lie. Like for you, the moment in the plane is you then can notice that,
do the work of. anchoring yourself to reality but when was there a moment when you began to realize
oh my gosh I have this lens through which I see things yeah for sure you know it's funny that I
think I first started realizing that I was reading things in a different way when I would share
stories and not this particular story of the betrayal with the guy but I would share other
situations and how I felt and apparently by what I would say,
like, oh, I'm so stupid. I'm, you know, if this is, I should have done this better or whatever the
case may be, whoever I'd be talking to would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
That's, that's a little, that's a little strong piece. Like I wouldn't have necessarily thought
about it that way. Yeah. Yeah. That hurts, but I don't like your. going really hard on yourself and
you're making yourself the the entire center and the entire core of this problem and so hearing
that feedback i'd be like oh i maybe i am thinking about this in a way that i don't have to and
then it was further confirmed in therapy when i started my work years ago you know my therapist was
actually the one to start giving me um some additional terms in what I'd learned in school,
like rejection sensitivity. That's like a newer term, rejection sensitivity, a global sense of
rejection. And I was like, oh, yeah. But it was first in conversation with friends,
comparing experiences or hearing them say, whoa, girl, calm down.
And it was just a normal way to talk about myself and a normal way to think about. myself. This is
I'm rejectable. Yeah. This is this is my script. This is my play.
Yeah, this is about me. I want to kind of touch on this rejection sensitivity.
I only recently became aware of that term in the therapeutic space. And it was interesting.
Because I noticed, you know, we've talked about highly sensitive, the highly sensitive person,
that's kind of the language I've, which is different. They're two different things. But I as I've
thought about that lens and I'm curious it tell me a little bit what you mean by it but it's kind
of helped because it's like I'll see other people even to this day able to take a rejection or take
an insult or take a criticism and just kind of they don't like it but they kind of just either clap
back easily or move on and that has never been me. I take it in.
Is that kind of like, tell me a little bit about what does rejection sensitivity mean?
And it sounds like there's some sense of it's of nature and nurture. There's some sense of it
that's part of predisposition and wiring and then probably paired with some painful experiences.
Some experiences. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So that wounding is about. Interpreting rejection where
there may be room for another explanation. I think that was one big revelation for me where,
you know, even in ambiguous situations, even in situations where another interpretation of why
things happened, like in my case, he's a narcissist, you know, where another interpretation could
work. My immediate. you know, interpretation was, it's me.
I'm, I'm rejectable. I'm rejectable. There's something wrong with me or, um, it pains it.
The pain is, as you just said, not something you can easily bounce back from.
It is something that sits with you, stays with you weeks, months, years. It starts to write your
story. When you're experiencing rejection like that, you're talking about something a little deeper
than the, you know, my feelings are a little bit hurt, but it's okay.
I'm going to keep it pushing and go to the next one. There's some of us who, because of our wiring,
like you said, and because of our wounding, wiring and wounding. are going to respond a little bit
differently it's going to be a little bit more elevated a little bit more heightened and of course
that doesn't you know we all have our stuff but for those of us who have that little origin that
little wounding rejection takes kind of an additional toll on us
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It makes so much sense and I so appreciate your being willing to talk about it and anchor this
wholehearted way because it gives hope, I think, to know, oh, it's not just me.
It's not just me. I'm not the only one. You know, when I was like, gosh, I... Even to this day,
I've thought, why am I so sensitive? That kind of thing. Why was this so hard for me? And then you
start to realize, no, no, there's a lot of us out there for whom this is just very real.
And it is true for everybody, but a subset for whom there's an even greater.
And my guess is that there's a. I always think with any of these kind of sensitivities,
there's a strength on the other side. I don't think it's an accident that you're in a healing
profession with a lot of empathy. I think those two things sometimes go on the same two sides of
the same coin.
Absolutely. Yeah. The sensitivity we have for other people, the almost kind of superpower I feel
like we have in reading other people's. pain. I think it's kind of this, that's,
you know, my, my therapist would always say, you know, there's, there's, there's the gift of it.
And, you know, I don't want to call it a curse, but there's the gift. And then there's the, there's
the burden, you know, if you will. Yeah. And, The feedback I also get from friends and family and
loved ones and people in my care is just, I can get to their pain and feel their pain quicker than
anybody else in their life.
I do think that's connected. I think there's a sensitivity there. a reader there we have of our
world and of our loved ones that, you know, they depend on.
But, you know, when we're going through our stuff, it's hard. It sucks. And it can feel
embarrassing, even though it's human, you know. But yeah, absolutely.
So this leads me to then for someone listening, if we keep returning to relationships or
environments where we feel unseen or kind of almost heightened that it's almost like we're trying
to get that healed. What longing might be driving that pattern?
Because I can see how, again, when there's that old wound,
as you say, that rejection wound, there's often that subconscious drive to get it healed.
And maybe that even is drawn toward people who replay the pattern. Yeah. Oh,
absolutely. I believe in that. I believe that we are unconsciously drawn to the very things that
hurt us because unconsciously we're seeking another way to get it repaired.
Or even if it's starting to... to repair then it's almost like we need to continue testing it like
let me just make sure i am truly accepted let me just make sure i am truly okay let me just make
sure i i am you know beloved and it's not that easy to just fall away from me because i feel like i
have done a lot of work in my life personally and that there's been a lot of repair but i find in
relationships and especially in you know my most intimate relationships that there's a part of me
that still wants to test that like let me just you know let me just make sure that we're still good
here and I'm I've I have seen patterns of being drawn to people who have temperaments or
characteristics that make it easier for me to want to test that.
And, you know, at some point I want to sit down with God and be like, why did you like, why is it,
why did you do that? Like, why is it this way? But I can tell you for sure that I've consistently
seen that pattern in myself and in the various ways that I've worked that we at least unconsciously
are seeking for a chance to continue to fix and to continue to find assurance in,
in, in those same ways around the theme of rejected. Are we truly accepted? Are we truly lovable?
Can people stick? I think that's like another word that I've sat with.
Can you stick to me? Or is there something I can do, you know, unintentionally to make you leave
me? So it's, yeah, I've seen that pattern.
I've seen that pattern in myself. You know, in the book and in my work, I talk about the things we
can do when we are. kind of in that cycle, but it is something to continually be aware about and
something that I personally have to be intentional about and sort of suss out when I feel myself
feeling that shame and panic and fear again. Yeah, it's a cue. And you talk about one of the things
you say is that heartbreak can become an opening. So the pain of that actually becomes your
invitation. And I want to get into that, the healing part of it. Before we go there,
I have a question I like to ask other people in this field. Because I think when people reach out
for help, when they start to recognize something's off here, I'm feeling more shame than I want to
feel, or I'm blaming myself for something that's not my fault, or I can't get out of a pattern,
they reach for support. And you've talked a little bit about what was helpful with your friends
kind of naming. I think you're taking on too much here or your therapist helping you name things.
I also kind of like to flesh out, did you, were there things that weren't helpful? Because I also
think it's helpful sometimes to name, like these were the kind of messages that weren't. helpful to
me for example one you know that i've talked about a little bit is you know pray it away you know
like just just pray more and that that can be so self-defeating because it's like well it's a
nervous system issue that is going to take And many moments of practicing,
just to your point, practicing a new way, it won't magically go away necessarily. And so that can
feel so self-defeating if someone says, just pray it away, because then when it doesn't go away,
it's like, am I a failure of faith now too? So that's one example. I was just curious if,
and if you don't have any, if there's, but if... there was advice that wasn't helpful or hasn't
been helpful or wouldn't be helpful, just to alert the listener if they're hearing that, it's okay
to go, oh, that's not going to take me where I am. to go here yeah oh absolutely so anything in the
name of like well just just get over it just you know just shrug it off just dust it off like it's
it's not that deep it's not that serious like anything that was said that sort of um made it how do
i say this made it that wasn't congruent to what it felt like to me wasn't helpful. So if I'm
telling you, this is breaking my heart. If I'm telling you, I don't know my way out of this thing.
I don't want to show up again. I don't want to continue. And I don't know why. And you're telling
me something that feels incongruent to how deep and serious it feels. That wasn't helpful.
It was helpful to hear. That's a different response that I that I,
you know, like if a friend was saying, wow, I wouldn't have arrived there. That was helpful because
it showed me there was something to look at, but it wasn't helpful to be invalidated.
Because when you talk about nervous system, we don't just flip a switch and have our body respond
in a different way. You know, I love that. That's such an important I want to.
double click there for a second because that's a nuanced difference where a friend who says just
that's stupid you're fine get over it versus a friend who says that's interesting it maybe if you
know I don't know that I would respond that way or it does feel like you're being a little hard on
yourself right there that's a nuanced difference that really matters we it's not that we have to
validate everything that our friends tell us or that we feel like I know I've come to a point in my
life, even again, I'm, you know, I'm an empty nest, you know. like old, you know, but it's like,
oh my, and I just, I, to the, to the point we were talking at the top of the episode about humor.
And I was talking about the, how you can get to a point of being able to laugh at yourself. I'm at
a point now where I can kind of go, oh golly, I am just ridiculous. Like I can't even like fire a
repairman who has botched a job because I don't want to hurt his feelings, you know, like, and it's
that, that sensitivity. I'm so sensitive to that. I don't want to impose that on anybody else. And
I'm to the point where it hasn't totally changed. But I can kind of laugh at myself a little bit,
right? Because it's just a part of me. But that's different. So I'm not validating. I'm not
acknowledging that it's not kind of an extreme response.
But I'm also accepting it, I guess. So I love how you're saying that. There's a nuanced middle
ground there that we can hold ourselves and our friends with. Absolutely. Yeah, there's noticing.
And a word that I've been loving, witnessing. There's been noticing and there's witnessing.
And then there's judging. And as my friend, I want you to notice.
I want you to witness. I want you to tell me, you know, what... looks different and you know
because you because you want me to understand myself better but I don't need your judgment and I
don't need your invalidation and I certainly don't need help feeling ashamed so you know I'm gonna
pick and choose who can notice and who can witness and who can gently hold up a mirror so that I
can understand myself and find greater fulfillment in my relationships and I'm gonna step out of a
relationship with you if I'm gonna be feeling judged and invalidated and you giving me more reason
to feel embarrassed and humiliated for literally how I'm wired, wired and wounded.
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love that i love that that's that's really um really wise i think when we think about who we're
going to walk with and who we're going to let into these tender places so i want to i want to shift
to Kind of we've been circling around it, how we heal and holding intention,
the wiring and the wounded. This isn't going to happen magically healing. What does healing look
like to you? How do you see the goal here? And I know it kind of gets to, I think,
the title of your book, but how do you see the goal here? Yeah, so I've defined wholeheartedness.
I've chosen wholeheartedness as a word. to define a process.
I call, or I define wholeheartedness as an integrative approach to healing.
And, you know, the whole book is about like the different pillars or the different aspects of what
this healing looks like. And kind of similar to, you know, I had mentioned before,
I think this was offline, that I really loved one of your recent episodes about humor being a sign
of healing, being a sign that you're healing, you know, I would say peace,
a sense of peace is a sign that you've been healing.
And so this whole book, wholeheartedness sort of break down and unpack some of the most helpful
aspects of this healing process that ultimately can lead us.
to peace not everything being fixed you know not everything being perfect again but having peace
even while we're kind of moving through the various kind of heartbreaks that life gives us i one of
the stories that i go back to is that relationship i thought i was gonna spend my life with this
guy you know but men certainly are the only people who break our heart right
Friends can, siblings can, parents can, your country can,
all of that. So wholeheartedness is what I call an integrative approach to healing that can lead us
to peace. And it begins with trying to get us to hold,
when we go through something, the opposing realities of our lives.
So in this situation, with this relationship I'm talking about, there was the reality that I was
completely heartbroken and I felt like my love story was over, that this was it.
This was the end. I was saying goodbye to a relationship and it hurt.
And pain has to run its course. But when I say embracing opposing realities in our lives,
there's that truth. I'm heartbroken. I don't see a future. I don't see another way. I don't see the
end. I'm saying goodbye to this relationship, but I'm also... saying hello to a new relationship
with myself. There was clearly, because of this heartbreak,
an ability for me to see the things that I was still believing about myself that I'd always
believed. You know, things about me that could stand to be touched by God,
could stand to be touched by, you know, love, by more internal work.
And I was able to see that. Because of that heartbreak. When I talk about heartbreak being an open
window into our soul, there's something heartbreak can do that other things can't do. And it's
reveal what's deep down under, you know, what can still stand to be healed. And so when I embrace
that fullness of it, that I'm hurting and I'm heartbroken, I'm saying goodbye, but I'm also at the
beginning of saying hello, creating a new relationship with myself. To me,
in that, that's the beginning of finding peace. There's this, but there's also this. You know,
there's this reality, but there's also this reality. And they feel contradictory. But when I can
hold them together, there's something about that that I can gain from.
That's a word. That's beautiful. I am so struck by the fact that your name is Peace.
People have been saying that. It's just so... Because that word is, you just brought such depth to
that word. It's not either or. It's holding the reality of both. Right.
That's incredible. So how would you tell the listener from the book?
I know you provide a very clear path. What are some of the first steps on the path?
Yeah. I'm always going to start with looking at your beliefs.
like in the first place, um, when it comes to healing, well, actually the first,
very first thing that I just, you know, in the name of not hinting at any kind of spiritual
bypassing is to let pain run its course. I mean, for at least a week,
maybe two, I couldn't even think like, don't, I'm not going to read a book. I'm not gonna,
I'm. I can't think straight. I can't see straight. I can't hear anything.
I can hardly pray. I think I looked up to God and I said, how, why? Those were my prayers.
How, why, you know? And my mom's spoken to me and friends spoken to me and they dropped really good
seeds, but pain has to run its course. It's like when we're bleeding, like physically bleeding,
that blood, it's coming out, it's pumping out. And we just have to like, what's the word?
Put pressure and, you know, like not die. Like the goal is not to die.
You know what I mean? When we're broken, the very first thing is try not to die.
And I know I'm being facetious here, but when we're that broken over anything, love,
the end of a marriage, the loss of a dream, you know, whatever, just. breathe,
like just try to get to the next day is the very first step. That's amazing. It's true. You know,
but after that, because heartbreak can help us tap into what's really deep beneath the service.
And a lot of that is some really messed up beliefs we have about ourselves.
The first thing I would tell people is try to grab what those are.
When you're sitting there after heartbreak, after the end of a marriage, after the loss of a hope,
the loss of a dream, a chapter in your life coming to an end and you don't know if you'll ever get
a new beginning, a new chance at it, like love. For me, in that case, was love.
What's really going down? What are you really thinking about yourself in that moment?
What are you really believing about yourself in that moment? Heartbreak has a way of revealing the
toughest, nastiest things that we think about ourselves. And until we can tap into that and
confront that and begin to work on changing that. And in the book, I name sort of like three
specific beliefs I think can kind of summarize a lot of what we all feel.
And I'll just say them, you know, I'm bad, I'm broken, and my life is beyond hope.
when we can kind of grab those and sit with them.
