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When the world feels on fire, how do our souls find rest in God alone?
This week’s two-part episode is close to my heart. In the wake of recent violence, I first pause to reflect on what it means to choose love in an age when outrage feels easier.
From there, I turn to a conversation with my friend and mentor, Dr. Stephen Macchia. Steve has spent decades guiding people into deeper intimacy with God through practices of silence, prayer, and community. Together we explore the barriers distraction creates, why being truly listened to is so healing, and how slowing down opens space for God’s presence in our lives.
This episode is an invitation to lay down outrage, pick up compassion, and step into the quiet spaces where God does His best work.
📚 Books you wont want to miss from Dr. Steven Macchia:
- Praying the Parables of Jesus by Dr. Steven Macchia
- Crafting a Rule of Life by Dr. Steven Macchia
📚 Also mentioned:
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
Here are some other episodes you might like :
Episode 75: Your Secret Weapon Against Stress & Anxiety - How to Transform Your Mind Through the Power of Prayer
Episode 88: What to Do When Change Stirs up Anxiety, Uncertainty, or Confusion
💬 Got a question? Call 307-429-2525 and leave a message for a future episode.
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Transcript:
Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You. I'm so glad you're here with me this week because this conversation is a really special one for me personally, and I also think it's one that's going to minister to you especially as we are dealing with so many hard things right now in our country.
Before we dive in, I do wanna pause and acknowledge the complicated emotions so many of us are carrying after the tragic killing of Charlie Kirk last week. We've seen far too many violent acts in recent years on school campuses, in public spaces, in universities, and it's absolutely tragic. Real people are hurting in your lives, in my life. Maybe people are hurting for different reasons, but people are hurting.
And moments like these remind me that our work, yours and mine, as soul menders really matters. Our work on the podcast here together and everything I do is to help you cultivate a healthy soul, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. And as we become healthy souls, you and me together in partnership with God Spirit, we become what this world needs. Changing our world out there starts with us.
It starts with our inner lives. It starts with every single one of us doing our part to bring more goodness, more kindness, more real love into the deepest corners of our souls so that we can spill that love out into our families, our neighborhoods, and our world. Part of why I've taken some time to gather my thoughts and figure out how I want to respond and why I almost shy away from political takes online is because I needed to have these conversations in my real life first.
There is absolutely no substitute for the hard conversations we need to have with each other in our embodied lives. And as I've had those conversations this past week, it's led me to two pieces of wisdom or insights that I'm trying to put into practice in my own life and I wanted to share them with you, especially as it relates to this work of soul mending. The first one is simple. We have to learn how to be people of love. We have to learn how to love people who see the world differently than we do. As followers of Jesus, we don't actually have a choice.
It's baseline. We have to be people of love. A healthy soul is a soul filled with love and it's hard to love Someone who's beliefs or viewpoints or lifestyler decisions or behaviors or actions feel like a threat. I get it That's real and I don't want to minimize what you're feeling what I'm feeling in any way But Jesus does it give us another option? We have to learn to become people of love this past Sunday Our pastor spoke on the parable of the Good Samaritan and it felt exactly Right to my soul when the man in that parable asks Jesus who is my
First, try this with me for just a moment. Think of someone who is hard for you to love. It might be that person with a yard sign that makes your blood boil or someone you just had an interaction with at work or at your kid's school or even in a friend group or even in your church community. Maybe picture them right now as you're listening and just notice what you notice inside your soul as you think of them. You might notice that some part of you bristles or feels resentment or that twinge of envy or anger or frustration or a feeling of injustice.
Maybe even a part of you feels hatred. I hate that person, they've hurt me. Listen, that feeling is most likely there for good reason and I don't want you to shame yourself for what you notice, but I do want you to pause for a moment and recognize this is where the love of God starts, is when you invite God's love into the places that are feeling that anger, that resentment, that frustration, that bristle, that even that hatred inside your own soul first.
You might even pray in that moment, "God, this part of me so angry, so threatened, so resentful, please hold even that part of me with your love. Because here's the thing, first John 419 says it perfectly. We love because God first loved us. It starts inside us. I'm not asking you to put yourself in harm's way, to debate or agree or to do something you don't feel in good conscience you can do, but we do have to cultivate a loving posture in our own souls.
And it starts by noticing those moments of hatred, of anger, of unforgiveness, of harboring resentments inside our own souls first. Secondly, and this one's more practical, but it's important to me and I want to speak to it. It's where I was the most rattled through these events. I want us to prioritize our real embodied lives over online outrage. And I want us to help our kids do this too. We used to be able to disagree without rage.
I remember a time before the internet, before social media, when we could have debates and disagreements and discussions without rage. I'm guessing if you're closer to my age listening to this, you remember those times too. I grew up in a very a very conservative state, what we think of now as a red state, a Christian family, and I went to a very liberal secular Ivy League college clear across the country in a different part of the country where most people thought very differently than I did. This was years ago. And guess what we did in those days, pre -social media, pre -internet? We had conversations. We had coffee together. We debated in classrooms and we could do that during that time without hating each other,
without labeling each other as the problem. I remember vividly in one class I held a very different perspective than almost everyone else in the class and you know what? None of us left the class hating each other. I think my perspective challenged some people.
They listened to me and I in turn gave them the courtesy of listening to them. We learned from each other and we stayed friends and neighbors all within one very small embodied community. We came together in a way that I rarely see happening in this day and age. What made me think of that memory is I was in all honesty looking forward to a debate that was scheduled to be held this week on my alma mater on the campus where I went to college back in the day before social media. It was between Charlie Kirk and Hassan Piker, two men who come from completely different worldviews, different sides of the political spectrum, different ideologies, different belief systems. And I was looking forward to it because I learned from listening to people with different worldviews, listening to people who think differently, almost always when I listen to someone whose viewpoint is different
from mine, somewhere inside my soul, I can say that's a good point. I may not agree with their conclusion, but I might understand where they're coming from. And you know what that does inside of me? It promotes compassion, a shared sense of humanity, humility. It makes me hold my own viewpoint with a softened grip, and that humility is good for my soul. I recognize that while I have certain convictions, I am not God. Ultimately, only God sees the whole picture, the full picture, who accounts for all of humanity. And I honestly believe with all of my heart that the internet, the deep recesses of the internet and social media are tearing us apart. They're preying upon the worst parts of our souls. I'm not saying there's no good online, there is. But there's a lot of darkness out there.
Rage gets rewarded online. It becomes addictive. I see it in myself. It lights up a part of our brain and I rebuke it on behalf of all of us in the name of Jesus. It's a lot harder to hate someone that you disagree within your real embodied life. You have elections. You vote against people. You debate vigorously in the town square. You might see that person in the grocery store line and greet them, or you might sit next to church with them, and you may not see the world exactly as they do, but you're part of the same embodied community.
That's where we're supposed to work this stuff out, not in comment sections. So my second challenge for you and for me today is to make sure we are processing these events, these very challenging topics and events with people in our real lives before turning to social media and most of all I want you to be working with your kids to do this too. Social media relationships are not real. They are not two -way. We are passively taking in data and not engaging with real embodied people. We know from the research what this is doing to our young kids. For resources on how to get your kids offline, check out The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Hyatt. We are trying to get him on the podcast because he has a new book coming out specifically for kids. But I believe the work that he is doing is profound and important to this present time. If you do use the internet or social media, as I do, make sure it's helping you grow compassion and humility, not to foster rage.
And then most importantly, we all have to ask ourselves, where are there people in my real embodied life that I disagree with? How can I take a step toward that person in love? Where am I gathering to talk with people who don't always think exactly like I do and who help hold me accountable to compassion, to justice, to mercy, and to love. We are called to love people in our embodied lives and not only people who are just like us. We are called to love people who are different from us, not only for their sakes, but also for our own souls.
Remember, 1 John 4 19 says it this way, "We love because he first loved us." I pray you receive God's love today in the deepest parts of your soul because it is my belief that it is out of that love you have received from God that you will be able to make a difference and become a person of love in this broken world. My hope is that this conversation you're about to hear will help us do just that.
***
My guest is Dr. Stephen Macchia, someone I consider a spiritual mentor and guide. Years ago, I went through a two-year program he designed called the Emmaus Experience, and I can honestly say it was one of the most profound vocational callings of my adult life. It shaped how I understand my own work as a therapist, writer, and follower of Jesus.
Steve is the founder and president of Leadership Transformations, a ministry that exists to cultivate vibrant spirituality and attentive discernment among Christian leaders and teams. He’s spent decades inviting people into the deep work of spiritual formation—away from hustle, distraction, and noise, and toward rhythms of prayer, community, silence, and rest.
In our conversation today, we talk about:
- Why distraction is one of the greatest barriers to intimacy with God and with one another.
- How silence and attentive listening can transform our relationships.
- The power of spiritual companionship and why every soul needs both solitude and community.
- And we’ll explore Steve’s newest book, Praying the Parables of Jesus, which invites us to engage scripture in a slower, more contemplative way.
If you’ve ever longed for a deeper intimacy with God, if you’ve felt the pull of hurry and noise and wondered how to create more space for your soul to breathe, this episode will meet you right there.
I cannot wait for you to hear from Steve. His words always leave me a little quieter, a little more grounded, and a lot more aware of God’s presence in my life.
So let’s dive into this conversation with my friend and mentor, Dr. Stephen Macchia.
***
- Well, I'm just so thrilled to have you here with this time with you today,
Steve, you've played such your work and your presence in your life has played such
an extremely important role in my own life. We'll get into that a little bit more
throughout our conversation. But I want to start just right where the listener is,
the person tuning in. We talk a lot about the intersection of faith and mental
health on the podcast. And one of your sayings that I always think of it,
always stuck with me is this idea that you, we emphasize different syllables.
Did I quote you? You say that so perfectly. - That's right, that's right. - Yeah,
and-- - That's right, this syllable has to be on the right. - Yes, and so we're not
working apart from one another. we're emphasizing different syllables and you're
emphasizing this spirit part, the soul formation,
which I love. And again, was game changing for me in terms of how I viewed my
work as a therapist. I'd love to just start right here and now with what are you
seeing as the biggest barrier that keeps us from experiencing this deep loving
intimacy that we so long to have with God?
- Yeah, I think it's summarized in one word. Then the one word would be distraction.
The biggest barrier to intimacy, whether it's a human relationship or a relationship
with God, is that our eyes are focused elsewhere, and that's what distraction does.
It holds our eyes elsewhere. My wife Ruth was a preschool teacher for many years,
and she would get down on her hands and knees and say to the children, "I need to
see your eyes, I need to see your eyes." And when she could see their eyes, then
she knew that she had their attention. She'll say that to me. Steve,
I need to see your eyes. And I know exactly what she's saying because I'm
distracted. I'm trying to do multiple things and I'm not paying attention to her.
And so I think when we're distracted, we're totally unable to focus on God or each
other. - That is so, such a great summary and there are so many distractions ever
increasing in our day -to -day lives. I sometimes look back with a sort of longing
on the pre -internet era, let alone the pre -social media era,
the pre -iPhone era, you know, it's, we weren't, it was sometimes a little bit
easier to keep some of that clutter of noise out of our lives, even though it's
always been hard, but that certainly is added to it.
Well, the promise of social media of all kinds is, and the internet and everything
that's available to us today is that the promise was that it would make our lives
simpler and slower, and it did the opposite. It made our lives complex and faster.
Yes. And both of those are against the work of the soul. Okay.
Okay. I love it. Against the work of the soul. So let's go back a little bit,
Steve, because your story's so interesting. You started out in ministry. You built
some pretty amazing things in New England, where, You know, the soil is a little
rockier in some ways for this work of spiritual formation of faith practices.
Although I tend to think of it also as incredibly rich. There's a little bit of
both and there, as you and I both know. But at some point, something shifted for
you. You were maybe following, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but maybe
a more traditional ministry leader path. Something drew you deeper into that work of
spiritual formation where you emphasize a whole different aspect of soul care than
most of us are familiar with. Can you take us back to that moment and what
prompted that change?
Well, after about 20 years of what I would call more traditional ministry, I was
working in a church for 11 years on a pastoral staff was great, great experience,
all of it was wonderful. And then I was in charge of a group called Vision New
England, which is a multi -denominational multi -administry network of folks around our
sixth state region. And it was all good. Everything was great. But I was really
trying to do so much, And I was pushing everyone around me to accomplish and you
know, live out that sort of that Protestant work ethic, you know, we'd rather burn
out than rust out. We'd rather be as busy as possible and accomplish great things
and set goals and go and accomplish. No matter who was in a way,
we can just sort of toss them to the side and get our goals accomplished. And I
realized that there was something going on inside of me that wasn't very healthy.
And I said to a friend who I trusted, I said, I'm looking to talk to someone that
doesn't want something from me. I need a neutral listening ear and voice.
And that's long story short, is when I started spiritual direction. I met this
Episcopal monk who came into my office with blue jean overalls and a t -shirt and
open -toe sandals and I was in this professional mode of dressing up and every hair
in the place kind of thing. And as soon as he opened his mouth, I knew he had
something that I desired. He had a slower pace.
He had a tentative countenance. He had a way of being with God and with me that
was profound. It was mysterious and beautiful. And that began a 35 + year
relationship in direction with the same person who I see on a regular basis as my
spiritual guide, my spiritual companion. So I would say single -handedly getting
engaged in spiritual direction with a trusted companion, trained and trusted companion
was the turning point for me. And everything about my life,
I would say, has changed as a result, some instantly and some more long term in
terms of a chipping away. But that experience of having a companion who was walking
with God and encouraging me to do likewise was definitely the catalyst for everything
since. And so you started this ministry called leadership transformations.
That was one of the things that flowed out of this pivot in your own life.
And it's marked, as I understand it, by some key components of the spiritual life
that go all the way back. They're not new, they're ancient, but in many ways have
gotten lost in our modern, as you're saying, kind of hustle culture that seeps into
the church, what are some of those key features? And I know from it,
I know from my own personal experience and we'll get into that. But from your
vantage point, this, you've, you've, you've talked about the word slow, attentiveness,
being with companionship. You know, it seems like from that came this ministry.
What are the key components, the key foundational pillars that you're trying to pull
lovers of Jesus into and away from this more kind of hustle,
trying to get things done, trying to do good things for God mentality.
It's a great question. And I would say that the number one spiritual practice that
we're all desperate it for, frankly, is what I would call spaciousness,
a spaciousness with God. In other words, finding the time and creating the space to
have unhurried, uncluttered, unhindered time for the sake of your soul,
which would be your walk with God, your relationship with God. So a prayer closet
experience is something that's very important that I strongly urge and encourage
everyone who is seeking to walk with God and in community to have.
It was Bonhoeffer who said, you know, the one who loves to be with others, be
careful because you need some time alone and be careful if you're only wanting to
be alone. You need time together. So it's with aloneness and a community and it's a
community and contemplation, another way to put it. So we learn how to pray, but we
learn how to relate to one another. And that's really where you excel is,
and that's where these two disciplines are combined, formation and healthy
relationships, because our experience with God is gonna be as deep as we can go
relationally. And if we're unable to go deep relationally with each other,
we're not going to go deep with God. But if we're able to go deep with God,
that'll help us to embrace the reality of who we are as individuals seeking to have
meaningful relationships with others. So it is hand in glove, Allison,
but if I were to put the emphasis on a particular syllable there, it would be soul
care, the care and nurture of one's soul. - Yeah. - And there is nothing more
important than that. And yet, because we live distracted lives, we put everything
else in front of that.
- So I wanna share a little bit here about how I experienced that, how our paths
crossed. And there's so much that came out of these two years. And we're going to
talk about this for your podcast. So I'll send my listeners over to hear more of
the story on your podcast. But just at that intersection of I love how you're
saying community and contemplation, the both and the aloneness and the togetherness,
neither of which we're very good at. So I came into your world,
this ministry that you're doing through a two -year retreat program. There were
quarterly retreats. And the rhythm that was just so life -changing for me,
there were silent portions of it where we would have silent meals. We would be with
each other sitting at the breakfast table, but not speaking.
- It is so powerful. If you've never done this, it is such a unique way to be
with other humans with the absence of all the noise and the words. We would have
time alone where we would literally be in our prayer closets or off on a walk.
So there was built -in time for that kind of aloneness. There was aloneness together.
And then there were structured times where we would share our stories.
And what I loved about that, Steve, is the structure. There was an order to it.
We would each get a certain amount of time, maybe 10 minutes, I don't remember
exactly, with themes. And over the course of four quarterly retreats,
you could get pretty deep in what you shared. And so for the first one, I think
we told our spiritual autobiography sort of in 10 minutes So you have to kind of
do the work of looking back and what was so powerful and I'm I'm saying this for
the benefit of the listener because I've never Experienced anything like this was
more powerful than therapy there dare I say I mean it was so powerful So I I just
that's that's the passion in my voice about this. I would share my story and at
the end of it, silence. We put a timer on and we would sit with my story or
whoever was sharing their story in silence, holding it. And Steve,
we don't do that. Usually we share our story and immediately everybody jumps in to
fix it, to give advice about it, to interpret it, to tell us we shouldn't feel
that way. All we did was sit and hold the story. At first it was very
uncomfortable for me. That first, I was like, what is happening? But over time,
the rhythms, and then there were more rhythms. You know, there was, we can get into
that, but because then we would take another round where people would reflect back
verbatim words that they heard you say without interpreting,
without giving advice, just saying I heard you say lonely four times.
And that is just an unbelievable, from a psychological perspective, an attachment
perspective to feel that secure holding was life changing for me.
And so I share that with you both to just honor and validate what you and
thousands of people already know about how the power in this work, but it was so
different than anything I'd ever encountered in a small group, even in discipleship
and mentorship. And I guess I want to ask you,
you know, how I'm not even sure what my question is other than to say, I think we
need this. I think what you're doing speaks to something so deeply inside of us
that need to be seen and held in a very slow,
methodical, kind of orderly way that we just often don't encounter. Well,
when you think about the most intimate moments of life, very few words are spoken.
Yes. It's presence. It's an embrace. It's eye to eye contact.
I mean, we fall in love through the eyes. We love another through the eyes.
And when we can't see each other's eyes or when we see each other's eyes as sad
or disappointed or tearful or turning away, all we need to do is just be present
with the other. And it's in that presence that the mysterious work of healing and
intimacy with God occurs. And we think it needs to be chock -full of words.
And it actually doesn't. And what your testimony is, is the testimony of many others
who have gone through our programs. People will say, "I've never been listened to
like that in my life. Now, think about the power of that statement. I've never been
listened to like that in my life. If we do one thing in this world to change the
trajectory of this craziness that we're in, it would be, I think, around
attentiveness, around listening. And so I talk about it and write about pure
listening and you've described it. It's, you don't fix a person,
you don't correct a person, you don't compare your story, you don't one -up the
other person's story. You're simply there. And if you're going to say anything,
say exactly what they said. Don't interpret. Because when we begin to interpret,
then the person who hasn't been properly listen to is saying to themselves, they
didn't listen to me. That's not what I said. And the bold and courageous will say
that. They'll give voice to that. But many will just smile and, you know, tolerate
it, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. So I think we should only speak when we're invited to
speak in those moments. The rhythm of that of that practice I took with me into
relationships,
even as my work as a therapist, because there was a time, I think the last round
was you can give encouragement. You know, the last round was maybe share a way in
which others touched something about me, or here's what it made me think about,
where we might get into some of that. But it's
after. We've given the fullness of our attention to the story. Yeah.
And to the person, the person's story, which is precious and it's unique and it's,
it may be difficult, it may be hard, it may be painful, but it still has,
you know, the work of God on it and he wants to heal every ounce of our pain.
Yes, if we let it and in those settings, that's where a lot of healing occurs So
Steve for the listener who's hearing this and maybe hasn't Been a part of such a
community and can't imagine You know, maybe they can't for whatever reason Take the
time to join one or their churches don't offer something so they're listening going
I want that how do I find it. What would you say might a couple of steps be
little both little tiny steps we can do just in our own lives and even bigger
steps that we can take to begin to bring this kind of listening and slowness into
our lives? It's a great question because experientially it's rare these days and what
we're trying to do is we're trying to push that rock up a hill, if you will, and
knowing that everything about the busyness and the noisiness and the confusion of our
world is distracting us and keeping us from these rich encounters with God and with
each other. But if we can at least be a catalyst for saying something like,
could we just pause for a moment and not dive into the conversation yet. Like
imagine if we were to just, let's take a minute of silence. - Yeah. - We want to
be together, but let's just have a minute of silence. I encourage teams and
individuals and couples and small groups tie the time that you're together in
silence. So if you're together for 60 minutes, that's an hour long session.
Take five or six minutes and just be together in silence. It will dramatically and
radically change the experience that you have when you start talking to each other
radically. I'll say the boards that are coming in. You're coming in from your busy
workdays and you're huffing and puffing to get here and you've just had a quick
meal and You had to deal with your kid's homework assignment, you know, whatever it
is that you're coming in with. Let's just settle together into a common space where
we can listen to God and each other and it comes through silence. It comes through
that crucible of transformation, which is silence and solitude. But it's dramatic for
both the alone space and my per closet and my communal space with others and we're
not doing either very well. Yes. I love it's the both and it's not just because
yes, it's not just spend more time alone. And I love that. I mean,
you could even do that with a friend or with your spouse or at the dinner table,
say we're going to sit in silence before we start dinner. You know,
we say the grace and then we all are, we sit, we practice sitting in silence for
a minute to just let our, let our bodies settle. Right. I bet that changes the
nature of the dinner conversation. It does. It does. I've seen it over and over
again. I've been on retreats with people I don't even know, never met. And for the
whole weekend, I'm not talking, saying a word to them. But by the time the thing
ends, I feel like hugging them because I've so enjoyed the time together.
And we haven't said a word. But that's how the Spirit of God works.
He works mysteriously. He works quietly,
secretively at times, you know, and then he makes some pops out makes himself known.
Yes. And yeah, I just I think we were too much of in a fix it mode for
everything, including our relationships. There's a form of humility in it,
right? We where we're kind of setting aside our left brain in our words,
our desire to kind of setting that aside and recognizing just the presence Read
g I love what you said there was another thing I wanted to grab on to you said
you might say to a friend I don't want to jump into conversation Can I share this
with you almost labeling it for someone? Yeah. Yeah, can I just share this with
you? And would you be willing to just hold it with me? Oh
Very good, that's a very simple thing you could do to just say it can we just
maybe even begin with silence and then kind of just share something with you.
I'm not looking to be fixed or corrected or changed. That Ruth will say to me,
"Steve, I just want you to listen to me. I don't want to. I'm not asking you to
fix me. I'm asking you to listen to me." Yeah. Yes.
Steve. I think we need to learn how to listen. Yes, all the way back to learn how
to listen, which means we can't be distracted. We have to have souls that can be
still with one another as someone who practices stillness and solitude.
I'm curious, what's one practice that you personally return to over and over when
your own soul feels dry or far from God or distracted. What one practice re -anchors
you time and again? Without a doubt, it would be simple breath prayers and probably
my favorite one is Psalm 62 verse 1. "My soul finds rest in God alone.
Seven words that have changed my life. My soul finds rest in God alone.
It doesn't find rest in this world. It doesn't find rest in even relationships as
good as they may be. It doesn't find my, I don't find rest in work. Everything
else is adrenaline, but when I can find a space to have Sabbath moments.
I'm just using a simple breath part to get me to that space, to get me out of
the distracted space and into the focused and attentive space that's uncluttered.
And, you know, that's hard to get to. So I'll just very simply just say,
"Oh, Lord, my soul, my soul, my soul. "Oh, find rest in God alone," and I kind of
speak to my soul in that regard or give voice. It's interesting in the various
translations, it'll go, "My soul finds rest in God alone," or "My soul,
comma, find rest in God alone," or "Truly,
my soul finds rest in God alone. It's nuanced ever so slightly,
but each has a power to it. Yeah. So I'm either commanding my soul,
just slow down and rest. Yeah. Or I'm reminding myself of the comfort of the
presence of God in the midst of crazy, full, full to overflowing lives.
I feel that when you say that in my body, there's something, when you say breath,
right? There's a whole body response to that, right? That we feel deep.
And again, I think for so many of us,
and I don't, I think doctrine is important. I think right thinking is really
important. And when we're so bent in this sort of thinking relationship with God,
it's new to experience that feeling of what you just said,
which is a lived, a holistic experience of my soul. You drop down into your body.
- Right. - Right, that's incredible. - And to use the breath prayer,
it's sort of like breathe in the breath of life and breathe out the anxieties and
the frustrations and then breathe in the joy of the Lord and breathe out everything
that's bothering you and consuming you. So it's very simple,
choose your own, but for me those little seven words in Psalm 62 have been,
they've been life changer for me in many - Yeah. - Very simple. And then I can get
into the word and then I can pray. That's the other thing that I learned from this
Episcopal monk friend of mine. He taught me how to pray. And basically,
don't do all the talking. Figure out a way to let God do the majority of the
talking in your prayer so that you're doing less of the talking. So much of the
time we're thinking about our prayers in terms of what we articulate, and oftentimes
it's not what we're articulating, it's how our soul is being prepared to receive the
gift from God, His Word, His love, His grace, His kindness, His forgiveness,
the very things that God loves to give to all of us as his beloved children.
It's a two -way conversation. Yeah, yeah.
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This leads us, Steve, right into this brand new book. It's beautiful. I was just
looking through my copy. It's called Praying the Parables of Jesus,
and it's an invitation, really for readers to engage scripture,
prayer in this more contemplative way. So tell us a little bit about what prompted
the book and how it leads people in this way of not just saying more words to
God, but really being with God in all of we are. Yeah,
it's that's a great summary. It's a it's a desire of our heart of our hearts as
Sue Skinner, my artist friend and I collaborate on this. She's she was the visual
person. I was the word person. And we have this dream together of bringing the
parables of Jesus to life. There are 40 plus or minus parables.
So we're featuring 40 that we think is the sort of the focal point of Jesus'
simple little stories that so often we think of in childhood, you know, we think
that all children would like these stories. But the more I spend time in each of
the parables, the more I realize, oh my goodness, God is so serious about his
kingdom that every single one of the 40 parables point to the kingdom.
It's all about the kingdom of heaven. And there's a picture, there's a simile for
every single one. The kingdom of heaven is like and fill in the blank and that's
where Jesus excelled. He was basically explaining the here and now and the future
kingdom that we're invited to participate with him. He was so serious about the
kingdom that that's all he referenced and all 40 if you were to look at in terms
of the main theme. It was all about being with him now and forever.
And he was really speaking against the religious leaders of the day who were putting
rules and regulations out that barely anyone could keep up with. And Jesus came to
set people free. He came to give them life and joy in their walk with God and
their delight with one another. So again, it's that vertical horizontal thing coming
together in each of the parables. These parables are amazing, absolutely incredible.
They stand alone, there's contrast, there's a simple story that goes with it,
but it really penetrates the heart. And so what we've done is we've taken two very
ancient spiritual practices called Lectio Divina and Visio Divina and brought them
into each of the parables by way of the message, by the way, it's Eugene Peterson's
rewrite of the entirety of the scriptures and how He wrote out the parables,
so we're pulling from that. We dedicated the book to him because he's one of our
spiritual heroes.
And then it's just an invitation to read the parable perfectly,
reflectively, and take a look at this visual that may help you pray the parable
when you see how an artist has conveyed a part of that parable for you.
- That's beautiful, I love it. It's-- - A deep dive. - Yes. - But it's,
yeah, invitation. - It's an invitation, again, to everything we're kind of talking
about to enter in with our whole selves.
Again, not just our thinking brains or not just our, our souls that are distressed,
you know, but to really, I remember as part of the Emmaus group that I did with
you, you, one of the assigned readings was, I think it's called Eat This Book by
Eugene Peterson. And that book itself is such a great book,
but it's, it does a lot of what you're, it invites you into a holistic experience
of scripture that again many of us haven't just when you when you taste it it's
like oh but it's hard to even describe because you're still just marinating in
scripture but it's it's kind of from this more um I don't even you know it's hard
to put words on it but from this more contemplative space where it dwells within
you, which again is maturity, you know, I think sometimes we think maturity ends at
the head as opposed to bringing us deeper into our whole bodies.
- Totally. And yeah, lektio and visio in its simplest form is the repetitive read of
the same passage of scripture. So you're looking at this parable and you're reading
it several times. You're not, you're not jumping ahead, you're not looking around the
parable, you're diving into that parable and seeing what God has for you.
And every time I've used electio with groups and we go out for an hour by
ourselves and we sit in a particular passage of scripture and come back into the
circle, there's never been a repeated store in that circle.
Everyone discovers something that's for them. That's amazing. That God gave to them.
That's amazing. And so that's what Lectio and Visio really provide for us as hungry
souls wanting to know more about the heart of God. And you can follow this Lectio
pattern anywhere in the biblical text, not just the parables. - One other resource,
before we close, that I want to shout out to my listeners, 'cause I just think
it's such a helpful resource. It's your book called "Crafting a Rule of Life,"
which came out, I don't know when, several years ago, but I know so many people
who've gone through it because it teaches, the book shows, it explains these
different practices like you're describing here that are new to some people. But then
the back part of the book takes you back creating your own rule of life, which has
nothing to do with sort of a rule. It's a way of leaning into,
I think, who's the quote, the unforced rhythms of grace? That's another one I
learned from Emmaus. Who said that? - Yep, that's a Willard. That's a Dallas Willard.
- Dallas Willard, the unforced rhythms of grace where we put ourselves in the path
of these encounters with God. Could you just tell us a little bit about crafting a
rule of life and how that is another way that we can scaffold these encounters with
God? - Yeah, first of all, we correct myself. Unforced Rhythms of Grace is Eugene
Peterson's interpretation of the passage in Matthew. Willard would say we need to
learn the sort of the unhurried way of eliminating hurry,
basically, from our lives. So anyway, just to correct for those who knew better and
are listening to my voice on Um, yeah, it's,
it's, um, the rule of life has nothing, as you said, has nothing to do with rules
and regulations. It is all about a way of life and a way of life is either going
to be something that's, that's toward God and his purposes for our life,
or it's going to be wandering on our own. And I like that imagery of the vine
and, um, a healthy vine needs a trellis from which it grows and blossoms and
flourishes. If a vine does not have a trellis, it ends up wandering on the ground
and it does not produce the fruit that it's supposed to. In fact, God called the
people of God in the Old Testament at one point, "Wandering vine." You're a
wandering vine and you basically need to come back home. And so I look at the rule
of life. I mean, yeah, crafting the rule of life as something that brings us home,
brings us home to the true person, the best of you. - Yes, yeah.
- The one person that God made you to be in all of your uniqueness and all of
your beauty and all of the gifts and the abilities and the storyline of your life.
and you begin to unpack that, understand that. And when you begin to live it, you
realize you don't have to keep looking over your shoulder wishing you were like
someone else. Instead, you look upward and straightforward to say, "God,
how do you want me to live my life fully for you?" So we have things in common.
It's like a thumb and a thumbprint. We all have thumbs and the thumb does what the
thumb's supposed to do. but your thumbprint is different than mine. And let's
accentuate the idea that your life is unique as mine is,
as everyone is listening to our voices is. If we can set people free to become
fully who they are and live more purposefully into that, then they're putting their
vine on a trellis And it's flourishing and blossoming, just like a healthy vine
should. I love this. And I think that, you know, this is probably overly simplified,
but from many of my listeners, I see a lot of this work of spiritual formation and
these, the rhythm of life, uh, I mean, the rule of life as sort of an expansion
of what so many of us got, which wasn't all bad, which is you have your quiet
time in the morning, read the Bible, pray, go about the business every day, go to
church on Sundays, say grace before meals. You know, these are not, these are, these
are beautiful rhythms, but they can so easily become wrote,
or if, let's say, um, my personal time, you know,
feels dry. And, and so then I set it aside, but I feel shame because I, you know,
I I don't know I and I have listeners right into me. They say, you know, I've
been growing. I've been learning about myself I've been growing in emotional health
and in some ways now my old rhythms my old rituals feel dry And I think to
myself, oh that that's because there's we're incorporating in new layers new meaning,
you know, we're Expanding all the different ways that we encounter God and those are
part of it. All of those different ways are part of how we encounter God. And I
found in that book, "The Crafting of the Rule of Life," it includes, you know, it's
reading the scripture, prayer, worship, all of those things, but there's just so much
more too. And again, this is ancient. This is not new. These are ancient rhythms.
There's just so many more ways that we can encounter God in our daily lives.
So I just found it incredibly helpful to me to just expand some of that myopic
viewpoint that parts of me had kind of thought, this is the way, you know, this is
the way, and if these ways aren't working, you know, there's something wrong with
me. - Right. Oh, that's good. It's expansive, but it's also deepening.
- Yes. - In one's self -awareness, and we're not very good at self -awareness either.
- Yes. - We've listened to lies and we've created lies.
And no, we need to listen to the truth and speak truth and lean into the truth of
who you really are, who you're meant to be. - Yeah. - And yeah, it's gonna take
some collaboration with the Holy Spirit and with people who know us best and love
us most. - Yes. - And And that I do think is very important. Turn to the people
who know you best and love you most and want the very best for you. They'll help
you figure this thing out and expand it as well as deepen that awareness.
It's interesting too that Saint Benedict, one of my other heroes, ancient heroes, he
was one who really formalized an understanding of a rule of life. And for him,
it was all about these two same things, contemplation and community. In fact, if you
look at his rule of life, it is all about that. But the opening word, the first
word is listen. Yeah, it's like, listen, listen to God,
listen to your personal life experience, pay close attention, and then lean into what
you hear what you're noticing from the word of God, from the voice of God,
from the voice of the community of God.
Yeah, listen, it goes back to listening again. That's right. And so essential,
so very important. I love that we bookended the conversation, the listening.
Where can my listeners find your work, find your resources, Find the new book,
all the things, Steve.
SteveMachia .com is my personal website for the books that I've written.
LeadershipTransformations .org is the ministry website. So, SteveMachia, M -A -C -C -H -I
-A, SteveMachia .com and LeadershipTransformations .org.
We'd love to welcome anyone that's your friend is our friend Allison. - I highly
recommend, I mean, you've been doing this for a long time. I know there are folks
coming along now. John Mark Comer is one who are kind of bringing these ideas well
into the mainstream, which I think is awesome. You have been working out these ideas
for years. These are such trusted resources and I cannot recommend your work enough.