I mean, you know, Dr. Allison, that as soon as we become aware of things, that's the only place we
can start to kind of dust them off and begin to work with them when they become aware to us in the
first place. That's the only place they can be shaken out is when they're aware, when they're held
up to the light. And so that's always going to be my first. what do you believe what what is this
making you believe about yourself right now whatever the heartbreak and disappointment or rejection
is what is it grab that thought because as soon as you hold it up you can start to work with it oh
that's so good that's so good and therein begins the healing it's such a paradox but it's actually
allowing that heartbreak i love how you And again, in the book, you really talk about this broken
heart, you know, and in those pieces, you can actually start to see more clearly. Yes.
It's so good. It's so good. I want to just before we wind down here,
and you've talked about this a little bit, but how did your experience,
your experiences in the plural, but this experience as well, affect your faith?
You've touched on this, but I think many people can begin to maybe not only lose hope in others,
but lose hope in God and bring some of this into their relationship with God. Maybe I'm not worth
God's time.
How has that been played out in your life, and how have you seen that show up spiritually?
Yeah, you kind of named it right there. So, you know, I'm talking about the heartbreak being an
open window and open glass and to our past and to our soul and starting to see more clearly about
what's all underneath, what's all underneath this. Right. And then it finally gives us a chance to
work at it. And one of one thing that I found in addition to me feeling or realizing that I
believe, oh, I'm I'm I'm broken. Like I don't work. My love doesn't work like I.
I don't work. Something about me doesn't work. And that's just what it is, was, you know,
God doesn't work. You know, it's there's or he doesn't work for me.
You know, I believe in God. Somehow it didn't shake my belief like in God and his existence.
But it did shake my belief in like God working things out for me.
There's I feel like. For a lot of us, maybe we can, it's like saying, yeah, God is good,
but it's God good to me. God is faithful, but it's God faithful to me are two very different
things. And I realized one of my beliefs is one of the beliefs under the core was,
yeah, that, you know, God is good and God is real, but I don't know if God is good and real to me.
I don't know why he would let me go. through all of this i've i've like the story of hannah i've
been asking him for one thing it's like you know how they say you have one job You know,
I've been asking God for one thing and I've seen him do magic in all these different areas of my
life. But this one thing, what you have one job, God, and it looked like we were getting close and
nope, you know, I'm alone. You don't care. And the funny thing is,
Allison, and I want to be careful how I talk about this, because I don't know how God's going to
meet every reader that reads this book or every listener. I don't know how God's going to what God
is going to do. in their stories i believe god's going to do something um and i'll tell you that my
life looks completely different now than it looked back then and i and i've seen um there's
redemption in my story that i'm not ready to talk about publicly but i'll you know hint hint
there's there's a lot of redemption in my story that i'm celebrating now and i and i say i want to
be careful talking about it because you know, how you'll hear, Oh, they did it for this person. And
we know, and then we start, I don't know. I just, that's a whole other theological thing. I don't
want to go down. I do believe God is faithful to his children, but I,
in my story, I questioned that. And I believe it was important for me to find,
to work towards finding peace in the unknown to me was the whole point,
not, not what practically God has done for my life now, because I can't sell that to you.
I don't know what God's going to do. I know God's going to do something, but I don't know what's
going to do. But what I can sell you is that you can find peace in the unknown and you can find
peace in the unfolding of your life. Because one truth is, is as long as we're here and we're
longer still breathing, God is not done. We're not done. And there's some,
powerful things that can come out of realizing that. And I hope that for my readers and for my
listeners, they get exactly what they want. But I know what's even more important is how to find
peace in the unknown, in the unwielding, in the uncertain,
and in the unfolding that is a characteristic of each and every one of our lives.
Our stories are still unfolding. So I don't know. I think that was a roundabout way to get to
something. But that's definitely what I want to leave with. That's the heart of the book, that you
can find peace, that your life is still unfolding. It's not over. That is a lie, that it's over.
It is a lie that you're broken and that you don't work and that your life doesn't work. It is a lie
that you are bad. I believe we are good and worthy by grace. And there's some beauty to be found in
all of that.
That's how I'd answer that. That is so powerful. I love that. It's like you're refusing to tie the
happy bow because we don't know how that plays out. And it doesn't always play out the same for
everybody. That doesn't mean that we don't have that. gift that comes it's just you said that so
well Dr. Peace you are truly a doctor of peace that was a word I just felt that in my bones and it
I can tell it's coming from your hard-earned wisdom your expertise you know all the different
layers of whole I I can feel from you the wholeheartedness and that means a lot to me yeah yeah I
could feel just It's just really powerful. Where can my listeners find your work?
Because I want them to find you and your work and your book and all that you're doing. Yeah, thank
you for that question. So of course you can, right now I'm most active on Instagram, so you can
find me at itspisamadi. I'm sure you'll leave those details. But I really love people to check out
this book. I'm so excited about this book. It's not my first book, but it is my personal,
most personal book thus far. I will say that this book, you know, wasn't about establishing me as
an author, testing the waters. I wanted to write an honest book about healing.
I'm really excited for people to find gems. I believe there are gems in this.
And you can find this book anywhere where books are online. It's Amazon, Target,
Barnes & Noble. Any online retailer, go to your favorite. You can grab it. But you can get all
those links directly from my Instagram page. I'd love for you to give it a chance. I cannot
recommend it more. We will link to it in today's show notes. We'll link to it on our website, The
Wholehearted Way by Dr. Pisa Mahdi. It is well worth, if you're a listener of this podcast,
you will love this book. It is just your story and your expertise just in this wholehearted way.
It's just so beautiful. And I'm so grateful that you are sharing your wisdom with the world,
sharing your wisdom with us today. Thank you for taking the time. I am just so grateful for you.
Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Allison. This was a bucket list to talk with you and on your podcast
because I love it. So thank you for having me and thank you for sharing your listeners with me.
We're grateful. 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, YouTube, or wherever you
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reflection to help you start your mornings with a steady dose of wisdom. 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 if trauma isn’t just about what happened to you—but what your body learned about safety in relationships?
At its core, trauma isn’t just about what happened to you. It’s about what your body learned in relationships—especially when safety was broken. Whether those wounds began early in life or emerged later through betrayal, loss, or disappointment, your nervous system adapts in ways that are meant to protect you.
If you’ve ever wondered why it’s hard to feel safe in relationships… this episode will help you understand why—and where healing begins.
You’ll learn:
- The 3 ways trauma reshapes your sense of safety
- The deeper story behind patterns of anxiety, shutdown, or people-pleasing
- The patterns your nervous system uses to protect you (without you realizing it)
- The hidden ways trauma can impact your relationship with God
- 4 shifts that begin to restore safety
This conversation offers a compassionate, faith-rooted path forward—helping you understand how your soul and body respond to broken trust, and how safety can be restored over time.
More Resources:
Connect with @dralisoncook on Instagram
Want to go deeper? Join 80,000+ soul menders in our email community and receive weekly reflections and gentle practices here.
If you liked this episode, then you’ll love:
Episode 179: Building Wise Trust - How to Protect Your Heart Without Closing It Off
Episode 188: The Healing Power of Safe People (Not Just Safe Spaces)
Episode 191: The 5 Most Important Things I've Learned About Faith, Attachment, & The Inner Life
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
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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.
© 2025 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage or transcript without permission from the author.
Transcript:
At its core, trauma is about broken safety in relationships, where your body learns that connection
is no longer safe. When betrayal happens later in life, it can feel like the ground just falls
away. beneath your feet because the assumptions you carried about the world that people are
basically trustworthy, that relationships tend to be safe, suddenly get shaken. And your body
responds to that shock in very real ways. Healing often involves not just healing our relationships
with other people, but slowly allowing our understanding of who God is to heal as well.
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You. I'm so glad you're here
with me today. Today's deep dive episode is part of what I've been calling our pillar episodes.
These are episodes where we step back and talk about some of the core themes that run through so
much of the work we do together here at The Best of You. Earlier this year, we talked about
connection, how we learn closeness and boundaries in relationships. We talked about formation and
attachment, some of the deeper ways our souls are shaped over time. And we talked about joy and
play, about the importance of recovering delight and lightness in our lives. Today,
we're turning toward another pillar that sits underneath so many of our conversations here on the
podcast. And that's the theme of trauma healing. and safety. Over the years on this podcast and in
my work with so many people, I've noticed something again and again. When people begin asking
deeper questions about healing, so often what they're really asking about is safety.
How do I feel safe again? How do I trust again? How do I live with an open heart in a world where
trust so often gets broken? And honestly, this question has felt so close to home for me this week.
Because over the past month, I've just been struck again and again by how much pain so many people
are carrying. I've talked with someone navigating a painful romantic breakup. Another person
grieving the loss of a friendship that meant a great deal to them. Someone else feeling betrayed by
an institution they trusted. An organization they had invested years of their life in.
Different stories. circumstances, but underneath them all is the same ache that so many of us know
so well, the ache of broken trust. And it reminded me of something that is almost universally true
about what it means to be human. If you live long enough in this world,
your trust will be broken at some point. Sometimes it happens early in life from your earliest For
some people, your first experiences of trust with parents or caregivers were complicated,
inconsistent, or painful. And in those cases, your whole nervous system can grow up learning that
the people who are supposed to be safe might not actually be safe. Other times,
the wounds come later. You might have grown up in a fairly stable home. You might have trusted
people easily for years, and for the most part, they came through. And then somewhere along the
way, a betrayal, a divorce, a painful rupture in a friendship, a betrayal in a church or workplace,
it can feel like the ground suddenly disappears beneath you. The truth is,
one of the things I often remind people is that betrayal is part of the human story. Even Jesus was
betrayed. Someone he loved. Someone he trusted. Someone who had walked closely beside him.
So the real question isn't whether we will encounter pain or betrayal. The real question is what do
we do when it happens? How do our souls heal? How do our bodies learn safety again after trust has
been broken? Because trauma, whether it happens early in life or later in life, has a way of
shaping the way we move through the world. It shapes how our bodies respond to other people.
It shapes how easily we trust. other people, and sometimes it even shapes how we relate to God.
So today I want to spend some time talking about what I've learned over the years about healing,
trauma, and safety. Not in a heavy or overwhelming way, but in a way that helps us understand our
own souls, our God-created souls a little better, and helps us move toward healing,
put ourselves on the path toward healing and safety and goodness. Because the truth is,
while betrayal is part of our stories, healing. As we begin, as we talk about trauma and healing,
I want to start with one simple idea that can be really clarifying. At its core, trauma is about
broken safety in relationships. Something happens in a relationship or across a series of
relationships where your body learns that connection is no longer safe. Now,
trauma can take many different forms, but over the years, I've noticed that most people's stories
tend to fall into a few common categories. And sometimes just hearing these categories can help you
locate your own story with a little more clarity and compassion. So I want to start by walking
through three of the most common ways these wounds of trust show up in our lives. The first
category is what we might call early attachment wounds. This happens when the people who were
supposed to be your first safe place in the world were not. consistently safe.
Maybe your caregivers were unpredictable. Some days they were warm and loving. Other days they were
withdrawn, angry, or overwhelmed. Maybe there was emotional neglect, not necessarily dramatic big T
abuse, but a kind of absence where your feelings weren't noticed or responded to. Maybe you grew up
with a lot of criticism, messages that you were too much or not enough or Maybe you learned very
early that the safest way to survive your home was to walk on eggshells, to constantly scan the
room and adjust yourself depending on someone else's mood. When these are the environments we grow
up in, something very important happens in the nervous system. Our bodies learn a lesson about
safety. And that lesson often sounds something like this. Someone saying they love me doesn't
necessarily mean it's safe. And that's a really hard lesson for a nervous system to carry.
Because as human beings, we are wired for attachment. We're wired to need closeness and connection.
But when closeness has also been a place where we've gotten hurt, our bodies develop strategies to
try to protect us. This is where you might see patterns like hypervigilance. You're always scanning
for what might go wrong. people-pleasing. You learn very early that if you can keep everyone else
happy, maybe you'll stay safe. Or controlling tendencies,
trying to manage every variable in the environment so that nothing unpredictable happens.
Or a deep fear of abandonment that can show up in relationships later in life.
In a recent conversation on the podcast, Melanie Shankle shared with us about what it was like for
her to grow up in an environment where her nervous system learned exactly this lesson. That the
person saying, I love you, I'm safe for you, I'm here for you, was also the very person who was
hurting her the most. And when that's the case, your body adapts the best way it knows how.
When you're a child, you don't know how to make sense of that dissonance. So your nervous system
learns to survive. And these early attachment wounds shape how you learn. to trust other people
later in life. Now, this isn't the only way that trauma shows up. The second category is what we
might call relational betrayal that happens later in life. And this one is really important to talk
about. Because sometimes when people hear conversations about trauma, they assume it only applies
if you had a difficult childhood. But that's not always the case. Some people actually grew up in
relatively stable homes. You trusted the adults in your life. You learned that people could be
safe. And then somewhere along the line later in life, maybe as a teen, maybe as a young adult,
maybe well into adulthood, something happens that completely disrupts that sense of safety.
Maybe it's a divorce or an affair. that comes out of nowhere. Maybe it's a betrayal inside a church
or ministry environment that you trusted deeply. Maybe it's a friendship that suddenly fractures in
a painful and confusing way. Maybe it's an institutional betrayal where a place that was supposed
to care for people instead protects itself. When betrayal happens later in life,
it can feel like the ground just... away beneath your feet because the assumptions you carried
about the world that people are basically trustworthy, that relationships tend to be safe, suddenly
get shaken. And your body responds to that shock in very real ways.
You might feel anxious in relationships where you once felt relaxed. You might find yourself
questioning your own judgment, doubting yourself, second-guessing yourself. You might feel a sense
of grief, confusion, even anger about what happened. This is normal. It's a healthy response.
Again, none of these responses means there's something wrong with you. They mean your body is
responding to a rupture in trust. Now, there's a third pathway that's also really common,
and it's what is sometimes called accumulated relational stress, or also what is sometimes
described as complex trauma. And this kind of trauma isn't one dramatic moment or one big event or
one huge betrayal, right? One moment of having the ground. cut out from underneath you.
It's more like a pattern that unfolds over time. It's like a million tiny paper cuts.
Maybe it's years of subtle criticism that slowly erodes your sense of confidence over time.
Maybe it's rampant bullying. during your middle school years or your high school years or your
elementary school years. Maybe it's workplace dynamics where you constantly feel undermined or
dismissed. Maybe it's spiritual manipulation or pressure inside a faith community where your
questions or boundaries weren't welcomed. In these situations, the nervous system isn't responding
to one giant shock. Instead, it's responding to a series of smaller relational wounds.
And over time, these experiences accumulate. I sometimes say it this way. Sometimes trauma isn't a
hurricane. Sometimes it's years of tiny storms. And after enough storms,
your nervous system begins to adapt. You may start bracing for criticism before it even comes.
You may assume people are disappointed in you even when they aren't. You may begin to withdraw from
relationships because it simply feels safer not to risk being hurt again. The bottom line is that
our nervous systems are shaped by the relationships we move through in this life. And when safety
has been broken, whether early in life, later in life, or slowly over time,
our bodies develop strategies to try to protect us. And these strategies are actually incredibly
brilliant. They're signs that your nervous system has been doing its best to help you survive.