- Well, thank you, Allison. You're very kind. I so appreciate your friendship, and
I'm so delighted with the ways that your ministry is expanding,
exploding really with your writing and your podcast and your speaking and just so
proud of you. Just delighting with you and for you. And And praise God,
awesome, well done, good and faithful one. Thank you, Steve likewise. Thank you for
joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if
you take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or
wherever you listen to podcasts and click the plus or follow button. That will
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you're there, I'd love it if you leave your five -star review. I look forward to
seeing you back here next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best of who you
are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God -given self.
The world has changed, and raising kids now requires a new kind of courage.
In this encouraging yet practical episode, Dr. Alison is joined by counselors and best-selling authors Sissy Goff and David Thomas of Daystar Counseling in Nashville. Together, they discuss why anxiety is showing up earlier and more intensely in children, and how parents can respond with both empathy and practical tools.
Sissy and David share creative ways they’re helping kids build courage, resilience, self-control, and perspective. From therapy dogs and illustrated children’s books to powerful stories from their counseling practice, Sissy and David deliver hopeful reminders that your calm matters, and practical strategies can help your kids step into the world with more confidence.
This episode explores:
- Why childhood anxiety is rising, and how it looks different in boys and girls
- The surprising ways technology impacts emotional health
- The unintended consequence of overprotective parenting
- Practical tools that help kids develop resilience, risk-taking, and healthy coping
- When to seek counseling for your child
This episode is a hopeful reminder: Kids don’t need a perfect parent. They need a present one who believes in their courage and helps them practice it.
For More from David and Sissy:
check out their website, https://www.raisingboysandgirls.com and pre-order the DayStar Dogs books here:
📚Pippa Learns to Share the Spotlight: A Lesson About Jealousy
📚Happy Finds Her Calm: A Lesson in Self-Control
📥 Grab your 3 free Boundaries For Your Soul resources here:
📥 Download Alison’s free printable with the five boundary tools when you sign up for her weekly email.
Here are some other episodes you might like :
Episode 65: Vulnerability, Parenting, and Letting Go of Control
Episode 85: The Goal of a Healthy Family & 6 Roles We Take On In Dysfunction
💬 Got a question? Call 307-429-2525 and leave a message for a future episode.
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Music by Andy Luiten
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
Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week’s episode of The Best of You.
Today we’re diving into a topic I know so many of you are navigating—how to help our kids develop real courage and resilience in an anxious world.
We touched on this theme last week with Trey Tucker, who works primarily with Gen Z young adults. And today, we’re going to look at the same concern a little earlier in life—through the lens of children and families.
In this conversation, you’ll hear:
- A simple way to become the “calm your child can catch,” even when you’re stressed.
- Why anxiety in kids often looks like anger, control, or distraction—and what to do in the moment.
- How to decide when it’s time to consult a professional (and how to frame counseling as part of your child’s care team).
- Two kid-friendly tools you can try tonight to right-size big feelings and build brave muscles over time.
We’ll also talk about an amazing new resource for kids that uses stories to teach emotional skills in a playful, shame-free way. It’s creative, evidence-informed, and honestly…fun.
All right—let’s get to it.
Alison Cook: Today I am joined by two voices most of you already know and love they are counselors and best -selling authors Sissy Goff and David Thomas. Together they have helped thousands, is it probably more than thousands, of families through their work at Daystar Counseling in Nashville, their best -selling books and their top -ranked raising boys and girls podcast. If you're not subscribed to it, go hit the subscribe button because they are doing such good work to help parents. They are now,
I'm so excited to have them now. They are bringing that same wisdom to kids through a brand new illustrated series called the Daystar Dogs, which I love. These stories feature their, we'll get into it more in the episode today, but their stories feature therapy dogs, Lucy, Owen, Happy, and Pippa. And here's the thing that think is so cool and listen to these qualities, these emotional skills that they're going to help your kids with. Courage, resilience, self -control, and jealousy.
That's just four of them. I mean, do we all need help trying to empower our kids through courage, resilience, self control and jealousy. I am so thrilled to welcome David and Sissy Goff to the podcast today. Thanks for being here. We are always so delighted to be with you and honored to get to have this time.
David Thomas: Any time our paths intersect with you it's a good good day. It's always it's so fun
Alison Cook: We got to do it live sometime. That's the only thing we haven't been able to like I need to we need to get down there. Well I am so excited to launch into this. I kind of, because we're sort of back to school, we're sending kids out. Let's touch on this kind of anxiety word that's everywhere. We're talking about how kids are more anxious. There's actually a recent CDC study that's talking about how anxiety is actually raising in younger and younger kids. What are some of your top tips for parents to help their younger kids develop more courage and resilience, especially as we're thinking about them heading back into the school year.
Sissy Goff: Well, you just said this on our podcast and we are so team Allison on this that the very best thing you can do as a parent is to do your own work. And so we were talking about the very idea that just like anxiety ripples over onto the kids we love so does calm and so does the reminder that we can live in both spaces that we can feel anxious and nervous and worried and we can still do hard things that it's both things and so we felt like there was not much that speaks to the heart of kids with those kind of messages like a dog and that's why we'll talk more about that I'm sure but that's why the dogs are communicating the message but
I do think for parents it is so easy and in fact talking about research research says the two most common parenting strategies in light of anxiety are escape and avoidance so we see our kids in distress and it feels like good parenting to pull them out of that distress and In fact, that communicates the message, which we're not intending to, but it communicates the message, yeah, you can't do this without me.
You are dependent on me. You can't do hard things, which is never what we're trying to communicate, but it's what is translated. And so when a parent can say, can hold both things of, of course you have big feelings that this feels scary and you know what? You are so much capable than you have any idea. There is so much courage, not that you have to rise up to, but there is so muc courage that God put inside of you already.
Alison Cook: That's so good. That's so good. So much more is caught than taught in a way they catch our own sense of belief in them. Why do you think dogs are so helpful? I mean, I love my dogs. We were talking about this. We all kind of love our dogs. But why do you think there's such helpful kind of tools for or why do you think there's such helpful illustrations for teaching children how to navigate their own heart emotions?
David Thomas: It was for us a really easy decision and a natural progression. We currently have six therapy dogs on staff in our practice and so a lot of doodles. We do. We love doodles and we talk about how much work they do that makes our job 10 times easier, you know, how many kids and adolescents have walked into this space feeling nervous, fearful, overwhelmed about that first appointment. Any parent who's taken a child you love to counseling for any of us who've gone ourselves, that first appointment can feel somewhat overwhelming and it's amazing how often we have seen kids settle early into the experience just impeding the dog, just in talking about their own dog. We're starting our conversation right there and telling a story about a dog they love and how often we have seen evidence of kids telling more than I think they ever plan to tell in the company of a dog. And so because they do so much of the great work and the teaching in our space, it felt like this natural extension of what we do that the dogs would lead in terms of teaching these emotional skills that we felt were so important. - There's something so safe about dogs. -
Alison Cook: Yeah, that's beautiful. -
Sissy Goff: Well, and I will tell you the reason we started having dogs, so my first dog as an adult was a little Maltese named Noelle, and there were some people working at my house one day and I couldn't leave her home, so I called our dear friend and boss Melissa and said, "Could I bring Noelle to work for and she said to her and so that day, you know, we have all had this experience and I was sitting with an adolescent girl who told me she wanted to take her own life. And so I called her mother, had her mother come to the office and I needed to go sit with her mom and tell her what she had said to me. And so I left Noelle with this teenage girl and went and talked to her mom. And when I came back, Noelle was in the girl's lap licking her tears and she just intuitively knew Noelle just knew she needed to lean in with this girl and and that afternoon I called Melissa and told her the story and she said bring that dog every day and so now sweet little Noelle has this legacy of all these dogs that are such an important part of our work and so many parents will bring their kids the first time to counseling and say the only reason I got my child to agree to come is 'cause y’'all had dogs. - Which we love.
Alison Cook: I love it, I love it, that's beautiful. I wanna get into a little bit, how you're seeing some of these different things show up differently in boys and girls. It's one of the things I love about your work and your partnership. Before we get there, I wanna ask a question I hear so often from parents, and that is, how do I know when It's time to take my child to therapy?
David Thomas: such a great question. It is and we hear it often as well And we would say two things to that first we'd say to parents if If things are inquestion if you feel uncertain about that decision we always believe it's a great call to Consult with your pediatrician Come in and meet yourself with a therapist first and just ask questions because it may be that We do a lot of what we call parent consultations in our work where we may just give Parents a to -do list and leaving of some things for them to try at home That could be as much support is as needed in that season or in that conversation We might hear evidence of youknow, I think it would be beneficial to go ahead and jump start this process So I think a consultation is just a good, safe place to begin, whether that's with your pediatrician, whether that's with someone who does the work like we do, so that we're making sure we're giving the right amount of support. Not too little, not too much. Secondly, we would say we certainly want to watch for evidence of where something with the kids we love might feel problematic or difficult versus debilitating. So think, for example, you've got a kid who is sometimes teary on the way to school and feels really nervous about walking in the building. That's super common for a high percentage of kids, particularly in the first few weeks of the start of school. We're not overly concerned about kids who are teary on the ride to school, maybe even hesitant walking in but can find their way in the building and teachers report are settling in and experiencing learning and friendships and all those things, we're worried about the kids who can't get in the building, who, it's not just a tummy ache, they're throwing up before they leave the house, or it requires an administrator to come out to the parking lot and help get them into the building, that it's become so debilitating, it's difficult for them to experience the normal and good things we want kids to experience of learning and relationships. And so That's maybe a way to think on a concern you might carry for a child or out of lesson you love. Is it problematic or is it debilitating? Is it getting in the way of life for them? Because we don't want to wait until it's getting in the way of life and it's snowballed to that place.
Sissy Goff: I love that. I think my favorite story ever, and I can't remember if I've told you this before, but we had a mom come in once and she said that her daughter was pushing back and we see so many families who the kids don't want to come the first time. And we will say to parents, if you can get them to the building, every counselor who works with kids has convinced a kid to come in the building before. That's fine. But this mom was saying how her daughter was pushing back and she said, why do I have to go mom?
And this brilliant mom said, honey, my job as your parent is to build your team. And we
have people on your medical team who are your doctors and we have people who are on your academic team that are your educators of course I'm gonna have people on your emotional team and they're gonna be your counselors and so we may not go for six months we may go a few times just so you have a person so that when something does come up you can say hey mom I'd like to go see Sissy again and then we just you have a relationship and we just step right back into that place I just thought what a beautiful way to describe that to a child. Isn't that awesome?
Alison Cook: Wow, I love that. It's, I'm wanting to tell my listeners, they need to go listen to our conversation that we're gonna have on your podcast because talk about a secure, safe place that you're creating for your kids. That's so beautiful. What a great way to kind of normalize that team around our children that this is normal. That's so helpful. I love it.
That's so practical. If you're worried, do a consultation. Talk to your doctor. Talk to a therapist. Ask them. Get some benchmarks for what might, but I love the normalization of, this is just a part of our team, you know? That's beautiful. That's so helpful. All right, so I wanna talk a little bit about how have you yourself in your practice in your work how are you seeing anxiety manifest itself in younger girls in particular?
Sissy Goff: Well I would say I mean a lot of the parents I see of younger girls the girls are typically the firstborn not always but so much of the time and I believe the primary coping strategy for them. In lieu of any other healthy coping strategies becomes control, which I think any of us who are first born can say that continues through adulthood. But I think for a lot of these girls, they don't yet have the words or the understanding to say, "Hey, Mom, it makes me feel anxious when you change my schedule and I don't have any input," or when I don't know what's coming. And So they start to feel things in their body and then they lock down on, "I thought this was supposed to happen," or all of a sudden they just have a lot of anger or a lot of big feelings and get very rigid and very demanding even in what they expect and what they think should happen next. And I even see it happen in kids over birthday gifts or Christmas gifts that they can get really rigid about something they think they want and for a parent it feels like entitlement but really it's more about control and so I think with I mean we know all behaviors
communication from kids and so anytime there are big feelings I want parents to really track okay what are the patterns when are we seeing this come up what are the circumstances around it and is it about control and rigidity because when it is I think often anxiety is driving that train rather than just pure anger or entitlement. So that's one I really wanna pay attention to with younger girls.
Alison Cook: How are you seeing anxiety show up in young boys?
David Thomas: It's interesting to hear you answer Sissy in the way you did because if I were to assign two words that I think best reflect what it looks like on young boys, I would say anger and control. And it's often a rigidity and inflexibility resistance to trying anything new.
Interestingly enough, I see a lot of first born boys who struggle in this space.
That's not to say there aren't plenty of seconds and thirds I've seen who struggle
in that space, but a high percentage of first born boys who are also high
achieving, high performing, highly successful academically, athletically in a lot of
those spaces. So I think it's two sides of the same coin so often. They're doing
amazing things in the world and putting an overwhelming amount of pressure on
themselves simultaneously. So I would say those two in particular, but one other
interesting piece to note, I think with boys, young boys in particular,
is that I think anxiety can masquerade as the symptomology of ADHD because I think
when boys are carrying a lot of excess worry and fear it takes up a lot of
cognitive real estate so they often look distracted and inattentive under focused and
so really bright boys who are missing some basic instructions that again from an
outside view could just look like classic ADHD but as we dig underneath it's some
anxiety that's feeding and feeling it, it's just taking up so much brain space that
if we can clear out that anxiety, often we see less evidence of what looks like
true attention hurdles.
Alison Cook: How have you guys in all your years of working with young
boys and girls, how have you seen anxiety change in how it shows up or what influences it.
David Thomas: Oh, that's a great question. I do think we're seeing it show up younger and younger.
And I mean, there are so many things that we could talk about that are really
influencing it. I mean, certainly technology. We know that. We know that from
Jonathan Haidt's work. And I think that is not just I think we tend to think
that's social media but it's also just the amount of images that are changing I
mean if you're to watch a new show even for kids from today versus something from
the 70s when we were growing up the amount of I don't even I'm not a filmmaker in
any way so I don't know how to describe this in a way accurately but the
- It happens so fast.
Alison Cook: Yeah, interesting.
Sissy Goff: And I remember a psychiatrist we were
working with over a teenage girl in tandem, and she said to me, just the
stimulation that's happening when a child watches a screen now is mimicking an
anxious state in their minds, in their brains. - Interesting, wow. - And so it's not
just once they hit social media age, it can be bluey stages too. And so I think
want to pay close attention to that obviously but I think I would be so curious
Allison in your work what you would say to this but I think we're seeing more and
more parents who are doing this really good important work of as we've been talking
about today healing from their own stories and in doing that I think they're
overcompensating sometimes for what they missed And so they are doing this beautiful
job of hearing and understanding their kids, being attuned to their kids emotionally
and not necessarily arming their kids to do the important work of stepping into the
hard things with coping strategies. So it's more like we're hearing them and
understanding them and holding space for their emotions, But then we're not equipping
them to walk out into the world and to know that they can do these things.
Alison Cook: That leads me that the Owen learns he has what it takes book,
right, which is focusing on resilience. And how do you see a need for resilience
showing up?
David Thomas: I would say I think there is an overwhelming need.
Because for all the opportunity that exists for kids and adolescents in this day and
time, we see all the evidence of them feeling less equipped, less capable than ever.
And if I were to think about how that looks uniquely with boys, Allison,
it's fascinating for me to have done this work for 30 years at, look back at
shifts and the evidence of things being really different and I'm not just fascinated
but deeply concerned about currently the number of boys turning 16 who have little
to no interest in getting a driver's license. Where I saw no evidence
of that on the front side of my work. Like I'd have to think back to if I ever
encountered an adolescent young man that didn't want to pursue that, or wasn't even
chomping at the bits to do that, and seeing less and less evidence of that now.
They don't really wanna pursue the independence and the opportunity because, we'll
talk about this word a lot, it involves risk to move into that space, to study for
the test, to take the test, and maybe fail the test and have to take it again.
And alongside that, I'm seeing fewer adolescent boys than ever who are interested in
getting a part -time job interested in asking to a homecoming dance and how that
graduates up to less interested than ever and the statistics reflect this to apply
to college you know there's been a significant shift in the number of boys applying
to the undergrad students and that's not to say every young man's journey is to
pursue a four -year education. But it is to say, I don't want him to close the
door on that opportunity simply because he's had so little practice in the place of
risk. And if I were to scale that down to the elementary age years, I'm seeing
fewer boys than ever who are interested in being a part of a team.
- You know, dipping back into what Sissy talked about with G, you know, content to
just be home playing video games, content to only have conversations with friends
when I have a headset on, as opposed to going to a birthday party and having human
interaction. Because again, all those things involve risk. It's risky to join a team.
It's risky to ask a girl to a dance. It's risky to apply to college. And I'm
seeing greater evidence than ever of boys moving away from risk, which is why the
Owen book felt so important to begin to address that on the front side of
development.
Alison Cook: It's so interesting. So this is just listening to tie that to
resilience, right, the risk -taking. And this is my anecdotal take on this.
I'm curious, is, you know, I feel like the way that we were parented, where there
was sort of that almost living, you know, seen and not heard, right? And so we
sort of learned resilience the rough and tumble way, like we couldn't wait to get
our driver's licenses, right? And then there was sort of a correction
toward parents being more attuned, parents being more present. But it almost-- and
this is a too simplistic way to say it, but almost feels like an overcorrection. Is
that-- Yes. OK, yes. Yeah, right? You're both nodding your head and stronger.
There's a there's a both and there right there's a both and that is so necessary
in being a present parent it's it's not gosh okay that is just so interesting so
okay so let's talk about these books so in Owen that I'm curious about this link
so in Owen learns he has what it takes there's a feelings chart so why is this
feelings chart so Important for these young boys in particular as as you're wanting
them to develop these risk -taking muscles this Resilience.
David Thomas: Yeah Well, I think it starts with if I can't name my experience, you know, it's back to the wisdom of naming and taming I can't tame anything that I can't name. I can't Figure
out what it looks like to our conversation to take a risk if I can't accurately
Identify the fear that's getting in the way of me taking the risk and so I think
It hope was that just that might be an invitation to kids and parents doing more of
that connecting of the dots. In addition to, you know, Owen's story is really about
how that fear started to get in the way of him doing some of the very things he
wanted to do. Yeah. In addition to his work with me here in my practice at
Daystar, we did some volunteering at our local Children's Hospital and on the very
first visit after months and months of training this dog to be a therapy dog We
show up for our first visit and we're in the hallway outside of the first room
with this Adorable little guy who's sitting on his bed in the hospital room and I'm
so excited to walk in and begin the work and Owen is Paralysed like he is in a
sit position, I cannot get him in the room, and all of a sudden I start to
realize he's overwhelmed by a lot of new things he's not yet encountered, you know,
the white coats and the noises and sirens going off from the machines in the
hallway and people pushing carts up and down and there was a lot of stimulation
going on around him and it got in the way, it triggered some fear and so all of
a sudden he's not wanting to step forward into this room and missing this incredible
opportunity this little boy who wants to be with him and who I think needed that
visit and Owen needed to be with this boy and so I literally had to pick the 70
pound dog up and carry him into the room and put him on the bed so that he could
have this great encounter and Alison and I have to tell you and I may cry as I'm
telling you the story Sissy and I had a parent write us a letter that we just got
at Daystar and she'd been reading the Lucy and Owen books to her daughter who's
preschool age and she was reading them running up to the beginning of the school
year because her daughter historically has a lot of trouble the first couple weeks
of school and separating out which is super common for a lot of kids and sure
enough on day one they showed up at school. Despite a warm up where she got to
meet her teacher and her mom was really hopeful it might go a little differently
this time on day one she was just clean to her mom crying so hard and the teacher
motion to the mom that she could come on in and sit with her for a few minutes
in the classroom hopefully in a way that would settle her and she said I was
sitting in the floor with her and kind of combing her back and hair and she
whispered and her mom's ear she said you know, sometimes Owen's dad had to carry
him in the room too when he felt scared and I wept reading that letter and
thinking about that was everything the two of us hoped would happen with these books
is that it would be the beginnings of kids making those connections and even if she
could, you know, say through that experience, "I'm afraid right now." And so that
was everything we could have hoped might might happen with writing these books and
being able to press in on the front side of development.
Alison Cook: That's beautiful. Yeah, where meet kids right where they are.
Okay, so then we have Lucy learns to be brave, which is such a great title.
I love this for girls. So you include in this book a thermometer chart for children
to fill in. So how does this tool help our young ones be brave?
SIssy Goff: Well, we talk often about how more kids than ever,
if we were going to think about emotions on a one to 10 scale, more kids and
earlier than ever are going to 10. There's not a sense of two to four or two to
five. So And older ones have expressed it well to me. They don't say,
I feel nervous. They say, I have anxiety. They don't say, I feel sad. They say,
I'm depressed. I had a mom, I think it was probably three years ago now who said
to me for the first time, and now I'm hearing this phrase all the time. But she
said, I think my seventh grade daughter has rejection sensitivity dysphoria. - Oh boy.
- And yes, exactly. And I tried to say this one.
wanting to help at an early age kids learn to have a sense of perspective and to
have a sense of I mean Lucy my little dog who I adored that I had for 15 years
for her one of her biggest fears was hiccups the first time I ever got the hiccups
in front of her I was counseling a mom and Lucy ended up trying to climb on top
of this woman's head to get away from me because she was shaking and so terrified
of the hiccups and so I use that in the book as an example of let's you know
let's make a two a two and let's make a six a six and a hiccup as a two and a
six is maybe you know something scary happening in your family and nine is certainly
that and so I think helping them have that sense of perspective early on can really
be a game changer for kids and it's so funny, Allison, because I literally have
not, this is so, I think how God works often, but I have not thought about that
book in the context I'm about to attach it to until we have this conversation
earlier with you about attachment and I think the Lucy book is largely about
attachment because it's the sense of discovering how very loved you are by by the
grownups in your life, by God, means you are safe to go out and explore the world.
- Yes. - And within that context, a two becomes a two. - Yes. - And a five is a
five. - Yes. - And so that is exactly what the Lucy book is about. That when she
discovers how much I love her, she's safe to do these hard, scary things.
Alison Cook: Oh, that's so good, and that's so empowering. As a child, you begin to trust that inner sense of, you know, this is how, I remember as our kids got older, we would ask
them, is it, you know, feeling anxious or feeling, is it small, medium, or big? And
then as they got older, they could say it's small. They could self -reflect in a
way that's like, and it's small, you know, it's like, I'm fine, I can go to
school. But, and there was that ongoing trust of if it's big, I'm gonna do
something different, but is it small and you're kind of helping, I love the
thermometer metaphor in that, in that idea of helping them at a very young age,
understand those distinctions. Okay, so you've got two more books coming out. These are coming out in November.
And I want to know, I mean, listen to these titles, Happy Finds Her Calm, and
Pippa learns to share the spotlight. So we're looking at self -control and jealousy.
What led you to land on those two key topics for these next two books?
Sissy Goff: We had so much fun writing these two books. I think we both cried writing the Lucy
and Owen books because they were dogs we adored in that we have lost since then.
But happy and Pippa we giggled our way through both of those books and I'll talk
about Pippa will you talk about happy. So Pippa is a big sister who loves the
spotlight. She's actually an only child, only dog, who loves the spotlight and she's
wearing a tutu and she's doing all the things and everybody is so attentive to
everything she does. And then she finds out she's gonna have this baby sister and
Pippa, for the first time, starts to really struggle with jealousy. And that is a
universal experience. And I have not come across any books that I really loved that
could help older siblings. I mean, certainly there are books that talk about that,
but we start to talk about emotions as colors and how it's not one or the other,
it's both so much of the time. And I can love my younger sibling and I can feel
fear about that too. And sometimes the fear can morph even into anger.
And so Pippa's jealousy comes out as anger. And so helping kids start to tease
those apart and understand how all of these different emotions live inside of us.
Just that idea of naming it helps sustain it. So good. And so Pippa learns to,
at the end, her little sister's in a two -two -two and they're in the birthday
parade together, which is so much fun for both of them.
Alison Cook: I love that. That's great.
David Thomas: And with happy we really did laugh our way through the writing of both these books.
In fact at one point we were having so much fun we said our editor we may never
write another book for grown -ups. This is so enjoyable. But our hope within that
was that parents and kids were gonna laugh together too as they read these stories
because we both believe that Laughing and learning can happen side by side. We
always say that to parents. Like when we're talking around some harder things, let's
laugh together too. Let's laugh at ourselves. Let's laugh with the kids we love. And
we talked a little earlier about how the lack or lacking the skills to regulate can
get in the way sometimes of attention and focus, just as fear can. But one of the
things we also talk about within the happy book is how the other thing it can get
away get in the way of is reading the room and missing some cues and so happy has
a lot of moments where she's too much for her friends and not finding her calm is
getting in the way of relationships but one of the other things that I hope happens
in this book in the discovery is that we would love if a lot of parents might be
willing to Purchase a copy of this book for a teacher that you love because Happy's
teacher is the real hero of this story. Happy gets to therapy dog school That's
where it takes place and her teacher is just a rock star and all the different
ways that she helps her Strategize at school that spills over into home So that
these things aren't getting in the way of all of what she's wanting to accomplish
build relationships have friends, enjoy school. So our hope is that a lot of
teachers feel really seen and encouraged through this story as well. - And Happy's
teacher, by the way, is named Cat with a K, based off of the teacher that we've
both used for our therapy dogs.
Alison Cook: I love that. I love that. I love the whole
collaborative approach you take, even in the stories and your work, it's reflective
of your work with teachers and parents and counselors and you know it just it's all
you know I love how that's reflected in the story right there's all sorts of folks
kind of coming alongside our kids who can be empowered to help them grow and
together you know if we look at this series we've got courage resilience self
-control and jealousy so how do addressing how do we when our kids are addressing
these four sort of core areas. How is that creating a foundation for emotional
health? What does that look like when our kids, you know, when we're really looking
at our kids and we're kind of, you know, we've got our own inner critics aside and
we've got our own perfectionism aside and we're like, you know, I think my child is
doing all right. You know, I think they're, you know, how do we kind of gauge that
in our kids against these these these four kind of topics that you're helping us
engage with.
Sissy Goff: That's a great question and I I think it is so fun for them to be
described through children's books because we are we would guess that the majority of
readers are not reading themselves but their parents are reading to them. Yeah. And
so the fact that it is creating connection and conversation as they're reading and
hopefully talking about these very issues together I think is gives the parent an
opportunity to do some empathy work, to do some modeling of these things,
to learn to ask questions. We have we have not only a therapeutic tool in each
book but we have conversation starters with kids so if that feels hard to know
where to start but I think to everything that we've been talking about I think the
idea that a child is learning to say this is what's happening inside of me yeah
this is what's happening inside of me this is why I feel it and here's what I can
do about it yeah and Sometimes what I can do is just like your kids, I feel all
this, but yeah, it really is small. Or I know, I love in the Owen book that it's
the analogy is Owen wanted to step backwards, but he learned to step forwards.
That I can feel these things, I can understand them, and I can still step forward
into purpose, into meaning, into connection with other people into whatever is in
front of me. That is an opportunity to grow and to learn.
David Thomas: And I think the only thing that I would add to that is I love the quote from
Frederick Douglass that says, "It's easier to build strong children than to repair
broken men." I think there's incredible wisdom in those words and I think it excites
the two of us to think about building these skills into the youngest of kids that
they would be practicing in these ways that they would be having these kind of
conversations with it with their parents and laying this foundation on this side of
development and I was thinking just as you were asking that question Allison I will
never forget a couple of years ago I was leading a group of second through with
great boys and one of the boys came to group that week and his parents over the
weekend had told he and his sister that they were getting a divorce and he was
reporting that to this little group of second and third grade boys and he started
crying his little voice cracked he started crying telling it and there was another
little boy who a year before had navigated that exact same transition and as this
little guy was trying to tell the group about what had happened. This other little
boy who lived that already started scooting closer and closer him. I don't think he
even knew that it was happening to where by the time the little boy finished his
reporting he was almost touching knee to knee and looked at this little guy and
said I remember when it happened to me and I promise you're gonna be okay. It
doesn't feel like that right now like I watch this beautiful interaction happen
between two elementary -aged boys and I had this thought midway through it thinking I
cannot even imagine the two of you as adult men like I started thinking 30 years
down the road and thinking to be practicing these things right now practicing empathy
practicing active listening practicing all these different emotional skills on the
front side how that's gonna inform who you are as men in the world, how it's gonna
shape your own marriages, how it's gonna flow out into your own experience of
parenting, so I think it's just that great reminder of the earlier we can teach
these skills, the more we can practice these skills on the front side of
development, I think it can be game changing for kids in their future relationships.
Alison Cook: I love it. I love, and I love the introduction, because I can even imagine as a
parent being, you know, if your kids struggling with something, you've read this book
and you're like, let's remember Owen, you know, Owen is, you know, or let's, you
know, what would Lucy, you know, that you're, you're, you've kind of got that, it
kind of removes the shame or, you know, it kind of brings in a playful to your
point, a playful way to kind of bring back those ideas and to help empower your
kids. I love it. You guys are doing so much good in the world to help parents
build these Strong kids. Are there other projects you have coming down the pipeline
that you can kind of tease for us or get us excited about? I know you guys are
always working on some some great projects
Sissy Goff: We definitely are always working on whatever we feel like the need is that's coming up with parents and kids We're seeing and and out of this concern about Anxiety out of this concern about the lack of resilience and to David's point, boys that are not getting their driver's license, I would say girls who are reaching out socially less than ever before, afraid to try and make friends. There just has been a almost, I mean, I think debilitating experience is probably too strong, but to some degree that feels true that kids are
not being, not only who, I think the grownups who love them know they can,
but what brings more confidence for them? They're not stepping into those places. And
so we just have become increasingly concerned about that. So there might just be
something for parents that really speaks to how to help your kids discover strengths,
skills, and strategies practically in their daily life no matter how old they are,
no matter what situation they're in that help them discover how capable they truly
are.
Alison Cook: I love that what you're doing is coming out of your lived experience on the
ground working with kids and parents. You're in the trenches, you're seeing, oh this
is what's going on, this is what needs addressing, and then you're creating resources
to reach so many people. It's so amazing. I'm so grateful. You too. Tell my listeners where they can find you and find the series and learn more about
your work and upcoming projects that you'll have too.
David Thomas: One way is we have a podcast called Raising Boys and Girls. We are just launching a season called Parenting Personalities. We're gonna talk about birth order,
extroversion, introversion, how the Enneagram informs parenting and attachment.
We just had an amazing guest, Dr. Allison Cook, and we want you to end for that
episode.
Alison Cook: That sounds like a great series.
David Thomas: RaisingBoysandGirls .com always is where you can find everything we're doing. And we also, on Instagram, @RaisingBoysandGirls in Sissy Goff are just trying to help in all
the ways, parents, kids, all the Thanks. - That's amazing. Well, we will link to
everything in the show notes. I'm so grateful that you're creating these resources.
Such a beautiful way to steward the talents and just the incredible work that you're
doing on the ground to help kids. So, so grateful for you both.
Thank you for your time.
So grateful, my gosh. - Thank you, Alison.
Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would
mean so much if you take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify,
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look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday and remember, as You become the
best of who you are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to your
God -given self.
In this episode, Dr. Alison is joined by counselor and podcast host Trey Tucker for an honest conversation about the rise of therapy culture online, the pitfalls of over-identifying with a diagnosis, and how parents can help kids build resilience instead of anxiety.
Together, they unpack:
- The rise of “TikTok Therapy”—what’s helpful about therapy content online and where it falls short.
- Why so many people are tempted to define themselves by a diagnosis—and how that can keep us stuck.
- The difference between true boundaries and emotional avoidance.
- Parenting without panic: how to model calm presence instead of passing anxiety on to the next generation.
- Why resilience, not fragility, is one of the greatest gifts we can offer our kids.
Alison and Trey bring different perspectives with a shared passion for nuance, honesty, and practical hope. It’s a refreshing, thought-provoking dialogue that will encourage you to think differently about therapy, identity, and how we show up in family life.
📚 Learn more about Trey’s work at www.ruggedcounseling.com
📥For more in-depth listening, check out his podcast, Rugged with Trey Tucker and his socials
📥 Grab your 3 free Boundaries For Your Soul resources here
📥 Download Alison’s free printable with the five boundary tools when you sign up for her weekly email.
More episodes you might like :
Episode 65:Vulnerability, Parenting, and Letting Go of Control—Inside A Guy’s Perspective With Our Friends From Dadville
Episode 66: The Truth About Anxiety & How to Become a Worry Free Parent with Sissy Goff
Episode 41: Boundaries With Fear And Anxiety—How to Calm the Chaos Within and the Joy of Internal Boundaries
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt — mentioned in the context of the impact of social media on kids and rising anxiety.
Boundaries for Your Soul by Alison Cook & Kimberly Miller — you referenced it when talking about IFS and faith integration.
Fathered by God by John Eldredge — Trey mentioned this when discussing father wounds and stages of a man’s life.
💬 Got a question? Call 307-429-2525 and leave a message for a future episode.
*Some of the links above are Amazon affiliate links. If you choose to purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
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Editing by Giulia Hjort
Sound engineering by Kelly Kramarik
Music by Andy Luiten
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
Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Best of You. I'm so glad you're here today for a conversation that I think so many of you are gonna find, both refreshing and challenging in the best possible way.
Today I'm joined by fellow therapist and podcast host Trey Tucker, and This episode's a little different than some I've done in the past. It's really just a conversation between two therapists. We take turns diving into some of the hot topics we've both been wrestling with. You'll hear us unpack the rise of therapy, speak on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, how it's helpful in some ways, but also where it's falling short.
We talk about the dangers of over identifying with a diagnosis, The nuance between real boundaries and emotional avoidance and why resilience not fragility is one of the greatest gifts we can offer the next generation.
And what I love about this conversation is Trey, number one is a guy. So he has a different perspective than I [00:01:00] do, but he also works primarily with young adults with Gen Z and young millennials. whereas my focus is primarily on women, and so it was a really fun conversation to just tackle some of these topics from our two different perspectives.
Trey is a licensed professional counselor educator and the host of the Rugged with Trey Tucker Podcast, where he shares mental health insights honesty and depth, especially for men and young adults.
His work blends experience from the education world, private practice and online spaces where he is helping reframe what it means to be emotionally healthy in a culture that often confuses comfort with healing.
this is one of those episodes where I genuinely forgot we were recording because the conversation was just so rich, and it was just so fun to bat some of these ideas back and forth with a fellow therapist.
I hope it speaks to you and encourages you and maybe even challenges you to think a little differently. Please enjoy my conversation with Trey Tucker.
INTERVIEW
Alison Cook: Tell me a little bit about, you're a therapist, you're in [00:02:00] Chattanooga. What does your life look like there? Family background, all the things.
Trey Tucker: Yeah, being a therapist is really fun. I actually came to it late in life. I kind of jumped mid-career. I started out in Educate. Well student. I started out in the corporate world. I was in marketing and then I learned a lot, but also learned it wasn't really fulfilling. So. I knew I wanted to really invest in people's lives on a one-on-one type of basis.
And so I switched over. I just, I started working in education. I was teaching and coaching and the students, I mean, almost from day one, they would just bring me a lot of just tough life struggles, and I was honored by the fact that they were, but. I always felt ill-equipped to really give 'em a, a solid answer.
And so at some point along the way, a few years into that, I just decided, all right, I'm going to get a counseling master's. And as you know, that's no small undertaking. So I was working full-time still, so I was doing the [00:03:00] part-time school thing to get the, the masters done. Now I still do a mixture of work in the education world and also in the private practice world.
And also all these videos and podcasts and things that, that tend to become the beasts that always wants to be fed as you know. So
Alison Cook: Yeah.
Trey Tucker: between that mix, it's, it's a really fun ride. Most mornings I wake up and it doesn't even feel right work that I'm getting ready to go do. It's just like I, I can't believe that I get paid for this.
Alison Cook: That's awesome. And do you. Yeah, so I actually started as teaching too. That's interesting. I went right into, I worked with adjudicated teens and I loved it as a teacher.
Trey Tucker:
Alison Cook: at a, a school for girls who were, there because they'd been essentially put there instead of going to jail.
I loved it. And so again, it was that blend of education, but also just. These tough situations, family stuff. Most of them, all came from terrible families. This was in Wyoming where I grew up. and then that just sparked my interest in [00:04:00] these dynamics. So I went and got my master's degree and then went on to do my PhD, which is in both psychology and religion.
'cause I was always toggling between the two. Right. Like, I think just like you and I'd love to hear more from you on that. you know, there's the spiritual dimension of healing, but then there's the psychological, but then I got into like clinical psychology and it felt very void. Of the spiritual dementia.
So I kind of flipped back to both end. And so I've always kind of tried to keep that. That's kind of the big thing I try to tie together, in what I do.
Trey Tucker: Yeah. do you tend to find yourself coming down one side or the other in terms of which you access more with a client?
Alison Cook: That's a good question. I don't see a lot of clients anymore, but whether with people, with clients in my own work, this is something I'd love to ask you. I can go back and forth. I can see issues with both. So in, in the faith world, I see the issues with. Over spiritualizing stuff, right?
That is trauma or family patterns or brain. but then in the [00:05:00] psychology world, I can get so frustrated with just what feels sort of, empty.
Trey Tucker: Mm-hmm.
Alison Cook: So focused on the individual. So focused on myself. And that was one thing I wanted to ask you. You know, we kind, especially in the social media world of therapy, where everybody's kind of.
speaking the language and sometimes I think, is this really got substance to it?
Trey Tucker: Uh, yeah, I, I'm glad you said that because I'm getting more and more fed up with it at first, especially the first probably couple years like. 2020 and then 21 22. I was thinking, all right, this is awesome. We're normalizing therapy and people are talking about their mental health and, and then the last year or two, frankly, I just noticed people.
Either becoming weak or staying weak and they're using therapy language as a way to stay stuck. the word fragile just keeps coming in on my mind as I see a lot of these videos of like, you know, you need to [00:06:00] cut off your parents 'cause they didn't give you everything you needed as a
child, or your friend wouldn't appreciate the fur measure of who you are. You just need to walk away. I'm like, oh my gosh. Like at what point did we expect. The real to be perfect and our parents to be perfect. And then our response is, well, I'm just gonna cut everybody off. I mean, that's a perfect recipe to stay weak.
So there's my little soapbox, but we can go any direction we want. What do you think though?
Alison Cook: Well, this is what I was kind of hoping for because looking at your account and looking at mine, there's definitely, we, we bring very different sort of energy. Maybe more male, more female energy, and yet. there's similar things that I see. The one that I see is the kind of, I am my diagnosis
Trey Tucker: Uh, yeah.
Alison Cook: as a, as a, well, it's just my anxiety or it's just this, and again, not that there aren't times and places for any of these things, right.
You and I both know this. And also it's almost like they, they become easy shortcuts and to me, I see it as very similar to what. What I [00:07:00] don't like simultaneously in the faith community where, where there could be some of these C cliche, oh, God just took it away. you know, that's sort of a magical fix that maybe happens in some instances, but the reality of
messiness, all this stuff is messy. I talk a lot about boundaries and then. At the one end, you know, it was so important for me to learn boundaries. And then on the same side, I see this, oh, that's just my boundary. And I'm like, I don't think that's a boundary. I think that's you putting up a brick wall and you don't wanna deal with something, you know?
Trey Tucker: Exactly. Hiding behind that brick wall and calling it a boundary,
Alison Cook: Yeah. Yeah.
Trey Tucker: The messiness for sure. I totally resonated with that. We, I've gotten better at showing my mess just in my own life. 'cause for a long time I just worked under the assumption that I need to look like I've got it all together, even though I know I don't have it all together.
And like that wasn't a mental health thing. That was just a kind of my own background thing. But as I became a therapist, I started realizing, wait a minute, I'm a mess. And if I show my clients at least a little bit of my mess, [00:08:00] then they're gonna be more likely to. Reciprocate and open up as well. And then it's, it's had that same effect in friendships and family and whatnot.
But yeah, we, we have to be willing to, to show our messiness and then tolerate it because like you said, if, if everything is just clear cut and black and white, nothing's ever gonna change.
Alison Cook: There's no perfect conversation. you know, so much of life is the rupture and then kind of trying to figure out how to come back to each other. So let's, I wanna get into vulnerability 'cause you talk a lot about that from a male perspective, and I think it's so interesting. Before we get there, let's close the loop on this sort of social media.
So, you create content, you. On there. You have a podcast, are you on TikTok? Or, or
Trey Tucker: I'm, I'm in the wild world of TikTok and Instagram and all that.
Alison Cook: so how do you, let's say, as a parent, and even for our listeners who are parents or for ourselves, who am I a kid that I never go down the, the TikTok Rabbit trail?
'cause I do. how do [00:09:00] you delineate healthy? And unhealthy, and how do you stay grounded in your own real messy life versus the social media version?
Trey Tucker: Yeah, it, it was tough at first because. When I first started making videos, I had no idea what I'm doing or what I was doing. I still don't have a great idea of what I'm doing, but at least I'm a little less of a rookie. And so it, it really became, almost an obsession. Like it took up almost all the real estate in my head of like, any conversation I would have or any article I would read, I would find my brain stuttering to try to filter it towards world.
How can I make the video? Yeah. You know,
Alison Cook: yes.
Trey Tucker: so over the last couple years there, I just realized like, not only was that not helping the content, it was mainly not helping me. I just felt like I was short tempered and tired all the time mentally. So now if I come up with an idea, I'll type it in a note in my phone and then I'll record it a whole lot less [00:10:00] formally than I used to do it.
And I'll care less if it does Well, and and as far as a parent, I mean. I'll tell you a story. You probably have something similar. I was in the grocery store about two months ago and I saw a daughter and her mom, the daughter looked to be around 14, 15 years old, a mom just walking around in front of her daughter on the phone, and I could tell the mom was watching some sort of, whether it's Instagram or TikTok, I don't know, but she was scrolling.
The daughter was not, and the mom continually was like. About to bump into stuff because she kept watching her phone and the the daughter said, ma, get off your phone and walk.
Alison Cook: Wow.
Trey Tucker: So we, as adults, we've gotta model it. We're brewing just as badly as teens are. And then so many parents they hand their kid a phone or some sort of device at such a young age, and that brings in all kinds of other horrific things like pornography.
But yeah, I think soon, very soon we're gonna realize. This stuff is gonna be like cigarettes ended up being in the fifties and sixties.
Alison Cook: [00:11:00] yeah, think there's a reason the Jonathan Hates book, the Anxious Generation has hits such a nerve. I, I dunno what you think about what he's saying or what he's,
Trey Tucker: fully agree?
Alison Cook: Yeah, what, what he's putting out there. But I, I think there's a reason so many of us are recognizing, I, I think to myself, I don't know how old you are.
I grew up before really the internet. I, I got the internet in college, you know, email. and I am so grateful. because I know the way my brain works and, and I think it's different legitimately for different people, I think it would've been excruciatingly hard for me as a young girl comparing myself to others.
I, it's hard enough now, I cannot imagine what it would've been before my brain was formed, and I'm just so grateful.
Trey Tucker: Oh, it'd be, it'd be horrific. I, I tell people, especially the students that I teach, it's like there is an amount of money that I would take to go back into my teenage years, but. It we're talking like hundreds of millions to go back into this culture being a teenager, because whether it's social media or [00:12:00] just other influences.
Yeah. The, the comparison trap is just horrendous and I, I, for a girl especially, I can't even imagine
Alison Cook: Yeah. Yeah. I think about it. I, I live in a small town here most of the year. We live in the town. I grew up in Wyoming. In, there's something about a small town where there's still that sense of there's dignity in just a certain job working at a restaurant, being a postman, you know, I used to work at the local restaurant and there was like dignity in it and there's a place of belonging in an embodied community where it's like, oh, I see you.
I, I know you and, and I do this, and you do this. And together we make this community. Run. And, and there's this sort of togetherness in that, where everybody kinda has a place no matter what you're doing, you know, whether you're the mayor of town or whether you're, you know, I don't know, whatever.
And, I feel like that's what gets lost when you're comparing yourself to the globe.
Trey Tucker: right. Yeah. our brains were never designed to know what was going on in all [00:13:00] over the globe at any given moment. I mean, you're talking about a source of anxiety that that alone causes plenty. I.
Alison Cook: Yes, yes,
Trey Tucker: But the, the smaller town vibe, I'm, I'm jealous of you. 'cause I personally think that's really how we were all wired to live. I don't know if it was John Eldridge or somebody, he really mapped this out in a longer way. But the gist of it is he, he thinks we should all be still living in small villages of about a hundred to 150 people. Where relationships happen, like you're talking about, and everybody has a dignified royal and is seen and valued just because.
Everything is more manageable instead of just overwhelmed all the time.
AD BREAK I
Alison Cook: all right, Trey, switching gears, Are you trained in IFS or familiar with IFS?
Trey Tucker: I love IFSI, knew about it as a therapist, I was already trained in other things like CBT and e, MDR R and all the alphabets. But I always looked at IFS as this weird little thing where you have to like talk to things inside of you. Like, I'm not doing that. But [00:14:00] I got to a point in my own anxiety where I was like.
Ain't nothing else working. And I know a lot of tools that should be working. And so I went to a therapist who was trained in IFS as basically like a last resort, and it has changed my life. So ever since then, I've tried to get more and more training. 'cause I, I want people to experience what I've done through it.
So I'm assuming you're as well.
Alison Cook: I should send you a copy. So I wrote co-wrote Boundaries for Your Soul,
Trey Tucker: Oh, that's flying.
Alison Cook: adaptation of IFS. This's done pretty well among Christian therapists. So yes, I am familiar with it. It's really the heartbeat of everything I do, and it was it, to me, it was that perfect integration of.
Faith. 'cause we, we brought in, in IFS as you know, you know, the self is the center and we, brought in, we call it the spirit led self. The place where you collide with the spirit of God, with God's spirit. Right. That's where, it was just so life changing for me.
'cause I was like, oh, this is where it all comes [00:15:00] together.
Like a part of me, loves being a therapist. A part of me is constantly pushing against therapy. a part of me, loves church and a part of me sometimes is like, Ugh, I don't like what they're saying.
You know, it just kind of made sense of all of
Trey Tucker: Yep.
Alison Cook: Kind of competing kind of aspects to me, and they're all part of me. And so It's just a way to understand more of how we're made in the image of God, which means we're really unique and parts of us get hurt, and that doesn't mean that all of us is hurt.
Trey Tucker: Do you think it's accurate to say that IFS from a spiritual perspective takes us a little bit in a positive way back to a Genesis two, like pre Genesis three, pre fall kind of a look at ourselves,
Alison Cook: I never thought about it that way, but when people talk about, the heavy emphasis on original sin, I do always think to myself, but when God first made us, we were good. And I do think it's who we will become. when we're finally on the other [00:16:00] side, but, and we're not there yet, but there are glimmers of it.
And so, we kind of go through in Boundaries for Your Soul. When we go through that section, we talk about, , you know, in John 14 where Jesus says, I'm leaving you, but I'm leaving you with a comforter, a counselor who will come to be with you, who will come to live in you, which is the spirit. And so that becomes this. There is a place inside. Where suddenly we can connect to
Trey Tucker: Yeah.
Alison Cook: a glimpse of that truest version of ourself. That's the hope, right?
Trey Tucker: Right, right. Okay. That's helpful. I'm gonna use that. I'll give you credit. I promise.
Alison Cook: Well, I, um,
I would love to hear from you as a guy—tell me a little bit more about your journey with anxiety and how that really unlocked things for you.
Because I get questions from listeners often. a lot of my listeners are love, Incorporated parts language, even if they've never done, you know, IFS therapy. But, how [00:17:00] do I help my, especially like my spouse understand this, I have mostly female listeners, or even my sons understand this.
So I'd love to hear your perspective on that.
Trey Tucker: Yeah. Yeah. Anxiety. I'm thankful for it. Both. Its positive traits and not so pleasant traits because I see now that it's actually trying to help me and I'm thankful for the unpleasant parts of it because it gives me more of an empathy for my clients who also have it, and, and it can be so, so uncomfortable.
And when I first started dealing with it, I. I was not a therapist, so I had really no tools. So I basically treated the anxiety as the enemy. Like, this is, this thing's trying to attack me, so I'm gonna hit it back. And, and then I would start to beat myself up for it. Like, why can't I just get rid of this stuff?
And I'd even, we alize it, like you mentioned earlier, like the won't be anxious for nothing. That's what Paul says. So, and that's, that's a whole nother soap box. But, it culminated. Into my first couple years of actually being a therapist, and I [00:18:00] still had it in my head. That anxiety was the enemy.
I don't think I would've said it like that, but that's, that's how I approached it with clients. And I think I gave them some short term relief, but I never was able to really help 'em get to the root issue. And then my own struggles with the anxiety internally kept coming up.
So I'm like, alright. Something's not working. I need, you know, the whole phrase, nothing changes. If nothing changes. I'm not very smart, but I'm at least smart enough to know I need to change an approach if it ain't working. So I thought, alright, I'll give this IFS thing a shot, even though it's the weirdest concept I've ever heard of, but I tell you where it helped me risk that that movie, uh, inside out.
Alison Cook: Yes.
Trey Tucker: And I'm normally not a cartoon watcher, but like when I saw that, I'm like, oh, okay, if you could look at emotions like this, then a couple things could be true. Number one, they're trying to help, they're just kind of misguided sometimes, and number two, they're not me, so I don't have to beat myself up for it.
So it's like I'm not my [00:19:00] anxiety, I'm not my thoughts. It's these other parts in me that think they're helping So in terms of mild own anxiety, yeah, One of my wounds, or like injuries that I talk about is the thought is not good enough and forgotten. Like, those two thoughts from past moments have been kind of the messages that have tried to stick around in me.
And thanks to IFS, those, don't weigh on me nearly as much anymore. But when I start to get anxious or some other, not so healthy emotion, then I start realizing like, okay. something's hitting this, bruise
you know, if somebody hits the bruise that we already have, physically, we're gonna overreact to that 'cause there's already pain. So anyway, long story short, IFS helped me realize, okay, I can actually connect to this little thing in there that's pumping the anxiety and.
it took a long time 'cause there was so much skepticism and so much brain fog. But when I finally did connect with that part, I realized like, dang, this thing is [00:20:00] working overtime and, is very exhausted trying to help me out by scanning for possible things that might cause me more pain like I'd experienced in the past.
And it, it really like broke my heart in a good way for that part. 'cause it, it seemed like a little 5-year-old toddler that. Was really trying to do its best, but just didn't know any better, but it was working its tail off trying to help.
Alison Cook: That's beautiful. You talk a little bit, I know in some of your content about father wounds.
Trey Tucker: mm-hmm.
Alison Cook: Is that come out of your own experience and how do you describe that for others?
Trey Tucker: Yeah, the answer to my own story is yes, and it's in everybody's story because just like we talked about a few minutes ago. Nobody got a perfect parent. Nobody got a perfect dad. Nobody got a perfect mom. And so the wins are gonna happen. Like, sorry, it's just a question of which ones are you gonna get.
And thankfully I had awesome [00:21:00] parents and as awesome as there were, there were still gaps. 'cause my dad's dad left the family when my dad was 10 years old. And so he never really had a model for like. Not just how to be a dad, but just how to grow into a man. And so he picked up a lot of, knowledge and skills along the way from mentors who invested into him.
But inevitably, there were still some parts that were kind of unfinished in him. And Any unfinished parts in us are gonna get passed along to how we treat our kids or the people around us. So, yeah, I, I've got my own father wounds and a book that really opened my eyes to this is called Fathered by God.
it's also by John Eldridge. And I, would encourage women to read it as well, but it's really written for men because it, takes you through the stages of a man's life from brain hood. All the way through the elderly years. And it talks about like, here are the things that really ideally should happen to a boy as he becomes a man in each of these stages.
And most of the things that should happen to us [00:22:00] have to do with our father investing in us in some way. And so he also talks about the inevitable moments where a dad. is, you know, slightly imperfect or as as extreme as left the family altogether. And he shows, okay, here's how you can get what you missed out on from your relationship with God the father.
'cause ultimately, he's the perfect dad and we're his kids. And if we can let him father us, both as sons and as daughters, that's really what's gonna make us whole. So that's the. The gist of my journey, but I notice it in every single, person that I get deep enough with, but especially every client is there's at least a parent wound, partially responsible for whatever they're struggling with in the moment.
Alison Cook: I love how you're talking about it. I can tell just in this conversation, you and I share a sort of, really genuine longing for nuance because
Trey Tucker: Hmm.
Alison Cook: Right. It is true that we all have parent wounds. We just do. there's [00:23:00] no perfect family and that's also not to lay blame.
Trey Tucker: Right.
Alison Cook: I know my kids are gonna come to me, you know?
they do. I think that's part of where the health lies, right? Is, they're like why did you just say that? Or you just broke a B, you know? And I'm like, oh, right. You know, like,
Trey Tucker: Using those words against you, huh?
Alison Cook: just cannot. Be there at every moment and it is, you know, when you were talking about IFS and then you're talking about God, it, to me that was so much the power similarly for me is it took away blame.
I don't have to get this from my parents because I can now. Connect to the part of me that didn't make the basketball when I was in seventh grade and felt so ashamed and felt like I'll never be good enough and I'll never be chosen and I can find that part of me and God. there is a way to that part of me that, that no imperfect human.
could reach and, that's just the reality of this [00:24:00] journey. so I really relate to a lot of what you're saying with all of that.
Trey Tucker: the nuance is key. 'cause like you said, if, if we allow ourselves to stay in blame, what we're really implicitly saying is that we're expecting earth to be heaven. And if earth is perfect in heaven, then we don't really need heaven. So like, I don't know, sorry, earth ain't perfect news flash. So even, even atheists who I think would, would agree with that statement, we got, we got some problems here.
So since it's broken, we can't expect. Perfection from other people.
Alison Cook: And so this gets at resilience, and you
Trey Tucker: Mm-hmm.
Alison Cook: talked earlier about this idea of fragility.
we have to be able to live in a world that will hurt us. How do you, and what's on your heart and what do you want people to know, whether it's your clients, whether it's listeners and all the work that you do about that?
Trey Tucker: Yeah. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. 'cause sometimes, I think I come across maybe too strong on it, but I keep reminding [00:25:00] people, you can handle this. And even if you can't fully handle this right now, you can build your strength to the point that you can eventually handle it. I come from a sports world and a weightlifting kind of world.
So for example, if, if I'm trying to. Back squat, 400 pounds, that's too much for me. Like I will collapse under that weight. But if I start with 200 pounds and slowly increase my ability to handle the weight little by little, then eventually I'll be able to handle 400 pounds. So I, I can do it.
It's not something that I can just, I need to walk away from forever. And I think handling challenges in life is the same way. It's like, yeah, it might be too heavy for you right now, but yeah. Just keep coming at it. 'cause you got the ability, you just gotta pull that ability out little by little.
But what's your vernacular for that?
Alison Cook: I love how you're saying it, and I, I hope you keep saying it, I heard a story and I can't remember where I heard it but it was a woman talking [00:26:00] about how her daughter was struggling and they were trying to get her into therapy. And I hear this all the time. I've gotta get my kid into therapy, and I, I have thoughts about that, that I'll, I'll set aside for now about kids in therapy, but.
And someone said to her, I wonder if she needs to get into a sport.
Trey Tucker: Mm. Yes.
Alison Cook: I don't think this is, I think sometimes the kid does need therapy, and that's not exactly what you're saying, but there are lots of ways we build those muscles to piggyback on your metaphor.
And one of them is for someone to get in there and, and help us see the parts of ourselves that, that have been broken and that are fragile and that need care and another way. Is to kind of build those muscles through life as a contact sport
Trey Tucker: Absolutely.
Alison Cook: the hard thing and to your point, not in a, don't throw yourself into something you cannot handle,
Trey Tucker: Mm-hmm.
Alison Cook: but to.
Walk into something that's gonna challenge you a little bit, that's gonna test you a little bit, that is [00:27:00] gonna be scary a little bit to see, oh my gosh, I can do it. And I do think that's that balance that we need in this, especially from our end, where there is a almost too quick, I gotta get my kid into therapy.
Trey Tucker: Yes.
Alison Cook: I, I, find myself sometimes like, again, I wanna be really clear for the listener. I think sometimes it a really great therapist can be helpful for your kid. And also, oh man, I don't know. There is another side to that. So I appreciate your speaking into that.
AD BREAK II
Trey Tucker: well I'm glad you said it about, therapy being helpful but not necessarily the right time or thing for a particular circumstance. 'cause you tell me what you think about this, but especially in a teenager if a parent talks to me about the option of therapy, one of my first.
The question slash suggestions is, alright. First, do they have any sort of community involvement, whether it's a sport or instrument where they're part of a band or something bigger than themselves that they're a part of and have to be relational and [00:28:00] work. Like you're saying, we're through difficulty building a skill, and number two, do they have anything where they're having to serve?
This doesn't necessarily have to be community service officially, but something like that, because I'm sure you've seen, how much research there is about that service is really one of the things that grows us the quickest at any age, but especially for a teen before they just dive into therapy. I wanna know those two things.
Alison Cook: Yeah, that's a really good, those are really helpful. I think for me, I'm looking at the parent and I'm thinking to myself, can the parent be a resource to kind of anchor the child as the child is, stepping into some of these
I wanna work with the parent to help equip the parent to help the child navigate what's hard. At the same time, I understand there are situations where the parent can't. And that's where then I see the therapist coming in, whether it's one parent, where that [00:29:00] therapist can come in as sort of the co-parent. or where the parents are just not able to do it and for whatever reason the therapist is kind of helping the kid navigate.
And so that's kind of how I've looked at it, is I don't think it should be a substitute. A therapist can be really helpful, but they're still not pulling the kid out of the hard things, they're empowering and equipping the, child, to navigate the hard thing. So I, I never wanna do it apart from parents. I always wanna do it kind of understanding the whole system there.
Trey Tucker: Yeah, I love that. What do we do in those situations when the parent almost can't help themselves but pull their kid out of a struggle?
Alison Cook: and to me, that then becomes a conversation with the parent you know, some education around, what they need most is to [00:30:00] know that you can be with them and you are not gonna buckle or fold during their hard time.
Trey Tucker: Yeah. Yeah.
Alison Cook: 'cause so often it's the parent's anxiety, you know, I can't handle it, that my kid isn't X, y, and Z.
And it's, well, then the kid's anxiety's really spiking 'cause they already feel it and then they feel yours.
Trey Tucker: Yeah. Responsible for Kim people.
Alison Cook: yeah. So try to help the parent be like, I get that this is hard. I hate it with you. when do I need to intervene? You know, if you're being bullied mercilessly at school, when do I need to advocate for you?
You know? When do I need to be that safe place when you come home and be like, you did it. You made it through another tough day, and I will be here every single day because I'm okay. You know? I think so often that's, the work for the parent, and You know, for me that's always been a tricky one.
I'm always wanting help the parent. 'cause I, I do gets back to what we were talking about. I do think it's such an important role. It's not everything, we're not [00:31:00] gonna be perfect, but the more we can grow, boy, that's what our kids need the most, is that we're gonna be okay. You know? And that 'cause that's what God, God doesn't always save us.
Out of everything. Right? But God is always right there going, I'm here. I'm not leaving. I see how brave you're being. I know it's hard, you know, you can come back to me. I'll heal your wound. I'll give you a big hug, and then we're gonna send you back out tomorrow. You know? I mean, there's a little bit of that back and forth that we have to learn as parents.
Trey Tucker: yeah, yeah, man. You're good at this. I, it's almost like you need to write a book or something, and I'm glad you're, working with parents so intently on that, because one of the things I've noticed when a parent pulls their kid out of a struggle, the message that gets sent to the kid is, you can't handle this.
Alison Cook: I know.
Trey Tucker: the parent would never say that verbally. But that's, that's the implied thing, is like, you can't handle it. Only I can. So sorry. You don't have what it takes and you're gonna [00:32:00] have to keep relying on me forever.
Alison Cook: So how do you, I know you do a lot of work with young adults. . .
Trey Tucker: Mm-hmm. I do, yeah. Most, of the people in their twenties and early thirties, and that's, it's such a, such a tough age range. I,I personally think that for a man, especially that age 22, 23 is at least one of the. Toughest times in his life, if not the toughest, because especially if he's gone to college, everything has changed his, his city has changed.
He's no longer a student. So part of his identity has changed, his friend group changed. His routine is changing. He's having to adjust to really the first real job and all the different pressures and expectations that come with that. So it is just a. Torrential downpour of new stuff to have to either move on from or adjust to.
And so often they come to me just struggling to, pivot and figuring out, uh, who am I now? And like, what do I do next? So it, that's my favorite age to work [00:33:00] with.
Alison Cook: and what are some of the things you're seeing? So you're kind of with Gen Z, some young millennials. What are, what are some of your, the things you're seeing that give you concern and also the things that give you hope?
Trey Tucker: Yeah, the, we'll start with concerns and get those outta the way. 'cause I think the concerns are pretty much universal, to the age, but maybe a little more emphasized in the twenties, is that they were the first generation to. spend a pretty decent amount of time of their youth having phones, if not in their hands, but in front of them.
And so a lot of my concern is not everybody here, but a lot of people at that age have a, I hate to say it, but a lack of ability to just talk face to face and. Connect and stick through maybe some of the awkward, silent moments of a conversation without immediately reaching for the phone to bail 'em out of the awkwardness.
general social skills is one of 'em. there is a. More of a self-focus, I think partly because of some of the therapy language that you were talking about earlier, like it's all about [00:34:00] self-love and your truth and all that. Like think that rubs off even in people that don't realize it.
But I also notice on the positive end, they can see through BS really quickly, I think, quicker than people in their thirties, forties, and up. And because of that, they see the cultural lie that is this whole hustle culture, and you gotta be rich by 25.
Like they'll fall for it for a little bit, but somewhere in those early twenties they realize like this. This is empty, this doesn't actually do what it's claiming to do. So they want a purpose and they, realize that there's a calling on their life and they're, really passionate about trying to discover that.
So those things gimme a lot of hope. But do you work with a change at all, or is it more in the thirties and up?
Alison Cook: Not as much, which is why I'm curious. you know, my own kids are in their twenties, so I get a little window through them, but also I get it through just my own forays and the reality television or, you know, whatever you're kind of seeing out there. and I just, I, I don't like,
[00:35:00] stereotypes and also I, I know from my own IFS work and my own work, boy was I not quite ready and still forming. And we know this from brain research between like 20 and 26.
Trey Tucker: Mm-hmm.
Alison Cook: I mean, how much I still needed guidance and you're making major decisions.
Trey Tucker: Yeah. Maybe the biggest decisions in.
Alison Cook: I mean, and you're just expected to kind of hit 18 and go to college and be ready for all of this. And so the fact that you're stepping into that gap is just beautiful. To me, that's like a perfect time to, to go see a, a therapist or to kind of make sure you have that connection to someone a little bit older and wiser.
It's, it's so smart.
Trey Tucker: definitely. What do you notice with the folks you work with the most?
Alison Cook: I think some of what we're saying with the moms, it's the getting on top of our own. Stuff, our own [00:36:00] anxiety that, so we're differentiated from the stuff our kids are going through because so often, especially my generation, we're kind of now doing the inner work and going, oh, the anxiety I feel.
Is separate and different from the anxiety they feel. And so I've gotta do that work inside of me so that I can be this calm presence that's not reactive or not over parenting. Right. because we got a little bit more of the.
The CNA not heard childhood. Right. The, the less emotionally attuned, and there's pros and cons to that, right. You know, I grew up, again, we can celebrate the old days, you know, we're out in the streets until dark and nobody's checking on us, And there is a beauty in that.
And also there isn't as much, wasn't as much of that emotional attunement through the hard times. Right. So then we come in as parents and we're attuning to everything.
Trey Tucker: Right.
Alison Cook: Right. It's just so [00:37:00] fascinating, right. The cycles
and like it's actually what our kids need is for us to just be like, you're fine.
You know, like, you're gonna be okay, you know, uh, to some degree or another, you know, not to overstate it, but, so that's a little bit more of the always trying to help discern, you know, when it, when do I need to step in and when. these are just some growing pains and I'm here and I see it.
And also, you know, so it's, it's more that kind of thing. So, you know, I tell you what, just this conversation makes me realize how much we really all need to stay in conversation with each other. We need
Trey Tucker: Yeah. Absolutely. I think that's the biggest battle against the screens, is the screens are keeping us isolated and we were built for connection.
Alison Cook: Yeah. just this conversation with you has really, enriched, um, makes me feel like I see things more clearly and all that will trick out into the work that I'm doing. So I'm, I'm really grateful.
Trey Tucker: Me too. Same here with you. I'm glad we're gonna fight the wrong side each other. 'cause you, you're bringing perspectives and ways of saying [00:38:00] things that I hadn't thought of. So let, let's keep this going.
Alison Cook: I hope my listeners will come find you and maybe you could tell us where, folks, you know, can find you and they can listen to both of us and get different perspectives, but also a lot of like-mindedness.
Trey Tucker: Yeah, totally like-minded. I think we're saying the same thing, but just with different vernacular, so I want,my folks to connect with you as well. So on my side of the things at Rugged Counseling is the handle on pretty much everything, whether it's Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. All the things.
I've got, a podcast as well. I'm a rookie at it. I know you're, much more skilled at it than I am, and so I'm, I'm trying to get to, to your level at it, so it's out there too if people wanna see that. what's the podcast called?
Trey Tucker: it's called Rugged with Trades Hacker. I just, I'm a simple dude, so I just try to keep it all simple in names too,
Alison Cook: I think it's great. And this has just been a. [00:39:00] delight. I'm just so grateful we got to connect in this way.
Trey Tucker: Me too. This has been awesome. How about my week right here. Thank you so much for your time.
Alison Cook: Thank you, Trey.
What does it take to make the church a safer place for women’s voices?
This week Dr Alison is joined by husband-and-wife therapists Dr. Christy Bauman and Dr. Andrew Bauman, who are doing groundbreaking work at the intersection of women’s stories, embodiment, and spiritual safety. Together, they offer both prophetic challenge and practical hope for how we can build healthier faith communities.
In the first half of the episode, Christy takes us into the sacred rites of passage women experience, highlighting women’s voices in the Bible. In the second half, Andrew shares from his extensive research, offering a vision for safe churches where power is shared, voices are honored, and healing is possible.
Together, Christy and Andrew model what’s possible when men and women work side by side for change.
You’ll learn:
- The six symbolic rites of passage women experience over a lifetime—and why reclaiming them matters
- How Christy helps women see their bodies as sacred places of dignity and spiritual depth
- The results of their research with 2,800+ women who work in church settings
- A vision for churches where power is shared and women’s voices are truly honored
A note of care: This episode includes sensitive topics such as pornography, domestic violence, and harm related to women’s bodies. Please listen gently and step away if you need to.
📕 Learn more from Christy and Andrew:
Christy Bauman’s Book: Her Rites: Women’s Rites of Passage, A Sacred Journey for Mind, Body, and Soul
Andrew Bauman’s Book: Safe Church: How to Guard Against Sexism and Abuse in the Church
📥Free Resources from Christy:
- Body Map PDF
- Theology of the Womb Video Course (use code: TOTWcomp)
Learn more about their work at the Christian Counseling Center for Sexual Health & Trauma
📥 Grab your 3 free Boundaries For Your Soul resources here.
📥 Download Alison’s free printable with the five boundary tools when you sign up for her weekly email.
Here are related episodes you might like:
Episode 48: Loving Your Body as a Spiritual Practice, Why the Flesh Isn't the Body, and 3 Heresies We Kind of Believe
Episode 11: How to Start Loving Your Body with Christy Meeks
Episode 126: Restoring Wonder & Play in Intimacy - Navigating Sexual Brokenness, Safety, and Vulnerability with Therapist Sam Jolman
💬 Got a question? Call 307-429-2525 and leave a message for a future episode.
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Editing by Giulia Hjort
Sound engineering by Kelly Kramarik
Music by Andy Luiten
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
Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Best of You. Today's episode is one I've been looking forward to sharing for a while now. It's two back-to-back conversations with a husband and wife team whose work is challenging, harmful norms and helping men and women move toward deeper emotional, spiritual, and relational health.
Today's episode is a little different than what you've heard on the podcast before. In the first conversation I talked with Dr. Christy Bauman. Christy takes us into the lived realities of women's bodies, from menstruation to menopause, infertility to aging, and she reclaims these life cycles as sacred rites of passage.
She helps us see the wisdom and spiritual depth embedded in each season, and she offers practical ways to reconnect with our bodies as places of dignity agency and God given worth. And then in the second conversation, Christy's husband, Dr. Andrew Bauman, also a therapist, shares from his own journey as a former pastor and now therapist, including his early struggles with pornography, his research with nearly 3000 women about their experiences in the church and his call for leaders to confront harmful messages about women, spiritual abuse and misuse of power.
He offers a vision for safe churches, rooted in the example of Jesus, where power is shared, voices are honored and healing is possible for everyone. I wanted to air these two conversations together because they offer such distinct, yet beautifully complimentary perspectives on the same urgent issue, how to make the church a safer place for women's voices in particular.