And understanding that that is what's happening is one of the first steps. toward healing.
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As we begin to understand what's happening in our nervous systems and how these wounds of trust are
showing up in our lives, the next question becomes, what actually happens inside of us when safety
is broken? Because trauma doesn't just live in our memories, right? It shows up in our bodies and
our emotions and in the way we move through relationships. There are a few really important things
that tend to happen inside the soul when we experience broken trust.
The first thing is this. Your body learns protection. When something painful or threatening
happens, your nervous system automatically begins working to keep you safe. It's amazing. It's a
part of how God designed us, right? But it isn't always conscious. You don't necessarily
consciously decide to go into survival mode. It's something your body does for you.
You may have heard about people talk about the four primary trauma responses or fear responses.
Fight. flight, freeze, and fawn. Fight is when your system moves toward confrontation.
You become defensive, argumentative, or quick to anger. Your body is trying to push threats away.
So you move toward conflict, right? And it doesn't always show up through loud arguments or
yelling. That's what people don't understand. Often it's that quick to criticize, quick to defend,
quick to put your guard up. That's a form of fight response. Your nervous system gets activated and
you move into overdrive, even with folks who may well be trustworthy. The second one most of us
have heard of is flight. This is when your nervous system moves you toward escape. You might become
restless, anxious. You might stay constantly busy, always trying to move away from whatever feels
threatening. Think about someone who's always kind of a little bit on eggshells, right? They're
never confrontational. They're never moving toward people. They're always kind of staying busy,
dancing around in the background, trying to avoid any threat, right?
And it's just as exhausting. Your nervous system is just as activated, but it's there to keep you
safe through flight. Now, freeze is when the body shuts down. You might feel numb,
stuck, or unable to act. It's almost like you're frozen. And in this case, it's almost like your
nervous system can't choose between fight or flight. And so you kind of feel stuck, frozen,
blank. You can't find words. You can't figure out what to do. You feel numb inside. And again,
this is your nervous system trying to protect you, but not knowing how to move, how to shift into
the gear that will eventually get you to safety. And the last response is called the fawn response.
And this term was coined by Pete Walker. It's a little bit more recent. I talk about it in The Best
of You. And here in Wyoming, we sometimes bump baby fawns. It's amazing, right?
In the wilderness when you're hiking. And baby fawns don't run. They don't...
They don't flee. They stay camouflaged. They're curled up as if you could barely see them.
It'd be so easy to just kind of bump into them. And that's how they stay safe. They stay hidden in
that way, camouflage from the other animals. And our fond response is like this.
It's when our nervous system tries to keep the peace by pleasing others,
by staying small, by camouflaging ourselves, by smoothing things.
over, by accommodating, by adapting yourself to avoid conflict.
Now remember, just like the other responses, this so often happens outside of your conscious
awareness. I have noticed this repeatedly in my own life as an adult where I'll just flip into that
switch. ever so subtly, and it looks like being nice, right? You just read the cues,
you know what the other person wants to hear, and you try to make them happy as a way of staying
safe. Now, it's not all bad, it's adaptive, and it's very effective, especially for women,
especially for women in faith communities, because we often get rewarded for this. But there's a
difference between being truly kind, which is about exerting sort of a kindness and a compassion
towards someone else, and the reality of trying to please someone to keep ourselves safe.
under the radar, out of their realm of threat. So it can become really problematic when we don't
know that we're doing it and we give over to pleasing and codependent patterns versus that very
important skill of being able to stand in our own space and disagree or say no or very politely
excuse ourselves, right? You don't have to be mean, but to be advocating for our true sense of self
and autonomy and agency. Here's the thing. All of these responses have the same goal.
The goal is self-protection. Your body is trying to keep you safe. And this is so important to
understand because so many people look at their reactions and assume something is wrong with them.
They think, why do I get so anxious in relationships? Why do I shut down when conflict happens?
Why do I keep trying to please everyone? What's wrong with me? How many of you have felt that way
at times? What's wrong with me? Why can't I just show up as myself and be normal?
That's what I'll say to myself. Why can't I just be normal? But what I want you to hear me say.
today is this. Your nervous system is not broken. It's trying to protect you.
Those responses have developed for a reason. At some point in your story,
they've probably helped you survive something that was painful or confusing or overwhelming.
And the truth is you can teach your nervous system that you are the adult in the room and you can
now make the decisions for yourself. Now, there's a second thing that happens when trust is broken,
and that's the different parts of us step in to help. Now, I often talk about this idea of parts in
my work because it gives us a compassionate way to understand our inner world. And some of these
subconscious responses, instead of thinking of yourself as one simple unified personality,
you begin to notice that there are actually different parts of you that respond in different ways,
depending on what's happening. A part of you. gets defensive. A part of you It freezes,
right? A part of you wants to run away. A part of you plays small. But other parts of you are mad
about it. They don't want you to act that way. And it helps us understand that we're complex. We're
multifaceted beings. So in my book with Kimberly Miller, Boundaries for Your Soul, we describe
three categories of parts. And it's based on the internal family systems model of therapy.
And the first category are these manager parts. And these are the parts of us that try to stay
ahead of danger. They try to prevent something bad from happening. These are the parts of us that
become vigilant. They scan the room. They analyze conversations. They try to anticipate what might
go wrong. Sometimes they show up as perfectionism. If I can just get everything right, maybe
nothing bad will happen. Sometimes it shows up as control. If I can just manage the environment,
manage the relationship, manage everyone's emotions, maybe I can keep. things safe.
These manager parts of us are trying to prevent pain before it ever happens but when pain does
break through anyway as it does another kind of part tends to step in.
And these are what are called firefighter parts. They're like firefighters. They come in after the
flames of pain surface. And these ones move quickly to put out those emotional fires.
When something feels overwhelming, maybe grief, shame, anxiety, these parts jump in to help us
cope. Sometimes they show up as withdrawal. You pull away from other people or as numbing.
You scroll endlessly, distract yourself, overwork, overconsume, over... Sometimes they show up as
anger, right? If you think about it, a burst of anger lashing out can make you feel better in the
moment. It creates distance, which can feel really good, like you got something for your efforts,
right? But underneath all of these protective parts, there is another part of us that carries the
original pain. And we call these in Boundaries for Your Soul and in IFS,
Exiled parts. These are the parts of us that carry the grief, the sadness.
The pain, the fear, the loneliness, the sense of being hurt or rejected or abandoned.
These are the tender places inside of us that learned something about the world when trust was
broken, that I'm not safe, that I'm not good enough, that I'm not worth care, that I'm not lovable,
that I'm not fundamentally safe or okay. And these parts of us carry those burdens deep inside.
often outside of our conscious awareness.
And what's so important to remember is that none of these parts of your soul are bad.
They're all trying in their own ways to protect something precious inside of you.
Before we get to healing, there's a third impact of trauma that we don't talk about as often, but I
think it matters, especially for those of us who are people of faith. And that's this.
Trauma can change the way we experience God. When relationships are safe,
it's easier for our nervous systems to experience God as safe. But when relationships have been
confusing, or painful. It can make our relationship with God feel complicated, too. Maybe a part of
you knows with your head that God is good or that God is trustworthy, but to another part of you,
trust feels risky. You might find yourself wondering, can I really trust God?
Why didn't God stop what happened? Why do I still feel anxious or wounded or unloved if God really
loved me? These questions are not signs of a weak faith. They are signs that your nervous system
has experienced something painful in the realm of trust. And if the people who represented safety
in your life, parents, mentors, spiritual leaders, adults, were unsafe in some way,
then it makes sense that trusting God might feel complicated too. Our images of God are often...
through the lens of our earliest relationships, which means this. Healing often involves not just
healing our relationships with other people, but slowly allowing our understanding of who God is to
heal as well. When we step back and look at all of this together, we begin to see something really
important. When trust is broken, your soul adapts. Your body develops protective responses and
different parts of you step in to manage pain. And sometimes even your relationship with God gets
tangled up in these wounds as well. And here's the good news. None of these responses means that
something is wrong with you. They mean that our systems are doing its best to survive. And
understanding that opens the door to the next question. How does healing actually happen?
So here's the most important thing to understand about healing. It almost never happens through
force. or willpower. It doesn't happen through beating yourself up. It doesn't happen through
criticizing yourself for having some of these responses. Healing starts with compassion.
It's a slow process of restoring safety in the places where safety was lost.
And here's the good news. You can become that re-parenting, that re-attaching figure for your own
soul in partnership with God. So here are a few ways that this can happen.
It starts with teaching yourself what safety feels like. Your nervous system can learn to
experience moments where it is safe. Moments where it learns that it doesn't have to stay on high
alert all the time. Sometimes that safety begins right inside your own body.
It might be as simple as learning right now as you're listening is taking a moment to slow down
your breathing. Learning to notice when you're overwhelmed and giving yourself permission to pause.
Learning to listen to the signals your body is sending you instead of overriding them.
It might mean right there in your car or right now as you're listening to this podcast,
noticing what are the cues my body is sending me? What's happening?
It starts with awareness. You begin to attune to your own soul, to your own body,
like you might attune to a child you love. Think about how you attune to your own children.
You notice their unspoken cues. You notice their downcast eyes, the slump in their shoulder,
the bubbling over of laughter at times, right? You notice that and you mirror that to someone you
love. You begin to do that for your own soul and your own body. Some part of me is downcast.
I don't know why, but I want to get curious about that. Instead of shaming yourself or trying to
fix yourself, you start to notice. This is what's happening right now.
I'm right here with myself as it happens. This is how you begin to retrain your body to learn
safety. You learn to become safe for yourself. Sometimes safety begins through small experiences of
being understood by someone else. Maybe someone listens without trying to fix you and you notice
what that feels like inside. Maybe someone sits with your pain instead of minimizing it.
They're just with you in it. Maybe someone respects your boundaries and it surprises you.
You anticipated that they might get mad, but you did it anyway. And instead of lashing out at you,
they say, I get it. I'll honor that. And you notice what that feels like in your body,
right? It's not just that it happens. It's that you allow yourself to become consciously aware that
it's happening. That was safety. What that person did there felt safe to me.
I want to notice what that feels like in my body. They seem small,
some of these moments, but they matter when we become more aware of what it feels like in our
bodies. Here's the thing. Every experience of safety begins to teach your nervous system something
new. It teaches your body this is what connection can feel like when it's safe again.
Even after a rupture with someone who's safe, you maybe have a conflict, but you work through it.
You say what you feel. They say what they feel. You arrive at a deeper understanding.
You're so relieved that you hurt each other out, that you came back to a place of peace. Oh,
does that feel good in the nervous system? We never had that experience before. This is what safety
feels like. You learn it and you grow it and then you move toward it consistently.
Sometimes this kind of relational safety happens with the therapist, right? This is what the
process of therapy is. It's relearning what it feels like to have that healthy.
Attachment, not that that person validates necessarily everything you feel or think, but that that
person stays with you, showing you what it's like to work through honesty, kindness,
and repair. Sometimes it can happen in community spaces where you can show up as your real self
instead of performing or hiding. I've talked with so many people about what it feels like after
leaving a toxic system where they felt like they had to suppress themselves or couldn't speak up or
would get punished if they thought a certain way. And then they find themselves in a community, not
that's perfect because they aren't perfect, but a community where. they can be themselves. And even
if people disagree, there's a kindness, there's an honoring that happens, right? Even if you have
to set a boundary, there's an honoring of that, that you just feel in the culture of that system.
Right there, there are two ways that we can experience healing. One is to become a compassionate
witness to your own experiences, to begin to notice the movements of your own soul,
to notice when a part of you is acting up. Again, not to fix, but to notice,
to witness, to get curious about. And then the other way is through other people.
We are often wounded by other people and we are also healed through other people,
through ordinary moments of kindness, through other people. showing up for us in ways that surprise
us and teach our nervous system how to heal and how to trust again. Healing rarely happens in
isolation, right? It happens as we slowly experience safe connection again, both from ourselves and
from other people. And this leads us to the third part of healing. Healing is, I believe,
a part of our spiritual formation. It's the ongoing work of becoming more like Jesus.
In other words, the places where we've been wounded are often the very places
Careful here when I say that. I'm not saying that God causes the pain, right, so that he can heal
us. Broken trust, betrayal, and relational wounds aren't what God intends for our lives.
But what I am saying is that God meets us inside these wounded places, inside the grief,
inside the betrayal, inside the confusion, inside the questions. And over time,
something begins to shift. These parts of us. have been carrying pain begin to experience
compassion. These parts of us that have been bracing begin to soften. These parts of us that have
believed we were alone begin to discover that we were never alone after all. And slowly over time,
our souls begin to experience safety again. Safety with ourselves, safety with other people,
and safety with God. Now again, it doesn't mean we'll never be hurt again,
but it does mean we will learn how to be with ourselves and stay with ourselves through the hurt.
And we become, over time, more resilient. I want to close today with something really simple that
you can reflect on today, even while you're listening. Earlier, I mentioned the idea that many of
our reactions are actually signals. They're places where our nervous system is telling us something
important. Instead of judging these reactions today,
what if you approach them with curiosity? And it's really as simple as noticing and getting
curious. I notice I'm sad today. I wonder what that's about.
I notice I get really defensive with that other person. I wonder what that's about.
I notice I'm resentful today. I want to get curious about that.
I notice I'm exhausted deep inside. I wonder what's going on inside my soul.
This way of attuning. to your inner world, not to fix, not to analyze,
not to shame, but to be with is an amazing aspect of how God designed our souls that we can stay
with ourselves. We can invite the power of God's presence to meet us right there.
And through doing that, we can become more authentic with other people instead of hiding.
these parts of us, instead of trying to shove them aside, we bring them into our conscious
awareness. And as you practice that today, just noticing, getting curious what's happening in your
soul, inviting God into that space, you might even think about who's someone I could share this
with. Not to analyze or fix again, but to say, you know, a part of me is a little sad today.
And then just notice what happens. How do they respond to that? Does it feel like care?
Does it feel like pressure? Doesn't necessarily mean that they're a bad person if they're not the
right person to show up for you in that moment. But you're learning to test. You're learning to see
how does your soul respond? What feels safe? And you become an advocate for yourself.
Because the truth. is this trauma is what happens when safety is broken but healing is what happens
when safety is slowly restored moment by moment day by day step by step awareness by awareness it
often doesn't happen in one big flash it happens in these tiny moments of getting curious of
extending compassion of reaching and learning and noticing and pulling back not because you're
operating out of protectiveness, but because, oh, that didn't feel good. That's interesting.
I wonder what that's about. These small moments of noticing matter so much more.
then you might realize they are the places where healing begins. Because these different moments
where we're activated or we're experiencing emotions or feelings or thoughts that we wish we
didn't, they are not your enemies. These are actually signals. They're invitations to slow down and
become curious about what's happening inside your soul. Instead of shaming yourself for these
reactions, you begin to ask yourself gentler. Questions. Questions that open the doorway to
understanding and eventually to healing. As we close today, I want to leave you with a few
questions to reflect on. You can linger over them right now as you're listening, or you can pause
this audio or video, whatever you're watching, and take some time to journal what you notice.