Side by side, their insights reveal not only the problem of how women's voices have been silenced, but also the power of what happens when men and women work together to create meaningful change. And when I had each of these conversations with Christy and Andrew, it just struck me how beautiful it is that they're doing this work together as a married couple, as a team, and in a culture where it's so easy for one gender to villainize the other, right?
It's so easy for men to villainize women or for women to villainize men. I just found their partnership in tackling this important issue as such a refreshing reminder of what's possible when we learn to listen and honor and work together for the good of all. Before we begin, a quick note in these conversations, we do discuss sensitive topics including pornography, domestic violence, and experiences of harm related to women's bodies.Please take care while listening and step away if you need to.
Together, Dr. Christy and Dr. Andrew Bauman co-direct the Christian Counseling Center for Sexual Health and Trauma, where they lead intensives, workshops and retreats for individuals, couples, and groups. Christie is the author of Her Rites: Women's Rites, a Passage, A Sacred Journey From Mind, body, and Soul.
And as you'll hear in today's episode, she's offering my listeners some free guides based on her work that we'll link to in the show notes. Andrew Bauman is the author of Safe Church, how to Guard Against Sexism and Abuse in the Church. It's based on his extensive research featuring the voices of nearly 3000 women about their everyday experiences in faith communities.
Please enjoy my conversations with Chrisy and Andrew Bauman.
Alison Cook: Christie, I would love to just learn more about the why behind your life's work. You've spent so much time not only working one-on-one. As a clinician, but just really digging into some key ideas, especially as it relates to the body and women's bodies in particular. What originally motivated you and what still drives you to keep doing this work?
Christy Bauman: I do love that question because it is what I wake up with every day, which is a female body, and so much of what I do in my career has been based on the story that God gave me, and mostly the body to be formed in the Imago day, but to be female is quite an interesting journey. Well, it has been for me because I grew up in southern rural Louisiana, and the idea that.
You were a female who wanted to love God and serve God, and I felt called to preach the gospel, like there was something in me that was such a storyteller and this story of Jesus. I was so ready to tell the story. And one of my favorite moments was when I learned that the first person Jesus revealed himself to was the woman at the well.
And that she ran from him saying, I'm going to tell your story to everyone. And he said, I was really hoping you would do that. And so I wasn't really under the impression that I could be a disciple. The 12 disciples as I grew up, they were all men. And every part of the story, every pastor I knew was male.
And while I wasn't necessarily sad about that, I didn't know where I belonged in this female body. And it put me on a long journey of, Lord, is there something you want me to be particular about in how I use the feminine that is within me to bring your story to the world? And so. You know, a lot of that before I was in grad school was just looking at theology around women's stories in the Bible.
And so even Eve, she's not made from dust like Adam, she's made from bone. And so we are struck just from the very beginning that there's a difference in the makeup of her body. And as we look at the stories of the women in the Bible, we see that they were about the business of the body. Whether that was about birthing or burying, there is something in the continuation that they understood the body.
So then as I went to grad school and started to understand psychology and women's wellbeing and women's psychological wellbeing and spiritual wellbeing, I started to realize that we can't leave the body out for the female.
Alison Cook: It's so interesting to listen to you because even in science, our daughter is starting out on a journey into medical school, right?
And there's such an absence of research, specifically we're seeing in this, in menopause research about women's bodies. Because so much of the scientific research in the medical community has been done by men and on men's bodies as if they're the same. And I remember hearing a woman, she's at Stanford, and I cannot remember for the life of me right now, what her title is, but she's talking about fitness and wellness.
And her quote is, women are not small men, they're different. And so the things that apply to men, especially even if you think about the wellness space, which is so different from what you and I are talking about today. Similarly, if we apply what works for men's bodies, for females, it's different. And so I'm intrigued by what you're saying 'cause there's sort of almost this absence of information and knowledge and deep and meaningful understanding, and I really appreciate that you're speaking directly into that space in this realm of both psychology and theology.
Christy Bauman: It was so helpful to go down that avenue and really to start to look at the mind and the bodies and the hormones of women and the life cycle of women to understand that we are different and that we need to know the difference.
It's helpful to us, like it's actually a gift that we are different.
Alison Cook: So let's talk about it a little bit. There's two aspects of your work I think is really interesting and I'd love for you to kind of dig in for us. One is this idea of the six symbolic rites of passage that women experience over a lifetime and how those kind of help us understand embodied healing.
I think that's really interesting, but then also just on a broader scale, you talk about life cycles in general and how we all go through cycles of life and how that's kind of something none of us is very good at. There is a winter in all of our lives, but how that particularly maps onto these six rites of passage for women. Could you talk a little bit about what those are and how they help us understand not only our bodies, but our emotions and our spiritual lives?
Christy Bauman: Yes, and it's so much to talk about. It is always hard for me to condense it. We as women have very little time and we don't slow down and spend as much time on our bodies, but I do think we serve a God who created us, demanding us to slow down for our own wellbeing and our own health.
And I think as we look at the changing leaves or look at the amount of time the sun is out or the darkness is out, it's God's invitation to us to slow down into the season that we're in. And that constitutes with the age of our children or the age of our marriage. And when we actually get into those particularities.
There's nowhere better to be than right where you are. And the healthiest Jew is actually very clear, like God was kind in making not just a liturgical calendar, but a calendar for us in the world based on our age and our story and our life circumstance, and the seasons of the place we live and the seasons that our own family or whatever we're creating in our story is at.
And so I always begin with story work. You can't do body work before you've done story work. We can see that in the Bible. It's always a story told. And then when we close the Bible and we close that story, we apply it to our bodies and where we are in our current life. And so the rites of passage that I wrote is psychologically a really old model.
It's an old model of understanding that we have a first breath and we have a last breath. Each one of us and only you and I will have our first breath and our last breath. No one else is going to share that with us. And those are the bookends of the rites of passage. So we start with birthright. Then we end with Legacy.
The next one after birthright is we are initiated. So usually for the female, it's when she bleeds for the first time. It's when she is kissed for the first time. It's those coming of age moments where she knows something that she didn't know prior. She was naive too, and then she tasted of something and she had knowledge in a way that initiated her into knowing.
So there's a sense of where our body from First Breath is. Then adolescing, it's growing up.
Alison Cook: I wanna pause and double click on this for one second. Christie, I hear so many stories from women in particular. It's so interesting that you're talking about this as a rite of passage. I have such a complicated relationship with that in my own life.
There's so much shame around it, and I hear so many women talk about that being a time when maybe parents disappeared. Dads didn't know what to do, backed off psychologically. We do see that often when parents don't know how to be present to that particular rite of passage for a young girl. And I know the same could be told about boys.
We're just talking about women here because I know like Sam Jman has done some great work with boys and how important that is. But I hear that story, you know, it's like my dad just didn't know what to do with me, so he was just gone. And that was heartbreaking to me. So I just kind of wanna pause there. It's not just biological. It's such a psychologically and spiritually crucial moment for young girls.
Christy Bauman: Well, and the process of letting go and leaving, it's very vulnerable. And so when we're birthed and we take our first breath, and that's the first time we're outside of our mother's body and her care and her protection.
And so initiation is when our little bodies start to try something on. And it's often where harm and neglect happens, and sometimes abuse, right? Because it's such a vulnerable precipice of time and we don't have the knowledge yet in our own bodies. And if we have a parent who doesn't know how to come alongside or is distracted, so a lot in initiation, I will ask a question.
Is the first time you bled who was around to help you understand that? Where was your mother? Or what did it look like around that story of your bleeding? Because bleeding is such a vulnerable thing and. Here, women are being invited to understand, okay, now I have a body that bleeds and I have to tend to this body.
How do I do that? And there's so much shame and embarrassment around it, and there's so much a sense of covering it up. Just flush it down the toilet, just cover it and go and do what you need to get yourself clean. We've missed so much biblically and psychologically with helping girls who are becoming women understand that this is actually the work for them, for the rest of their life, that this is actually going to lead them into creation.
So you are so right that these stories are usually where evil marks us, because we are so vulnerable, they're vulnerable junctures
Alison Cook: That's so well stated. So what comes next?
Christy Bauman: Then the right of exile, which means that you get left alone. So every woman has known, once she realizes that her body is hers sharing it becomes complex.
And so whether that's with friendship, whether that's in relationship with someone, whether that's with how she's starting to leave her parents and their safety, or that they've already left her, whatever the story looks like. The right of exile is a rite of passage where we've all known what it means to be put in the desert rejection or being left alone where it's us and God in a desert, and we are waiting on his voice to come to us.
And do all women go through that as a sort of rite of passage? Well, historically, yes. There was always a season in which you were sent to the desert. You know, Jesus' story of being in the wilderness and the fasting and where he's tempted. It's the same for the female. She is in the desert and she is trying to figure out what to do with knowing God's voice and her own voice.
She will hear the voice of her mother, whether that's good or bad. She will hear the voice of those jealous of her or who have envied her. She'll hear the voice of being abandoned, or you are by yourself and you find yourself. And then we know when that is done that we are then invited to the rite of creativity or creation.
But it's part of that process that every woman will know that she starts out with her first breath, and that's when she is given a birthright. And then initiation is the first time she bleed. And then exile, is that part of her where she's finding herself.
And then the rite of creation is, what does it mean to break open your body to birth something? I am impregnated with an idea. I birth my podcast. I birth a book that I've written. I birth a physical child that I want to have some dream that she has because we are co-creators. God was really different with women than he was with men when he made us physical co-creators. And we bear life in our womb and we bear the ability to create.
And so that breaking of our body open is the rite of creation. It's understanding how do we break our body open. To create life unto something and knowing that if we follow the women in the Bible, women who are at tombs, so it's like Risa and Abigail who were wives of Saul and they had their sons crucified against their will, and they had to care for their children's bodies after they were crucified.
And so their story in the Bible is a huge one where women are asked to do something when death comes upon the scene. And then you have Mary and Martha, who is that Lazarus tomb, and they have to know what to do with the tomb, how to prepare the body. Then you have that same Mary, Mary, the mother of Jesus and slo.
There are five women at the tomb and they are washing Jesus' body, wrapping it, anointing it with oil, getting it ready. For what we now know was resurrection. The work of the female that she learns in the rite of creation is there's a sense of breaking and bleeding open, much like the crucifixion, so that it's unto creating life.
And so I'm taking these narratives and I'm trying to look at them from the female body's perspective because it's just not common for us to do that.
Alison Cook: It's in the shadows. We don't highlight it. We're looking at it through the lens of men as opposed to kind of highlighting it, putting a spotlight on these different rituals are distinctly feminine and it's really honoring, and I feel in my body listening, I'm like, gosh, it's so interesting to hear about these rituals from a female perspective where it's sort of honoring and I mean, there's pain in it and it's raw, and we kind of have a sense of that, of the male journey even in our movies, right?
You know, there's the warrior and there's some violence to it, and there's this, and there's that. You know, we as women, I think, kind of almost know how to celebrate that on behalf of men. You know, there's some of it that's hard and painful and it's very bodily, and also it is part of our narrative collectively, biblically, psychologically.
And the thing that comes to mind theologically, I think about the Pascal mystery for my listeners. If you go to a liturgical church, you every Sunday say, you know, the mystery of faith is this Christ has died. Christ is risen, Christ will come again. Right? There's that cyclical nature of death, resurrection coming again, that we participate in the lifecycle of.
Christy Bauman: So that's why we start birthright is that females are not highlighted in the Bible as having a birthright. It's the first born son. So if you are a second or further born son, or you are a female, there's not really an understanding of birthright. And so what you just named is we as believers when we commit to this work, we say we join.
This cycle, and I'm just going in and pulling out the particularities of what that looked like for females. Because in the Bible, females were about the work of the red tent, so the bleeding, the birthing, and mid wifeing of children and the next generation, and then being at the tombs, being at the bodies when they're sick.
And when they're dying, they even buried the bodies with the faith that they were going to be resurrected. Now, did they think that was on earth? No. I think those first believers knew Jesus, whatever you're doing, we believe that there's a bigger story. You've told us there's something on the other side of this, so we are going to do your work.
And the work for the female is I'm going to bleed. I am going to birth or help birth, and then I'm going to help birth death, help you die and tend to the body along the way.
Alison Cook: Christie, how does this map on for you personally, because I know that what you're, you're not saying this is women's work. I know you're not saying that. Right. There's something deeper, there's some claiming of our story as women that is honored—and—I could imagine there are also ways in which that narrative of your job is just to have kids and tend to, people can get weaponized.
Christy Bauman: Oh, a hundred percent. For women who write in and say to me, I can have children, what does that mean? I've had a hysterectomy at 25. What does that mean? Right. And so why I am trying to take that psychological sort of rite of passage is it's not actually about physically having a child and birthing a child, but for the most part, all of us women bleed and we will all stop bleeding.
And all of us as women take our first breath and take a last breath. And so I'm just asking us to step back and look at the cycle that's happening for us, and also the idea that we are in our bodies in a different way than men are. And so that is actually to our benefit. Even if it's hard for us, if we don't shy away from it, it can be our superpower.
Alison Cook: I've thought about this 'cause I'm menopausal, and first of all it's very new. I think generationally that we're actually talking about this as women publicly, which I cannot imagine what it must have been like when we weren't so true. And I have thought about it a little bit of like what is the meaning of this for women?
Because it does feel like a closing down and I didn't have biological children. So for me there's that layer. But I just wanna reiterate, you're onto something here by. Helping us understand the reality of, and also the deeper meaning of what does it mean for us as a woman?
Christy Bauman: Your segue actually is perfect.
Your question of what do I do with perimenopause? Why are we talking about it now? What does it mean? It almost sounds like a fertility death. It almost sounds like we are falling asleep. And what does that mean? And that is in the heartache of ageism, right? It's something like, just stop whatever's coming for us.
Slow it down. Let me be in my rite of initiation again, and my rite of creation. But truthfully, these rites of passage, they happen again and again, but we are collecting them. So right after we're creating. We go into intuition and that's perimenopause. The rite of intuition is when we know what we know, and so where maybe a 20-year-old or 30-year-old in our society is put as the look, we need to have power or be visible in our culture.
The lie of it is that the 40, 50, 60-year-old, she knows something that little girls don't know, that even young women and young mothers don't know. She knows something of survival and of wisdom, and that's why we call her the sage femme, the wise woman. This is what right we're in, and you can't take what she knows away from her.
I can remember waking up at 40, waking up at 45, and feeling different in my actual waking hours, like I didn't care as much as I did when I was 20 or 30, and I wasn't as scared. As I was when I was in my twenties or my thirties, there is something of growing into this body of mine that I started to shed some of those more immature, younger places.
That's something that I don't think we have a culture or society that honors that, and so perimenopause is this beautiful invitation for wise women to have a platform and to speak the wisdom that man, those 20 and 30 year olds. Need us desperately to say, Hey, you are not going to grow old and wrinkled and you have to be afraid of sagging breasts and a terrible sex life.
Like we need to tell them a deeper truth. But there is so much almost again, hiding around it, even though you would say we're at a day and age where women are starting to talk about it. Finally, those women are realizing, I'm not all washed up just because my hormones are changing and my body's changing.
Alison Cook: Yeah, I love that. The wisdom era, and again, the more we talk about that in name, that the more we're bringing it. What comes after that?
Christy Bauman: So next is the right of legacy. And so it's what story are you leaving? So the wise woman is also the initiator. So she gets to be the one who goes back to those going through the right of initiation and she gets to be the protector.
Think of the wise sage who is there while the younger girls are vulnerable. But when those wise women are actually just trying to keep their bodies and trying to hold onto their youth, they're no longer available to protect and lead the younger generation. And so when they aren't stepping into their wisdom or asking their mothers or their fathers to step in and be protectors of those in initiation, then we've realized that.
We've told those women and men, they're not needed. They're perimenopause, they're dying off. And actually we so desperately need them because again, if you pull out into that macro system, we need to keep this going. Like there's something of the maturation that is inviting us into new life. That is what God's all about is this cycle of the new life.
Alison Cook: I find that so powerful. And there's a couple things you're saying I think that are so important to hear, and it gets back to what you're saying about vulnerability. So whether it's perimenopause, whether it's moving into that kind of intuition era, whether it's the legacy, it's vulnerable, there's a death, and you talk about in your work how we have to be willing to talk about that and face those small deaths and there's a vulnerability to the culture, to pain, to abuse, you know, all the things.
But if we are able to move through, we actually move into even more of our God-given birthright, more of our God-given agency, what we have to offer, what we have to bring.
Christy Bauman: Yes, we're right there at legacy. What are you leaving that is gonna come after you, long after you're gone? And the work of the rite of intuition is you are doing things that will outlive you and you're wise enough to know that. And so you are going to invest in the things that leave the world after you and the generations after you impacted because of how you're living.
And that wisdom then, is our legacy when they say, do you remember Allison Cook? Do you remember her words? Do you remember that one podcast when she spoke about this? It has stayed with me. It stayed with me in my kitchen when I'm cooking dinner. It stayed with me. When I'm walking in the forest on a hike, as I've aged, there's something of legacy that again, is about resurrection.
It keeps living on past us. That's a beautiful and hard part of the journey.
Alison Cook: Yeah, it is. I love that language of rite of passage. There's beauty in that, but there's hard in that. You're going through a birthing, to your point, which also involves letting go of something.
Ad Break 1
We talked to your husband, Andrew. I know you guys do some work together in trying to create space for women's stories, space for couples, but in particular space for women's stories. I know you've surveyed. Thousands of women. And you did this together, is that right? Yes. Can you tell us a little bit about your work together and some of your most powerful takeaways as it relates to how you guys are really leaning into this work of coming alongside women and also couples in your work?
Christy Bauman: Yeah. Andrew and I were both, did our masters at a seminary in psychology, two different seminaries. But what we both realized was that women's voices were not being invited to the table. And Andrew was seeing in his own work and in his own story, how he was, in a sense groomed to treat women a certain way and to objectify them and therefore not see them as an equal or hear their story.
And then I was coming from this place of wanting to bring my voice into the work and realizing that there was a lot of loopholes that I had to get through in the Traditionary seminary world. And again, why choosing psychology and science was a little bit safer for me because I was a female who was bringing stats and information that could actually be heard and listened to.
And so I think in us getting married, there was that work where he saw. The need and the importance for a good team to work together. We need the feminine and the masculine to come together to share God's story in completion and in wholeness. And so the advocacy was, well, if we look at the Western Church, the female voice has been marred and has been silenced.
And so the Enneagram eight that he is, he went on rampant to help women bring their voices back and make safe places. And he believes that the church can be a safe place for women. Again, that's his hope. And he comes back to that scripture of, you know, has been laid down your life for your wife and give yourself up for her as Christ did for the church.
And his belief is that he wants to lead a revolution of safe churches, for women's voices to be brought and that cohesion that's needed to get this work done. And. I, like I mentioned earlier, came into the world, female. And so, you know, my love for God was, Lord, teach me the way you want me to go. And so the research was, well, every woman for 16 years that walked into my counseling office was sharing a story of where she had been targeted or harmed.
There are not stories of women who, it was easy for them to be in a place of power. It does not come easy. And usually their bodies are the ones that are targeted or objectified or marked along the way. When they try to bring their voice, their entire body is usually targeted. And so I started to just take in that information.
How do I help women live longer, speak from their true voice? And my husband was, how do we make a safe place for women to do that in the Christian realm?
Alison Cook: It's really amazing. It's why I wanted to talk to both of you, because I just think there's something really powerful that you're doing it together, this work, and you bring very different voices culturally.
One thing that can happen is there can be a lot of scapegoating and blaming. I mean, I think that's definitely happened to women for sure. And also it can also happen toward men. I'm always just someone of nuance. It's like, wow, what could it look like if we're trying to kind of right some of the wrongs, bring in more of the female voice, but also do it in a partnership.
You're embodying something really beautiful to me.
Christy Bauman: Yeah. I mean, it feels like a great, like, blessing of you saying that over us, I really appreciate it because I know it hasn't been easy, and I also am just aware of, again, in this individualistic culture, we are taught in a sense to protect ourselves. Or if it's for women, it's for women. If it's for men, it's for men.
Alison Cook: and there's a bad guy and a good guy, and the guys are the bad guys, or the women are the problem.
Christy Bauman: And so in that, it's really important for us to come back to if we are made in the imago day, if both male and female are made in the image of God and the masculine and the feminine reside in all of us. All of us bear a little bit of masculine energy and feminine energy, and one is more dominant than the other, but in that it's to know God, it's to know God, and to really see God's face to me is to study that.
And so I do think it isn't that common, and I hope it becomes more common, and I think it is the way of the future for us to be successful in actually moving forward in wellbeing and health, spiritual health in psychological health. I think in physiological health. I think when we start to understand, like you said at the beginning, your daughter's journey in medical school, we know research, particularly in rural doctor's office for women, is 10 to 15 years behind if that's with our medical system.
Can you fathom, like you said, the psychological or spiritual research that we're missing out on. So, man, let's catch up with our female understanding so that then when we put the masculine and the feminine together, both healthy, it will be a revolution we can move forward. And that I think is what Christ was saying about the church, right?
Is that we've got to move into that. But it's been doing a lot of research and asking a lot of women. What has worked, what has not? Where have you been targeted? What parts of your body have been marked or not? And so I think for your listeners, while I do have my book, her Rites, and it goes through each rite of passage, while that can be an incredible resource for women, I would say it's a year of therapy in one book.
And that was my intent when I did it. But what I really would love is that we're gonna put a body map exercise, A PDF. And I think if women could just print out this body map and do this exercise, you can do it one time. You can do it as many times as you want, and you are just trying to map out your scars.
The invisible and the visible, what you've created and what you haven't, how you've been marked, what it's cost you to be birthed and to create in this world. What exile has looked like for you, where you think your legacy is going to come from? Usually the part of the body that we hide the most, it's the one that has the most to say.
And so I would just tell women like, this could be a great practice to do a body map.I've used thousands of these ways of mapping each individual's story on their bodies. We also wanna give the video course for my previous book, theology of the Womb and More Scripture based and historical understanding of what does it mean to bleed, what does it mean to birth, what does it mean to bury?
I have a video course that we wanna gift for free to your listeners if they wanna do that. It's a lot easier if you don't have time to sit and read.
Alison Cook: Amazing, so generous with your time and your talents and the wisdom that God has given you. We're so grateful. Thank you for being here with us today.
Wasn't that such a powerful conversation with Kristi? I love how she brings forth women's voices in the Bible alongside our own lived experiences in our bodies, these incredibly formative milestones, these rites of passage where we can feel so vulnerable and where so many of us have experienced harm, where we can feel so vulnerable.
Yet when we learn to reclaim them, they become tremendous opportunities to grow and to more of our God-given selves, and especially as women reflect the face of God into this world. Now we're gonna shift into my conversation with Andrew Bauman. While Christie speaks more from her personal experience as a woman, Andrew's gonna give us more of a guy's perspective looking at church culture and what it takes to truly create safe churches.
I think you'll notice how their work overlaps in such a beautiful way and how it takes all of us men and women to bring real change. Let's dive into my conversation with Andrew Bauman.
Alison Cook: Andrew, I'm thrilled to have this conversation with you today.
Andrew Bauman: Yes, I am as well. Thank you for having me.
Alison Cook: before we dive in, I wanna find out from you, you've been a pastor, you're now a therapist. We'll get into that, but more to the point, I wanna know what circumstances in your own life, in your own work led you to write a book about guarding against sexism and abuse in the church as a guy.
Andrew Bauman: Totally. There's a few different entry points. So number one, I was a pastor. I also had a hidden addiction to pornography for about 13 years. I was realizing that a degrading view of women and an oppressive theology was kind of mixing with my mindset. And so that was one entry point. I've been sober for about 15 years now of pornography and just realizing, wow, this is actually fairly normal, what I went through as a pastor, but also kind of mixing a degrading view of women and a sexist theology.
There's some tie there. So that was one entry point. The other entry point is my own origin story. So my father was also a pastor, but a prominent evangelical leader in the eighties. He was a vice president of a evangelical Christian college, and he also had a hidden sexual life, cheated on my mom for 20 something years, and that kind of blew up when I was seven years old.
So my mom went numb to survive her own trauma, and then I found myself, you know, going to church. Five times a week and you know, kind of an orphan. And the church took me in, the church began to mother me, father me. And so those were a few entry points of kind of the why so much. You know, I dedicated this book to my mom and just kind of watching her struggle, longing to be a good Christian wife, whatever that meant.
And yet my father's inability to love her well or become a healthy man himself. And then in 2018, I read a study called The Elephant in the Valley, which was a study on sexism in Silicon Valley. And then I was like, huh. I wonder about another male dominated space that I know very well. Like I wonder what those statistics are.
I wonder what that is. So that kind of set me in 2018 on the journey to begin to discover, okay, what are women saying about their own experiences of sexism and abuse in the church?
Alison Cook: Tell me a little bit about the move from being a pastor to being a therapist.
Andrew Bauman: Yeah, it didn't last very long, you know, it was a year and a half or so just realizing I couldn't be as honest as I wanted to be.
You know, I enjoyed the teaching, but I realized I had this big story of trauma, my own sexual abuse, my own stories of addiction, and I just felt like I wasn't being real. I wasn't being as authentic as I wanted to be. So I, you know, began to read some of Dan Allen's books 25 years ago or something, and kind of realized, okay, I kind of want to go in this direction and want to be more authentic with my life. Life and actually help people in a deeper way.
Alison Cook: Okay, so there's a lot to unpack here. You've spent the last three years conducting research and really listening to the stories of women. You've surveyed over 3000 women, is that right? In church settings?
Andrew Bauman: Yeah. Yeah. Over 2,800 women. Yeah.
Alison Cook: And gimme some highlights of what those stories revealed about women's experiences.
Andrew Bauman: Yeah, so these are women that worked in the church. So 16% of them worked 25 years or longer in the church. Another 25% worked 16 years or longer in the church. So these are women in the front lines of ministry and a few of the significant discoveries were 82% said they believe sexism plays a role in their church.
What is sexism? You know, think of prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, just because of someone's sex. There's different types of sexism. We won't go into that, but 82%. I was blown away. Maybe as women or women listeners, maybe you won't be surprised, but me as a male are like, that's a lot.
A few of the other significant results, 62% of women said they wouldn't be surprised if they heard a sexist joke in church, right? So women in the kitchen, women drivers like this is stuff I grew up with hearing and became normalized. And then in 2008, Dr. Thomas Ford did some research called More Than Just a Joke.
And what he realized, what he came up with is he said, sexist humor acts as a releaser of preexisting prejudice and antagonistic attitudes that one already has about women. So it's a releaser, it's a release valve. So what that is saying is that these pastors are already have a low view of women and already have a sexist view of women.
And in a sense, these sexist jokes that are so common that these women shared with me are normative and it's incredibly sad.
Alison Cook: I almost wanna back into this question because we know this isn't how God sees women. We know this isn't how Jesus. Sees women, right? So how does a church become a place where this is okay?
Andrew Bauman: Yeah. I mean there's so many different, there's so many different avenues. You know, I tend to think, you know, 'cause I work with a lot of men and unwanted sexual behavior, some of barn's, research of 50% of pastors have some type of relationship with pornography. You know, I see that as one entry point. I also see incredibly simple interpretations of scripture that have been used and weaponized and interpreted in a certain way that is so heavily impacted by patriarchal societies of the Bible.
You know, early Roman Greek culture. And then the sexist interpretations have then eased their way into the norm and they think that's what God wants. And so a few of these scripture verses, which we, you know, we can dive into if we want, but they've become, oh, this is how God sees women. This is how God wants the church to run.
And really it's based on misogyny. It's based on actually a deep hatred of women and not on what God actually wants.
Alison Cook: So I hear what you're saying. There's a lot of different ways that it kind of sneaks in. I don't even know if it sneaks in the back door, comes in the front door and gets embedded in a theology that whether well intended or harmfully intended almost reinforces this low view of women. And then women to some degree might internalize some of this and it creates this sort of entangled. Mess.
I wanna understand the relationship between what you're describing and spiritual abuse, abusive cultures.
Andrew Bauman: You know, spiritual abuse is one of the most vile of all abuses, right? You have emotional abuse, psychological abuse, sexual abuse, financial abuse, physical abuse, all these abuses.
But you know, simply thinking of abuse as power over rather than power shared. And when you throw in spirituality, when I as your spiritual leader represent God, like that's the ultimate Trump card in a sense. I can do whatever I want to retain power and control over others if I have God on my side. So it's incredibly dark because who can argue with God, right?
And so when God is used in that manipulative way, the harm is deep. And so many women who are just like, I don't go to church anymore. I've lost my faith. But many of 'em said, no, actually I love Jesus more than ever. I just, I can't be a part of a church. I can't be a part of the system. Right? And it reminds me of the legendary Diane Langberger, her quote in her book, redeeming Power, she says.
People are image bearers of God, not systems. We're called to speak truth to power, but many times we feel like we can't actually speak the truth to the system. And yet the system itself isn't the image bearer of God, it's actually the ones who are a part of the system.
Alison Cook: How do men in particular, disentangle from bad theology, disentangle from this idea of power over versus shared power? I had a conversation with Sheila Ray Gregoire, and we talked about how harmful messages definitely harm women and also harm men because this isn't what God means by spiritual leadership, whatever that means.
Andrew Bauman: Right, exactly.
Alison Cook: How do men begin to do this work of disentangling from these harmful toxins? I know, you know, don't tell sexist jokes, but it's deeper than that. It is. It's much deeper than that.
Andrew Bauman: I mean, one, we've gotta first see that there is a problem, right? Because of our privilege, because that we don't, well, I don't experience it.
I didn't hear that joke. It doesn't impact me. We have to realize this is an issue. We are the ones perpetrating it. I say it time and time again, you know, domestic violence, sexual abuse, like who are the main perpetrators of these things? It's mostly men. Yes, women abuse, of course, but yet the statistics say mostly men are perpetrating domestic violence.
So we've gotta realize we've got a violence problem. We've gotta begin to do the hard work. And especially for, you know, church leaders. You can't lead others where you haven't gone yourself. So if you haven't done work on your own sexuality, if you haven't begun the hard therapeutic work of self-discovery, you've got to, you've gotta look at your own life.
What was femininity to you growing up? What was masculinity? What was your socialization of being a man growing up? Like you've gotta do that hard work and unlearn so you can relearn. Actually, I think what's much more God pleasing and much more mutuality. And I'm reminded of the verse, Galatians 3 28, right?
There's no Jew or Greek, no slavery free, no male or female, but we are one in Christ. There's no hierarchy in Christ. And yet, if you grew up in a much more traditional home and you saw, okay, a woman played this role. Man played this role. Not necessarily wrong if that's what they mutually agreed to, but so many times, and I hear time and time again with the men that I work with is, no, this is God's role.
This is what she has to do to fulfill her call. And what we've really confused, kind of patriarchal norms and sexist attitudes, as you know, theological in God, honoring.
Alison Cook: and to come again to this idea of how Jesus saw women, right? This is the actual model of what a guy needs to try to get to the root of, not only for her health, and this is what always feels so important to me to say. But also for his health.
Andrew Bauman: Yes. That was a huge thing of realizing, interviewing all these women and then realizing, wow, how we have treated women. And then when I begin to look at Jesus' life, the disconnect is just wild because here he is, you know, just breaking down these huge barriers for women, right?
When Jesus starts his ministry, what Jesus is born into is this wildly oppressive Roman rule. And then Jesus comes in, you know the story, one of my favorites is the woman at the well, right? In John four. And the Samaritan woman is not only oppressed by her own people, she's an outcast among outcasts. And then Jesus goes up and he offers a drink to share spit with an unclean woman.
I mean, it's so scandalous, right? It's so wild. And then he tells her he's launches his ministry. Go tell the world. Go tell the world who I am, and it's like, oh wow. Right. The story of the alabaster jar, you know, in Luke 7 36, the Canaanite woman in Matthew 1521 and the other amazing one of Mary Magdalene in John 20.
The most important of the gospel, the resurrection. He says, I'm gonna entrust this to a woman to go preach and tell the world that I have risen. And yet growing up, that was the most absurd thing to hear a woman preach. Like, I remember I'm about to go to grad school and looking for a job in Seattle. And I was like, oh, I could do this youth pastor.
'cause I was a youth pastor at the time and a college pastor. I was like, I could do this youth pastor stuff in my sleep and you know, make money on the side and, you know, it'd be easy. And so I applied, I was in a national search and I was down to the final, like two people. So I had an interview with, you know, the deacon board.
I'm making 'em laugh and I've got the job in the back and they finally ask at the end of the interview, do you know that we have a woman pastor? And I like almost fell outta my seat. I didn't even know that existed. It was like, what in the world? And I tried to make some joke and act like I was cool with it, but I was like, well, I know what the Bible says.
And then I removed myself the next day from the thing. But like that's how deep I was thinking that no, I wanted to honor God. Yet the stories Jesus did was the exact opposite, but I had taken those few scripture verses and made them in a sense, the gospel.
Alison Cook: Yeah. Sometimes I do think about if Jesus were to walk the earth again today, you know, just to imagine, you know, him coming into our current context, you know, who are those people he would be sharing spit with? It's mind blowing how we repeat patterns.
Andrew, what are practical steps, like how do we actually change cultures? Because there's a lot of different things you've just talked about. There's theologies and some people aren't gonna change their theologies, and that doesn't necessarily mean they have to be abusive and toxic.
You've talked about guys changing their internalized messages about women, but I guess when we kind of circle back to the church, which is the topic of your book, we're not gonna be perfect, but what are some practical steps a church can take to become safer?
Andrew Bauman: I think the most simple one is like number one. Can we just start this conversation? When's the last time you heard a sermon on sexual abuse? One out of three women are impacted by sexual abuse. When's the last sermon you heard on domestic violence? That's one out of four. And so let's just start the conversation, and if your church isn't starting it, well, what'd it take for you to start it?
Hey, can I do a book club on this book? Because the more we normalize it, the less it'll be secret, the less it'll be in the dark. We have to begin to talk about these things. Number two, I'm thinking, how do we begin to change the church? We have to use trusted, researched resources. That's something that Sheila talks about all the time, right?
It's like there's so much bad stuff out there that's not well researched. It's just I think somebody's pathologized, unaddressed trauma coming out as a normal theology or something rather than actually from a healed place. And then they. Represent God. Another thing I like to tell people is we can't do this alone, right?
We gotta find our tribe. And so a lot of times people are isolated. Well, there's no churches in my area, there's nobody's talking about this. It's like, I get it. And online communities can be incredibly helpful. And then finally, what I tell women a lot, if they don't hold positions of power, what can I do?