Just notice what stirs up inside of you. Where in your life have you experienced broken trust?
How did a part of you learn to step in and protect you when that happened?
What does it feel like to extend compassion to that part of you?
And imagine inviting God to meet you in that place even now.
Because so very often these places where we feel the most tenderness, these places where our
protective patterns show up the strongest, these are hues, they're signals,
our soul ascending, that there's a journey toward healing right here.
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, YouTube, or wherever you listen to or
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And be sure to join us each weekday for the best of you every day, a brief daily reflection to help
you start your mornings with a steady dose of wisdom. 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.
Episode Show Notes
What happens when your body starts telling a story your mind cannot ignore?
In this deep-dive episode of The Best of You, Dr. Alison sits down with author Justin Whitmel Earley to explore the connection between spiritual formation and the everyday rhythms of our bodies.
From the outside, Justin’s life looked stable and successful. But anxiety and panic began surfacing in ways he could no longer explain away. What followed was a deeper question many of us carry: what if our bodies are revealing something about how we are living?
Together, Alison and Justin explore the forgotten wisdom of embodied faith and how small daily practices shape the soul over time.
In this conversation, they explore:
- Why anxiety sometimes appears even when life “looks fine” on the surface
- The surprising ways your body may be revealing deeper patterns in your life
- What modern faith may have forgotten about the role of the body
- How simple daily rhythms can slowly reshape who we are becoming
This conversation is about learning to listen.
Because sometimes the path toward healing begins by paying attention to the wisdom already present in your body.
More Resources:
Connect with @justinwhitmelearley on Instagram
Order Justin’s latest book The Body Teaches the Soul.
Connect with @dralisoncook on Instagram
Join the 80,000+ soul menders in our email community and receive weekly reflections and gentle practices here.
If you liked this episode, then you’ll love:
Episode 186: Stuck in Overthinking? A Simple Practice to Interrupt Stress, Overwhelm, and Habit Loops
Episode 184: Stop Running From Anxiety - How to Tell Normal Stress from Unhealthy Anxiety and Find Peace Over Panic
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
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TRANSCRIPT
Beautiful office, important job. I'm getting paid more than I've ever gotten paid in my life. I
have a wife and... two children and everything is going right in my life if you look from the
outside but in my mind i was a house on fire everything is closing in everything is ending i justa
wish i knew that there were physical practices i could engage in that would calm that emotional
state if a doctor can get you to uh exercise be in friendship often throughout the week you know
take walks outside and eat right and not work too much and sleep eight hours like that is going to
be far better than any pill that could ever give you
Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You. I'm Dr. Allison, and I'm
so glad you're here with us this week. If you're new here, I'm so glad you found us.
This is a space for anyone who's interested in a wiser way of being human, a place where we honor
the complexity of real human lives grounded in modern science and ancient wisdom. And this is our
Thursday Deep Dive episode, where we slow down and explore one topic more fully.
If you haven't already, I'd love for you to to join us each weekday. For the best of you every day,
this is a short eight-minute reflection rooted in scripture and shaped by psychology and spiritual
wisdom. And for those of you who are following along with the daily reflections, today's
conversation is meant to feel like a natural continuation of that path where we pause and take a
little more time to go deeper in conversation with other guests and experts and sometimes just me
to look at how that wisdom actually shapes our lived embodied lives.
Today's scripture is Genesis 2-7, and we'll touch on it in the episode today in a powerful way.
The scripture is, Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. It's a verse...
of us know well, but we don't always think about in the context of what we're carrying right now.
Because what if this wisdom is physical? What does it mean that God gave us a body,
breath, and bones, rest, and rhythm? And that question sits at the heart of today's conversation.
Today we're talking about the body, not as something to manage, fix, or overcome, but as something
that teaches us. Many of us were formed to believe that wisdom lives primarily in the mind,
in right beliefs, right thinking, right theology. But what if wisdom also lives in breath, in
sleep? and rest in the rhythms we repeat every day without thinking.
My guest today is Justin Whitmull Early, and his story brings the question to life in a powerful
way. Justin is a lawyer, an author, a husband, and the father of four boys. He's the author of The
Common Rule, Habits of the Household, and his brand new book, The Body Teaches the Soul.
He's someone who deeply valued the life of the mind, faith, theology, vocation,
calling. And from the outside, his life looked really good and together. But in his early 30s,
his body began to tell a different story. That moment became the beginning of a long journey,
one that led him to ask a question many of us carry. How can I believe a gospel of peace and
goodness and yet live with a body ruled by anxiety? Justin's new book,
The Body Teaches the Soul, grows directly out of that question. It's not a self-help manual.
It's not a productivity guide, though it's incredibly practical. It's an invitation into wisdom,
the kind of wisdom scripture has always pointed toward that we talk about in these daily
devotionals where body and soul. connect. In the book, Justin explores how simple embodied habits
shape us spiritually over time. And he challenges the two errors many of us fall into when it comes
to the body. And he invites us to reclaim the body as something sacred, as a place where God's
wisdom meets our daily lives. I'm so thrilled to bring you my conversation with Justin Whitmull
Early.
thrilled you're here i i would love to dive in to our conversation where you dive in in the book
because it's so powerful you open in the er i think yes you're unfortunately yes yeah you're 48
hours without sleep you're in a full and panic mode um kind of in my words i would you know you're
you're there's a dissonance between what's going on in your mind and what's going on in your body.
Can you put us back in that moment? Tell us what was happening and how that led to this book that
you've gifted us with now. It was a moment I will never forget. It changed the course of my life.
It led to me writing.
When I was in that moment, I was about 30 years old. I had been a missionary in China for a couple
years of my 20s, almost five actually. So I was a serious Christian,
so to speak. My faith was really important to me. Law school had been an interesting time.
I had felt called actually to leave the mission field and go live and work missionally within
lawyering. So I had come at law school as a serious Christian again.
What I didn't realize during law school was that it, like the rest of the world,
is a... machine. It did not just teach me new information about how to be a lawyer.
It shaped a way of life that I was unaware of until it changed me,
until after the fact. And what law school did was encourage me to stay up later,
wake up earlier, fit more work in everywhere, be constantly tethered to my screen. The typical
stuff of modern working America, but For, you know, top law school students,
and for better or for worse, I was one of them at a top law school working towards a top lawyering
job. These were all blessings. These were good things. But the formation is pretty extreme there.
And so I came out as a 29-year-old turning 30 lawyer with a great head on my shoulders,
like great worldview. But the architecture of my habits at that time, the way I lived my life,
the formation that had occurred, and I didn't know about it, was just like everybody else's. And at
the age of 30, I wake up one night in full-on panic attack. And I didn't even know,
Allison, what a panic attack was at the time. I had no idea what was happening to me. That's why
I'm in the emergency room thinking I must have eaten something, something must have gone wrong. And
I was really scared because in my mind, I had never put my quote unquote identity in work.
In my mind, this was not the most important thing in life. In my mind, I was a calm, normal,
sincere Christian. But in my body, I had become wild.
I mean, I was totally, I now see the words like disintegration and dysregulation and all these
things would apply. I just didn't know those words that I had no idea was happening. Yeah. I
relate. My listeners, I've told this story and I've been telling it more very similarly.
And if it makes you feel better, I was in a psychology doctoral program having that kind of living
so much in my mind, thinking I could analyze health, analyze spiritual formation,
analyze my way into wholeness. only to find myself having extreme panic attacks.
So when I read that, a part of me was like, oh, I get it. There's that wonderful left brain kind of
mind-oriented part of us that, especially as Christians,
isn't bad. And it can be the part of us that's very theologically minded and doctrinally minded and
doing the right thing minded. But man, does it have to be brought. into relationship with the rest
of us. And so that's right. I just appreciate that story so much that you shared that as the
anchoring. And for me, I think it was particularly acute because as a former missionary,
sincere Christian and lawyer, and by the way, English literature major and aspiring writer,
I've always loved writing. I thought that's how life work. Like you believe the right things.
You get the words and the ideas right in your head and it will trickle down to your body. I never
would have said that because I never doubted it. I didn't need to say it. It was just assumed,
right? And so two things that happened to me in the wake of that, Allison, have been the most two
important changes in my life. And the first one was realizing that your head can go one way while
your habits go the other way and your heart will tend to follow the habits. That was a really
important realization. And that explains so much about life, why I don't just feel the way I say I
feel, but rather I often feel the way I practice myself into this emotional place.
Another way to put it would be you can't think your way out of a problem you didn't think your way
into. You practiced your way there, so you need to practice your way out. So this was really
important for me. in the context of formation in the spiritual disciplines so that's actually what
i went on to write about as i started to recover in my mid-30s but the second part of this that
came a little later and i realized oh my gosh this is just as important if not more was the whole
embodied part of that that you can't actually really talk about spiritual formation and habit
without talking seriously about embodiment because we're talking about dysregulation between what
you truly think you believe and what your body is trained to experience we're talking about the
difference between worldview and education upper and lower and that led me to an embodiment place
and i would say now oh my gosh this is not just a realm of spiritual disciplines this is a realm of
physical disciplines this is actually the question of what do you do on the daily with with your
body and why is everything you do physically far more spiritually important than you think,
and everything you do spiritually far more physically important than you think. Just one more way
to sum that up, kind of like I said earlier, is when your head goes this way and your habits go
that way, your heart tends to follow the habit, right? And I think another way to put that is when
your thoughts go one way. But your embodied practices go the other way. Your brain tends to be
formed by the embodied practices as much, if not more than the thought part, like it's a joint
effort. So I didn't realize that. So a lot of my practice and writing and life has become really
attentive to spiritual and physical discipline and how they're forming me emotionally and thought
wise and belief wise far more than I ever knew. I want to get the book is very practical and I want
to get into some of the practicality of that. But it sounds like. The mind part, because you talk
in the book about, you know, I'm a serious Christian, reciting scripture. Your mental habits,
for lack of a better word, were not bad. No. In that sense.
Yeah. I do say so myself. Yeah. Right. It still just wasn't enough to where it was also,
it was unintegrated. It was fragmented from the physical. Is that how we could put it? That's a
great way to put it. For example, I remember another iconic moment during that time where I was
sitting in my 18th floor office in my new law firm. I think I'm a second-year associate.
Beautiful office, important job. I'm getting paid more than I've ever gotten paid in my life. I
have a wife and two children. From the outside, everything should be great. I even remember it was
a beautiful day outside the window. I'm overlooking the river. It's incredible. Everything is going
right in my life if you look from the outside.
But in my mind, I was a house on fire. And I didn't know why.
Everything that I thought about my life, it's like, this is good. I've got a great job. I've got a
great family. I've got a great future. But my mind felt like,
my body, like my internal life felt like everything is closing in. Everything is ending.
And I didn't know the word for... then you know i didn't know the word for dysregulation i i now
realize i was having sort of constant panic attacks induced by insomnia induced by a hurried and
anxious way of life but i thought i was just losing my mind and like this was a one-way street
towards the insane asylum and and that really started to scare me and i just wish i knew then that
You know, the title of the book, The Body Teaches the Soul. I just wish I knew that there were
physical practices I could engage in that would calm that emotional state.
Because I kept trying to solve it with saying more Bible verses. The problem was I already believed
them. I just wasn't putting them into practice. And we were made to be this, you know,
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How did you, when you got out of that ER moment, you had to face the reality,
when you reached out for help, what did you find? How did you begin to put the pieces together?
And I like to ask this question for so many of my listeners. Sometimes you receive advice that's
not helpful. And I think that's helpful to name. So what was helpful and what wasn't helpful as you
started to realize, I've got to change something? Yeah. I think what wasn't helpful was that most
people around me had the same either myopic or one-sided view of my struggle that I did.
So far from blaming them. I just think we didn't know enough physically and spiritually.
at that time now this was only 10 years ago right but i do think we're kind of having a renaissance
and neurology and spiritual formation and understanding of how these two things go together i think
i grew up in a in an era i mean the 20th century is absolutely a gnostic era where where and we can
get more into this if you want but where people tend to over spiritualize the bible and
christianity and tend to minimize the physicality this actually happening secular culture as much
as christianity so a lot of people around me had the similar kind of problematic viewpoints so
practically speaking when i went to the emergency room they saw it strictly as a physical anxiety
problem here are some sleeping pills yes psychology did it too that's right they were like the
appeal wasn't just the religious community that's right they that was the best answer they could
give and i don't Don't necessarily blame them. When I went to a lot of my friends and even
counselors, they were like, you know, this is your identities and work and, you know,
you're believing the wrong things. And they weren't wrong. Again, it had become just not in the way
that we thought. I mean, again, with what hands did I pick up my heart and place it in the identity
of habit or in the identity of work? I think by habit. Right. So it wasn't a belief problem.
It was a habit problem. And all these things were.
Yeah, not super helpful. But let me say what was really helpful because I think this is also really
important. And I don't want to like dunk on culture or my friends or the counselors and just say,
you know, I already had it wrong and I finally figured it out. You know what was helpful is I
talked to a ton of people and a ton of people listened to me and a ton of people had empathy for me
and a ton of people wanted to pray for me and a ton of people wanted to help me. And in the
aggregate, the Lord used those conversations to start to put ends together that I had never put
before. which is why I went on to write about it.
Their presence was extraordinarily helpful. They didn't need to know all the right answers, and I
don't blame them for not. So I'm very grateful I had people to talk to. And if anybody's
experiencing something like this, you have to talk to people, therapists and friends included, even
though, as it turns out, a lot of them only had kind of one side of the answer. But you were about
to say something I noticed. So what were you going to interject with? You're saying so much good. I
want to... underline it for the listener that so often when there is that that divide between and I
love how you talk about it the the mind or the belief and the habits of the body it's not that some
I love how you're saying it it's not that Because if we leave it in the mind, it's all about I
should just have less idolatry or I should just be able to practice this,
take a pill, which sometimes does help and is sometimes necessary. But what we're missing, and you
used that word Gnosticism. Tell us a little bit more. I want to anchor this discussion.
That was a heresy in the early centuries that we fall into as Christians. And for the listener,
what happens is if you're dealing with anxiety, If the body isn't part of the healing conversation,
we're missing a huge piece of this. So tell us what you mean by functional Gnosticism and how that
actually, how we're kind of living that inadvertently in many ways in our faith communities,
also in therapeutic communities, but particularly sometimes in faith communities. Absolutely. And
this is the core of The Body Teaches the Soul. This is the theological foundation upon which all
the practices and habits are built. Genesis 2-7. lays out the view of a human person.
It says God created Adam out of the dust, that is physical stuff, and then breathed the spirit of
life into him. That is a spiritual miracle. And the combination of that physical and the spiritual
is a soul. The King James Version says a living soul was born.
And we could go a lot of different directions, but I'm going to keep this short and basic. That
means what Christianity has always believed and what the Bible teaches over and over is that a
human being is a divine combination of the spiritual and the physical. It is unlike anything else
in the universe. This is kind of why we are the image of God in a unique way.
We are just... wildly beautiful and wonderful and complicated and, by the way,
mysterious. We are a divine union of the physical and spiritual, and that's not really a math
equation. It's a spiritual reality that we're always digging deeper into. But it means you can make
two major heresies in the world, and it's been happening for thousands and thousands of years.