And a big thing that I often say is begin to trust your gut. I think a woman's intuition has been so attacked. Her body has been deemed dangerous. And you know, whether it's purity culture, or whether it's just from male projection teaching about modesty or whatever, making it a woman's fault. A woman actually needs to double down on her intuition on trusting her own body.
I believe God lives in our bodies, and so we must trust the voice of our body. And I think when we can begin to trust our gut, then we can begin to speak from that centered place. Rather than that insecure place or that traumatized place that we can actually begin to trust our own goodness.
Alison Cook: One of the things I say to women, and a lot of it's outta my own experience of kind of having a knowing of, okay, I am not gonna be fully respected here.
And also being an empathetic person, especially where again, there's that spectrum of toxicity, there's bad theology, and otherwise decent humans, there's really toxic pathology. And so for me, what I'll sometimes say to women is that trusting of the body doesn't mean you have to go burn the house down.
Sometimes it does. Sometimes you do. Sometimes it means I need to find myself in another location to get somewhere where I do feel valued. I do feel honored. I do feel respected. That's what's most important, just taking that simple step of surrounding yourself with people where you do feel valued, it's just such a basic step, but so important.
Andrew Bauman: Totally. And so many women in the church don't feel like they're valued or their gifts aren't being fully utilized.
Alison Cook: Andrew, what gives you hope for the future of the church regarding men and women coming together in a beautiful, wholehearted way that is reflective of original design, of original goodness of men and women? What gives you hope about that?
Andrew Bauman: One, all of the new voices and the voices that are coming out and speaking up against this stuff and the new resources that are coming out that are speaking up, but then also even more poignantly the work that I do on the ground, right? So every month, you know, we have our four day men's workshops folks, men coming in from all over the world and like dealing with their darkness, wrestling with their glory.
Like they're doing the work to heal their unprocessed trauma so they, they can stop oozing on the people they say they love. And that gives me a lot of hope. The most profound workshop that we do under the co-ed workshops. What happens if we actually get together and face each other and deal with our gendered wounds and heal and not be scared of that, but actually begin to engage what we will most fear.
That gives me hope. Those groups that we do are just so powerful.
Alison Cook: Why is this where the church, the place where we can't, as men and women, brothers and sisters come together and honor and love each other and respect each other and not shame each other and also call each other, and I can think of a number of different angles on that, but I'm curious to hear your response to that as someone who's been in church ministry.
Andrew Bauman: Yeah, I mean, I truly believe we can't be spiritually healthy unless we're emotionally healthy. And I feel like we've neglected the inner world, so many leaders, we have become charismatic, you know, so we can get more people and you know, kind of the CEO model, but we have it focused on the inner world, and so that oozes over unprocessed trauma is always reenacted in our present day life.
Always. And so I think that's what we're seeing is this unprocessed trauma coming out and oozing out in the way people lead.
Alison Cook: Yeah, I like that because it gives us a place to start. We're not gonna fix 2000 years, but we can start with our own unprocessed trauma.
Andrew Bauman: Yes, exactly.
Alison Cook: At the very least, the church can become a place that doesn't skim across the surface of that, but actually moves us into deeper health internally, which is inevitably gonna lead us back to each other.
Andrew Bauman: Exactly. So when we look at like scripture, you know, if we're all dealing with all these unprocessed wounds and oh, I feel insecure inside, I need then to try to feel big. I'm gonna go to power and control. So of course spiritual abuse becomes a thing, right? Or when I think of how scripture was used in, what was it?
1807, the slave Bible was created and you know, based on slaves obey your earthly masters was the verse, right? So they basically developed an entire Bible to help oppress entire people group. And they took out the story of Exodus from that Bible because they did not want to empower an oppressed people.
And so this is where scripture can be weaponized.
Alison Cook: Yeah, it goes right back to your point, Jesus words, out of the overflow of the heart, the mouse speaks. That same integrity has always been the most important thing no matter what era. Of atrocities you are living in. If that inner integrity is not there, you will use all that trauma, all that pain, all that sin, Whatever word you wanna use will come out against other people. And at the same time, in those same context, whether it's 1807 or whether it's now integrity in the body, to your point about it being in the body says this isn't right. I don't care what scriptures you're using to justify it. This isn't right.
This isn't good, this isn't true. This isn't honorable. This isn't leading me more to love of God, love of self and love of neighbor.
Andrew Bauman: Exactly.
Alison Cook: Andrew, tell my listeners about this book you've written. You're doing a lot of work in this space, so tell us specifically about the book and about the other places where people could find your work.
Andrew Bauman: So Safe Church is the book of over 2,800 women in the research of, you know, how to fight against sexism and abuse. You can also find it on the website, safe Church us. Definitely check it out. Share it with your friends. I think it's super important. I mean, obviously I'm a little biased since it took me five years to write it, but this conversation is vital.
Our churches need to be safe for everyone, right? And we need to look at these blind spots. Speaking up against the church doesn't mean that you're bad. It actually means I care about it, right? It actually means that I love the church and I want it to be a safer, more equitable place of liberation rather than trauma.
And then my wife and I, we run the Christian Counseling Center. For sexual health and trauma, and you can find@christiancc.org. And we run workshops and retreats and all sorts of offerings as well. And then my wife's new book with Penguin Random House is called her rights, R-I-T-E-S. But Women's Rites of Passage, a Sacred Journey for Mind, body, and Soul. Her rights, so you can check that out as well.
Alison Cook: I just wanna say, you know, we've all benefited so much from Diane Berg's work over the years and she writes about this and there's some other voices, but it is just the fact that as a man you are doing this work to speak to it. 'cause it isn't just women. You have to do this work and I really appreciate your putting yourself out there in that way. I'm sure it's not always easy and I think it's really important toward the end of healing, we've gotta heal together. To your point, the answer is not to just silo off from each other. So I really appreciate you're doing that work.
Andrew Bauman: Thank you very much, and thank you so much for having me on. It was great to finally meet 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, Amazon music, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and click the plus or follow button that will ensure you don't miss an episode, and it helps get the word out to others while you're there.
I'd love it if you leave your five star review. I look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God. You heal others and you stay true to your God given self.
Have you ever found yourself afraid to feel joy - worried that if you celebrate, the other shoe will inevitably drop?
So many of us quietly hold joy at arm’s length. We tell ourselves it’s safer not to get our hopes up than to risk being let down again. What if joy isn’t a fleeting feeling for the lucky few, but a courageous practice we can all learn?
Dr Alison sits down with therapist and author Nicole Zasowski to talk about her journey of choosing joy in the face of loss. Nicole shares how she discovered that joy can be the most vulnerable emotion of all - and why learning to celebrate is one of the most important practices we can cultivate in our lives.
Together, you’ll learn:
- The surprising reason joy can feel harder than grief or disappointment
- The difference between toxic positivity and true, grounded joy
- Why pessimism and cynicism are really forms of control
- Practical ways to retrain your mind to savor what’s good—even in difficult seasons
- What Scripture and neuroscience teach us about joy
📕 Learn more from Nicole: Check out her book What If It’s Wonderful? And her Daring Joy Bible study workbook for practical steps to cultivate joy.
📥 Download Alison’s free printable with the five boundary tools when you sign up for her weekly email.
Looking for more? Here are a few favorites:
Episode 168: How do I trust God after loss?
Episode 74: How to Find Hope in Hard Times
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
💬 Got a question? Call 307-429-2525 and leave a message for a future episode.
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Transcript:
Alison Cook: 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 for this incredible conversation. Today's episode is for you. If you've ever found yourself holding joy at arm's length, maybe you're fearful of trusting that the good in front of you is real, that it's safe to exhale, or that it might actually. Last, maybe you've been through loss, disappointment, or long seasons of waiting and even when something good finally happens, instead of celebrating, you catch yourself bracing for what might go wrong, or maybe you've quietly stopped hoping altogether, Telling yourself it's easier not to expect anything good at all to happen than to risk being let down one more time.
Our guest today knows this feeling well, Nicole Sakowski is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She's a speaker and she's the author of a fantastic book. It's called What If It's Wonderful? Release Your Fears, choose Joy and Find the Courage to Celebrate.
And she's just released a brand new Bible study. It's called Daring Joy. What six women in the Bible teach us about the power of celebration when it feels risky, complicated, and even impossible. What I love about Nicole's work is that she invites us to see joy, not as a fleeting feeling, but as a courageous counter-cultural practice. one that we can and really must learn how to cultivate no matter our circumstances.
Nicole's own journey to joy Began and as season marked by change loss and a performance-based identity, she shares candidly about walking through infertility and multiple miscarriages, and the surprising realization that Joy was the most vulnerable emotion she could feel.
Because when you hold something dear, there's always the risk. Of losing it. Instead of avoiding that vulnerability, Nicole began to explore what it looks like to practice joy as a rhythm of life rather than a reaction to circumstances. In today's conversation, we'll talk about the difference between true joy and what you might think of as bright siding or a toxic positivity.
Why joy can sometimes feel harder to embrace than grief or loss, and really practical ways to retrain your mind to notice, savor, and celebrate the good in your everyday life. I loved this conversation because Nicole brings both the depth of her clinical training and the vulnerability of someone who's wrestled through these questions herself.
She gives us permission to honor what's hard and to welcome what's good. Every single day reminding us the joy is not for the lucky few, but it's for all of us in every season. So whether you're in a season of sweetness or a season of sorrow, or like most of us, somewhere in the both, and this conversation will give you practical, spiritually rooted and deeply compassionate tools to start daring Joy today. Please enjoy my conversation with Nicole Zaki.
INTERVIEW
Alison Cook: What I love is that your work helps us reimagine joy. Not really as a feeling, A feeling that we have to conjure up, but more as a practice. I am curious how did the younger version of you relate to joy and, and what are the roots of why this became such an important topic for you personally to address?
Nicole Zasowski: I think two seasons. Stand out to me. Uh, one being most of my childhood and and into my early twenties, I had a very performance-based identity. I only felt as good as my last performance. And so therefore I had a very performance-based joy where I only gave myself permission to celebrate on the far side of a dream realized or a goal achieved.
And I think that's how a lot of us view joy in celebration is. We give ourselves permission to practice joy or to celebrate, on the other side of some sort of change. We view it as a reaction versus a rhythm. And that was very much me. for the majority of my life. Um, only gave myself permission to celebrate, you know, even the way God made me or, a gift that I had.
on the far side of. Of some sort of gold star, and. Sadly, that mostly worked for me for most of my life. I would please perfect perform the three Ps, and I mostly was able to find myself in a position where for maybe a brief second,
Alison Cook: Mm-hmm.
Nicole Zasowski: I felt that I had permission to celebrate. And of course we know that's a mirage.
As soon as you get there, the finish line has moved. Somewhere else, you know, down the line. And so you're perpetually chasing When will I be good enough? Or you're always afraid of falling off that pedestal, even if you do have that moment of, okay, I, I, I did it. and then was a good thing, but a hard thing.
At the same time, I confronted a season. That could largely be characterized by change in loss. it included a, a sudden move across the country, that was good for me, but very much unwanted. I had to leave all those comforts that I had built my identity on, and so without, couldn't take 'em with me.
Nobody knew who I was, where we were going. Nobody really was impressed by my accomplishments. And this was devastating to a girl who had a performance based identity. But as, as you know, that's a gift because when you're left empty handed, you're able to hold something that's more. Sure.
Alison Cook: Hmm.
Nicole Zasowski: after we got here, my husband and I walked through.
A long season of infertility that included five miscarriages in about as many years, which was really painful for so many reasons. But one of the first times I was like, I can't outwork this. I can't be good enough. I can't, um, outwork the pain to make it different. And, that was heartbreaking on its own level, but also, again, there was an invitation in that to put my identity in who I was as a child of God, as Nicole versus what Nicole can do.
Um, and when I did start to encounter some breakthrough and good news in our story, I realized I was hesitant to embrace it
Alison Cook: Yeah.
Nicole Zasowski: and. This was so interesting to me because here is the thing I've longed for, the thing I've prayed for, and I am holding it in arm's length. I'm not celebrating it, and I was so grieved when I realized that, yeah, I've experienced a lot of tangible loss in my story, but a lot of the loss I've experienced has been my refusal to embrace the very good things that God had
Alison Cook: Hmm.
Nicole Zasowski: And so that was the part two to your question of, you know, the season that sort of shaped my relationship with joy is I, I was holding it at arm's length and I learned that joy is actually the most vulnerable feeling we feel because when you hold something, it's automatically accompanied by the possibility of loss.
And if you've been through. Trauma or pain of any kind, you know, it can feel safer not to hold that joy at all than to hold something that might break. And again, I was so grieved by that, what I was missing out on, I thought, I don't wanna miss out on my beautiful God-given life 'cause I'm so busy preparing for the worst.
And so. I did a deep dive into the neuroscience research. I did a deep dive into scripture to understand how can joy be a practice? My feelings are not there,
Alison Cook: Mm-hmm.
Nicole Zasowski: how can I engage with this? What am I empowered to do to engage with this so that I can have a healthier relationship with joy? And then out of that came my book.
What If It's Wonderful and my Bible study daring Joy.
Alison Cook: So, okay. Gosh, there's so much in there I wanna unpack. So you had this self-awareness at a particular moment to recognize, okay, here's a moment where I should be feeling joy.
And I am not.
Nicole Zasowski: right.
Alison Cook: What was it that you were experiencing?
Nicole Zasowski: I think mostly fear, yes. Here's the thing I've prayed for, but it doesn't feel like a good idea to celebrate it. so I'm going to protect myself with pessimism and cynicism, which are just fancy forms of control, right? I'm trying to become invulnerable to that hope to possibility, and so that's what I was employing.
Alison Cook: It's so interesting to me from a parts framework through the lens of parts, that it makes sense that a fearful part of you that had been very hurt.
Nicole Zasowski: Yep.
Alison Cook: Was there was very present in your sort of inner family and that to protect that part of you, an inner cynic or inner guarded part of you surfaced and again that you could become aware of that, you know, I just get this sense listening to you that you're sort of became aware of that dissonance.
here I am. Not experiencing the relief or the joy or whatever. You know, joy is such a interesting emotion. What all goes into joy? and that you were honest enough to say, I see this.
Nicole Zasowski: Mm-hmm.
Alison Cook: I can't conjure up that feeling. I can't make myself have it. So I have to go on a path of how do I. Learn. How do I teach myself how to celebrate, how to experience joy? Am I, am I hearing you right? I mean, you definitely, you're in the right profession as a therapist, right? Where you're aware. But I love that. That's what's so beautiful. That's what you offer us, is you were so aware of the dissonance, but even in that awareness, you didn't immediately have the, oh, there, now I can It.
It's like, no, I have to go on a journey.
Nicole Zasowski: Yes, yes. And I've learned both as a person and a therapist, I think with a lot of the virtues we wanna incorporate in our life, whether it's. Joy or courage or that we have to often act on what we know to be true or practice that virtue before the feelings follow and in the. Brain research I've done and in my work with clients and in my own personal work, that's certainly been true for me that I'm gonna have to, to practice this before
Alison Cook: Hmm.
Nicole Zasowski: I necessarily feel it.
And it might be quite a while of practicing it, before those feelings follow. So that's absolutely the journey I, I took.
Alison Cook: Okay. I wanna get to the practice 'cause I think that it, I think it's so interesting and counterintuitive and in many ways counter-cultural to think about practicing joy. I think it's [00:09:00] so important and, just so grateful that you're talking about it before we get there. When you set out on this path, this recognition of, I don't feel. The way that I feel like I should feel about this. did you talk about that with people and when you reached out for insight or wisdom, or even through your research
Nicole Zasowski: Mm-hmm.
Alison Cook: did you find helpful and also what, what did you kind of bump up against that wasn't helpful out there on this quest?
Nicole Zasowski: I think one of the most unhelpful messages we can hear. Related to this quest, but also with. Joy is and, and it's a similar but distinctly different message than the one that I would hope to share with people and that I would hope readers would get from my work. Is this sort of, um. Just put a silver lining on the cloud [00:10:00] or, fake it till you make it.
Alison Cook: I've, yep.
Nicole Zasowski: you know, God doesn't ask us to call a painful thing. Good. Um, good things grow from painful things? Of course. Um, but he doesn't ask us to call that. hardship or that hurt or that loss itself a good thing. And I think if we're not careful, we can easily kind of that toxic positivity, kind of easily tie a bow on something where there's no bow to be tied or look for a way to draw a silver lining on that cloud.
And that's not what this is.
I think one of the hardest but most helpful messages. was understanding that joy is a practice, that it is a spiritual discipline.
at first I was annoyed when I started to see that message in scripture and the neuroscience research because I thought, gosh, there's so many things in our personal growth in our faith walk that require.
Discipline and I thought, gosh, can't joy just come easily? Can't that be the one thing that just flows naturally out of us? And then I realized. How empowering that is, because if joy were simply a feeling that came from good circumstances or came from the winds in our life, then it would be an experience for the lucky few who happen
Alison Cook: Yeah.
Nicole Zasowski: good experiences sometimes or good circumstances.
Alison Cook: Yeah.
Nicole Zasowski: And to know that this is something that is actually available to us, to all of us in all seasons was not only empowering, like, oh, I can actually take a step toward this and, and do something. But also really comforting that this is, and I could cry talking about this. 'cause for a long time I felt like.
I was somebody with my nose pressed against the glass looking in on something I couldn't have. And I think a lot of us, when we think about joy and think about how, can feel that when or if this relationship gets solved or if I experience. A health breakthrough or whatever that is.
We all have that thing, right? then I can experience joy. I think it, a lot of us feel disqualified from it. And so my hope is that my work could be an encouragement that this is something that, yes, it might look different in different seasons, the feelings will go up and down, but this is something you're absolutely empowered to practice regardless of what your life might look like right now.
Alison Cook: Yeah. I love that. I, I love that your work. Comes directly out of your own
life experience. you said something that I think is really, profound in many ways joy can feel more vulnerable
Nicole Zasowski: Mm-hmm.
Alison Cook: than grief.
Nicole Zasowski: Mm-hmm.
Alison Cook: Why is that
Nicole Zasowski: Yeah, I, I was, um, I was really surprised when I thought about it that way and Brene Brown talks about the idea of foreboding joy. Um. That joy is often accompanied by this sense of, but what if it all goes away? and I think a couple things. The act of holding something right, when we embrace something, when we celebrate something that's vulnerable because we're holding something that can be taken
Alison Cook: Mm-hmm.
Nicole Zasowski: particularly if our joy is.
In something that comes and goes, and we can talk about that in a bit. But, that can be a vulnerable experience to actually take a chance to celebrate something. You hear a lot about people saying, well. Waiting for the other shoe to drop or, you know, we operate with these really funny, ideas about how life works.
I think probably to try and get a sense of control on something that is uncertain, but just the idea. I've heard people say, yeah, things have. Really great for a long time. I'm, I'm really enjoying my life and I'm in a sweet season of peace and connection with other people, you know, so I'm probably due, you know, we, we have this idea that we can only embrace that for so long.
And just a side note on that, the research is really clear that while we might wanna protect ourselves with pessimism and cynicism. Even if, and this is a big if 'cause usually it doesn't happen, but even if that outcome that we fear should come to pass or the other shoe does drop,
Alison Cook: Mm-hmm.
Nicole Zasowski: having prepared for that mentally and emotionally doesn't take any of the sting out of that outcome should that happen.
So all we're doing is robbing ourselves of that delight and connection in the meantime.
AD BREAK I
Alison Cook: That's so good as you're saying that it reminds me of. The importance and the, and the sounds cliche, which is so hard about this conversation, right? It's so nuanced. of living in the moment
Nicole Zasowski: Mm-hmm.
Alison Cook: thinking about the manna in the wilderness.
Like, what is mine today? Is mine today.
Nicole Zasowski: today.
Alison Cook: And the joy that I have today is the joy that I have today. I'm not worrying about tomorrow. So there's a lot about it in the Bible. We see it in psychology being in the present moment. What's happening right now. We don't do ourselves any favors, with the sort of doom stressing, the doom worrying.
And I love that you underscored that. But again, that is a practice. and I hear you saying that a part of you. had to retrain,
Nicole Zasowski: Yeah.
Alison Cook: reorient to a different practice, which required you to be vulnerable to a new emotion.
Nicole Zasowski: mm.
Alison Cook: I guess how you say it is, we don't drift toward. Joy. And so in your own experience, you had to begin hunting for it, looking for it. So talk to us a little bit about, as you're realizing, oh, I need to incorporate this practice into my life, what were some of the first steps you started taking and how did that go and how did that feel for you initially?
Nicole Zasowski: Clunky. I think when you're learning anything for the first time in your carving those new neuro pathways in your brain, it's like blazing a trail in the forest versus taking the well beaten path. the brain prefers what it knows, not necessarily what is good or true. and I say that not
For someone to feel overwhelmed by change, but to validate that change is hard, carving those neural pathways is uncomfortable for your brain, even if it's good and ultimately healthier thing. So it definitely felt clunky, but rewarding nonetheless. I think when I started to understand what some of those practices were.
and we can talk about what those were, um, and, and how to practice them at home if you're listening. but yeah, it felt clunky. It, it felt, unfamiliar and, and while I was helping that truth become more familiar to my brain.
Alison Cook: Yeah.
Nicole Zasowski: but again, hopeful and I, I really believed. in what I was being led to do.
Alison Cook: and also as both yourself and as a therapist, it would strike me that you have to have some buy-in to recognize this is a path I need. To work on. Right. And I think that could be confusing.
And even as a clinician, right, we have some people who come to see us that are so good at bright siding things,
Nicole Zasowski: Yeah,
Alison Cook: which isn't what you're talking about. That's not joy. That there is actually a need to help them really walk through and feel what's hard. Almost a practice of grieving in a way.
And there's something about, you knew, I get this sense. You were really aware. I see something happening here that I need to shift inside of me to be able to balance out. Yes. there's a part of me, you know, if I think about that part's language that is maybe, always to some degree going to be a little bit. Uncertain.
Nicole Zasowski: Yep.
Alison Cook: Um, maybe a little bit like I'm not that one that just dives right into the excitement and the exuberance of emotion, right? and also I need to cultivate this other part of me that can feel and lean into the joy and lean into the, this is good, and I'm gonna let myself right.
So that, that takes a lot of. Self-awareness and self knowledge, and I'm thinking ofof the listener. How might they know that there's an invitation also to Joy and that that also might be a practice not to deny what's been hard not to bypass. What's been hard, and I think, again, I'm being long-winded here, but I think especially in faith contexts
Nicole Zasowski: Yeah,
Alison Cook: where joy can become a way to spiritually bypass, I should feel this way.
I shouldn't feel sad, I shouldn't feel angry. I shouldn't feel, ungrateful for a lot of folks. I could imagine there's a sort of. well, which one is it? and I, I'm trying to figure out how to learn to feel angry. I'm trying to figure out how to learn to feel sad, again, I'm, sort of saying a lot of things and not really getting to a question, but I, I hear very clearly in what you're saying, Nicole, that we wanna make sure there is also a seat for joy at the table.
Joy also needs to be there.
Nicole Zasowski: Mm-hmm.
Alison Cook: And so I guess. how do we know when there's that invitation? How do we know? Maybe there's an out of balance, and maybe the best metaphor I can think of is it's almost the opposite of what happened in the first Inside Out movie.
Nicole Zasowski: Sure.
Alison Cook: Right? And the first Inside Out movie, joy was the only character she was dominating.
But for you. And I think for a lot of people, Joy's, the one that's marginalized, Joy's the one that's being held back.
Nicole Zasowski: Mm-hmm.
Alison Cook: So both, as a clinician and in your own personal life, how do we know when that invitation might be there?
Nicole Zasowski: That's such a good question. I think, you know, similar, ideas, different language. I, I work with a model called Restoration Therapy
Alison Cook: Mm-hmm.
Nicole Zasowski: The first thing we do and, and something that I'm very aware of as somebody who practices it in my own life, is to understand what that message of pain is.
So what are the feelings you tend to feel when you're in a painful situation? And these are. Shaped by our stories. So you and I could go through the exact same thing tomorrow and I might feel inadequate or worthless and, and you might feel alone or unsafe, just as an example.
Alison Cook: Interesting.
Nicole Zasowski: But understanding what those messages are, I'm very clear on what my three to four feelings I tend to feel 90% of the time I'm in a painful situation.
and so understanding like for me, what those wounds are, I've already shared, you know, a part of my story would be definitely not good enough. That's a big one for me. shaped by my. Miscarriage and infertility season, might also be vulnerable. And so then it's identifying what are the ways I tend to protect myself and react to that pain that are totally understandable and probably served me at one point in my life as a child, uh, are no longer serving me now, are no longer
Alison Cook: Mm
Nicole Zasowski: At least to let run amuck.
Alison Cook: Mm-hmm.
Nicole Zasowski: So, and the four broad categories of those behaviors are shaming yourself, blaming other people, controlling and escaping. So. And this is what you were talking about earlier, is sometimes we've gotta know what names to give our pain. We've gotta name the cost.
We've gotta grieve what that feeling is, identify what we might be tempted to do. I am a world class controller. and that can look a lot of different ways, not necessarily micromanaging someone else, but for me, as I've already shared. Becoming invulnerable to that pain. So by, okay, if I just expect the worst, then I won't have to feel, as devastated, or I won't feel the gravity of that vulnerability if, if it doesn't turn out how I'm hoping and praying it will.
And so really being able to name that is where you can see some invitation of. What does it look like? And again, that's, that's a well carved neural pathway in my brain.
but what is the truth that? I want to claim, and I use that word claim because again, this doesn't mean the feeling isn't real and that I don't have good reasons for feeling that way.
But as an empowered adult, that's the feeling that's being thrown down. What am I gonna choose to pick up and continue to tell myself,
Alison Cook: Right.
Nicole Zasowski: what am I gonna choose to speak to that very real feeling?
Alison Cook: Yeah.
Nicole Zasowski: And how can I practice acting on what I know to be true instead of reacting to how I feel, which for me is engaging in a lot of these joy practices.
Alison Cook: Interesting.
Nicole Zasowski: that's counter to how I tend to react and protect myself.
Alison Cook: Yeah, it makes sense what you're saying because it's not so much so, so I think for me not in my, how I am with other people, not with how I am as a clinician, but with myself, when I feel one of those vulnerable, painful emotions, I tend to bright side, I tend to minimize, I tend to, it'll be fine.
It, that's not joy.
Nicole Zasowski: No,
Alison Cook: But it can appear that way. It can appear like a positive, optimistic. Person and this conversation is so interesting to me because I, I had this conversation with my co-author, Kimberly Miller, when we were writing Boundaries for Your Soul.
at the time I was practicing letting myself feel sadness and so I would listen to sad music,
Nicole Zasowski: Uhhuh, uh.
Alison Cook: I would listen to that Coldplay song Fix You.
Nicole Zasowski: Yes, good choice,
Alison Cook: And both Kim and then my husband too, like, they're like, why are you listening to that? Like, they didn't need the help.
Nicole Zasowski: right.
Alison Cook: they didn't need the help to feel that and. I'm being a little convoluted here, but, but I think you're saying something interesting. the impetus is still whether you're going to pessimism or whether you're kind of going to a, like I have a bright sighting part of myself. Either way, we're not dealing with the actual vulnerable. Feeling, which is [00:26:00] something hard happened, something painful.
We're not actually telling ourselves the truth, whether we're piling on and saying Nothing good is ever gonna happen for me, or expect no good in the future, or whether we're saying it'll be fine. Don't worry about it. Just shrug it off. we're not giving ourselves the actual healing and truth.
That true joy. Or any of the fruit of the spirit, but in this case, joy. So tell me, in light of that kind of isolating what we're talking about, something that is healing, something that is. for example, again, using, if FS vernacular playfulness is a quality of the spirit, let itself playfulness, which I, I think is akin to joy is.
The ability when something really hard is happening and, and you have some friends that are really good at this. I have a couple of friends who are really good at this, and they just make you laugh. But it's not because they're bypassing the [00:27:00] pain, it's because you just see the absurdity in it and you're just like, tears are streaming down your face, and you're kind, laugh, crying.
That to me is joy. It's not bypassing. And so I'm curious in your vernacular, 'cause I, I love. This vernacular that you're bringing through restoration therapy, what is joy like? What is it actually, it's not bright siding. but I hear you saying it's also very much not kind of the opposite of that, which is sort of the, the pessimistic or the cynical component.
how do you know it when you see it? How do you know it, when you feel it? What's your experience of that?
Nicole Zasowski: Well, I do have a definition that I personally hold, but I think to speak specifically to what you are saying is I'm often asked what's the difference between celebration and escape? Because I think we do tend to look at joy as falsely as you're pointing out bright sighting or,
Alison Cook: Yeah.
Nicole Zasowski: and, and so you're exactly right.
Bright siding or getting pessimistic or, or doing those, any of those four things, blame, shame, control, escape. Are different forms of reacting to our pain. So they, they might have different consequences, but they're equally unhelpful and unhealthy and, and don't actually help us deal with that pain. And so I would ask.
You know, somebody that maybe is having a hard time discerning the difference is what are you looking for? Any sort of escape behavior, including bright siding, is looking to take us,
out. So I, there's nothing I can do to solve this pain or deal with this pain, so I'm just gonna check out and hope it goes away while I'm gone.
Versus joy and celebration keeps us connected. It's an avenue of connection with our emotion and with other people and with God.
Alison Cook: Mm-hmm.
Nicole Zasowski: So, you know, the example you gave of your friends just having the gift of seeing the absurdity in something. They're not disconnecting from their pain and, you know, numbing it.
they're relationally connecting in it. So one diagnostic question is. Is this disconnecting or is it connecting?
Alison Cook: great.
Yes.
Nicole Zasowski: this connecting me to God to other people in my
Alison Cook: Yeah.
Nicole Zasowski: To my emotional experience? Or is it something that's just hitting the pause button
Alison Cook: Yeah.
Nicole Zasowski: on my emotional processing where I'm in a, you know, it's like when you take a nap and it feels so good to fall asleep.
'cause you don't have to think about that thing that's burdening you and then you wake up and it takes about five seconds for you to be like, oh, there. Yep, there it is. that's escape versus what's helping me emotionally process this, what's helping me connect to other people.
Alison Cook: Yeah, that's good.
Nicole Zasowski: Um, so yes, and the very simple from a spiritual perspective, definition of joy that I've landed on is recalling God's steadfast character and remembering his faithfulness in our story.
That's. Joy that's available to all of us in all seasons. So at, at the very root, from a spiritual perspective. that's the definition I personally hold onto is, is something that's available to me always.
Alison Cook: I love this
you're speaking about it with such depth. There's such a deep integrated understanding there. I love this quote. You say, Nicole, And I think this kind of gets at what you're trying to say here. I love celebrating with God instead of seeing celebration as merely the result of the struggles God has carried me through.
Nicole Zasowski: Mm-hmm.
Alison Cook: And I think that there's something to that, the relational
Nicole Zasowski: Yeah.
Alison Cook: connected component. That you're getting at there when you're with God through it all, there's a ness in the joy, not God.
You know? Thanks for rescuing me from this hard thing, as if you weren't in the hard thing with me too, but there's a, oh my gosh, God, look at what's happening. This is good news. We're doing it. You know, there's that ness that's so beautiful.
AD BREAK 2
Nicole Zasowski: The story that really stood out to me in, in teaching me that particular point was, um, the story of the 10 men with leprosy. And if you're not familiar with that story briefly, you can find it in Luke 17. But, um, men have leprosy and it's their disease that's brought them together because.
That would've been a thing in that culture that defined them more than anything else. you know, more than their personality, they would've been. isolated from their families, isolated from their communities. And so these 10 men have nothing to lose 'cause it's not only a physical disease, it's, it's an emotional and relational cost as well.
Alison Cook: Mm-hmm.
Nicole Zasowski: They see Jesus and they cry out for healing [00:32:00] and he tells them, be on your way to the temple, which Might sound like a strange response, but it's typically the first step one took after being healed. So they had to exercise some faith that they would be healed on their way to the temple, and sure enough, they start to see their own healing in the faces and bodies of their friends and
Alison Cook: Mm.
Nicole Zasowski: only, mean, we can assume that.
Given the massive life change that this would've meant that they all felt grateful,
Alison Cook: Mm-hmm.
Nicole Zasowski: but only one were told and scripture returned to actually thank Jesus. And I looked at this story and trying to understand the difference between gratitude and Thanksgiving. 'cause Thanksgiving is the outward expression of the gratitude that we feel
Alison Cook: Mm.
Nicole Zasowski: our hearts.
And I love Jesus's response. It's a bit facetious when this one man. Comes to say thank you. He says, well, weren't all 10 healed. and I, you know, [00:33:00] it's easy to maybe take this as Jesus's bid for our praise, but that's not the point of this story. The point of this story is that Thanksgiving saying our gratitude out loud either to God in our prayers or to somebody else in your life. Is the avenue we've been given to celebrate the gift with the giver. So if you're a person of faith, Thanksgiving is the avenue we've been given to celebrate with God. Like look, what's happening. I think,
Alison Cook: so cool.
Nicole Zasowski: yes, this is awesome.
Alison Cook: Yeah.
Nicole Zasowski: I think often I was used to clinging to God, you know, overground, that was rough underfoot and then.
Pictured him saying, okay, have fun when you need me again, let me know, when you need me again, when we got to that ground, that was smoother and, and he absolutely wants to engage with us in the light of our joy just as he wants to be present with us in our pain. And Thanksgiving is, is a helpful practice for many reasons, but it is the avenue we've been given to actually celebrate God's good
Alison Cook: I love that there's a, it's a relational,
with God or with other people as well, like celebrating with a friend. I am so excited about. This and we give someone else a gift when, you if I've walked through painful times with a friend and then something really great happens, what a gift that I also get to be part of that experience.
So there you're so wise on that. There's a relational component to it.
Nicole Zasowski: I heard, um, I have no idea what the source was, so my apologies. It was something that just came across my Instagram feed. and because it was related to, to this conversation, I, I paid attention to it, and I am, I'm gonna paraphrase here, but it was a gentleman talking about, you know, how we often talk about that.
Best friend as the one you could call in the middle of the night, you know, with your deepest hurt, your deepest need, you know, when you're in your darkest hour. And he was saying, we don't often talk about that close friend. You know, the, the even more vulnerable close friend that you could call when you have something to celebrate and who you know is not gonna be threatened by that.
Gonna rejoice with you in that
'cause there's vulnerability in that
Alison Cook: Yes, there sure is.