You can make a spiritual heresy and sort of say, essentially what we are is really,
at the end of the day, just spiritual. And we call that Gnosticism, also Manichaeism, lots of
different names. But it's recurrent. It happens all the time. It's happening now as much as it was
happening in the era that the New Testament was written. And lots of Paul's writings are actually
combating this. Lots of the early church fathers were combating this. They were like, no, you can't
just say Jesus was God and not actually a human body. He was human. This is really important.
Because they were combating this idolatry of the spiritual side of us. We also know there's another
side of that idolatry. you can say actually everything's material it's not spiritual and we see
this all over the 20 21st century um it actually started to really come about in the enlightenment
and darwinism this is not new but it's accelerated to a pretty wild extreme where you get people
literally saying i'm just the atoms um and the bible of course preaches against that like no no far
more than your body but you are your body you know and so where you you end up is you say we
christians can't make these errors we can't ignore the spiritual but nor can we idolize the
material we need to and you can picture a triangle here those two at the bottom like ends of the
extreme you want to picture a triangle up towards something that is different but combined and that
is we want to image god which means we're always going to be attentive to the spiritual and the
physical and if you are trying to solve your mental health crisis just by reading bible verses
you're probably ignoring the gift of the body that God gave you. And you're trying to solve your
mental health problem just by taking pills. You are ignoring the gift of the spiritual brain that
God gave you. And if you're trying to come at it as an integrated whole, okay, you're not just
doing something wise. You're doing something biblical because that's who you are. Oh,
that's such a word. You could even add only through talk therapy.
that yes you can't incorporate some component of the nervous system the body the breath yeah yes
actually you know and probably a lot of listeners will be familiar um reading the body keeps the
school which was actually originally the inspiration of my title.
I was trying to play on it a little bit by saying the body teaches the soul.
You get some great outlines there. I mean, people generally are starting to realize two things,
that the pill revolution is insufficient. If you're not doing real talk therapy,
addressing the truth claims in your upper brain and how they bear on the lower body.
then you're missing something. So increasingly, even though it's kind of a popular heresy, like,
oh, you just need a pill to solve your depression problem. What I found in all my research is that
no psychiatrist worth their salt really thinks that. They think,
oh, you absolutely need good talk therapy, which is another way of saying you need spiritual truth
claims. You need to be in touch with what reality actually is. But hopefully those same people
would realize that there are times when talk therapy is not enough. In fact,
if a doctor can get you to exercise, be in friendship often throughout the week,
take walks outside and eat right and not work too much and sleep eight hours, that is going to be
far better than any pill they could ever give you. They would much rather have you doing that than
almost taking any pill. They recognize those are more successful things. So people want this upper
-lower approach. And I think the great joy for me working on this book was realizing It's what the
Bible's prescribed for years. And all these things that we ought to do, sleep and exercise and
breathing, which I write about in the book, these are chapters, are dignified with the spiritual
gifts of God. Like, this is what we're doing. Yeah. I love that you're taking it all the way back
to how we were made in the beginning. That's so powerful. I had Dr.
Hilary McBride on the... podcast and we were talking about to your point in psychology i learned
the top down approaches and the bottom up approaches to healing and you and some therapists lean in
different directions and that it takes different forms of feeling but the top down is the let's
let's look at the cognitive let's look at the thoughts let's look at and you can apply this to
spirituality as well the top down is sort of the the thinking and the kind of what happens you know
in the in the in the upper part of our brain and then the bottom up is starting with the body
what's going on in the body and that's the part that yes was neglected yes and is now coming back
into your point and and i'll i will say that you know different people different people ask me i'll
all Sometimes you need one more than the other. In your case, you didn't need that.
You needed the bottom up. Same with me. My thoughts were good. That's right.
They were perfectly logical. They were just completely disconnected from my body. That's right.
And likewise, I meet plenty of people at my gym, for example, who are living a great,
healthy lifestyle. They're doing the right things. They know about this. And they are crumbling.
Yes. Because they think at the end of the day, they are a conglomeration of atoms and love in the
world is an illusion. Yeah. I mean, they're falling apart because they're trying to say, how do I
explain my love for my children? How do I explain the problems of my marriage? And I'm like, truth
claims, worldview, formation, Christian evangelism. This is back to the basics. But, you know,
sometimes people need that. But I find a lot of people in Christianity like me are doing okay on
the worldview. Yeah. That's a huge generalization. But I meet a lot of people like that, but
they've completely ignored their body. The part of their worldview that's not working is they're
kind of Gnostic in their worldview. So take us there, because that's where much of the focus of the
book is. Because even in psychology, we've kind of begun, like you said, there is this renaissance
these last several years in understanding this. But let's flip it to spiritual formation, where I
still think we're a little behind on that. We're not often going into...
church services. And again, I love how you said that, like we're all doing the best we can.
But for those listening, you have this metaphor of gardening the body.
And this is spiritual practice, right? This is not separate from your,
these habits are not separate from your spiritual habits. Talk us through what that looks like for
you and how you practice it. You bet. I'll give you the first. five, six chapters of the book,
and then I'll try to give a short example of one, and then you can decide which one you want to go
to next.
After all that introductory work that we just talked about, the book is very practical. Breathing,
thinking, eating, sleeping, exercise, sickness, sex.
Those are the first seven, if you will.
Breathing was huge for me. The book starts with breathing because breathing is the place where the
upper meets the lower in an extraordinarily unique way. And we could do an hour-long podcast just
about the miracle of breath, spirituality of breath in Genesis 2-7, the wild integration of the
upper and lower in breath. Breathing, of course, is the one vital life function that your upper
brain can take control of and then regulate your lower body through. And so I went from a place of
thinking breathing exercises. And breath prayers were kind of woo-woo and suspect and maybe
Eastern to realizing, oh my gosh, this is fully Christian. No wonder so many other people realize
the importance of breath. And breath prayers became, and still to this day,
you know, yesterday I was doing some breath prayers. It's just become an integral practice for me
because what's happening in a breath prayer, and I like to do box breathing where you sort of
breathe up for a couple seconds, inhale, hold for a couple seconds. Exhale for a couple seconds.
Hold for a couple seconds. Probably most of your listeners have heard of this. So that's a lower
body exercise, right? And I like to combine it with Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd on the
inhale. I shall not want on the exhale. And for me, that is not only effective.
It has saved me from so many panic attacks. It's helped me re-regulate to get back to my kids in
the house and out of angry moments. But it also... integrates the upper and the lower.
We're talking about bringing the spiritual truth to a lower body exercise. And I could talk about
it for a long time, but that's a great example of how just in one place of the body, this theology
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Did
it take you a while to learn to trust that?
It took me a while to trust the breath. Did it take you a while?
And I'm thinking of the listener who maybe has tried it and it initially can feel a little,
we're so used to being in our minds. I'm just curious how your journey was with that. It took me a
lot of practice. And if you think about it, this is going to make sense in every area of life.
If somebody says, hey, you should really exercise or sleep differently. If you understand right,
it's not going to be right the first time you go to the gym. You're going to need a lot of
practice. And this is kind of Allison where the gardening metaphor becomes so important. The
gardening metaphor runs throughout the book. And it's the idea that the best way to think about
your body. is a garden the original vocation in eden is you we were gardeners we still are and the
gardening metaphor helps you in a couple different ways one you know that no gardening work is fast
like nothing ever happens overnight nothing ever is automatic anything regarding your body is going
to be happening at the pace of a garden but we also know from working in gardens that there is real
change this is where the The difference of, I think you solve the agency problem when you take the
gardening metaphor. If you do nothing to your farm, you know what's going to happen. It's going to
become a desert or a jungle. A gardener knows that they have to act. And when it comes to our
bodies, if you want a different mental health outcome,
then you need to practice breathing. You need to practice sleeping. You need to work at the pace of
a garden. But importantly, gardeners also know something else. It's not autonomous.
You don't have complete control. You're dealing with the soil that you were given. You're dealing
with the weather patterns that you have. And that means you're dealing with the body that you're
given. We're different. Our bodies are different. And you've got to garden yours, not someone
else's. And you've got to realize, man, they have different soil here. They won the dopamine
lottery. I didn't. But that doesn't mean you stop gardening. That means, okay, what do I do with my
plot of land? And the Bible is full of parables talking exactly to this. How do you be faithful
with what you've given? How do you garden what you've been given? This is why Jesus talked in
farming so much, because spiritual growth, what do we call it? The fruits of the Spirit. It's
fruit. You stay connected to the vine. So think about gardening. You're working in conjunction with
God, and that means any practice like this is going to be slow. It's going to take practice,
but it's very real, and there's very real fruit. I love that. I love that.
It's a slower way. We say in Boundaries for Your Soul, it's a slower way to get to where you want
to be.
That's great. I love that. It's a slower way because if you don't do it,
you're never going to get to where you want to be. But it is patient work.
Before I let you go, I loved this chapter.
It's just a beautiful chapter on sickness and lament. But in particular, you talk about learning to
cry as a discipline. Yes. And I thought that was just really beautiful.
How tell us a little bit about that, what that was like for you. And I just I thought it was really
what a beautiful way to think of tears as a embodied spiritual practice.
Yeah. You know, I think I probably had a overdeveloped view of the fall before I realized the
goodness of the body. So I've always been kind of solid, so to speak, on, hey, we fall apart.
Our bodies are dying. There's tragedy in the world. Cancer happens.
And then as I started to realize, oh my gosh, but our bodies are beautiful. They're important.
They're given. God created us with bodies. He redeemed us through the body of his son. He's going
to resurrect us to new embodied life. Clearly he loves bodies. So a lot of the book is in that lane
of saying your body is a gift. It's good. You should be stewarding it, gardening it, eat
differently, sleep differently. But you don't want people to think about this. without really
wrestling with the other reality, that it is broken, it is fallen. And that needs to be squarely in
the middle of your embodied theology, which is why I put the chapter literally actually squarely in
the middle of the book, because if you don't understand the fall and how your body's broken, you
get all this wrong, right? And so it's not a chapter of answers. I mean,
this is the problem of... This is the problem of sickness and the problem of fall.
And better theologians and writers than me have not solved it, right? The best answers we have is
that, well, God is with you in the pain.
He's with you. And guess what? He cries just like you. One of the wildest verses in the Bible,
also the shortest. You learn it as a kid, Jesus wept. And that idea is at the core of the chapter,
that if we don't learn how to, like Jesus, go to the tomb of Lazarus.
And that means that, like Jesus, you walk to the dying body that you have. And your first response
is not, don't worry, it's going to be resurrected. Don't worry, we can do something about this. Oh,
we're going to fix this. First response is to be like, this is called suffering. This is called
pain. Let's cry. Let's cry. Let's weep over this. This is not how it's meant to be.
All answers are going to be hollow if you don't learn to cry like Jesus. And as it turns out, Your
body's meant to do it. It's kind of fascinating, right, that we cry externally at our eyes where
everybody's looking. It binds us to each other. It shows that we are hurting and other people
notice it. I mean, you know, every time I write about this or talk about it, even right now, I'm
like, I kind of want to cry because I need it. I need it. And you were meant to.
So everybody needs to learn it. Everybody needs to learn to lament. And then you need to get to the
work on gardening your body and hope for the resurrection. It is a softening and it's so
fascinating. It's a physical softening that leads to an emotional and kind of mental release
because it is that tears is that release of I can't I can't solve it. That's kind of the whole
point. Yes. I have to to grieve it. What would you say as we wind down here,
Justin, for the person listening who whose body is. tired or anxious or maybe numb,
what would you hope they most understand? You've given us so many gems,
but just speaking to that person now, what do you hope they most understand about how God meets us
through the body?
I like to sum it up like this, and I put it in every chapter in the book, that your habits won't
change God's love for you, but God's love for you should change your habits. And that's it.
And applied, that means right where you are right now and all your brokenness and all your struggle
and your suffering, God loves you. He's redeemed you. He has no questions in his mind about how
much he loves you, how carefully he made you, and what he's going to do with your future in life.
You have a lot of questions, but he doesn't. He loves you. And you can't change that. This is the
wonderful doctrine of grace, of justification by faith alone. saved by any of this but a real if
you believe that if you agree and amen with everything i just said you have something to do you
have something to do god's love for you should change your habits and that's the most hopeful non
-legalistic thing i could ever tell you because it's the reality the beautiful reality that god has
called you into agency over your body he's called you to garden it Which means you have the
delightful ability to get to work, to go do something. You are not stuck with the depression you
have right now. You're just not. If you think you are, you're actually believing a plain lie from
the enemy. And it might be a spiritual attack or it might be a doctor who told you, you know,
you're just like this. But you're not. God has built the grace of neuroplasticity into your brain,
which is kind of the coolest thing ever. You're not stuck with the patterns you have, the brain you
have, the addictions you have. He wants to change you, mind, body, soul. And that is such good
news. So I would just invite you, rooted in that love of God, to get to work,
start the gardening process. And the body teaches the soul is hopefully a really practical primer
on how to do that. It really is. And I love that you start with the breath because that is
literally the next, you know, that is something we can all. do. And it is so powerful.
It is such a practical book. It's just so well organized and structured and accessible and grounded
in biblical and theological wisdom, but just such practical takeaways.
Tell my listeners where they can find your work and this book in particular,
but also some of the other things you've put out into the world. They're all really, really great.
Oh, thank you. You can... Go one of two directions. You can go to my website,
which is justinwitmoreearly.com. Very Google-able. Justin Early, author, lawyer. We'll get you
there. And because, by the way, we didn't talk about this in the conversation. I still practice
law. Sitting in my law desk right now, taking a break between client meetings. But you can find my
website there. Join my email list if you kind of want to follow along, long form. And all my books
are listed on the website. I also do post on Instagram. So you're welcome to follow me at Justin
Wentmore Early. And I post a lot of short form habits for parenting, spiritual disciplines,
body teaches the soul stuff like we just talked about. I mentioned in my story that I wrote about
spiritual disciplines before I ever got to physical disciplines. So if you go on my website,
you can see earlier works on spiritual disciplines for everyday workers. Spiritual disciplines for
parents spiritual disciplines for friend groups But this one the body teaches the soul is really on
physical disciplines is particularly for mental health We were talking before we started recording
about being bivocational, and I really appreciate that because you work. I mean,
you're a dad and you're a full-time attorney, and you are living these truths that you write about
and speak about. They're really coming from, it's not like you're sitting around, you have to put
this into practice in very real circumstances. And it's a great gift to me.
I'm sitting here at my desk. I'm the CEO and one of the founding partners of our law firm. It's
called a vote illegal. If you want to go look it up, we do all kinds of law. And this is not an
advertisement, but we work with regular people. I help people buy and sell companies. I help people
write contracts. I'm a business lawyer. My partners do all kinds of litigation and employment law
and all this stuff. But that means I live in a realm where I'm not paid to go think about.
I don't know, having a quiet time for two or three hours. I'm not a missionary anymore in that
sense. You're in the real world. And that is no shade on anybody in full-time ministry.
We need you. We need your writings, and we need you to be spiritually healthy, so go do it. But I
sort of sit in a place where my readers are more or less like me. They're wrestling through how
hard it is to be a young parent. My boys are between 7 and 14 right now.
It's tiring. I wrestled through running a law firm and making payroll next month and getting
clients. And that's hard on your mental health. And so all of this stuff for me is born out of I
need to be a healthy human body and I need to be a healthy spiritual being,
which is to say I need to be a healthy soul. If I'm going to be a good CEO of Avoto Legal, if I'm
going to have anything worth writing about, I have to guard in my body and my mind to bring it to
the task. And lots of us. forget we think we'll give it all to our kids you know we'll serve them
and we're trying to do a good thing but your kids need a mentally healthy mom you know your kids
need a dad who's not a workaholic and by the way those are the two things i struggle with being
mentally unhealthy and being a workaholic so i i don't i don't write about anything i'm not deeply
struggling with so if you read my works you're going to read about the struggle not about the
idealized version of how this happens yeah it's just a really like you said we need all different
types of people but it is a really unique angle that you bring and um just such a grounded in in
like you said just a very full life um this is for everybody oh it's full my main struggle right
now is uh How to not live a super unhealthy life doing two jobs,
writing, lawyering, while writing about a healthy life. Oh, boy. The irony is not lost on my wife
and I. It's hard. But I do believe, and I told you this before we started recording,
Allison, I really do believe the Lord has called me to this because I think it's that place of
struggle. How do you do this well that gives me anything to write about in the first place? So if
anybody wants to follow along. I'll be posting on my website, and I'll be lawyering at a vote
illegal, and you can watch me in the struggle. But I'm going to speak to you out of the struggle,
not out of the perfection. I love it. That's the best we can do is just honor it. Honor it honestly
and openly and with our bodies, you know. Yes, yes, absolutely. For me,
the open hands is one of the most just reminding, oh, you know, it goes with the breath,
the open hands. It does. It really helps, the physicalization of that. I'll tack this one on right
to the end. I was always a little bit, I grew up Presbyterian. I was a little bit nervous to open
hands and lift hands because I was like, I don't know, it's performative, it's a fad. And then I
learned all this stuff about the body and how your mind changes. You're more open. You actually are
in posture of reception. You learn better. And I was like, oh, I need to get my body to the work of
worship. All right, let's put the hands up. It's really changed me. It's a good habit.
I really love that framing. It is. And by the way, that's chapter 9 in the book,
how you need to worship differently at church because of your body. Whoa, okay.
That's a good teaser. Well, thank you, Justin, for your time, and we wish you all the best as you
head back into the rest of your day. And pray that this conversation goes with you. And we're just
so grateful for what you're putting into the world. And we're glad to be here with you in
partnership in this work of soul mending and soul tending. Thank you, Allison. It's been a delight.
Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you
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are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.
Episode Show Notes
What do you do when the person who was supposed to nurture you becomes the source of your deepest wounds?
In this episode, Dr. Alison sits down with writer, speaker, and host of the Big Boo Cast, Melanie Shankle to explore the complicated terrain of mother wounds, emotional enmeshment, and the long road toward healing.
From the outside, it can look like “normal family tension.”
But in the body, something feels off.
Together, they explore:
- What happens when your nervous system knew something wasn’t safe before you had language for it
- The quiet impact of criticism, competitiveness, and emotional parentification
- How shame can keep you believing the problem is you
- The difference between honoring a parent and tolerating harm
- Why distance sometimes becomes part of healing
This is not a conversation about blame.
It’s a conversation about truth-telling.
About untangling enmeshment.
About breaking generational patterns.
About discovering what safety actually feels like.
If you’ve ever felt torn between loyalty and self-protection…
If you’ve wondered whether what you experienced “counts”…
If you’re learning to trust what your body has always known…
This episode is honest, nuanced, and ultimately hopeful.
Because healing one life can change a generation.
More Resources:
Connect with @melanieshankle on Instagram
Order Melanie’s latest book Here Be Dragons.
Connect with @dralisoncook on Instagram
Join the 80,000+ soul menders in our email community and receive weekly reflections and gentle practices here.
If you liked this episode, then you’ll love:
What Does It Mean to Honor Your Parents?
Episode 128: Generational Trauma—Overcoming Inherited Dysfunction & Legacy Burdens with therapist Gina Birkemeier
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
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TRANSCRIPT
So much of my self -image, so much of my self -doubt, so much of everything came
from the voice in my head, which was my mom's voice. She was the first person that
ever made me feel like I wasn't ever going to be good enough. I had lived so much
of my life in that self -hatred of if I could just do this, if I could just act
right, if I could just behave in a certain way. And so all of a sudden, the grace
to be like, no, I just accept you however you are. It's biblical. I mean, the
truth set me free. And so that changed the trajectory of my life.
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You. I'm Dr.
Allison. I'm so glad you're here with me this week. If you're new here, I'm
especially glad you've joined us. This podcast is a space where we try to live
honestly, where psychology and faith aren't at odds, but always in conversation. We
care about the complexity of real human stories. We slow down, we name what's hard,
and we look for wisdom that is both grounded and compassionate. This is our weekly
deep dive episode where we take one topic and explore it more fully. Before we jump
into today's conversation, I want to briefly connect it to something we explored back
in January on The Best of You Every Day. These are the daily eight minute,
sometimes more devotionals where we anchor in scripture and reflect through the lens
of psychology. And in this episode in January, it's called What Does It Mean to
Honor Your Parents? We wrestled with Exodus 2012, which is the commandment of the
Ten Commandments to honor your mother and father. And we asked a really important
question. How do we approach harmful parenting without becoming reactive, without
becoming kind of the way our culture sometimes can right now, which is to cut off
too quickly, while still honoring the reality of harm? Because honoring doesn't mean
denying. And it doesn't mean tolerating harm. It means learning how to live
truthfully and wisely in the aftermath of what shaped us. Today's conversation lives
right in that tension. Today on the show, I'm talking with Melanie Schenkel. She's a
beloved writer, speaker, and the co -host of the Big Boo Cast podcast. And her book,
Here Be Dragons, Navigating Mean Girls, Motherhood, and Other Mysteries of Life was
an instant New York Times bestseller. From the very first page, you can feel it.
This is a story about facing what's been hidden, about looking honestly at family
dynamics that shaped you. even when they're painful, confusing, or layered with
moments of love. And as I was reading her book, I kept thinking, these are the
very themes we talk about on this podcast all the time. Prentification, enmeshment,
toxicity that often registers in the body before we understand what's happening with
our minds, and that complicated space where you love your family and yet something
isn't right. When someone isn't taking accountability and when distance becomes the
path. toward healing. One of the most striking parts of Melanie's story is how her
body knew something was off before her mind did. And so many of you tell me about
a similar experience. You talk about how not having the language for what happened
was so hard or feeling like I can't quite name it but my body feels anxious.
Melanie talks about how her nervous system was carrying signals long before she
consciously understood the pattern she was living inside of. We talk about what it
means to grow up taking care of a parent emotionally, to feel responsible for a
parent's feelings, to become the steady one, the good one, the one who manages the
room. And then... as adults, to realize you've internalized those patterns,
that you may have taken on some of your own mother's ways of coping, that you may
be repeating dynamics you swore you'd never repeat. There's so much compassion in
this conversation because healing isn't about laying blame, right? It's not about
laying shame on somebody. It's about becoming aware of the patterns that shaped us.
It's about telling the truth without turning cruel, but so that we can free our own
selves. It's about honoring reality in a way that brings healing not only to our
own souls, but to everyone who will face that truth with us.
And we talk also about something many of you wrestle with quietly. What do you do
when healing changes the shape of a relationship? At the end of our conversation,
we touch on Melanie's decision to stop having contact with her mom. And I want to
say this clearly. This decision is hard. It's painful. It's deeply nuanced.
There's grief involved. There's no one size fits all answer when it comes to contact
or distance with a parent who has harmed you. Some relationships can shift with
different boundaries. Some can soften with a little space. can change with healthy
conversations and even undergo seasons of repair and deep healing.
And some require limited contact. And for some people, this becomes the healthiest
path forward, especially where there has been sustained, prolonged harm. What I
appreciate so much about Melanie's story, both in the book and in our conversation,
is that she doesn't present it as simple or clean. It's layered. It's emotional.
It's costly. It's deeply personal. No matter what kind of family of origin you came
out of, whatever parenting you had, or whatever season of life you're in now,
there's something in it that rings true for all of us. If you've ever felt torn
between loyalty and self -protection, if you've ever wondered what honoring a parent
really means when harm is involved, if you've ever sensed in your body that
something wasn't right but didn't yet have words for it, this conversation is for
you. It's honest, it's brave, and ultimately it's hopeful because at the heart of
Melanie's story isn't just rupture, but healing. What happens when you stop denying
what your body already knows? What happens when you begin to untangle enmeshment?
What happens when you get into healthier relationships and start to realize how old
patterns have shaped you? What happens when you begin to live with clarity instead
of confusion? I'm so grateful that Melanie trusted us with her story. Please enjoy
my conversation. with Melanie Schenkel.
I am so thrilled to have this conversation with you, Melanie. For the listener,
we were just talking offline a little bit about this. It's such a sensitive topic
and it really touches on so many of us. I'm going to kind of call it the mother
wound. That's a loose category.
talk about it so beautifully in your book. And we'll get into why it's so
sensitive. But before we even get into our conversation, what I want to name, as
I'm reading this book, Here Be Dragons, your story in some ways,
not in all ways, is extreme in the sense of just the level of harm that was
ongoing. And also, so many of us can find elements of our stories in it.
yeah and also it's such a tender topic because that relationship is so sacred and
something that is so and you you illustrate this so beautifully and we're going to
get into it in the book it brings out so much in us we want to protect that
relationship so many of us are moms we're so aware of our own failings how we've
been so imperfect we're so scared you know what i mean it's yes it's so tender for
so many reasons i just want to start by saying thank you for being willing to
speak so honestly just It's such an honest book into this really delicate
relationship. Yeah, it's a really hard, and you know, you said offline and it's so
true, is I mean, I did not write this book until after my mother had passed away.
I don't think it's, I don't think I could have been this honest. had she still
been living. So there was a freedom in that because I think so many people are
still wrestling with it's still a struggle. You know, I'm still trying to figure out
how to navigate as a grown woman, as a mother yourself, how do you navigate your
relationship with your mom? And if anything, after writing this book, I'm like, wow,
there are a lot of us out there that are trying to. figure this out and do it
well you know. It is so true and we'll get into that it but especially I think in
our generation we're roughly the same age and then you can also say and you allude
to this in the book there are ways in which our generation has overcorrected. Yes,
for sure. Right? Yeah, for sure. And we're seeing some of the pendulum swing on
that, you know, with the over -parenting. So before we dive into the deep end,
because you can tell I'm chomping to get there, I want to set the context for my
listeners who haven't yet read your book, and I can't recommend it enough. You have
said that the first mean girl you ever encountered was your own mother. And so for
listeners... for whom, you know, this is new, take us back into that home
environment and help us understand what that dynamic actually looked like. Yeah,
you know, I tell the story in the book, but my parents got divorced when I when I
was eight years old is when they first separated for the first time, they didn't
get divorced until I was nine, 10. But It was the realization of and I think it
took it was almost you don't recognize what it is, because what I say is when
you're a kid, I think part of God's protection is that whatever you grow up in is
what you think is normal. Like you just assume this is the way all families work
and this is the dynamic. So it was almost before I got to college when I started
to look at other mothers and daughters and thought. they don't function the way my
mom and I function. And so I started to realize that so much of my self -image,
so much of my self -doubt, so much of everything came from the voice in my head,
which was my mom's voice that always told me, if you could just act better, then I
could be better. If you weren't such a disappointment, if you could be this thing
for me, if you could live up to this standard. And she was constantly... tearing me
down and there was a competitiveness there um in terms of looks and um and kind of
almost even my dad's affection even though they were divorced i think there was such
a resentment there because my dad and i were so close and so it almost took
watching my daughter in high school go through her mean girl stuff that she had to
deal with for me to put language to it and go, oh, that the first person that
ever did that to me was my mom. She was the first person that ever made me feel
like I wasn't ever going to be good enough. What a just vivid reality check.
And you're saying something so profound. And you talk about this in the book, that
there's a protection in the fact that we see our own families as normal. But also
there's a whole undoing that then later on in life, you have to go back and rewire
yourself from an attachment perspective of, oh, you describe in the book how this
wasn't safe. Well, what does that do to a nervous system that learned young,
this is what quote unquote safety is supposed to be. So why is it landing so funny
on my nervous system?
well put as a child, kind of feeling in your body that you wanted to get away
from your mom. Yeah. But not knowing why, right? That's that dissonance from such a,
it's like your body knew. Yes. Before your mind did. Can you tell us a little bit
about that? That's, you know, it's so funny, Allison, because there's, I tell the
story of the book, but there was, my mom used to always say, and kind of in a
resentful tone, that from the time I was like three, my mom's name was Suzanne, and
that I would walk in the kitchen and she said my eyes would kind of flash dark
and I would say, what doing, Suzanne? And I just thought that's such a metaphor for
kind of like the way that always was, because it was like, I think there was
always this question of like, what are you doing? Like something didn't seem. right
to me or seem safe. But as a kid, I couldn't, I couldn't name it. It was just,
it was this constant instability and a constant walking on eggshells. And so I look
back and I can remember that so clearly, just feeling that disconnect between what
felt true to me and what I was living in, which,
you know, how are you that perceptive as a kid? But there's just, I think, you
know, something is not right here. And to me, there's a beauty in God's design of
the nervous system that it's this registering this isn't safe, even though I'm being
told this is what safety is. Another thing I think that you said that was
interesting is you said you describe your childhood home as a house on fire that
you wouldn't realize you actually needed to escape until years later when you
realized it could destroy everything you actually wanted. to build yeah and I thought
again just that for my listeners we talk about trauma on the podcast but the way
you describe the visceral sense before the rational before the logical before you can
put names on things it just takes you into that because that's where shame enters
in right we yeah Yeah. And I think it's so funny. So my sister and I have been
going back through after my mom passed away. She got all these old VHS tapes of
like home movies of, you know, Christmas and holidays and things that my grandmother
recorded. And we've we've laughed, but it's. You can tell in every video, the
underlying theme is I'm so annoyed to be there. Like there's just a thing where my
body language is completely closed off. I'm rolling my eyes at everything that's
said. And I just remember this sense of, especially as I got into my high school
years and just started to know more where it was like, I just don't feel like I
belong here. This doesn't feel safe to me. I don't feel accepted here. I don't feel
loved here. I don't feel like my whole self is welcome here. And so it's been so
interesting. look back and go, everybody just thought I was a surly teenager. But I
was like, no, I was shutting down because of what I knew the response to my real
self was going to be. Here's what I wanted to ask you. So in the book, you're
telling us these experiences of,
for example, just how your mom made moments, especially as you were becoming a
teenager, that were really about you, about her there's one instance where you were
going through a really painful breakup and you just described like gosh you know i
i just gone through this really hard thing in my own life i think you were in
ninth grade and we were talking and then my mom started making it about her
boyfriend or her breakup is that am i yeah I mean,
it was always that, you know, I mean, she would come in and she would be like,
well, what's going on? And then she would start to tell me, well, you don't
understand what's going on with me. My boyfriend and I just broke up. She had this
on again, off again boyfriend all through high school. And there was just always
drama there. And she would bring me into it and treat me almost like a girlfriend,
but not in a healthy way. And just so I felt the burden of her emotional well
-being, which now I realize is. a mother your child should never feel the burden of
your emotional well -being and that's what as i'm listening i was like taking notes
i was like parentification emotional enmeshment um you know all these words that we
talk about all the time on the podcast you're describing so beautifully and the
confusion of and you say this again so well uh part of me is kind of mad But
part of me feels like I should take care of her. And I think that that's what's
so hard about that. Because I think I, as a kid, you want your mom to be okay.