Nicole Zasowski: calling somebody to say, I need to celebrate this with you. This breakthrough just happened, or, I'm so excited about this and you're the person I thought to call, in addition to celebrating other people, but I thought that was so rich and so good to point out.
Alison Cook: That's so good that that hit. Yeah, that who's that person
Nicole Zasowski: Yeah.
Alison Cook: can call? And really, yeah. That's, that's a great, insight. Nicole, [00:36:00] what, just as we're winding down here, what are some some practices that have helped you personally and that you use with clients?
Stay attuned to joy, so. Whether as a therapist, as a mom, as a person of faith, what are some practices that help you keep this part of you or stay attuned to, to this idea of joy that we're talking about?
Nicole Zasowski: Yeah, and there's tons in the book and the Bible study if you're curious about what do I actually do, but the, there's a few favorites. Thanksgiving would be one, and again, that's the outward expression of the gratitude that we feel in our hearts. So I live in the greater New York City area and. all over the New York City subway system are signs, you know, if you see something, say something, and it has a much more ominous meaning there.
But I've adopted and tweaked that phrase as if I feel something, say something. Okay. And I use that to challenge myself toward this notion of saying what I'm grateful for out loud again, either to God in your prayers or to someone in your life. And it is vulnerable. It's vulnerable to look somebody in the eye and say, Hey, I just want you to know this is the difference that your friendship has made in my life.
Alison Cook: Wow.
Nicole Zasowski: This is how I've grown because of our relationship. We don't talk like that in everyday life. So but it is so powerful. Not only will you increase your joy because the research says. That you will experience much more joy when you actually share your gratitude out loud through Thanksgiving than had you simply written it down and kept it to yourself.
So you'll increase your own joy, but hopefully you'll also. Pass some joy onto the recipient of, of that news. savoring you mentioned being in the present moment. and you and I as, as clinicians both know that, um. When we are anxious, our brain tends to run ahead to the future and think about all the what ifs, or it runs to the past and thinks about all the, what it could have, should have, we should have done differently.
The problem is, we're not empowered in the future or the past to make choices we, we only have today. And so that savoring is a practice that's both helpful for anxiety and for increasing our joy and the way that you practice it. Is you take one snapshot, not a whole dinner party, maybe the look on your friend's face when you gave them a compliment across the table or the sound of another friend's laugh or you know something.
You could take a photograph with your brain and you simply ask your five traditional sense what they're going to remember about that moment. So what do you see? What do you hear? What do you smell? What do you taste and what do you feel? [00:39:00] And what this does is it. Extracts more joy from the life that you're already living.
So again, we tend to think of, ugh, celebration. I've gotta add something to my life, or I've gotta spend a lot of money or a lot of time. And this is about experiencing more joy in your every day. The. Already have, so you don't need to add anything. It's just experiencing more joy in what you've already got.
Alison Cook: hmm.
Nicole Zasowski: Also, we don't drift toward joy. Our, our brains are a little bit like Velcro with negativity and Teflon with joyful things. So this is a way of retraining our brain to not only recognize joy that our brain would typically dismiss, but also helping that joy be stickier. And you're telling your brain, uh, this is something that you would normally think is not important, but we actually need to keep this and we're gonna store it in a part of our brain [00:40:00] where we can actually recall it later as a fond memory, and it's not just discarded as something that we don't need anymore.
So it's part of how we retrain our brain. Toward joy when you practice this daily, you'll start to see more and more opportunities. My, my clients and and readers will often tell me, first it was a challenge to do one thing a day, and then it's like, oh, it's hard to pick one because, because I keep seeing opportunities to savor and extract joy from that moment.
So those are two really powerful practices that. Are easy to incorporate daily that I would encourage listeners to start with.
Alison Cook: I love that because it gets to your point of, regardless of your circumstances, not to quote Paul, but regardless of our circumstances, I mean that is what, that's getting at. Even when things are really hard, I can look for those moments to safer.
Nicole Zasowski: yep. Yeah,
Alison Cook: And I could think of those just when you were talking about it, I could think of those moments where I felt really depressed and my, my husband's face or or something else.
You know, it's just like, oh, and then taking that in there's an attunement that's intentional and I love how you're kind of guiding us through how to practice, noticing it, but then really pulling. All of that into our muscle memory.
Nicole Zasowski: Yes.
Alison Cook: That's beautiful.
so what would you say to a listener right now who's in a hard season, maybe they're afraid to dream, afraid to celebrate, afraid of what could go wrong. What's one piece of wisdom that you'd summarize to say to them right now?
Nicole Zasowski: Hmm. Well, I'll go based on the research that, with that particular feeling, that foreboding joy, if you're holding something but you're afraid to dream or afraid to hope, Thanksgiving for what is, is what the research says is the only way to tolerate that [00:42:00] vulnerability of joy. So if you're celebrating something but you're afraid.
Um, it'll go away, or maybe there's a possibility of something on the horizon, but you're afraid to hope. Thanksgiving for where you are right now is what the research says is the practice that's gonna serve you best. And then I'll go back to my joy definition that is available to all of us because that's what we see.
Certainly in the Old Testament as we look at the Old Testament, that the Israelites, their celebration wasn't necessarily, I mean, knowing how difficult their story was at many points wasn't necessarily in reaction to, something good happening, but it was remembering God's character and remembering his faithfulness.
And so making celebration a rhythm. Versus a reaction in your family culture and in your own personal life, I think is a really helpful place to start as well.
Alison Cook: I love that you have to turn. Like you said, you're, there's that foreboding fear that's future oriented, we have to turn to today. What am I grateful for right now? What is good right now? What can I celebrate right now? That's, that's awesome. Tell us, Nicole, about how we, listeners can find you and especially about this newest project, daring Joy, which sounds like it's a very practical and biblically based way for folks who are wanting to incorporate more of what you've been talking about into their lives.
Nicole Zasowski: Sure. So my website is a great place to connect with me, Nicole Zaki, Z-A-S-O-W-S-K i.com. you can buy my book, what If It's Wonderful or Daring Joy. Uh, certainly on Amazon or everywhere you like to buy books. there's information on that on my website as well. and during Joy, I, I felt like when I finished, what if it's wonderful.
They're not companion projects, so you don't need to read them in order or anything like that. Um, content. Is largely different, but I felt like I wasn't done with the topic I just had this sense that we were gonna keep going in this conversation. and. That's where Daring Joy was born. It, it goes through six, the stories of six different women in the Bible.
And these women either hold up the mirror to what holds us back from joy or provide a beautiful example of what it actually looks like to practice joy when life doesn't necessarily serve that up. And.
Alison Cook: Wow.
Nicole Zasowski: I learned so much as I studied their stories. It's amazing how age old these struggles that we've been talking about in this conversation are.
and because you see it right from the beginning with Eve and the, the women are Eve, Sarah, Miriam. Mary, mother of Jesus, Elizabeth and Mary Magdalene, if you're interested in that. And it's a more of an interactive workbook style resource, whereas what if it's wonderful is a traditional trade book. But it does have discussion questions in the back if you looking for a book club discussion guide or anything like
Alison Cook: Uh, I think it's great. I highly recommend, and again, as therapists, right, we are so often helping people work through their pain and their trauma, and it is so amazing to me and beautiful that as a therapist, you're bringing in the fullness. Of what healing is, because this is a huge component of it, no matter how hard things are.
This is a component of wholeness, and I love that you're bringing it in with that nuance of understanding. You're not trying to bypass, but I just highly recommend to anyone listening to the therapist listening. and all of you listening, these are. Great resources, uh, so that we don't lose sight of the goodness and the beauty and the joy and I, I just am so grateful for what you're doing.
Nicole Zasowski: Thank you. You know that I am love your work and and so appreciate you as well. So this was a fun and lovely conversation for me to have as well.
Alison Cook: Awesome. Thank you, Nicole.
Why do we work so hard to earn the approval of others?
And what is it really costing us?
In this candid, practical episode, Dr. Alison tackles one of the most common struggles she hears from so many of you: people pleasing. You’ll hear powerful voice messages from listeners as she explores the many forms this pattern can take—from avoiding conflict, to saying “yes” when you want to say “no,” to slowly losing sight of who you really are.
Together, you’ll learn:
- 5 common roots of people pleasing
- How certain Bible verses get misused to reinforce self-erasure
- The high cost of people pleasing
- 3 simple steps to move toward wholeness
📥 Pick up your copy of The Best of You—Dr. Alison’s book on this topic here
📥 Download Alison’s free printable with the five boundary tools when you sign up for her weekly email.
Other episodes you might like :
Episode 46: People Pleasing as Survival, How Jesus Regulated Emotions & the Problem With Toxic Positivity and Spiritual Bypassing with Aundi Kolber
Episode 33: People Pleasing & Developing Your Own Inner Compass: Thoughts on Depression, Mental Health & the Church, and Finding Hope in Dark Places with Dr. Monique Gadson
Episode 14: The Fawn Response
💬 Got a question? Call 307-429-2525 and leave a message for a future episode.
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Editing by Giulia Hjort
Sound engineering by Kelly Kramarik
Music by Andy Luiten
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:
Hi everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Best of You. I'm so glad you're here today with me. One of my favorite parts of this podcast is getting to hear directly from you. Your questions, your stories, and the honest reflections you share with me through your emails on social media, through your reviews, or whether I get the opportunity to meet you in person.
And in today's episode, you're gonna hear some of your voices woven throughout our conversation. We're talking about something so many of us wrestle with, and that's people pleasing, what it looks like, how it shapes our relationships, and how we begin to break free from it in a way that honors both ourselves and God.
Speaking of your voices, I'd love for you to be part of an upcoming episode where we're exploring comparison and competition within friendships, how it shows up, how we navigate it, and how we heal from it. If you've got a question, an observation, or an insight related to how you've dealt with comparison and competition within friendships, we would love to include your voice.
You can call us at (307) 429-2525 and leave us a voicemail and we might just use your voice in a future episode.
Now for today's topic one, I know so many of us wrestle with people pleasing. This was the top theme that surfaced through the voicemails that you've been leaving me these past few months. In today's episode, we're gonna name what people pleasing really is, the different ways it shows up and how we begin to break free, not by abandoning others, but by coming home to ourselves and to a God who doesn't ask us to disappear.
We're gonna start off today with your voices because people pleasing doesn't always look the same, and the journey out of it is deeply personal. These different voices show us just how varied and also vulnerable the journey can be.
Hi, Dr. Allison. My name is Elizabeth and I've been following your work for a few years. I'm a really big fan and I always look forward to Thursdays when a new podcast episode drops. As a recovering people pleaser, I have been working on showing up for myself and showing up to my life more fully. I'm trying to move away from postures of passivity, people pleasing, going along to get along, et cetera, and continuing to develop my bravery muscles.
This sometimes means disappointing people or having conflict, which isn't easy. As someone who is very attuned to others, I'm working on differentiating, taking care of myself and asking for what I need. I'm so grateful for your work and encouragement to be true to ourselves and to who we are in God.
Hi, my name is Susan. I'm calling from Ohio. I love your podcast. I listen to it and I go back and re-listen to a lot of episodes and I love how you combine psychology and faith and an area that I would really like to grow in personally and spiritually is not meeting other people to make me feel like I'm okay when I feel that sting of disapproval from others or maybe even rejection. They're angry with me. Suddenly I feel like my prop has just been pulled away from me, and then I feel bad about myself or I don't feel okay. And I know that God loves me, but I really struggle to be secure enough in God's love that other people aren't like a mirror for me to see myself, to see if they approve of me or like me in order that I can feel okay.
I wanna be more secure in God's love so I can forget about myself and just have that freedom and relationships to interact with other people. And to be focused on them and not always worried, am I okay? And if I am alone and I maybe don't have the support of others, am I still okay?
Hello, good morning. My name is Jeannie and I'm calling from the North Dallas, Texas area. I feel like I've been growing in many aspects of my life through various things such as meditation practices, centering prayer, shadow work, parts work. Understanding some of my core wounds and defenses, becoming alcohol free, making healthy choices, and incorporating changes from insightful podcasts and a growing relationship with Christ.
So where I continue to struggle is building and maintaining relationships. I just still happier living a life of solitude, though I know relationships are important. Doing the inner work has taken a lot, and when I go into relationships, I don't feel the value of them. They feel shallow and make me want to hide from all the work I've done.
I would like to grow on those deeper relationships of authenticity, and I don't feel like I can do that in some of my current close friendships.
Hi, Dr. Allison. This is Bree and I am calling from Philadelphia. I'm so grateful for your work. You have been an integral part of my faith journey, and honestly, God has used you tremendously in my life. So I just wanna say thank you. Where I would like to grow is mainly in my spiritual life. I used to be very linear when it came to growth where I would only focus on spiritual and I would neglect any type of physical strength or emotional or mental strength learning from you and others.
I have balanced that out some, but something that's been difficult is. Understanding how to incorporate my faith in this new understanding of my mental health and how that matters, and how it's important to not neglect things like rest and making sure that I am prioritizing myself when in the past I would neglect myself.
And so now that I'm choosing myself more. Sometimes things that have felt hopeful for me are not as helpful, such as certain spiritual practices like sitting down, reading my Bible, going to church, listening to Christian music. I almost have started to have like a stress response to those things because for so long I just allowed myself.
To only let those things be helpful. And now I'm finding that other things are helpful, like grounding exercises and listening to my needs and saying no. And so it's kind of been a little disorienting in this season of my spiritual life because. I don't know how to relate to God now, and I know you talked about this quite a bit.However, I feel this disconnect with trying to relate to God in this new season and this new understanding of me choosing me.
Did you notice the different faces of people pleasing? Jeannie, you've done some deep inner work, but you're now struggling to connect in relationships that feel shallow, and that makes sense. Elizabeth, you're learning how to show up bravely even when it means you have to disappoint others. Susan, you're longing to feel secure in God's love instead of relying on others' approval to feel. Okay. Brie, you're learning to say no more often to choose yourself, and it's reshaping how you experience God. All of this makes sense and underneath it all, do you hear the longing in each one of these voices? In all of our voices? The longing for freedom, for real connection, and for clarity, and a deep sense of who we really are in God's love.
What is people pleasing? I wanna start with a definition because people pleasing isn't the same thing as being kind, compassionate, or generous. Those are beautiful qualities that are often lying underneath our people pleasing tendencies, but those qualities are rooted in deep love and genuine care for the other person.
People pleasing, on the other hand, is something different. It's when your sense of worth depends on other people being pleased with you. It's when your desire to be liked, to be accepted, to be affirmed leads you to abandon your own needs, your opinions, even your values. And here's where it gets interesting, because there's a deeper distinction.
We don't always talk about. We often conflate approval seeking with people pleasing. Approval seeking is the motivation underneath our people pleasing behaviors. It's that inner drive to be liked, to be validated, to be accepted by others, and often it's sub subconscious. We don't even realize it's there.
It's an inner belief deep down inside that you might not even be aware of That says. My okayness depends on your approval and approval. Seeking shows up in all kinds of ways. It shows up when we overexplain ourselves to make sure we're understood when we fish for compliments or reassurance, when we avoid disagreement so that others won't think poorly of us, or when we perform or curate a version of ourselves to earn praise.
Now people pleasing is how that motivation often plays out externally. It's the behavior pattern that we see, right? People pleasing behaviors are all those behaviors we do to ensure that no one else will ever be upset with us. It often looks like saying yes. When you want to say no. Avoiding conflict at all costs, taking responsibility for other people's emotions, prioritizing other people's needs to your own detriment.
Here's the relationship between the two. Approval seeking is the internal driver. I need your approval to be okay. And people pleasing is one of the ways that we act out on that drive. Here's what the research in psychology shows us. People who chronically seek approval from others, especially through people pleasing behaviors, report higher levels of depression, anxiety, and emotional exhaustion.
And it's not because they're quote unquote, too nice. It's because over time you suppress your own needs, your own authentic voice in order to earn love. One recent study found that this pattern actually creates what psychologists call social disconnection. Despite trying to gain acceptance, people pleasers often feel more lonely and more misunderstood because the connections they form aren't based on their true self.
The very thing we do to feel closer to others actually leaves us feeling more alone and acknowledging that truth is where the healing begins. I actually feel alone, even though I'm working overtime to make sure everybody else is happy. I feel disconnected and unseen even though I'm working so hard to make sure other people feel validated by me.
The more you rely on approval from others to feel okay, the less seen and the more isolated you actually feel. Even though people pleasing is an attempt to belong, it often creates the very disconnection we're trying so hard to avoid. If it's so counterproductive, why do we develop these people pleasing patterns of behavior?
This is where I find parts work to be such a helpful perspective. When you think about your own people pleasing tendencies, I want you to think about that part of you as a protector part of you. Some part of you took up, pleasing others, trying to win the approval of others as its strategy and what's underneath that protector part of you is a deep fear that if I don't make that other person happy.
I will not be okay. My life depends on their happiness. My okayness depends on their approval of me. So there's two different things going on. We've got that part of you that takes up the strategy and does all of the people pleasing activities that make us so mad at ourselves, but underneath that is a deep fear that I have to earn their love, that I can't disappoint them or I won't be.
Okay. And here are five common reasons that that pattern might have surfaced inside of your own soul. Number one, attachment wounds. You may have learned early on that love was conditional. You didn't experience unconditional love from your caregivers, from the people around you, so a part of you learned that you had to work hard to earn love.
Number two, high sensitivity to others' emotions. People who are highly empathetic and those high and emotional intelligence often pick up intuitively on others' needs quickly and adapt to keep the peace. So part of you just never learned how to set gentle boundaries with a gift that God has given you.
Number three, enmeshment or blurred boundaries. In childhood, you may have taken responsibility for someone else's emotional wellbeing, especially a parent or a sibling, or an immediate family member, and you learn to conflate their happiness, their wellbeing with your own. Number four, religious or cultural messages.
Many of us were taught explicitly that it's selfish to say no to have needs or to even put ourselves first. We sort of cringe inwardly at the thought. It just feels so selfish, like it goes against everything we've been taught. And number five, it can also be a form of trauma response. People pleasing can be a form of what therapist Pete Walker has called fawning, which is a stress response.
Just as we fight or flee when we feel fearful or when we notice stress, right? We run toward conflict or we flee it. The fond response Walker theorized is a different sort of stress response that looks like being nice. It's a form of survival. If I can stay small and camouflage myself, then I won't be a threat.
So as you listen, think about which one of those roots resonates most with your experience and above all. Please know that people pleasing once did keep you safe. It is a form of survival response, but if it's running your life now, it's time to bring compassion to that part of you and help it rest inside healthy boundary lines in your soul.
I wanna talk a little bit about the Bible and people pleasing, and that touches on that. Number four, some of the religious and cultural messages, many of us received. One of the hardest things I hear from readers and listeners is this, I thought I was doing what God wanted, putting others first, dying to myself, but now I feel burned out, resentful and lonelier than ever.
That's real. And unfortunately there are a few Bible verses that can get misused to reinforce. People pleasing. Here are two examples. Number one, the verse from Philippians two, three that says, do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, rather, in humility, value others above yourselves. I love this verse.
I have tried to live my life by this verse, but the truth is this verse is about humility. Not self erasure. It doesn't say, your needs don't matter. It doesn't say you don't matter. In fact, humility, I would argue flows from a strong sense of self, from being deeply acquainted with your own needs, with your own opinions, from being deeply connected with our own souls.
Here are some examples of how humility differs from people pleasing. Let's say you're receiving critical feedback. Humility says, that's helpful. I hadn't considered that perspective. I'll reflect on it. People pleasing says, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to do it wrong. I'll fix it right away. Please don't be upset.
Let's say someone disagrees with you. Humility says, I see that we disagree and I respect your perspective. Here's where I am coming from. People pleasing says, yes, totally. I agree. Even when you don't, when someone is disappointed in you, humility says, I understand that this isn't what you hoped for. I'm also making the choice that feels right for me.
People pleasing says, I feel terrible. I'll change my decision so that you are not upset when it comes to service. Humility sounds like I'd love to help where I can and here's what I can realistically offer people pleasing sounds like whatever you need anything, just let me know. And then you feel resentful or depleted when you give more than you actually have.
When someone asks you to do something you don't have capacity for. Humility says, I really value what you're doing, but I need to say no right now so that I can honor my other commitments. People pleasing says, sure, I can do it. Anything, even though you're overwhelmed. Do you see the distinction? Humility honors the other person.
It honors their perspective without erasing yourself. The other verse that I talk about at length in my book, the best of you is Matthew 1624. Jesus says, deny yourself. Take up your cross and follow me. This one is a big one for me because I do believe in self-denial as a spiritual practice, but it gets so misconstrued, especially for women and especially for people who are inherently empathetic and especially for people who are carrying attachment wounds and trauma from childhood.
Jesus isn't saying never have an opinion. He's inviting us to surrender false identities, not our God-given voice or our inherent dignity. And listen, sometimes our false identities that he's asking us to deny is the part of us working overtime to please. Others people pleasing is not the same as Christlike Love.
Jesus was full of compassion and he had strong boundaries. He said no, he left crowds to rest. He sometimes disappointed other people and he spoke up when something wasn't right.
Most of us try to fix people pleasing by only changing the outward behavior. We try to say no more often. We practice boundary scripts. We brace ourselves for disappointing others, and it's a good start. Sometimes we have to practice before something feels intuitive, but if we don't also address the inner fear.
Driving those behaviors we're just muscling our way through. We're trying to fix ourselves instead of seeking the deeper transformational healing, I believe God has for us that deep inner fear is often that quiet voice inside each of us that says, if I stop pleasing them, will I be safe? Will I be loved?
Will I be okay? This is not just about learning to behave differently. It's about learning to relate differently to the part of you that's afraid. It's about connecting to that part of you that never fully knew love. Let's walk through what that healing process can look like. Number one, name the part of you that people pleases.
Simply notice what that part of you looks like, how it shows up. I notice there's a part of me that wants everyone to like me. That part of you isn't bad. It's trying to protect you, so we don't shame it. We get curious about it. What are you afraid would happen if I stop pleasing everyone? That one question can open the door to so much healing.
Number two, let God's love speak louder than other people's approval. This one's hard because that approval often feels like safety, but this is why Susan's question was so powerful. How do I feel okay without someone else's approval that's such. A valid and real question. When we start to shift, it opens our soul up to a different kind of love, and it can often feel disorienting, uncomfortable, uncertain, like we've shifted how we show up with other people, but then what happens to the part of us that has been working so hard to fill that void with other people's approval?
How do we bring that deeper part of us into. God's loving presence. It begins by rooting yourself in a love that doesn't shift with other people's moods, opinions or expectations. It means accessing that deeper younger. Part of you that maybe has never fully known what it's like to sit in the presence of love and to absorb into the depths of your being that you are not loved because you please others, you are loved because you are God's beloved child.
Let that truth settle into your nervous system. Spend time in prayer or reflection with that fearful part of you. What if it's true that I'm loved by God? What if I'm safe, even if others are not pleased with me? When you stop pleasing others, it doesn't only affect your relationships with others, it affects your relationship with God.
Parts of us have to learn what it feels like to receive. Love parts of us don't know what that feels like. When you've spent years pushing down your needs, beginning to care for yourself, your body, your mind, your emotions can feel like uncharted territory like Brie shared. It can even feel disorienting in your relationship with God.
Here's the thing. Your body, your emotions are not obstacles. It's new to discover a God who is actually in your body, in your nervous system, in your breath, in your movement, in the way you breathe. Slow when you feel safe. What if God's present isn't something you only reach for outside of yourself, but something you learn to experience within yourself as you become more whole?
Number three, practice speaking up bit by bit. As you become more aware of what's happening internally, take small steps to introduce change in your patterns. Healing doesn't mean swinging to the other extreme and becoming harsh or reactive. Healing is far more sustainable when you take small steps and introduce tiny changes and then allow your body, your nervous system, your emotions, the time to catch up.
And lastly, get support. People pleasing patterns often run deep. They're often rooted in early experiences and deeply embedded cultural messages and spiritual beliefs. You don't have to untangle this alone. Check in with a therapist, a spiritual director, a good friend, a wise mentor who can help you notice these patterns and begin to rewrite them.
As we close this episode, I want you to remember even the people pleasing part of you is. Beloved of God, don't beat yourself up for that. Part of you. Learn to get curious about those behaviors and the fears that lie underneath them. This is part of becoming integrated, becoming more whole. You are doing the brave work of coming home to yourself and learning to trust a God who wants to heal and be near every single part of you.
That's the kind of love that doesn't require performance or pleasing, just presence.
Thank you for joining me for this week's episode Of The Best of You, it would mean so much if you take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts and click the Plus or. Follow button that will ensure you don't miss an episode, and it helps get the word out to others while you're there.
I'd love it if you leave your five star review. I look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God. You heal others and you stay true to your God given self.
What if what keeps you going is also keeping you stuck?
Does venting actually help, or is it actually making you feel worse?
This powerful, hope-filled conversation might just change your entire approach to rest—it did for me. Cognitive psychologist and neuroscientist Dr. Therese Huston joins me for a conversation that’s incredibly helpful for anyone feeling overwhelmed, emotionally drained, or stuck in numbing patterns. I’m not exaggerating when I say it is a game-changer.
If you’ve been feeling off-center, burned out, or unsure how to truly rest, this episode will meet you with both compassion and science-backed tools to help you reset—even when you don’t have much time.
We cover:
- The surprising truth about venting—and why it may not be helping
- Why certain “breaks” leave you more drained
- How to reset your brain in less than five minutes (yes, really)
- Simple, science-backed techniques to calm your nervous system
- Why numbing behaviors (like mindless snacking, scrolling, or binging TV) can feel good—but keep you stuck
- Two powerful on-air practices you can do right along with us
This is not about productivity hacks. It’s about reclaiming your peace and tending to your soul—so you can show up as the person you want to be, no matter what your day looks like.
📘 Check out Sharp: 14 Simple Ways to Improve Your Life with Brain Science by Dr. Therese Huston
📥 Grab your 3 free Boundaries For Your Soul resources here:
📥 Download Alison’s free printable with the five boundary tools when you sign up for her weekly email.
Here are some other episodes you might like :
Episode 132 : 3 Strategies for Managing Overwhelm and Emotional Stress in the Sandwich Generation
Episode 80: Navigating Overwhelming Emotions
Episode 146: The Difference Between Escape & Relief with Annie F. Downs
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
💬 Got a question? Call 307-429-2525 and leave a message for a future episode.
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Editing by Giulia Hjort
Sound engineering by Kelly Kramarik
Music by Andy Luiten
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:
Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You. I'm so glad you're here with me this week. This is one of my favorite episodes, and the reason is it literally changed the trajectory of my summer,and I don't say that lightly.
The truth is I've been quietly working on a new book these past few months, and this one has been more personal than anything I've written before. It's really different than the books I've written in the past, and I'll share more with you about it later. It’s hard for me to come out from behind being a little bit more of the expert and be a little bit more vulnerable about some of the pain points and some of the wounds and some of the stories from my own life.
And I had just turned in a rough draft of the manuscript the day before I was scheduled to record this podcast interview, and I was almost wanting to reschedule it, but I didn't wanna be unprofessional, but [00:01:00] the truth is I was tired mentally, emotionally, and physically, and over the last few weeks as I was kind of facing down the end of this deadline of getting this rough draft, and I had really started self-soothing in some old familiar ways that I haven't turned to a long time.
Binging reality television, reaching for sugar, ice cream. All the things I know aren't actually helping me feel restored, but that were just kind of old ways of trying to self-soothe and,
And so I woke up the morning of the interview knowing to myself, I've gotta shift. I've gotta figure out how to get back into healthier habits. I don't wanna stay in this place. And I found myself literally asking, but how do I reset?
How do I come back? To center, especially when I still have so much to do and I, I don't wanna continue down this path, just muscling my way through and then checking out. I, I wanna get back to [00:02:00] a better place, a better way of working, and I'm not sure how to do that. And then this very day I recorded this conversation that I'm gonna share with you with Dr.Therese Houston. And I'm telling you the exercises she walks me through.
At the end of this episode, they only took maybe two minutes and it shifted something deep inside of me. Dr. Therese Houston is a cognitive psychologist and neuroscientist at Seattle University, and she's the author of a brand new book, it's called Sharp: 14 Simple Ways to Improve Your Life With Brain Science.
She's written for the New York Times Time, Harvard Business Review and more, and she has an incredible gift for making science both practical and deeply compassionate. In this conversation, we explore what kind of rest your brain actually needs. especially when a full day off isn't an option.
We talk about the kinds of breaks [00:03:00] that truly restore your energy, focus and presence. And which habits, like mindless scrolling or emotional eating, the ones I was turning to, can quietly drain you even more. And toward the end of the episode, Dr. Houston walks me through
two simple realtime exercises. I do them on air, and you could do them right along with us. And I am not exaggerating when I say I felt like I had just had. A massage, my whole body relaxed. My mind softened, and something shifted deep inside. This is not about a productivity hack.
It's about giving your soul space to breathe
so that you can come home to yourself and return to your day, whether you're parenting, whether you're working, no matter what you're doing, a better version of yourself. If you've been feeling overwhelmed, depleted, if you've found yourself numbing out more than usual or just slightly off center, this episode [00:04:00] will
meet you right where you need to be met. I am thrilled to bring you my conversation with Dr. Therese Houston.
Alison Cook: Therese, I'm so thrilled to meet you and to have this conversation with you. You've got such an amazing body of research and expertise that I'm thrilled to dive into today, especially with this new book. Can you just share with us a little bit about yourself and your background? What exactly it is that you do and how, what led you to
Therese Huston: Oh, thank you so much, Alison. It is such a treat to be here. You have such a warm and helpful show. I, I think this is a resource more people need to know about. Well, I am a cognitive psychologist by training, not, cognitive behavioral therapy, but I'm a scientist. Uh, I spent a lot of time in the lab, so I have my PhD as well as I've done postdoctoral work in clinical cognitive neuroscience.
So really focusing on the brain [00:05:00] and then. In a a what probably seems like a strange detour. I also got a degree at the business school at University of Oxford, so that was a lot of fun and really provides a nice compliment to like learning about how to be a good leader as well as taking a scientific perspective on, on the brain and how to take better care of ourselves and be sharper.
You know, be as mentally sharp as we can be. And what led me to this particular work, this book, sharp, is that, uh, I don't know about you, but during the peak of the pandemic, I found myself so drawn into the news cycle I'd go to sit. Down at my desk to work and instead of getting into my work, I would check the newsfeed and, you know,do we have a vaccine yet, or do you know what's, what's the status on, on in my neighborhood?
You know, what are the rates in, in my local area of COVID? Anyway, I got, I developed some really bad habits in terms of not getting focused. The way I used to. And so I needed some strategies for myself [00:06:00] to improve, my ability to focus. And since I've got a neuroscience background, I looked, does neuroscience have any tips on how to get better focused?
And sure enough, there was some great research out there that I'd never seen and that made me curious about, oh, are there tips for improving memory? Are there strategies for being more creative? Or, you know, all from neuroscience perspective is what I. As the filter I was using, and sure enough, there's so much helpful stuff.
I, I realized I need to share this because if it's helping me, it can help other people.
Alison Cook: I am so excited. This is so timely because I think with the last election cycle similarly and just with social media in general, many of us get into that habit of, and I've seen it in myself. I've been working on some writing myself these last few months, and I'm just aware, I'm like, oh my. focus, I can tell, has, has changed.
And and you know, and I can go down the self shame cycle of what's wrong with me and beating myself up, but [00:07:00] the reality is something real is happening in our brains and there are real. Ways to reset and renew and refocus. And so when I saw this book, I was just so excited to have you on.
I wanna say one other thing - you're an actual neuroscientist
Therese Huston: am, I, I, I've, done work in the lab and with patients and, um, done research on testosterone levels. So I am a real neuroscientist.
Alison Cook:You know, it's very trendy in many ways right now to say neuroscience
Therese Huston: right? Yes.
Alison Cook: What does that really mean? I, I think sometimes that's misused, but you are the person who's actually behind what we mean you, and you know many others, but [00:08:00] I mean, it's a very specific field. It's a very specific kind of study. So what do we mean when we say neuroscience?
Therese Huston: Such a great question and I'm glad you asked because all too often I'll, see a popular article in a popular magazine that says it's gonna talk about brain science or neuroscience, and then they don't talk about neuroscience at all. And I'm like, well, that's really good psychology research, which is very important.
We, we should be paying attention to that. But it's not about the brain or about the nervous system, right? So for it to qualify as neuroscience, there should be some mention of either a specific brain area, or something in the body that relates to the nervous system. So that might be talking about
dopamine levels, like neurotransmitter levels, cortisol levels, oxytocin, which is a hormone that can affect your thinking as well as how you feel. So if it's talking about something that's biological, right, and it might even be a term you've never heard before, like the anterior cingulate cortex.
If, if it sound like, I don't know what that is. [00:09:00] That's part of the brain. And so that would be neuroscience. Whereas if it's just talking about, for instance emotion regulation, deeply important and so much great psychology research there. But for it to be qualified as neuroscientific research, there'd be mention of a specific brain area or mention of, serotonin, something that's specific to the physiology.
Alison Cook: I love it. So
as such, you're studying not just cognitive, as the our thoughts, our thinking life. You're studying how that works in our
Therese Huston: Exactly, and what's exciting are. I started doing research in cognitive neuroscience in the mid nineties, and what's been exciting to see change is, in the nineties, we were only focused on things like, uh, how does attention work? And now we've gotten to a point where we can start to talk about.
Well, what happens when you're creative, right? What happens in the brain when a person's being creative versus when they're stuck in a rut? what happens when a person is feeling emotionally triggered? And so [00:10:00] there are so many things that we now know, we're beginning to understand what's happening in the brain.
There's so many things like we, we, we still need to move into the direction of what is the neuroscience of. Feeling connected to God. We don't know that yet. you know, that's, there are so many new areas. I know we will get there. We're not quite there yet, but we're moving in the right direction to understand so many more experiences through how the brain functions.
Alison Cook: Well, I, I love this and on behalf of many of my listeners, many of us, including myself, grew up in faith traditions that in many ways have created. Incredible resources, spiritual resources on one hand. And also there have been some misunderstandings of the biology of the brain where certain thought patterns, certain habits, certain behavioral styles, have been categorized as wrong or sinful, when in fact brain [00:11:00] science is now helping us understand.
This is just the way your brain is working. Doesn't mean maybe we like it, but it also takes away this stigma. And so I just wanna thank you for your work and your research. I think it's so freeing for so many people to really understand the brain and the mind and the nervous system. It's complicated and it's easy to.