And I loved her because she was my mom. So it was like, if I can just behave in
a way, if I can just give her what she needs, if I can just emotionally be there
for her, then she's going to be okay. And it's hard to separate that out. And you
think this was, you know, you can appreciate back in the 80s, there was not
language like enmeshment or attachment. We didn't know. any of this we had no
language around it and so i didn't know what i was feeling wasn't normal and so
that's what i yes so it's so well put i think for so many in our generation there
wasn't online social media where you could go and hear people talking on tick tock
for better or worse about what's happening to give it a name your muddle and so
again I'm guessing in hindsight you can put words on it, but in the moment,
was it just tremendous dissonance internally? Yes. Yes. It was just a constant.
And almost it felt like with her, sometimes the harder I tried, the more she would
sabotage and the more she would gaslight me. Like it almost, if I came in too
vulnerable, then she really took advantage of that. And I didn't understand what that
was. at the time or why that happened and so it would just make me and then there
was so much shame and guilt in me because all of this was and i bet there's
people that can relate to this all of this was masked in a lot of church language
too so i thought if i could just i just can't be a good enough christian if i
could just love jesus more than i could love her more or i could give her more of
what she needed and there again i look back and go that is never a child's
responsibility exactly in a parent's life
One of the things that I really respect your honesty. So we're talking about
patterns of constant criticism, parentification, where it's about her needs.
We're talking about a lot of competitiveness, like you're saying.
The minute you started comparing looks, the minute you started to have happiness.
sabotaging you. She also did it to herself. Even, you know, you talk about your
wedding day, you know, so many different really, that's what I mean by extreme.
Yeah. I think many of us can see moments, but pretty overt instances of just
undercutting you at every turn. You, Melanie,
you talk about how you in your own relationships, at least for a period of time,
adapted some of those same patterns in a way talk to us tell us a little bit
about that that was what was modeled for you so how in the world would you know
otherwise so how did that play out for you in your own relationships with women
during high school and college I mean, I think that I was raised in a way that
and I think when it comes into like to give you the backstory of my mom, my mom
was I say she was a high school beauty queen. She was beautiful. She was blonde.
She was blue eyed. She was the pride and joy of my grandmother. So she was always
I mean, when you look back at pictures of her, she was just immaculate. I mean,
she's like the 1960s dream, you know, with her baton twirler uniform and all the
stuff. And there's even a picture of me as a kid where I'm like, oh, for
Halloween, when I was eight years old. She basically dressed me as herself. I was
in a baton twirling uniform. I wore a mask with a blonde wig because obviously I'm
not blonde. I'm brunette. But that was the standard. And so and that vanity ran so
deep in that family line. So I was very much raised to believe that other women
were my competition, you know, where it was just who's prettier, who's better,
who can get this boy's attention. And so. I operated like that.
I mean, because that's what had been modeled for me. I just thought that's how
women were. And it was, you know, and now I look back and I was like, it was out
of my own insecurities that I felt like I didn't want anybody to be better than me
or I wanted to be the prettiest or I wanted to have, you know, all these boys
like me. And I would, you know, if a boy liked a friend, then I would try to go
after that guy, which was the very thing, you know, I was becoming a mean girl
because that's what I had learned. Of course, it makes sense. And the fact that you
connected those dots, I feel like it's going to be freeing to a lot of women who
then have shame about the patterns in their own lives. And it doesn't take away
responsibility, but it explains some of this learned behavior.
Yeah. And you and you look up and there is that you look back and go, oh, my
gosh, like, I can't believe that I was that person. And and I guess the gift is,
is like I've raised my daughter to be so different because, you know, this is so
harmful. And like women are always stronger when we're building each other up and
we're going to be a girl's girl. And there is no competition and all of us make
each other better. But. That has to be modeled for you. You know, you just whatever
you see in your home is what seems normal to you. That's right. And how your own
soul learns to live out of love versus out of scarcity. There's a lot in that I
resonated with. I want to. So I want the listener where I feel like I'm fast
tracking. It's it's such a powerful narrative that puts you in.
Those moments. And I think storytelling is a really powerful way to heal because
it's cathartic. You feel it with you. It's really beautifully written. Thank you.
And I'd love now to talk a little bit about where you are today and your own
healing journey. Yeah. If that's OK. Yeah. And I'd like to kind of cover a couple
of different fronts you touch on in the book as well as kind of.
how you're on the ongoing work of retraining your own soul. So if it's okay,
I noticed in the book, and I'd love for you to speak to each of these three, you
talk about meeting a healthy friend, reconnecting with Jesus, and then meeting your
now husband as three pillars of your own turning point toward healing.
Could you tell us a little bit about, and then I would say there's a fourth one,
which is, when you had kids of your own yeah and you actually then began to set
stronger boundaries with your mom yeah I, um,
yeah, I think for me first, I think in college, a huge turning point for me was I
met my best friend. She's still my best friend. Um, I call her Gully. That's her
maiden name. Um, her first name's really Amy, but, um, but we met in college. She
was also from divorced parents. Um, she also had hers was her father in her case
who, um, was an alcoholic and toxic. And so she and I just,
as we got to know each other, we kind of bonded. And it was that moment of, you
know, what does C .S. Lewis say, you know, friendship is when you're like, you're
not the only one. It was just all of a sudden, it's like I found this safe place.
And for the first time in a female friendship, I felt so safe and so seen and so
loved. Um, because we could identify it was the, she was the first person and now
there've been several, but she was the first person who was like, yes, I've
experienced some of these things too. And I get what you're saying, because I think
the hard part is up until that point, I really did always think the problem was
me. You know, I just hadn't got to the point of. Because I didn't know and nobody
tells you any differently and nobody sees what goes on inside the walls of your
home except for you. I mean, even when I wrote this book, my dad read it after
the fact and he was like, I didn't know all this was going on to this extent.
Because I didn't talk about it because I thought it's because something's wrong with
me. So to have that safe space and a friendship to have somebody say, I see this
and I see the value in you. And for me to look at her and see how lovable she
was made me realize that maybe I could be lovable too. So that was a real shift
for me. How old were you at that point? I was, we, we first met, I was 19.
So it was my sophomore year of college. And so that was a pivotal point.
The other thing that happened was towards the end of college. And I mean, I
continued. Listen, I made I made bad decisions. I mean, if there was a theme for
college, it was bad decisions. But after I had I had been engaged,
I had broken off that engagement because I realized it was I tended to go after.
guys that treated me the way my mom treated me. So that would say nice things,
but then tear me down and make me feel insecure and gaslight me. And that's what I
thought healthy looked like. So I was coming out of that engagement and another good
girlfriend at that time said to me, you need to go to this Bible study. It's
called Breakaway. It's at Texas A &M. They still have it to this day, but back then
it was really small. And I had grown up in church. I mean, that's the irony. I'd
grown up in church. I knew Jesus. I knew all of that. That was the first time
that I walked into a setting where my faith became real to me, where I really saw
Jesus for what he was and the healer that he is. And that it wasn't just about
salvation. You know, it wasn't just about, OK, you know, so you won't go to hell.
It was like, no, he's really here to heal and to make you whole and to and to
fix you where you've been broken and wounded, you know. And so that was I mean,
if there's any thread throughout my story, it's the goodness and grace of God to
meet me. where I was and to help me have grace for myself because I was able to
see myself maybe more fully the way God saw me. I want to pause there because you
already alluded to this, and I think you even use the word religious trauma in the
book. God had been used in a toxic manner through your mom,
whether explicitly through actions.
What was different? What was different about this group? How did God show up in a
different way that helped you, whether it was conscious? I think these things happen
in our bodies before they happen in our minds. We just feel something different. But
tell me how that felt different to you than what you had experienced before, even
if some of the same words were being used. You know, I think maybe it was a
maturity thing. Maybe it was a desperation thing. I think coming out of the
engagement, I very much had the whole, that's a whole other story. But I had had
this moment when I was making that decision where I was like, God, if you will
help me figure out how to get out of this, I will quit messing around and turn my
life over to you. I mean, it was kind of one of those desperate plea bargains that
you make, you know?
I really started a spiritual journey after that of trying to figure out what that
was going to look like. So I felt like walking into this group who I think it's
because it was people my age. It was led by college kids. So it was like people
who were in the same phase of life. Everybody was very honest and very vulnerable
and very real. And so it all felt sincere. And I think it's not that I when I
look back to my childhood church. I don't know that they didn't talk about grace. I
did not hear grace. And maybe that's because I had so much self -condemnation going
on that I just couldn't hear it. But I was met with such grace there. And I was
met with such love there. And so it felt like for the first sense of, I saw Jesus
as, I don't care what you've done. I don't care what you've become. You know, what
you've become, just come to me. And so that was the first time I had ever felt
that in that setting. So. And how did that create meaningful change in your life?
And maybe that leads to the third pillar meeting, meeting your now husband. But how
did that? Yeah. It I mean, it just it freed me up. I mean, all of a sudden,
you know, and it was still I mean, I'm still entangled with my mom. So there's
still you've still got that dynamic. So it's not like this, but it just I helped.
it helped me to see myself with more grace it helped me to see myself as somebody
who was i think there's such a difference of when you're walking in the spirit as
opposed to just trying to blindly figure out stuff on your own like it gave me a
level of kind of some wisdom and discernment about different relationships in my life
that i hadn't had before I think I surrounded myself with healthy people who
encouraged me and who called out the good things in me and made me realize that,
you know, your girlfriends aren't your competition and you can operate as a healthy
and whole person. So I just I think when Jesus starts to heal those places in you,
it affects every part of your life because all of a sudden I was making good
decisions again because I had the discernment to make those good decisions.
We kind of bumble along and we bump up against these pockets of goodness. And we
don't even really know yet how to put all the pieces together of what was broken
or what might still be broken. But we're just drawn. It kind of brings tears to my
eyes. We're just drawn to there's good here. And our souls kind of, you know,
go in that direction. And then there's more. And then there's more. And then maybe
at a certain point we start to put pieces together. But that's kind of what I hear
you saying, just the goodness of God. Just showing up and, and something in your
responding. Yeah. Yeah. And it was just, I think it was the grace of realizing I
was never going to be good enough and I didn't have to be perfect enough. And it
wasn't about that because I had lived so much of my life in that just. self -hatred
of if I could just do this if I could just act right if I could just behave in
a certain way and so all of a sudden the grace to be like no I just accept you
however you are just it's you know it's I mean it's it's biblical I mean the truth
set me free and so that changed the trajectory of my life and that's when I was
22 years old it's like God is we talk about God as a good father but when there's
that mother wound God is also a good mother
That grace of you're just gorgeous the way you are. You're just beautiful the way
you are. It's like, oh, that's what I've always needed. I just didn't have it.
Yeah, yeah. And it heals something in you. You know, I think it's I just read
something the other day that said that we look at the word salvation as salvation,
but salvation also means healing. And I'm like, that is isn't that what Jesus does
to us our whole lives is he heals the things that are broken because there are
going to be things in this world that are going to break us. Yeah. So then you
meet the guy who is your now husband. Is that right? Yeah. Tell us a little bit
about how that relationship, and right, this is right out of, you know, so the
therapist in me reading the book is like, this is attachment 101, right? We have
the attachment wounds. And then, and I mean, I'm literally like tracking it, like we
have the attachment wounds and then a friend comes in, right? There's an attachment
and then God comes in as this reparenting figure. And then we meet often our
significant other, which can be a huge. healing relationship for better and worse for
these old wounds and so it sounds like that was your experience again tell us a
little bit about how that that played out I you know when I met Perry it's we met
and we first started hanging out as just friends and I think God was so kind in
that because I had had such a um kind of skewed view of men um and just didn't
view them as like I never saw relationships. This can actually be a friendship. This
can actually be like, we just enjoy being together and not me trying to prove
something or to earn love or whatever.
Perry came in and was just, um, just the kindest, um, so fun,
you know, just amazing, um, man. And we just got to be good friends. And so there
was something in that too, where I was able to kind of, because we were just
friends at first, um, I kind of told him my whole story worth warts and all, I
wasn't trying to put, put on a face or be dateable because I didn't care at that
point. So, um, he just got the real story and so i told him a lot about my
childhood and the way i had grown up my mom had um i write about this more in
the book but my mom had really caused me to vilify my dad and my stepmom yeah um
and had painted them as the you know kind of the the malevolent characters in this
whole story. And so that's the viewpoint that I gave to Perry is because that's
what I had always been taught to believe. And then it was interesting because then
when he met them both, we got to the point in our relationship where we were
serious enough where he met my mom and then he met my dad and my stepmom. And he
was the first person to say to me because and now I see it because he's such a
his discernment is spot on like that. He just said, hey, I don't think the story
you've always been told is the right story.
Just, and it, you know, I tell that. It literally breaks tears to my eyes.
I don't, it's just the power of a witness. Yes. Yes. Someone to witness the reality
of your life. that's it. And I think even, you know, even the story of writing
this book and having people like you who, you know, you, you counsel people for a
living, even as I wrote it, I think there's so many things that are so entrenched
in you as normal that I was like, are people going to read this and be like, what
is she whining about? This isn't as bad as she thought, or this isn't, this is a
lot of drama over nothing. And so it's so validating to have somebody say,
yes. you aren't crazy this is this was not right this was not healthy and that's
and when perry said that to me he confirmed what had always been running through my
head where i was like it just doesn't add up because i knew who my dad was and
so The fact that she always wanted to make him into this bad guy, she wanted to
paint him as this man who had abandoned his family and left us. But I was like,
but he calls us every single night to check in. This is not it doesn't add up,
you know. So Perry saying that to me then freed me up.
At that point, I was 23, 24. And at that point. it freed me up for the first
time to have a conversation with my dad. And I'd always been scared to ask the
hard questions. And my dad had always been gracious enough that he was not going
to, he just let it ride. I mean, he wasn't going to put me in that position,
which now as a parent and an adult, I have so much respect for because that's a
lot of restraint to not want to defend yourself. He did the opposite of what your
mom did. He didn't throw her under the bus. And in fact, at that moment, you
learned that she had been lying. Very deceptive about the whole.
What's interesting to me, again, is your body knew. Your body knew that your dad
was safe. But you're being told this narrative. And how can a child make sense of
that? You cannot. That's it. no and if you argue against it if i ever questioned
anything there was so much rage from my mom that you learn you just go with it
like you you don't anger it because i would have to pay the the cost of that yeah
and and i lived under her roof and her rules and she had so much control you know
over my life that I just went along with it, but I knew. And so, you know,
when I had that conversation with my dad and he was able to kind of say, okay,
now I'll tell you, this is how this all really played out. It was, it was
astonishing. I mean, it was, it was life changing. Oh, I, I, yeah, it's a, and so
how from there. Tell us a little bit about how then, the more information you get,
the more truth you get. Your own life, I imagine, is your first priority. You're
starting to live your own new life in a new way. How did your relationship with
your mom evolve? You know, it was when I first got married, I felt like,
and I dreaded my wedding for, you know. all the reasons that I write about in the
book, because it was absolutely as bad as I thought she was going to make it. She
lived up to all of my worst case scenarios. So, but we got past that.
And then, you know, I finally had what I had always longed for was this is my own
family. This is my own fresh start. Like I'm not bound to her anymore. And she
doesn't have control over me. And so there was able to be some distance there. By
this point, she had remarried. She was like, in Oklahoma, so she was about eight
hours away. And so there was some freedom there, but I just started to realize that
every time the phone rang and it was her, I could feel everything in me. tense up.
And it was the same feeling of always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I never
knew when she was going to call and rage about something or tell me that I hadn't
done something or blame something on me or drop a bomb on me. I mean, I talk in
the book about, I mean, she dropped a major emotional bomb on me. I found out that
I had an older half sister that I didn't know I had. She dropped that on me in
my first couple of years of marriage and she had decided to go find this long lost
daughter. So there was just there was always a stirring up. And so the the longer
I was married, the more I was like, I just want distance from this. I don't want
to have to deal with this constant drama and toxic behavior in these words.
And I also now had a husband who was able to say, hey, this is not healthy like
this. Yeah, you should not feel this way. This is not normal. Yeah. So and and so,
Melanie, then you have. Girls of Your Own. You have one daughter. Is that right?
One daughter. One daughter. Okay. You have your own daughter. And the book,
which I think is really cool, is a little bit about the parallels of then learning.
Like you said, that was sort of your moment of awareness was that your daughter
started dealing with mean girls. And that was another breakthrough moment for you.
And I want the listener to hear it again. That's why I think the book is such a
valuable. the storytelling it shows how this is all healing is such a journey it's
all these different moments it doesn't happen all at once
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So you do, at a certain point, decide to cut off contact with her. Can you tell
us a little bit about that decision? And I want to frame that because, as you
know, I'm sure this is such a sensitive issue right now in the media. Yes.
It's getting a lot of attention. I think there's a reason that Lindsay Gibson's
book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, has been a New York Times
bestseller for, you know, there's a lot of interest in it. And then the no contact
conversation has got a lot of interest. And I want to say for the listener, this
is complicated. There are, it is so sensitive and there are not easy answers to
this question for anybody. If you are someone who has had to cut off contact as I
want you to talk to us about, it is, it is. a hard decision to arrive at.
And it is necessary if one arrives at that. That's not to say there are some
people who arrive at that and it's not exactly for the right reasons. That can also
happen. But for those for whom it is a real necessity, it is so deeply necessary
for healing and so sensitive in a culture, especially in Christian culture,
that doesn't always understand that. And I also want to say on the other side,
talking the best of you about the spectrum of toxicity, there are a lot of
situations where we can also find ways to reduce contact and establish boundaries.
And that might work for many people too. So there's no one size fit all for this.
But with that kind of larger contextualization for my listeners who I know are
coming at this from a lot of different angles. I also know I have parents listening
who are hurting from adult children, you know, suddenly setting boundaries with them
in ways that are confusing, right? So there's a reason this is so fraught. It's so
sensitive. It's so tender. With all of that being said, and I love how you speak
to this, will you share with us your story of realizing this is what I need to do
for my own healing, for my own daughter, for my own family, my own marriage, my
own health? Yeah, I'm so glad you framed it that way, because I think that's the
first thing is I would say to somebody is and I've had so many people that have
contacted me and I'm like, this is this is not a decision you make after one
heated conversation. This isn't a decision you make because maybe your political views
are different. This is a this is a deep emotional thing because I don't think it's.
at all what God intended for the parent child relationship to be in healthy context.
So for me, when I had my daughter, Caroline, I was 32 years old.
I talk about this at the beginning of the book, but it was a light bulb moment
for me when I held her, you know, the first or second night I had her home for
the hospital. And I just thought about, I was so overcome with love. You know,
you're just a hormonal, emotional, tired mess. And I just, in that moment, I thought
my mom never loved me like I love this baby. Like I just knew it. Like it was
like a puzzle piece finally like clicked. where I thought, because I was like, I
would sacrifice anything for this baby. I would do anything for her. And so that
was a big light bulb thing. The other thing about my mom that I will say is, as
the years went on, her behavior got gradually more and more chaotic. There again,
this was, by this point, we're probably, you know, Caroline was born in 2003. So
she, at this point, was older. So there had been probably almost 30 years of
prescription drug abuse. I mean, I talk about this some in the book. I think she
was self -medicating because she was bipolar. I think she had, you know, now that
I've read more, I think she even had like a borderline personality disorder. So this
wasn't just we don't agree on the same things. I mean, she was toxic.
She continually found ways to sabotage situations.
One of the things I write about in the book, I had started a blog that was the
beginning of my writing journey. And I wrote a post that was just a happy birthday
tribute to my dad. And my mom came on as an anonymous commenter,
but I knew it was her and left like three or four just vile, hate -filled comments
on that post. And at that point, Caroline was probably about three or four. And I
remember at that point, I wrote a long letter to her. Because I was like,
I'm going to cut off contact. I'm going to, I'm going to be done. And I wrote
this long letter and I just felt something in me. I just couldn't do it. Like I
just wasn't ready. And part of that process for me was, um, as I prayed about it,
as I asked God to give me wisdom and how to handle it. I knew that when I, when,
and if I made that decision, it couldn't be out of bitterness. It couldn't be out
of anger. It couldn't be out of unforgiveness. If it was, then I was going to
perpetuate the same cycle I was trying to break. Like it had to be out of a heart
that said, I forgive you and I love you because you're my mom, but I can't be a
part of this anymore. And, you know, when Caroline was six. And I and,
you know, Perry and I had these constant conversations because there also became this
thing of now I'm not just protecting myself. I'm protecting Caroline. And I thought,
what lies was she going to tell Caroline? What was she going to do to her? And
all of a sudden that carries a whole different weight than myself. A hundred
percent. You're that's a really good point. What just just before what was your
contact like with her up to that point? It was I mean,
we would talk on the phone every now and then, you know, we would we would have
conversations. You know, some would be good, some would be bad. That's what was so
hard about it. Because we would have these moments where I would be like, we're
good. We're in a great place. This feels really good. And then she would call two
weeks later. And she was infamous for, and my sister and I both agree, there's
still this phrase where she's like, remember when you said, and she would come back
and has totally twisted something. You describe that in the book. It's just a
dagger. It's just a dagger. Yeah. Thought was safe, then suddenly becomes a weapon.
Yeah. And I'm like, what? I don't even remember. That's that wasn't my intent.
That's not what I was trying to say. And all of a sudden I was defending myself
for something that I never. said or intended, but she would twist it and turn it.
And so there were different things like that. And then there was a moment that she
had offered me and I tell the story in the book, but she had offered me money to
go on this trip that I really wanted to go on. And this was, you know, my husband
and I, we were, you know, we were just starting off our new businesses. We had a
young child. We did not have the financial means. So she offered this money. Perry
said to me, he was like, I'm not going to tell you that you can't take that
money. He said, but you have to. think about what that's going to cost if you do.
And I knew he was right. You know, it's one of those things where you're like,
dang, why did you have to be right? That's so disappointing.
I wanted to do this. But when I called her to tell her, thank you so much.
And I dreaded that conversation because I knew in the back of my mind that that
was about her trying to regain some control. And so I was like, thank you so much.
I really appreciate it. I just don't think this is a good time for me to do this
trip. And at that point, she told me, she said, you have caused me more hurt than
anything in my life. You're a continual disappointment to me. And it was just, you
know, another.
And then a couple of months later, I was on a trip with my daughter. It was
supposed to be a fun trip. My mom called. She left me an awful voicemail message
because I didn't pick up the phone. And she basically ended. And this is after, I
mean, I'd been praying for years about, God, I don't know what to do. Show me what
to do. Let me know when and if I can walk away and still honor you because all
of that was so important to me. But she left a message and she ended it with,
if this is the end of our relationship, then so be it. And it just, when I heard
it, it was like, that's my door. Like, that's the door I've been looking for.
Okay. Yeah. I will honor your desire. Yeah.
Because I just, there again, because from the lens of being a mother, I thought I
would never say to my child. If this is the end of our relationship, then so be
it. And I thought for her to be able to say that just I was like, OK.
And so that really gave me the freedom. And what I will also say to anybody who
is thinking about that or debating that or struggling with that, you think that
that's going to feel amazing or it's going to feel really freeing or that that's
going to be the end of having to deal with it. And it's not. It just changes it.
But it never feels good to say, I don't speak to my mom. I mean,
that never feels, you continue to wrestle with that. And I continued for,
I mean, she lived 14 years after that decision and we did not speak again until
the last two weeks of her life. And I continued to pray about that decision.
all the time about God, if I'm supposed to reopen the store, if I'm supposed to go
back in, if I'm supposed to let her back into my life, I will do that. I just
need it to be really clear. And I do feel like God was really faithful to always
let me know that I was still on the right path. And part of that was my sister,
I have a younger sister, she maintained contact with my mom. And what my mom would
always say to my sister was, I can't think of one thing I've done that. would
cause Melanie to do this well and you know as a mom you I can sit right here and
go I can think of a million things I've done already so just the sheer you know
where I was like wow there's no ownership of I did this and I thought there's no
change there's no change and I kept thinking if at some point there was some change
and she was the hardest thing because you would hope for a spiritual change but she
had always been in church she was in bible studies she was in all these things so
I was like so where where is the change going to come from yeah um and there
again there was the mental illness component there was the drug component there were
a lot of things going on there so were you and your sister able to navigate that
making different decisions through that we were um it was it's been easier our
relationship's been easier obviously since my mom passed away yeah um but my sister
will and she's very gracious to recognize You know, and I think this happens a lot,
especially as I've read things about like borderline personality disorder. I think one
of the things they do is they pit their children against each other. Yeah. And so
one of the one of the things my mom did is my sister, Amy, was always the good
one. I would imagine. Yeah. And I was the bad one. And so she catered to Amy.
She really but Amy knew there was always an awareness of because she was so
volatile. So Amy experienced a lot of that, too. Yeah. She wasn't in denial. You
know, it's the reason I respected my decision. Yeah, because it's one of those
family roles that there's a golden child, usually a scapegoat often. It sounds like
you were more in the and that is it isn't. It's not healthy to be a golden child
either. That has its own set of issues. And often adult siblings do navigate the
boundaries differently. And it is warranted. But I'm grateful that there was an
ability to respect. the different boundaries. And that's just what's so toxic. And I
love, I know we're running up on time. Thank you for going along with me. I want
to honor your time. But this is just so the heart of what we do here on the
podcast. But it's why, and I love that you said this, and I want to highlight it,
that this isn't God's design. And that's why, but that was never your fault. You
were a casualty. in this toxic situation. So it was never your responsibility to
heal it, to improve it, to make pretend like it was okay. It was your
responsibility to tell the truth and to heal your own soul. And I love that you
said that it came to a point where it wasn't about retaliation. It wasn't about
revenge. It wasn't a shallow like. this is the best day of my life because I'm
free. It was, I'm going to tell the truth. And the truth is that I have to,
this isn't an actual mom in the way that God designed that role.
It is hurting me. It could hurt my daughter. And that is just, these are the cards
I was dealt. And I just, I really, I just appreciate your telling it,
your story. beautifully and honestly um it's it's a hard story i love that you said
it isn't there's still pain they're still healing yeah you're still rewiring your own
nervous system right for safety and health And I think that's what that's one of
the things you said that I so appreciate. And I'm learning because I think when I
started writing this book, I was writing it from this standpoint of like, oh, I am
healed. Like this story is this story. This whole thing is closed. My mom has
passed away. This chapter has ended. And as I started writing the book, all of a
sudden I was like. I think I have to go to therapy and talk about this. I mean,
all of a sudden I was like, I'm not as okay as I thought I was. And so I do
think healing is a continuous process that we do throughout our lives. As we grow
and know more, you start to realize other places where maybe you're not as healed
as you thought you were. A hundred percent. And that is our work that we do have
control over. We can't change this other person, but we can. um,
continue to lean into that. So I, there's so much more we could go into about
parenting and we'll have to have a part two. Um, but, uh,
tell, tell my listeners just who will, I know, want more of you and your wisdom,
where can they find you and your work? I know you've got a podcast and I do. So
I have a podcast called the big boo cast. Um, it is, as my dad calls it, it's a
podcast about nothing. It's just, I do it with my friend, Sophie. We talk about
hair, makeup, life. All the things. You can find me on Instagram is where I
typically post, you know, just updates and different things like that. And then I
just started a sub stack that I'm writing on a couple of times a week. And so you
can also find my writing on sub stack where I just share, you know, everything from
here's what I cook last night to here is what God is currently doing in my life.
And then here be dragons is available everywhere books are sold. The paperback just
came out and it includes they had that my publisher had. my daughter write an
afterword for it, kind of telling some of her side of the story. So I just,
I highly recommend that just because it, it made me weep. And just if you're
wondering if doing the work pays off in your own children, I will say that that
afterword made me. thinks this has all been worth it. I just, it's beautiful. I
just put a post up on social media, I don't know, last week or something, I said,
you know, healing, the healing of one person can change a generation. Yeah. And you
are, you're living evidence of that. It's all the grace of God, you know,
and I think it's, and what I would tell anybody is, I think God is so faithful to
give you the strength that you need to do the hard thing. And so, and it is the
hard thing. But I think, you know, you start by trying to set boundaries and,
and see if that, works. And, you know, then you just trust that God's going to
give you the wisdom to know the path that you need to walk with those difficult
relationships. Yeah, we'll link to lots of resources. There's some great thankfully
now we do have more resources out there about how to un -enmesh and disentangle and
find that kind of healthy, differentiated place that we're trying to raise our own.
I'll just say one last thing. I'm thinking about raising young adult women, right?
And I mean, I think the The best, most powerful example of is when my young adult
daughter can say, question me or say, why did you do this? Or why did this happen?
And I'm like, oh, my gosh, I guess there's enough safety that there's actually an
ongoing conversation because it sure isn't because I was perfect. That's right.
You know, and so there's so much humility in this whole dynamic.
mothers and daughters and daughters and mothers and yet just some necessary and
important naming and truth telling that we all need to be doing. So I'm so grateful
for your voice in this. Thank you. Well, I've loved talking to you today. So thank
you so much for having me. I'm so thankful for your voice. I mean, for giving
words to so many things that we're all trying to process. Oh, thank you. Thank you
for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much
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join us each weekday for the best of you every day, a brief daily reflection to
help you start your mornings with a steady dose of wisdom. 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.
Stay connected all week long
The Best of You Every Day offers short, daily reflections on Scripture through the lens of emotional health—helping you stay steady, connected, and rooted in love.