Beat ourselves up and blame ourselves for certain ways that we behave, when in fact our brains and our nervous systems are just doing what they know how to do. And you're gonna give me
Therese Huston: Yeah, it's very true. I, I just had a recent conversation on a podcast about the neuroscience of bias, and that's a really fascinating area where, you know, we might judge other people for being biased and feel like we're not biased ourselves, but there are so many ways that. In-group favoritism is automatic and we have to fight it, right?
So it's really interesting. I, I do think that [00:12:00] we're often hard on ourselves around things that we don't want to see in ourselves or we don't wanna see in others. the good news is these things aren't inevitable. the hard part is, is that we need to educate ourselves as to, okay, I'm gonna fall into that pattern.
For instance, maybe I fall into a pattern of, of venting to people when I'm really, that's not productive for me, but I, I can't think of another way. 'cause I just need, it feels like I'm blowing off steam, but after I vent, I don't feel any better. Right. So it's really helpful to find out, oh, well we're, we're learning enough through neuroscience that we can find out what's a better way to spend that break instead of just venting to your colleagues or venting to your partner.
Alison Cook: Amazing. You just, okay. Teed us
Therese Huston: Oh,
Alison Cook: perfectly. 'cause this is what I wanna get into. Okay. So let's talk about breaks, right? We're, let's just, let's start there. I wanna get to sleep, but I wanna start right where we are with breaks, we. Going through the day, we've got a million things to do. Maybe we're parenting, maybe we're [00:13:00] at work.
Maybe we have 16 things on our to-do list and we're exhausted. and I've just been living this Therese, I've just been living this. I'm like, I know there's probably a choice I could make right now that would
Therese Huston: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Alison Cook: me, but what I really wanna do is eat a candy bar. is you know, scroll.
On TikTok, you know, I mean, which I recently discovered. I never understood it before. Now I'm like, I get it. I get why? It just is crack for the brain. I'm doing the very things I know enough not know this is not actually helping me, but it does feel like a hit of relief in
Therese Huston: It does. It does. And so what's tricky here is that we need to think there are things that are cognitively restorative. So there are things that can make it easier for you to make decisions easier for you to concentrate and focus. So that would, those would be cognitive [00:14:00] resets.
There are things that can help you emotionally reset so that you feel you can come in and be more patient or be in a better mood or help someone even when you're tired, OR lead even when you're tired. So that would be emotional reset. then there are unfortunately things that just make us numb, right?
Things that just.
Alison Cook: Mm-hmm.
Therese Huston: Help us get out of the moment. And there are times when you need to, and you probably know this from your own work, is there are times when we need psychological detachment. We need to be able to get some distance from whatever's upsetting, right? But if it's just for the purpose of numbing, so you mentioned candy bars.
For me it's ice cream. Okay. that's a break that I will sometimes take that it starts off as feeling so good and then it was like, uh, yeah. That, that is not helping me reengage with what I need to reengage with. So I think a really nice question to ask yourself after taking. A break, whether that's a, snack break or a scrolling break [00:15:00] or, You know, you take a walk or you do some jumping jacks, right? But after you you've treated yourself to some kind of break. Ask yourself, do I feel more ready to blank? Do I feel more ready to focus, to lead, to help? Or do I just feel like I've kind of checked out
It's okay to check out some of the time, but if, if all of your breaks are just helping you check out, it's not doing that cognitive reset or that emotional reset that's going to to, to help you show up in the way you wanna show up.
Alison Cook: Sometimes it's healthy to get detachment. Like the, the times when I think that it's helpful to get detachment. I, when I think of a work context, there's just been an announcement of huge.
Therese Huston: Reorganization that's taking place and you're gonna report to someone you don't know or don't like, like you're like, you need a little distance from this because otherwise it's just gonna be a bad day all around. And all your colleagues are on the Slack channel or talking and they're all upset and you just need to push away a little bit.
That would be a time when you'd need some detachment.
AD BREAK I
Alison Cook: I notice sometimes I will put on a podcast, maybe I'm cooking dinner, and I'll think to myself, I don't wanna listen to the news,
Therese Huston: Yes.
Alison Cook: but I will make myself, because I feel like I should know what's going on in the news.
What I really wanna do is listen to a comedian and are you saying that there's maybe something legitimate there?
Therese Huston: absolutely. So. in terms of, giving yourself a cognitive break or an emotional break, either one of those, those cognitive or emotional resets, there is so much legitimacy to, it needs to be something for the cognitive reset. It needs to be something that doesn't require your focus. Right. it's not taking effort for you to focus, right?
So reading a novel is something that actually stokes imagination, but it doesn't take, unless it's a novel you aren't enjoying and you're [00:17:00] just reading it for your book club, right? But if, as long as it's a novel that you're like, I can't wait to get back to my book, right? for me, it's mystery novels.
If it, if it's enticing, right? It's the thing that if anything, you're having to say, oh, I can only read for 10 minutes. That would be something that's going to help you both cognitively reset. It'll actually improve your. Um, what's something called the default mode network will become activated, and that's something that often gets suppressed when we're overly focused.
And having the default mode network activated is, is helpful in terms of feeling restored. So, so reading a novel as long as it's a fun novel for you, that that helps with the cognitive reset and also the emotional reset people experience. there's actually a study from 2009 that found that.
Just six minutes and that's all it took was six minutes of reading. A fun book decreased, perceived stress levels by 68%. That's huge, right? So short, right? Six minutes. You don't have to have a half an hour. You don't have to be on a beach. Or in my case, the hammock in the backyard, [00:18:00] six minutes. And it was more effective than walking.
It was more effective than listening to music. So in terms of if you need a stress reduction technique, you know, grab a book. What I do is I actually set a timer for me. I'll give myself 10 minutes, but I'll set a timer so that I don't, I'm not thinking like, oh crap, I need to get back to the thing.
Instead, I just set a timer.
Alison Cook: that is so helpful because when we're talking about what are actually restorative breaks. Versus kind of our, our go-to ice cream or sugar scrolling, which isn't giving us that restoration. Am I, am I correct in
Therese Huston: Yes. And we can, we can talk more about the pros and cons of scrolling, but chances are, it's not giving you a cognitive or an emotional reset. Yeah.
Alison Cook: Okay, so, I, this is very interesting to me. So I'm gonna say a couple of things and then we'll try to 'cause in my mind, and it's a little bit like eating our vegetables in my mind, I know. I'm like taking a walk, taking deep breaths. let's put it this way, when I've been [00:19:00] off game, I, I can think, oh, I should do those things, but they're not, it's like eating vegetables when you've been having a lot of sugar.
It's,,it's a big, big leap. It's hard to get there when you've been kind of on a bender, right? So lower hanging fruit, to me that might be a little bit like, you just said it, a novel. Music I heard you say like, then parts of me start to go, oh, that actually sounds enjoyable. Not just like jumping to vegetables, but maybe like a intermediary.
And so I think I'm hearing you saying there are many ways, some of them are enjoyable, but in this category of things that are going to be truly restorative.
Therese Huston: it absolutely does, and it's fascinating. So. Reading a novel, like I said, for as little as six minutes. Another good one that that might feel like it's a juicy, guilty pleasure is listening to music that gives you chills. So this is important. So you don't just wanna turn on [00:20:00] Pandora or Spotify and listen to, you know, some station that's, that's the top 40, right?
You don't wanna do that. What you wanna do is what's the song that when you listen to it, you get chills? Okay? Like where it gives you goosebumps. Um, for me right now, there's a song by Buzi that I really like that when I listen to it, I just like perk up and I just feel like I wanna move with it, right?
So what researchers have found is that, When you feel those chills, you're getting a dopamine hit and it's a good kind of, so there's, you know, people can talk about us being addicted to dopamine, but dopamine when, especially if you're feeling tired or depleted from caring or leading, when you get that dopamine hit, you will feel re-energized and you'll feel like you have more motivation to dive back into whatever is hard.
you can kind of make your own little dopamine playlist of like, what are the songs that give me chills? Doesn't matter if no one else likes 'em, but it does it for me. And then have that available, you know, on your phone or whatever device so that when you [00:21:00] need, or in your car have the cd, you know, already installed and ready to go hit that song.
And. Even if you just sit in your driveway and listen to it for three minutes, you, you can then be like, alright, I can, woo. I feel so much better. And, and even if you move right or if you're on TikTok you mentioned, you know, it's so easy to, to be critical of, of, of teenagers who are like, oh, they just wanna watch the dance moves.
Try them actually moving motion, if that's fun for you. Fabulous. No one needs to see it. You don't need to record yourself.
Alison Cook: Right. You don't have to fill
Therese Huston: Exactly. movement really helps shake off stress and reduce cortisol levels.
Alison Cook: Okay, so it's, it's as if science is validating that inner impulse, and I'm thinking about the Grey's Anatomy phenomenon, and I, I think Sandra o actually did this at, uh, she was the commencement speaker at my alma mater and she had everybody do a dance moment that dance it out, is actually helping you, it's actually doing something in your brain and nervousness.[00:22:00]
Therese Huston: Yeah. Well, it's really interesting because, so, in broad strokes, we have a, two different nervous systems. We have a sympathetic nervous system, which is a strange name, but it basically is the fight or flight part of your nervous system. The, like, I'm gonna push hard, I've gotta try hard.
And there's the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the rest and digest system. It's the calming down. And what's interesting is about. Dance is, it actually helps activate, it does many things to the brain as well, but it actually can help activate the parasympathetic nerve system. And when you think about it, you wouldn't dance if you were about to have to flee a scary animal, right?
That right. And so, you would, you would dance when you're relaxed, right? And so it's basically giving your body a signal like, Hey, we're relaxed right now. And so You're sending a signal through your body, up to your brain, like, Hey, everything's okay right now.
Alison Cook: Oh wow. And that gives your body some restoration. It, it actually, physiologically, uh. It's [00:23:00] such a bottom up to use the language of psychology hack and I'm such a head in my head person, and so it's telling yourself
Therese Huston: I'm okay. Yes.
Alison Cook: through your
Therese Huston: right. And we can talk about some other techniques where your body can signal to your brain, Hey, we're okay. but dance is kind of a fun one. and if it's, if dance isn't your thing, don't, don't put yourself under that pressure. But if that's something that like, oh, I can take a dance break and that would help me reengage and perform better the rest of the day.
Yes, please.
Alison Cook: Yep. That is Okay. I wanna, I'm curious because again, there's the things we, and again, there's no shame in this, but are the things we're sort of hardwired or conditioned or, you know, whether it's grabbing a, the food or, the phone.
The other one you mentioned this, that I think some of us do is
to a friend or to a colleague, or to a spouse. What is it about venting It [00:24:00] can feel good in the moment, but that is not actually giving us that restoration. And what would a alternate healthier, more restorative option B.
Therese Huston: Great question. So. I think part of what can feel initially helpful about that venting is particularly if the other person's really good at validating right then, that then you can feel like, I'm not crazy. This is truly awful, truly stressful, truly too much, right? And so that validation can be helpful.
unfortunately ti I know I certainly did this with a number of colleagues over the years when we were in the workspace together is, you know, something awful just happened in a meeting. And you go in their office and you close the door and the two of you complain about how awful and awful and awful it is, and then.
And neither of you has come to any solutions. You basically have said this is outside of our control. And the brain loves control, right? So if all, and, and, and they're fabulous research with animals where [00:25:00] they put mice on a treadmill and they make them run. the mouse has the option to run when it wants, or it's forced to run on the little little mouse treadmill.
And when the mouse has the option to run and can control when it runs. Huge health benefits, right? Improved cardiovascular health, improved gut health, but if you force that mouse to run for the exact same amount of time and the same intensity. They'll develop stomach problems, they'll develop cardiovascular problems.
So the exercise actually hurts them when they can't control when they do it, which is fascinating, right? We just think of exercise as helping our bodies, not when you're forced to do it. So the takeaway shouldn't be, you should never exercise. The takeaway should be our bodies crave a sense of control.
So if you're gonna vent to a spouse, to a colleague, even to a friend, After you get past that validation stage, and you can even say What I right need right now is validation, then move into problem solving before you walk away. what's one thing I can do that could make this a little bit better and move, move into [00:26:00] that space.
And that will increase your perception of control. So you'll get the validation as well as you'll get, there is something I can do and you might not be able to change. Let's say it's something at work. You might not be able to change what's happening at work, but you can change your emotional response to it.
I am going to, not get angry when this happens. Right. I am, I'm instead going to choose compassion or something like that.
Alison Cook: That's so interesting. So, gosh. there's a lot in what you just said. I, think what I hear you saying is the need for validation in and of itself isn't bad and can provide some relief. It's when it just goes negative dumping with no sort of counterbalancing. Okay, what are we gonna do? Sort of proactive. that's a nuance to that.
Therese Huston: Yeah. And I think we've all been in the situation where someone else will start suggesting solutions and we don't see them as solutions that would work for us, right? So for instance, I have a, a [00:27:00] family member who's having some financial problems and I hear other family members saying, just talk to the bank or just do this, and this person will not take any of those routes.
And I know this is adding stress to his life because he's like, but I'm not gonna do that. Right.
Alison Cook: Right.
Therese Huston: In fact, if anything, it's taking away his sense of control because the solutions that are obvious to everyone else are not clear pathways for him. So, so what's important there is, is to move to the, what could I do that would increase my sense of control?
What, what would be one step that I would be willing to realistically take?
Alison Cook: so let's say I'm venting to a friend or to my sister, but at the end of it, it's really on, there's something about agency, about saying, this was hard, this happened. I'm struggling. I don't need you to solve it. 'cause that also, so, so you're right.
It's, it's the over validation doesn't solve it, but also them trying to fix it. Doesn't solve it, it's here's what's going on. So there's a little bit of [00:28:00] validation there. Okay. That helps me get back into the part of my brain that says, here's my agency in
Therese Huston: yes, very well said.
you can say even at the beginning of the conversation, like let's say you go to to vent with a colleague or a friend and you say, Hey, I wanna vent first? I wanna hear your venting. And then can we move to problem solving? Like, that would be the most helpful for me because people don't know this.
If they haven't listened to our conversation, they wouldn't know that, that we need to end on problem solving. Right.
Alison Cook: Yes. So you can say,
Therese Huston: yeah, I think that's a very reasonable ask, and the other person's gonna feel better as well. So it's an educational moment that you can provide
Alison Cook: then they know how to help
Therese Huston: Exactly. And people want to, right? Yeah. And, and you probably know the people who only want to vent and don't wanna get to problem solving, right? Those would not be people to, to turn to in those extremely stressful moments.
Alison Cook: Yeah, that's really helpful. Okay, I wanna touch on exercise. You mentioned it with the research on mice, [00:29:00] and I wanna touch on it because I live in a family with others who find a lot of restoration through exercise. So the biggest stress reliever for a couple of my immediate family members is take a jog, work out, go to the gym. That is not what I wanna do when I'm stressed. I, I want to do that to be healthy, but it's not for me the primary way that I feel relief from stress. or restoration. Sometimes a good walk does.
My question for you is, is what we [00:30:00] need to feel restored, unique? Are we different person to person? Number one, is it possible that for some people exercise is absolutely the thing For others it's not. It doesn't mean we don't need to do it, but we might need to do it for a different reason.
Therese Huston: Brilliantly said, what I encourage here is self experimentation and by that I mean we each need to find what are the breaks that are restorative to us. And you're absolutely right. Things that are restorative for some or not restorative for all. A classic example of that is there's a great finding. For women that a 32nd hug from someone who's safe lowers cortisol levels. That's not true for all women, but it's true on average.
For most women, it's tends to be less true for men and. What's fascinating is some studies find it helps men. Some [00:31:00] studies find it doesn't, and researchers have kind of scratch their heads and basically what they find is there's just a huge difference among men and it kind of depends on the sample that you get in their research study as to whether you've got men who appreciate a hug and it makes them feel safe and grounded, or men for whom that now just raises questions of like, is this leading somewhere? Is this right? It as opposed to just for women, it seems to increase oxytocin. For men—it can increase other things that are then confusing.
So researchers have found that 30 seconds of affection from someone else lowers cortisol levels. As long as that person feels safe and touch feels safe for you and so on, especially for women, it's, it's very restorative.
20 seconds is, kind of the tipping point. 30 seconds is even better. This is the thing that my husband and I will often do. we'll be giving each other a hug in the kitchen in the morning, and he'll start to let go. I'll be long. I'll say [00:32:00] longer. Today. I need longer. It's very sweet.
AD BREAK II
Therese Huston: Let's try something real quick here. Okay, we're gonna do, a soothing self touch. So some of you might be thinking, I don't have someone to hug Therese. At least not at this point in my life. Some, at least I don't have someone who will withstand a 22nd hug.
So let's try something else that you can do even without a partner. So, um. first of all, I would just like you to rate your stress levels right now, Allison, on a scale of one to 10, where a 10 would be, I'm as stressed as I've ever been, and one is I'm so low stress, I could fall asleep. What, what number would you give it?
Alison Cook: Five.
Therese Huston: Okay, there we go. Yeah. Five or six. Good. And that makes sense. We're having a recorded conversation, which, which takes the stress up a little. Alright, great. So now what I want you to do is I want you to take both hands and put them really gently in kind of your heart space, whatever feels like your heart space to you.
And just make some small, gentle, circular motions just soothing little. So like very soft caresses at the amount of pressure that feels good to you. Just, we're just gonna [00:33:00] do that for a few seconds and close your eyes if you want, or you can just keep them open, whatever feels right to you. And just really focus on the warmth of your hands, how that's feeling kind of resonating.
Imagine it kind of flowing through into your chest, into your lungs, into your heart. And if we were gonna do this for the full amount of time, we would do this for 20 or 30 seconds, but we're just gonna do it for about 10 here. Okay. Now you can keep your hands there if you want, but I'd love for you to rate, again, on a scale of one to 10, how do your stress levels feel?
Alison Cook:Three
Therese Huston: Three. Right? It's so nice.
Alison Cook: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Therese Huston: So psychologists would call that soothing self touch. Research shows that what we just did, especially to hold it for 20 to 30 seconds, will actually reduce your cortisol levels on par with a hug from someone else. Now. That's on average. Some people it will be hires. For some it won't work.
But this is a great self experiment to do. Ask [00:34:00] yourself before you try the technique. What's my stress level? And then ask yourself afterwards, what's my stress level now? And to see if it's changed. And if you find that the heart doesn't work. What's nice about the heart is it's if by putting your hands here, you're activating the vagus nerve.
and the vagus nerve sends signals up and down, up to your brain, down to your heart's, lungs and gut. But by putting your hands on your heart, you're sending. Through your heart, a signal via your vagus nerve up to your brain. It reduces amygdala activity. It also increases activity in your prefrontal cortex.
So should, you should actually be a clearer thinker now than you were before we did that activity.
Alison Cook: more
Therese Huston: Yes. Right. Yeah. And it's, you know, maybe you can't do that in a meeting with your boss, but I've done it. I've done it in line. At a store where the line's not moving and I'm starting to be like, I should just return everything to the shelves and leave just jettison myself.
And I'll be like, you know what? You gotta finish this errand. You gotta do it. You're here. You've already invested the time, and I'll [00:35:00] do that. And I will be so much less stressed about standing in that line.
Alison Cook: that is powerful. I wish we had done that at the beginning of the interview, right? I mean, no, I, I could. That's a really, literally self-soothing exercise. Therese, what are other examples like that of these, especially, I'm thinking of my listeners who are really busy , you know, or maybe have little kids around them.
Therese Huston: Yes. Right. So that's a nice one too. And you can teach it, especially if you have little ones you're taking care of. You can say, Hey, we're all gonna do a soothing self hug. All right, let's everybody get in their favorite spot. lie down or sit down, you know, get in your favorite cozy chair. We're all gonna do this for 30 seconds.
So you could, you know, that's, that's a fun one. If I can demo another one, another nice. [00:36:00] we're gonna do a, a breathing technique that also activates the vagus nerve and can send a signal again to your amygdala that there's no threat and activate the prefrontal cortex. We'll talk about that more in a second.
So, I'll explain the technique first and then we'll step through it. But here's what I'm gonna ask you to do in a moment. I'll ask you. To exhale all of your air. Not yet, but when a moment, I'll tell you to. And then I'm gonna have you do a slow inhale to a count of five, and I'll do the count out loud.
That's a long, slow inhale. Most of us don't inhale that slowly, so be ready for that. You're gonna hold for two. And then we're gonna exhale for seven, which is again, a very slow exhale. I find most people find that long inhale the hardest. If, if at three you're like, Therese, I've already inhaled all my air.
There's no more that I can take in. Just start holding your breath early. That won't. Affect the impact of this. What's most important is the super slow exhale. So what I recommend here is to purse your lips. So if you're good at slow exhales, you can [00:37:00] just breathe through your nose.
But if that, you think that's gonna be tricky, just breathe like you're blowing out through a straw. Okay? And that can help slow down your breath. And we'll do two cycles. and I'll step you through it. Okay. You ready? Okay, great. So exhale all of your air. And, and we're gonna inhale 2, 3, 4, 5. Hold, two.
Exhale, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Again, inhale, 2, 3, 4, 5. Hold. Two. Exhale. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Great. So going back to that scale one to 10, where would you be now?
Alison Cook: Oh, well now, probably two.
Therese Huston: Even lower [00:38:00] Wow. Between the two. Yeah. Right. I mean, even just, I, I wasn't just guiding you through it. I feel more relaxed,
Alison Cook: Yeah.
Therese Huston: the important part is just the exhales longer than the inhale. Some people play with like a four eight, where they inhale for four and they exhale for eight.
You can play with what's comfortable for your body, but. The slow exhale, particularly if you do it through purse lips, is activating the vagus nerve, by activating it partially through your throat as well as through your lungs. And again, that's telling the amygdala there's no threat. But the prefrontal cortex researchers have actually found that in the lab because this activates areas of the prefrontal cortex right behind your forehead that are responsible for making hard decisions.
Decision making improves. so not only can you do this when you're stressed out about something in your home life or your work life, you can do this when you're like, I just don't wanna make a decision and I can tell I don't wanna make a decision, do this, and you, you would wanna do it for about two minutes.
We just did 30 seconds. So two cycles is 30 seconds. Eight [00:39:00] cycles of that will be a full two minutes. And researchers find objectively that it's, it's like the murky clouds part and It may still be a hard decision, maybe one you don't wanna make, but you'll have more clarity. Isn't that amazing?
Alison Cook: it's interesting. It's sort of counterintuitive in a way because when we're stressed, when we're worked up, it seems like to me there's a part of us that wants to go harder, wants to push harder. And so there's a counterintuitive thing you're training your nervous system to do, which is, and I think we want that 'cause we wanna get to the other side. And so we're training our nervous system that actually the way to the other side is through the restoration.
Therese Huston: Well said. Yeah. Instead of thinking, I'm gonna power through, think if I don't do something, I'm gonna power down. And if you think that to yourself, it'll be easier to say, [00:40:00] okay, I need to, I need to take a break. for me, I will know that I need to take a break, and maybe it's gonna be a breathing break.
Maybe it's one of the soothing self touch breaks. I'll know that I need to do that if I'm going from calm to irritable in seconds, right? Because that's not my normal mode. If, if I'm getting irritated that quickly, that means that my prefrontal cortex, which. is key for in impulse control is fatigued and so my impulses are taking over.
And so maybe there's a different sign for you, but look for the signs that indicate like, oh, that's my body saying it needs a break, I'm gonna give it one.
Alison Cook: Wow, that, yeah, that's, that's actually a cue. I need a break. And these are two very, Easy, simple that anybody can do. Ways that you are, signaling to your brain that you're caring for it.
Therese Huston: your brain doesn't need long breaks. So often we feel like in order to get a break, we need to go to the spa,[00:41:00]
Alison Cook: Yes. I was just thinking that.
Therese Huston: take a nap. Yep. You know, I've, I've got my mother-in-law, Gets respite care because she's caring for her husband who has dementia and she, doesn't feel she can get a break unless someone comes to the house for three hours and she can leave, which is too bad because I, you know, she certainly needs those breaks.
I'm not saying she doesn't, but it's, it's too, you know, I hope she listens to your show because they're called micro breaks by psychologists and neuroscientists. A micro break is anywhere from one to 10 minutes and. The kind of breathing breaks, reading a novel, a quick walk break. A break as, as little as a six minute walk has tremendous benefits for reducing cortisol, improving serotonin.
So know that a one to 10 minute break can be all you need to reset.
Alison Cook: That's amazing. So helpful.
What is the difference between numbing and a true restorative break?
Therese Huston: That one is a great question. And it's tricky because with numbing, what you're doing is There are certain brain areas that need a break. let's say you've been trying really hard to be supportive of someone else, right?
Whether that's at work or at home, you will probably feel emotionally exhausted from having to be patient when you don't feel patient or having to be positive when you don't feel positive anymore, right? So that's emotionally tiring, and that's going to reduce your dopamine levels. It's gonna reduce serotonin levels, uh, and that's, it's called surface acting.you're faking it.
You feel like you have to do it, and that's emotionally exhausting. And so you could do something numbing like, compulsive [00:44:00] snacking or scrolling on your phone and that's gonna take away in the moment that sense of like, I can't handle this anymore.
However, it's not going to improve your dopamine levels or improve your serotonin levels in order to do that. You need to do one of the things that we've already suggested, so dopamine will go back up. If you listen to music, that gives you chills. For instance, serotonin will go up if you go for a quick nature walk, or if you do the soothing self hug.
That can also help with serotonin and oxytocin levels. So doing something that even though you wouldn't have perhaps thought to turn to it. If it can improve these brain chemicals, you're, you're restoring something that was depleted and now you are going to truly feel like, oh, I can lean back in. a little litmus test that I do is, do I just wanna keep doing that activity?
Chances are it's numbing, right? that might be a nice litmus test where it's like, I don't wanna return to the problem. I just wanna keep the distraction going. That's sign of a bad [00:45:00] distraction. Whereas if you're like, I listened to one song, it would be nice to listen to another song, but you know what?
I can do this. I can go back in
Alison Cook: That's so helpful. and sometimes, again, that's why you're saying sometimes we do need that detachment that just, I've gotta distract myself. It's a survival mechanism in a way but it's not actually, I think of an athlete going out for a break. It's like sending that athlete out for a break and giving them, you know, a glass of wine that's not gonna help them get back on the court.
And win the game. They need actual nourishment to be able to re replenish and reset so that they can finish and get back in and finish the game.
Therese Huston: It's a really good distinction. Yeah. Gatorade would be better in that moment than, than wine, right?
Alison Cook: Yeah. But that's kind of with parenting or with work, it's similar. We, we actually wanna give ourselves something so that we can come back and do the hard thing that we wanna wanna do. That's, this is just so helpful.
Therese Huston: And I think a thing for anyone who feels guilty taking breaks. I, you know, I was in a leadership group recently where there was a woman who clearly felt guilty taking breaks and actually got angry at the leader who was facilitating the group, who was suggesting she needed to take more breaks.
I think a way to reframe this for yourself is that you're not stepping away from your responsibilities. You are stepping into the version of yourself that can better handle those
Alison Cook: Hmm. That's good. Yes, you're actually doing yourself and everyone around you a service.
Therese Huston: exactly, exactly. Because we need mantras. We need something to tell ourselves. In that moment, I tell myself, I, you know, you can't pour from an empty cup, which helps. But I really, I really like this idea of I'm not, I'm not stepping away from my responsibilities. I'm stepping into a version of myself that can handle them.
Alison Cook: I love that. Tell us about the book, where people can find it, and how you think the book will really provide this kind of relief that people [00:42:00] really need?
Therese Huston: I think so many of us feel in constant overwhelm, whether that's from the news cycle, whether that's from work and fear of jobs being cut, or your personal life, you know, you're caring for more. people and in more ways than you ever imagined you would, or that you feel prepared for.
you know, you feel like you're failing at everything. I think. So many of us are in a state of constant overwhelm and our devices just pull us into things that are numbing and give us that detachment, but that don't actually give us a break. And so I think we need more tools and, and my hope with the book.
Most of the tools in there are five minutes or less, just like the two exercises we just demonstrated. So there are things you can fit in, and I, I organize the book so that you could quickly turn to the chapter you want. You don't have to start from the beginning and read to the end. Instead, you can be like, I, I need help with decision making.
What does the chapter on decision making say? Right? Because I've gotta face a hard decision, maybe deciding whether to put them in assisted living or not. So some something that you need right now. I promise [00:43:00] you that book probably has a strategy that you can do in less than 10 minutes.
So that's my hope is to say neuroscience has got your back. your best days are still ahead of you.
Alison Cook: This is beautiful. The book is Sharp. 14 Simple Ways to Improve Your Life with Brain Science. Amazing. So, so [00:47:00] helpful. Therese, I would love to have you back on sometime. I think what you're doing is just so needed and I'm
Therese Huston: Thank you, Alison. I feel like we do good work together and I, I just feel honored to be here.
Alison Cook: Thank you.
Are you tired of holding it all together for everyone else?
In this deeply personal episode, Dr. Alison explores the hidden ache of emotional caretaking—the quiet ways we overfunction, over-give, and overlook our own needs to keep the peace. Whether it started in childhood or has become a way of coping in adult relationships, many of us have learned to survive by tending to others while slowly disappearing ourselves.
Alison shares what she’s learning about her own inner caretaker and gently invites you to reconnect with the parts of you that are tired, weary, and worthy of care. This isn’t about walking away from the people you love—it’s about learning to stay grounded in yourself as you care well for others.
This episode explores:
- Why emotional caretaking can feel like love—but quietly wears you down
- How childhood dynamics shape your adult urge to fix, help, or rescue
- What most people get wrong about “self-care”
- The hidden cost of always tending to others while neglecting yourself
- A gentle practice to reconnect with your inner caretaker—and what she needs
This episode is a loving reminder: Your needs matter. Your soul deserves care. And you don’t have to carry it all alone.
📥 Grab your 3 free Boundaries For Your Soul resources here:
📥 Download Alison’s free printable with the five boundary tools when you sign up for her weekly email.
Here are some other episodes you might like :
Episode 138: Breaking Free from Overfunctioning –– DIscover the Hidden Costs of Always Being the Responsible One
Episode 151: The Hidden Reason You Feel Overwhelmed –– Understanding the Mental Load with Dr. Morgan Cutlip
Episode 152: The Anxiety Beneath Perfectionism –– Why Trying Harder Won’t Set You Free
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
💬 Got a question? Call 307-429-2525 and leave a message for a future episode.
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Editing by Giulia Hjort
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Music by Andy Luiten
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
Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Best of You. I am so looking forward to this time together today. Today's episode was birthed out of a need in my own life. And as I thought about some of the things I've been struggling with and working on, it occurred to me that so many of you are likely dealing with the same inner dynamics as I am and that some of what I've been learning in my own life might be helpful to you.
Today's episode is especially for the caretakers and specifically I'm talking about emotional caretaking, where we work to meet the emotional needs of everyone around us. These are the parts of us that operate silently without us even realizing it. At times, you might be the steady one in your family, the person, everyone turns to the one who holds it all together.
Behind the scenes, you are the one who shows up. You give, you carry the emotional weight quietly, persistently, because that's what you've always done. Yet, maybe somewhere along the way you lost touch with yourself. This episode is for all of you who care deeply for others, but sometimes forget to care for your own soul.
It's for the part of you that will not stop trying to fix. What cannot be fixed, at least not by you all alone, the part of you that's tired of holding it all together. If you relate to any of this, I wanna offer you a gentle invitation today. Not to walk away from the people you love and care about, but instead to come home to yourself and to remember that tending to your own inner world isn't selfish.
It's essential. It's where true love and true compassion for others begins. In today's episode, I'm gonna share a little bit of my own story, how emotional caretaking has shaped me from early on, and how I'm learning to return to that grounded place within. We'll explore what it means to find your voice again and how to stop carrying what was never yours to hold.
And at the end I'll guide you through a short spiritual reflection, a prayer you can return to anytime you feel overwhelmed. Or lost in the needs of others.
I have a repeated pattern that shows up in my life to this day. I've worked on it a lot, but it shows up with different iterations and basically it's like this. I'll find myself compulsively checking in on other people. It might be on my family members, on friends.
I'll catch myself literally scrolling through text messages to see who might need something. Mentally tracking past conversations, maybe even conversations from months ago, wondering if someone, anyone is upset or needs support. Just the other day I was doing this again, mentally circling around other people's emotional states and perceived needs, even though literally my own body was shaky.
I hadn't eaten that day. I'd had a number of things happen in my own life that were really stressful and really hard, and I couldn't figure out how to manage them. I was clearly in need of a break in need of rest, and yet during that inner chaos, a part of me was mentally scanning for anyone out there in the universe, literally anyone I might know who might need something from me.
Maybe I could do this nice thing for this person. Maybe I should check on this person. Why haven't I followed up on that person? Right? I was going through my mental Rolodex of all the people I could check in on. Of all the people. I could do something nice for it. That can be a really helpful quality at times.
But in this moment, I just became so aware of the disparity. My own body was literally shaking. Because I hadn't eaten yet that day because I was so overwhelmed with some of these stressful situations, both in my personal life and at work that had come to my attention, and I just began to realize, this is weird.
Why is my default to scan all the ways I could care for others while I was so clearly the one in need of care? I just had to stop and notice what was happening here. I was scanning vigilantly to try to figure out ways to help other people while I was so clearly in that moment, the one in need of care.
It's such an old and familiar impulse. If I can just make sure everyone around me is okay, then maybe I can finally rest. It never works because the reality is trying to survive my own needs through losing myself in other people's problems, keeps me on a hamster wheel. This part of me keeps running and running and running, trying to fix what cannot be fixed in the world around me, trying to carry what was never mine to carry, and it's a never ending loop of exhaustion.
And it's tricky to navigate because here's the thing, you can always find someone in need of care. And sometimes we even hear people say, listen, if you're struggling, do something nice for others. And that's a valuable principle, and I get that, but
For those of us with extreme caretaking impulses who tend to manage the pain of others.
Instead of our own needs, it can be very challenging to know how to step off that hamster wheel of compulsive caretaking, and finally attune to our own needs, to our own inner cry for care. This is what I mean by the ache of the caretaker. There's something sacred about showing up for others. We know this to be true, but when we lose touch with our own center, even our care becomes distorted. We stop listening inward, we override our own needs, and we begin to try to fix what was never ours to fix.
So where does this compulsive. overactive caretaking impulse come from?
It can come from what psychologists call parentification. This is when as a child, maybe you're asked to step into an adult responsibility before you're developmentally ready. This can happen emotionally, logistically, or both. It can happen. If you had a parent who struggled with their emotions, who maybe confided in you or leaned on you, or even became emotionally unpredictable, and at a very young age, you learn to kick it into high gear to become the steady one, or maybe you became the emotional buffer in your family.
You sensed conflict between your parents or maybe between a parent and a sibling, or between other siblings, and maybe nobody said it out loud, but your nervous system. Picked up on it and without realizing it, you became that buffer for everybody that peacemaker the mood stabilizer. You learned to kind of stay small to shapeshift, to stay agreeable, to stay attuned, to keep the system from falling apart.
Maybe you were the secret keeper, the one everybody confided in, or even just the one who kind of held all of the emotional tensions in your own body. Sometimes it was even more direct.
Maybe you literally had to care for an adult who was physically ill or emotionally unwell, unable to work, or maybe just chronically unavailable. Maybe you had to cook the meals, you had to help with siblings. You learned how to read the needs of others before you could read a book. I'm not laying any blame here. This happens even in the most well-intentioned of families, but regardless, a part of you learn to take on the role of an adult far too young.
Lastly, sometimes these caretaking parts are formed in a more subtle way through a slow layering of our God-given temperament and personality, and even gifting our emotional sensitivity, our empathy combined with the family dynamics and the cultural dynamics around us. Some of us were simply born with very tender, intuitive nervous systems.
You might have always been the kind of child who felt things deeply who could walk into a room and immediately sense. The emotional temperature and that kind of empathy is really beautiful. But when it's left unsupported or misunderstood, if no one ever taught you the boundaries of that and how to differentiate and step back from all of that empathic knowing, especially when you're taking in data that isn't actually yours to process, it can turn into a sense of over responsibility.
And I mention this because I still remember even now, the names and faces of kids in my. Elementary school classrooms from as early as second grade, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, who I knew intuitively were struggling, who I knew maybe weren't being cared for at home, who maybe the other kids were mean to.
There was a part of me that took in all of that data that just kind of intuitively understood human pain and human suffering way earlier than I knew what to do with it. And so even apart from our family dynamics, sometimes we just have that temperament and if we didn't have anybody kind of come alongside of us and help us understand, Hey, I love your sensitive heart. I love that you see the pain in others, and I wanna help you learn to honor that as I also wanna help you learn how to let it go when it's not yours to fix. When it's not yours to heal, when it's not yours to mend. That's a pretty nuanced skill even for those of us as adults. So if you had that kind of temperament as a kid, no wonder it's hard for you to learn how to turn that off.
Regardless of whether this part of you developed in your family of origin or whether it developed as part of your God-given design, and probably in most cases it's a combination of both. This caretaking part of you is highly attuned to the emotional states of other people. It might be to your own kids.
It might be to your own spouse, to other family members, to friends. To people in your community, to strangers in the grocery store, right? The list can go on and on, but this part of you tracks everyone else often without you even realizing it. It notices who's upset, who's withdrawing. Who's even hinting at a need, and it doesn't just notice it.
It jumps in sometimes with support, sometimes with solutions, sometimes by simply silencing your own voice or your own needs because you do not want to impinge on the needs of someone else. Often this part of you jumps before you have a chance to pause and ask yourself. Am I the one called to step in here?
Do I have the capacity to meet this need? Is this my responsibility or is some part of me acting out impulsively and compulsively to meet needs that are not mine? In fact, to meet. If you've ever found yourself waking up with jaw tension, a dull headache, or tightness around your face, you're not alone.
Typically this part of you, this internal caretaker gets extreme because it started to form beliefs about what makes you valuable in relationships. These parts of us tend to believe things like this. My value lies in being needed. My piece depends on everyone else being okay. If I stop showing up for others, I'll lose my place in the system, in the family, in the friend group, in the community. This is how I stay connected. This is how I stay. Loved to abandon myself and show up constantly for the needs of others. And so this part of us keeps working. She stays ahead of everybody else's needs. She fuses connection with responsibility.
And before you know it, caretaking becomes a way of life, a default. The only way you know how to show up. In your relationships, maybe you recognize some of these indicators of a caretaking part in yourself. Maybe you're the one who always remembers all the milestones, the holidays, the events, the anniversaries, regardless if anyone else remembers yours, maybe you're the one who always sends the check-in texts, who's always sending the encouraging word.
Maybe you're the one who senses tension before anyone even speaks a word. Or maybe you're the one, always one step ahead. Emotionally, logistically, relationally, always on guard, making sure everything's working. But all the while you are the one running on empty. You are the one in need of care. Because here's the hard part.
Other people rarely notice the toll that all this caretaking takes on you. 'cause you're really good at hiding it. That's part of the survival. You've built your identity around being the one who can hold it all. And so other people don't notice when you need care. But inside, there's often a younger part of you just aching for someone to notice her, to care for her, to tell her it's okay to stop, to rest, to receive care, even for just one moment.
When I actually connect to this part of me who's so busy taking care of everybody else, and I kind of find that place in my soul that's doing that, she doesn't show up to me as that competent, capable adult that I feel like when I'm blended with her, she actually surfaces as more of a neglected orphan, she sort of has scraggly hair and she seems malnourished and she seems emotionally unkempt and kind of confused and like, what would it even be like for someone to pay attention to me? And as I've gotten to know this sort of inner neglected part of me, I realize so much more clearly that she doesn't even know what it feels like to receive love or care, how would she know how to ask for it from someone else when she doesn't even know what she needs?
She only really knows how to give it. So it's sort of a foreign idea to her. And the first step is really just learning that. About this part of myself that this is going to be a process. It's not as simple as just taking a day off or as going to a spa or some of these superficial ways that we talk about self-care in our culture.
This is a deeply embedded part of the soul who has to learn what it's like to trust that there's an adult present who wants to give care to her. It's a process of rebuilding trust because here's the deeper truth. This part of you doesn't have a full understanding yet of true belonging. She doesn't yet know that you are loved, not because of what you do for others, but because of who you are.
You are worthy of love and belonging, not because of all that you do for other people, but because you are made in the image of a loving God who longs to come alongside you with emotional attunement, with rest, with reassurances, with all of that love and devotion and encouragement and wisdom that you are so good at pouring out for others.
The caretaking part of you does indeed have a beautiful gift to offer. She's sensitive, she's empathetic, she's emotionally attuned, but first and foremost, what this part of you has to learn is that she also is worthy of love. Giving care to others when it's rooted in a sense of your own inner belovedness is a beautiful thing.
It's a gift when you are grounded in the truth that you are already loved. Your care flows from a place of abundance. You become a wellspring of compassion, not because you're trying to earn love or connectedness or belonging, but because you know love. You become a healer because you've been healed, a lover of other souls because you've experienced love in your own soul.
But on the other hand, when you're care for others is rooted in survival, it gets distorted. You may still show up with kindness, but underneath there's fear. Fear that if you stop caring, you'll lose connection. Fear that if you name your needs, you'll be seen as too much fear that if you bring your full voice, you'll blow the whole thing up, that you'll lose all that stability that you've worked so hard to hold together.
This is where something sacred, your gift of compassion becomes compulsive. You get back on that hamster wheel. You start to over-function in relationships driven by fear more than you're driven by love. You give more than is sustainable. You say yes when your body is saying no, you anticipate others' needs.
Before they even name them, and you begin to disappear in the process, instead of mutuality, the relationship becomes lopsided. You might unintentionally begin to enable. Other people who aren't taking responsibility for themselves, you may enable dysfunctional relationships around you because you can't bear to let the other people around you fight it out amongst themselves.
You may find yourself attracting other people who are emotionally unavailable or draining because you've trained them that you will carry the emotional weight. And in that process, an incredibly vital thing gets lost. You are God given voice, the voice inside of you that carries much needed truth and wisdom and power.
Even if the truth in this moment is I can't do this right now. I'm the one in need and I need to be able to speak up for myself without fear of losing everyone around me. When caretaking becomes compulsive, it stops being holy and it starts becoming harmful. Harmful to you, harmful to the other person who isn't doing the work that God has given them to do, and harmful to the possibility of true mutually beneficial connection.
Because real love includes boundaries. Real love includes mutuality. Real love always also includes you. Your voice, even your needs. It's unsustainable and exhausting when you consistently override your own needs and it becomes disorienting when your voice is always tangled up in someone else's expectations.
Over time, you begin to lose your sense of what you think, what you want, what you feel, what you need. Your nervous system gets trained to read everyone else's emotional landscape while your own inner soul remains unexplored and untended, and even as other people might be praising you for being so thoughtful or so dependable or so helpful, you can feel the toll in your body, in your relationships, in your sense of self.
You may feel anxious, but you're not sure why. You may feel resentment, but you don't feel permission to express it. You may feel invisible and yet terrified of taking up space. That's the distortion, that compulsive caretaking part. You were made to love and care for others. Yes, but you were never made to lose yourself in the process.
If any of this resonates with you, I want you to take a deep breath with me as you're listening. Maybe place your hand over your heart as you take that deep breath and send some love to that hard working caretaking part of you. We are not here to lay blame or to shame. We are here to get curious about her and to let her know she is no longer alone.
She is not broken. She's just tired and for just a few more minutes today, we're gonna take a moment and finally pay attention to her if it's safe to do so.
If you're not driving in a car, maybe even close your eyes and place a hand on your heart. Take a slow deep breath in and a long, steady breath out.
Let your body soften. Let your mind settle. Let your spirit open for just a few moments and I'm gonna ask you some questions for you to consider. Again, if your hands are free, you can take notes or journal while you're listening or just mentally join with me and reflect as I walk you through some of these questions.
What part of you is tired today? See if you can notice her not as a thought, but as a sensation in your body. Maybe she's in your chest, your shoulders, your stomach. Maybe she's hunched over from carrying too much, or maybe she's frozen, curled up in the corner, unsure. How to ask for help. Can you simply acknowledge her presence?
This part of you who works so hard, you don't need to fix her. Just be with her. Let her know she's not alone. If it feels like it's helpful, you might try to picture this younger part of you, the one who learned to care for others. Before herself, what does she look like? What is she doing? Can you see this younger version of yourself who always stayed quiet to keep the peace who cared for others to feel safe? Who believed her worth came from being needed? As you notice this part of you in your body, in your mind's eye, just see if you can sit with this part of yourself in the quiet and let this part of you know you've done so well, you've helped so many, and you don't have to keep going alone.
And if you're able to tap into this part of you that lives in your body, check in to see what would help her rest and feel loved just a little bit today, what would she wanna do with even just five minutes to her herself? What music would she like to listen to? What words of kindness would she like to hear from you or from God.
See if you can listen for her voice, something she love to receive in this moment from you or from God. Even now, let her hear you say you're not just here to help everybody else. You are worthy of care of love. Take some deep breaths in and out and just notice what that feels like to connect with the part of you who really only ever knew how to pour out and notice what it might be like to commit to this part of you to spend just a few minutes each day checking in on what she might need from you or from God.
If that was helpful to you, you can save this episode and go back and play it again. You can replay that section each morning until you have a better sense of what it feels like to tap into that part of you who also needs care. You are already an amazing caretaker of others. What might it be like to take all of that caretaking and turn even just a portion of it back toward yourself?
For many of us, learning how to tune in to our own needs is a process tending to that part of you who learned to care for others before she ever learned how to receive. This is sacred ground. This is how you build this inner sanctuary where love can truly grow, where your voice is also heard, where your needs are also brought to the surface, and where God wants to meet you, not so that you can do more for others, but because God longs to lavish love on this part.
Of you. Jesus said, love others as yourself. God never asked us to disappear in our love for others. You'll become a much better lover of others as you take consistent. Time each day to also love this part of 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, Amazon music, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and click the plus or follow button that will ensure you don't miss an episode, and it helps get the word out to others while you're there.
I'd love it if you'd leave your five star review. I look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God, you heal others. And you stay true to your God given self.
What does it mean to risk love again—after loss, heartbreak, and the disorientating grief that follows?
In this incredibly tender and powerful conversation, I’m joined by Stephanie Duncan Smith, author of Even After Everything, to talk about the kind of spiritual confusion that often follows personal loss.
Stephanie shares how a painful pregnancy loss just before Christmas reshaped her understanding of God. Together, we explore how to stay grounded in God’s love even when your emotions feel muted, your prayers feel flat, or your sense of spiritual connection feels off.
Whether you’ve experienced loss or walked alongside someone who has, this episode is an invitation into honest faith and the sacred practice of hope.
This episode explores:
- Why spiritual numbness is a natural response to pain
- What it looks like to grieve without having to fake it
- How to handle deep pain during seasons that are supposed to be joyful
- Why naming your loss honestly can help you heal
- How Stephanie processed the grief of pregnancy loss
📘 Get Stephanie’s book: Even After Everything: The Spiritual Practice of Knowing the Risks and Loving Anway
📥 Grab your 3 free Boundaries For Your Soul resources here:
📥 Download Alison’s free printable with the five boundary tools when you sign up for her weekly email.
LIsten to more episodes on grief and healing:
Episode 133: Navigating the 6 Stages of Grief with Renowned Grief Expert David Kessler
Episode 102: How to Name, Frame, and Brave Complicated Emotions About Faith & God
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
💬 Got a question? Call 307-429-2525 and leave a message for a future episode.
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Editing by Giulia Hjort
Sound engineering by Kelly Kramarik
Music by Andy Luiten
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
Anyway. Stephanie is [00:01:00] someone I deeply respect for her honesty, her depth, and her spiritual insight. As a senior editor at Harper One, she has shaped the words of many bestselling and award-winning authors that you and I know and love, but today she's sharing her own story. In our conversation, Stephanie opens up about her own experience of pregnancy loss.
The spiritual and emotional disorientation that followed. We talk about what it means to hold both deep grief and fierce love, and to take the risk of opening your heart again even after it's been broken. In today's episode, we get really personal. We talk honestly about pain, about healing, and the slow sacred work of learning to trust.
Again, we talk about how it's not through grit or forced resilience that we find our way forward, but through receiving the. Full spectrum of our lives of what's achingly hard and what's achingly beautiful, and knowing that at the heart of both lives, the promise of God with [00:02:00] us. I want to gently acknowledge that today's episode includes themes of pregnancy loss and miscarriage, which may be difficult for some listeners.
Please take care of yourself and as always, feel free to skip this episode if it's not the right time for you. Stephanie Duncan Smith is a writer and senior editor at Harper One who has spent her career developing, award-winning and bestselling authors. She's the creator of Slant Letter, a bestselling Substack email newsletter for writers looking to deepen their craft.
Stephanie lives with her husband Zach, a professor in their two children in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Please enjoy my conversation with Stephanie Duncan Smith.
INTERVIEW
[00:02:44] Alison Cook: I kind of wanna start this conversation where your memoir starts, which is with this incredible tension where you experienced the loss of your first pregnancy, right? As Christmas was. [00:03:00] Approaching, and that begins to serve as an anchor for the structure of the rest of your book. But tell us a little bit about the background and about that moment.
[00:03:10] Stephanie Duncan Smith: So I should start by saying my husband and I were childless by choice for almost 10 years before we decided that we were going to try for. A pregnancy, and this was a, you know, a storied decision and we didn't come into it with a lot. It was more of a cognitive choice, if I'm being very honest than an emotional one.
We knew that we wanted a family, but we felt pretty ambivalent for a while about the when and wheres of that. And so it was really meaningful to me that December, to grow. Into the idea, even just the very fresh concept that I was pregnant and for that experience to parallel the advent [00:04:00] season because this is what's important, I didn't go into this pregnancy with high hopes, frankly.
I went into it thinking, I think this is what we want, I guess. So it was really meaningful to me to. Walk through this advent season and really for the first time experience firsthand, the wonder and the mystery of new life. That wasn't something that I carried with me into the process until it became part of my embodied experience.
And then I thought, wow, this is amazing. And then that parallel, very suddenly starkly broke. And it was the week before Christmas and in the advent season, each week is sort of themed, and that week was advent week of joy, and it felt like a slap in the face. It felt like divine abandonment, and it felt [00:05:00] like the whole world in across cultures and generations and traditions.
So many people were readying to celebrate this most historic birth. And then it was like a, just kidding, not for you. And it broke me. It just broke me. It would've been painful anytime of year, but the juxtaposition really felt searing in a way that sent me reeling.
[00:05:31] Alison Cook: It makes so much sense, and one of the really. Incredible and meaningful parts of the book is you talk about how you began to lean into this liturgical calendar, this idea of the seasons, and we're gonna get into what we mean by that. For my listeners who aren't as familiar with that type of background, but as sort of a structure or a scaffolding.
For that [00:06:00] process of grief and pain. Right. So the very thing that in a way was such a added, this coming of Christmas, kind of compounded in many ways, the sense of loss also became something that you began to lean into. Can you talk to us a little bit about that and how that kind of played itself out inside of you?
[00:06:21] Stephanie Duncan Smith: Absolutely. So I gave you my raw reactions in the real time of this event, and what I had to work through and work out for myself was how does a story, the liturgical story, the narrative, and the shape of the Christian year, which follows the life and death and resurrection of Christ Square with an experience like that.
How does the story of what I understand primarily to be the incarnation God with us, the coming of [00:07:00] God to be in our humanity, how do we square that with personal moments that truly feel like and are marked by death? What are you supposed to do with that juxtaposition? I mean, the book shows my.
Wrangling and reckoning through this. So I don't come by any of what I'm about to say lightly, but I think for me, a lot of it was realizing that there's a promise in the paradox, and it is God is with us and that presence follows us through any personal moment of our life, death, and life that defies death.
That is the constant. The actual, the whole beauty and consolation of Advent is that a world is hurting so deeply that God says, I can't take it anymore. I'm going to come be with you. And not just be with you, but in the depths of the worst of your [00:08:00] human experiences, I am there. So what I experienced at first, and this is valid. was, this is an unsolvable paradox and I actually came to see it's not,
[00:08:15] Alison Cook: so I wanna slow down there on the unsolvable paradox. Tell me more what you mean by that.
[00:08:21] Stephanie Duncan Smith: I think we approach Christmas as a universal story. A universal hope. A universal promise, and that is a part of the Christian year.
Right? So in broad terms, the Christian year. Begins in Advent, which is a preparatory season toward the celebration and the feast day of Christmas,you know, these are the major seasons. And then time goes on and it moves from Lent, which is a preparatory season for the Feast Day of Easter.
And there's other seasons in there, but all of these are sort of high holidays, right? And. [00:09:00] In the calendar of a year, each of us will have particular personal experiences and life events that might align with those larger narratives, or they might clash in unbearable ways. And when that happens, as it did for me.
It's so painful and that dissonance can feel unbearable and unsolvable. And that was really the driver in my writing this book and working it out for myself, thinking, okay, but where is God in this dissonance as I'm feeling it? Because this doesn't feel like something where you can solve for X.
[00:09:43] Alison Cook: So in the process of wrestling with that very tension of when. This tragedy in your life occurred, which was right at Christmas. It kind of forced you into dealing [00:10:00] with tremendous dissonance. This doesn't compute. How can this incredibly painful loss be occurring? At the very moment that much of the world is celebrating this incredible. Hope.
[00:10:17] Stephanie Duncan Smith: Yes. And I think that is the core of the question. It's how can anything be so beautiful and representative of hope for so many other people? But to me it's salt in the wound.
[00:10:30] Alison Cook: Yes. Oh, that I'm imagining so many listeners resonating with that on a lot of different. Levels. You know, when something so incredibly painful happens on a day, on an anniversary in a moment, and suddenly that very beautiful thing becomes something incredibly painful.
And that was sort of the impetus for you to have to almost begin, not only to process. And so I wanna kind of break this apart, not only to process the [00:11:00] loss, but also to process it against your larger spiritual framework. It's almost like you didn't have a choice in that because of that juxtaposition, right?
[00:11:10] Stephanie Duncan Smith: Yes. So authenticity is a guiding compass for me. I do not have a poker face. I can't fake it. And this was the first year I think, in my life that I did it not go to the Christmas Eve service because I knew that that would not be good for me and I couldn't. Put on a face and pretend that the ultimate had not just happened when it had.
And I think, you know, for anyone in any kind of grief, I often say the loss or the hardship is the first grief and the pretense is the second. And there's not much you can do to control. The loss or the hardship itself, you know, that's what has happened, has happened. We can't undo it, [00:12:00] but we don't have to put on a pretense and we don't have to put on ourselves the burden of pretending that things are fine to make other people feel more comfortable.
And that's one simple, but I think really profound way. To really own your own grieving and healing process. And for me, in the spirit of authenticity, that really began with, I have to call this what it is, and I have a chapter in the book called Naming the Night, because I think that's the call when the unthinkable happens, when we brush up onto, you know.
Pain and death. You just have to call it what it is, and you're allowed to do that. And I think that there's a lot of shoulds that get charged into the grief experience, [00:13:00] like, especially when it comes to pregnancy loss. I've heard so many women say like, I don't know. Should I really be feeling this sad?
It was so early, or kind of dismissing and discounting. What's an authentic emotion, and I just don't believe that's helpful. And I'm sure you could talk a lot about this from your work. I think there is freedom and a sort of cathartic release in naming the night when it's night.
[00:13:30] Alison Cook: Yes, yes. And again, the courage. For all of us to do that, and I am imagining putting myself in your shoes. I'm thinking about those weeks leading up to Christmas and after Christmas, the courage to do that during a season when you're especially not supposed to be doing that.
[00:13:48] Stephanie Duncan Smith: Yeah, the hardest thing for me that year was coming back to work. On the other side of the holidays and everybody's like, how was your Christmas? [00:14:00] And I just didn't have the energy. And actually, you know, everybody gets to make their own decisions for themselves. What's good for you in a place of grief? What will be supportive for you? You get to decide that. And that's not anything that I can tell you or anybody else, but actually for me, again, in the spirit of authenticity, I told a lot more people than I socially needed to because it felt easier for me. Not, and that's a choice that I made for me, but I think we all have to decide what's gonna help us.
[00:14:32] Alison Cook: But again, I love that you gave yourself permission because you knew yourself and you knew it is going to hurt more to pretend. Therefore, I'm going to tell people and that is what I'm doing for me. Which is really what's key.
There wasn't, I'm not doing this to make other people feel a certain way. I'm doing this because this is what I need to be able to navigate this. I need to be able to say whatever the truth was. It's so powerful and so [00:15:00] important. Anything else from, those couple of weeks after? When you said that, when you said I had to go back to work, that was helpful to you in terms of honoring the grief and in terms of what you're saying, not having to pretend and giving yourself permission to be in the emotional space that you were in while also simultaneously still.
Trying to find ways to function in the world. it's something I hear about a lot from clients, you know? It's like, I am feeling this heavy thing and I'm expected to show up at, you know, my job or show up at this event, and how do I do that authentically to your point where I'm still doing the thing I need to do, but I'm not betraying this tremendous burden that I'm carrying.
Any other thoughts from? Your own experience, and I know some of that's trial and error, it's figuring ourselves out through the fact of being thrown into something. But any ideas on what was helpful to you or maybe what wasn't helpful?
[00:15:59] Stephanie Duncan Smith: Yeah, [00:16:00] sure. So I haven't told this story often, but this is a good place to share. I ended up not writing this into the book For various editorial reasons, but there's sort of an extra chapter to the events of things. AndI went into the ER and was told we couldn't find the heartbeat, but they also said, you know, come back a week later just to be sure.
And I watched movies for a week. I didn't have anything else to do. It was a long week and at the end of that week, I. I had to go back in and they confirmed it, but in the middle of that week, I was actually summoned to jury duty, and that's a medical reason to not have to go. So I should have been excused.
And there's a story here that essentially my provider did not provide a letter in the time that I needed it, so I had to go federally.
[00:16:57] Alison Cook: Oh my gosh.[00:17:00]
[00:17:00] Stephanie Duncan Smith: I was absolutely, I was furious, but it's the fury that comes with helplessness and powerlessness and just the loss of control. And I was pretty certain, I knew what was happening in my body at the time, but it was the one time I left my house that week, and when I was there, I was a mess.
And it's an even bigger story because it was actually a criminal trial for murder, and I just couldn't take all the emotional inputs. I just couldn't do it. So after I was finally excused from the selection process, I went to my car and I called. I was too angry to drive. I didn't feel sober. In my rage, I didn't trust myself to drive.
So I called my provider [00:18:00] and I said, I need to speak to the manager. Like, who do I talk to? And they, you know, put me through some voicemail and I just thought, I have to do what I can do here. And I'm able to sort of, you know, see the humor of this in retrospect, but. I'm not laughing at myself. I actually, after that, made a series of calls and it was like to the airline that had sent me on a nine hour delay and needed to gimme a voucher.
And it was stuff like that. And it's kind of funny that I did that, but I get it. And I see that woman in her car and I have so much love for her and compassion because she was flailing and. There was so much she couldn't control and she was doing what she could, and I actually am so proud of her [00:19:00] for practicing self-advocacy as a channel for her rage.
[00:19:06] Alison Cook: Yeah,
[00:19:07] Stephanie Duncan Smith:I mean, it didn't heal me, but it was a lifeline. Where otherwise I just would've felt like I'm so helpless and powerless. All of this is outside the realm of my control, and I think that matters. I really think that it matters to say in small and large ways to self-advocate, especially when so much feels overwhelming to you, and whether that's saying to your boss.
I'm overloaded right now and I can't take on that extra project. Or it's, you know, saying to your mom or your mother-in-law, like, I would love to see you, but I don't have the capacity this weekend. Do what you need to for yourself and that will feel empowering in a way that is hard to come by in those moments.
[00:20:06] AD BREAK 1
[00:20:06] Alison Cook: It's really good. I just recently did an episode on boundaries where I'd really kind of taken a deep dive into the newest research on it, and one of the studies I found was talking about how, and it kind of gets at this idea of agency and self-advocacy that you're describing, that when we, we really speak up for ourselves, it actually lights up the prefrontal cortex, which is giving yourself that gift of agency of here's what I can, and again.
There might be days where you're like, I cannot do this, and that's okay too, but where there's that moment of I've gotta find a healthy outlet for this rage, I'm gonna do it, and what a great way to do it. Just really honoring the different parts of you that needed you to. Understand how real that, you know, I'm angry, I'm sad, all the different things. Giving yourself an [00:21:00] outlet for those different experiences.
[00:21:03] Stephanie Duncan Smith: Yes, and I wanna close that story too by saying I did get a hold of the founders of the practice and. Prompted them to institute a policy that for anybody who needs a letter 24 hours.
[00:21:17] Alison Cook: That's amazing.
[00:21:18] Stephanie Duncan Smith: And that felt great. Yes. 'cause I don't want anyone to have to be in that position ever again. I should be the last one.
[00:21:25] Alison Cook: It reminds me, you talk at the end of the book about the stress cycle. I think it's Emily Naski. You were talking about it almost with the stress of allowing yourself to feel joy again. And we're gonna get there. But it also is another version of it. I am am raging and I need to find a way to let it flow through.
[00:21:41] Stephanie Duncan Smith: Yes. Get it out of your body. Yes. Whatever you can do to get it out of your body, it's not meant to stay locked up in there. Yep.
[00:21:49] Alison Cook: I wanna just touch on this idea of grief that you described. You write of a pregnancy loss. It's not just the loss in the moment, it's the loss of the future, the loss of all the [00:22:00] future possibilities that in your case, you'd barely just started to dream about in a way.
It resonated with me. And I wanna name this also for listeners because there's so many ways we experienced this. I didn't have biological children. And when it became clear to me that I wouldn't or couldn't, It was like I had a parade of images of sixth grade graduations, high school graduations, you know, the future losses.
And it surprised me. It just the way my psyche just. Had to process those losses. So tell me a little bit about how that was for you and what that was like for you.
[00:22:42] Stephanie Duncan Smith: Yeah, I think this hearkens back to what you were saying about finding our permission to grieve, and I'll speak particular to pregnancy loss and then more broadly, 'cause I think this is a really interesting dynamic.
But in the case of [00:23:00] pregnancy loss. It would be fairly easy on a face value way for someone to say, oh, but you didn't even know them. You know, how can you grieve someone that you don't even know? And it's like, oh no, that's not what's happening here. You are grieving an entire imagined future. The future of a life together.
And I would say that that is sacred imagination at work. That is the mind imagining something good and true and beautiful, that God honors and celebrates whether it comes to being or not. So who are we to dismiss that sacred imagination? And I think that carries to any kind of loss of the future. And if, you know, an, an example we could all pull up from this is from the COVID years.
How many [00:24:00] weddings or family reunions or graduations did families and individuals imagined that never got to be, that is worthy of your grief. Again, these are good and beautiful things, and we're right to put our hope in them and be shaped by that hope. My, the subtitle of my book is The Spiritual Practice of Knowing The Risks and Loving Anyway, and I have been very formed through, you know, living this story and then writing about it.
My very strong belief that the risk is always with us, and there could be an argument that it's better not to take that risk, but I am convinced that we really like who we become and we're proud of who we become when we [00:25:00] use that sacred imagination for hoping for something good, no matter what.
[00:25:05] Alison Cook: I love that phrase, that sacred imagination, because there is something holy about it. It tells us something about ourselves, about what we need as humans. These milestones matter and there's something about them that we need to honor. I really love that you write Stephanie kind of as we lean into, because it, it is true that part of the book isn't just about the grief, it's about how you began.
To hope again and in a very specific way, which is relevant in this case. And there's this quote you have in the book that I think is so powerful. You say the line between love and loss is thin as the rim of a coin and as if tossed into the air ever shimmering. And you know, that's just, that's the reality, right?
And how am I gonna hope again and how am I [00:26:00] gonna. Dare to imagine loving again in this specific way, and again, like you said, in broader ways that relate to everybody. This can happen in any kind of situation. And as you were wrestling daily with loving any way, how did you work through that, especially when you had experienced such a profound loss and the real risk. Of love is that it can get taken away.
[00:26:27] Stephanie Duncan Smith: Yeah. I'll put it this way. I have two children today. I have a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old, and they were both born after losses and I have never known pregnancy to be anything but truly a daily terror. It's just a true confrontation of mortality from waking to sleeping.
And I don't wish that on anyone. I certainly never saw it for myself at the beginning of [00:27:00] this journey, but I found it truly terrifying and I had to find solid anchors for myself or I wouldn't have been able to function. I think a few of the anchors I found are, you know, simple yet profound. And again, this is for any kind of unknowing because we all live in unknowing.
This is not an isolated experience, but I, the first thing that really helped me was just staying grounded in the present. One of my pregnancy books had a line kind of a mantra for today, and it just said simply today I am pregnant and. I don't know what tomorrow is. I don't know about next week.
I don't know. But right now I have whole body, whole person access to the only time I have whole person access to right now. This is where I am [00:28:00] and letting that be enough for today. And I, you know, there's a way to expand that into whatever your own. Love against risk scenario is it's just like today I have what I need today, I'm safe.
Today I am cared for and it's daily, but it's, I think it shapes us, and I wouldn't say this is a practice, but maybe something to stay close to is I was really interested to learn. There have been some studies, and you may be in the deep on these, but there have been some interesting studies that show.
People who are insecure relationships, where they're loved unconditionally, they're supported unconditionally. It's healthy, stable support. They are more emboldened to take risks. And I found that certainly personally in my marriage and family relationships, [00:29:00] and I think leaning on the support from those secure relationships.
Can give us what we need to face the unknown, and that can be the people in our lives. And I also think that, you know, in my case of really kind of stepping away from the Christmas season in the wake of my loss, again, that was valid and not without reason, but I had to do my own work to mend what I knew was a secure relationship with.
The God of Advent. I knew that cognitively, but I did not feel that emotionally, and I had to do my own work to restore that trust and sort of come back into the remembrance that trust is earned. So that I could experience the benefits of, okay, I've got a solid anchor. I can take some risks, like [00:30:00] I have a widened capacity for the unknowns because I know that where it matters most. I am held and seen and supported.
[00:30:08] Alison Cook: This is really powerful and I want to make sure the listener is grasping what you're saying. There's a lot in this. So first and foremost, that I've gotta be anchored in the present moment. It's that today, this is what is true, which is such a powerful way to live life, but is almost essential when you're risking to your point, right when you're risking.
But I also heard you talk about loving anchors, and I wanna make sure I'm hearing you correctly, Stephanie, you had your, the support of your husband there, loving anchors in our lives. Loving family members, but then you went to God, and I think I heard you saying that was a little bit risky too. Yes. Wait a minute.
Is this a loving [00:31:00] anchor in this? Right, right, right. So when you're back in that position now of maybe taking a risk to go through another pregnancy. You had to really rework that with God. God wasn't necessarily intuitively that safe loving anchor is that, I'm kind of putting words in your mouth, but am I?
[00:31:21] Stephanie Duncan Smith: Absolutely. Absolutely. And also, I don't think for a second that God is threatened by that sense that maybe there's some trust that needs restored. That's the work of relationships. I don't think God is scared by that. I don't think God is put off by that to the contrary, you know, I wonder if maybe God sees that as an invitation to get more authentically connected and for a more authentic trust.
So there's something powerful there. And you know, without [00:32:00] giving too much away, but I do just wanna preview a big as it relates to Advent and. My sense of being very unseen by this season. I had to re-envision that story for myself. And I found a lot of when things started to turn for me, and I can tell you when that was, things started to turn for me as I revisited that narrative, and I realized that upon deeper reading, this is not a one dimensional story of.
Celebration and triumph because the context of the world into which this baby is born was war torn. And not only that, but specific somewhat to my, you know, context. There's the gospels don't cut out this [00:33:00] whole other narrative. Of what's called the massacre of innocence, and that's when Herod jealous King goes out and tries to preserve his kingship by preventing this baby from being born.
And rather than sideline that narrative, this is part of Advent as much as the birth of Christ is. And in fact, God came through the incarnation because of stories like this, because this should not be, it was so serious that God had to come down himself and enter our narrative and our pain, and that's when it really started to turn for me, that realization that this too is part of the story.
And if you are feeling like Christmas. An advent is painful to you. It's not lining up with your experience. The gospels give a fair [00:34:00] hearing also to a story of deep tragedy. And you know the gospels even echo prophetically. You know the prophets from the Old Testament. Rachel is part of Israel. They echo her cries through the centuries and it says Rachel is crying for her children.
For they are no more. And I hear that today and I had to learn to hear that is your sorrow is sacred to God. And if you are crying, you are being heard and honored by a God who remembers your grief in every season. You are not alone, you are not unseen. And that's when I, especially at the time, begrudgingly, I will admit, I was like, okay, I'm hearing this.
And that felt like a gift in a season that felt like, oh, you are not participating in this. This [00:35:00] isn't for you.
[00:35:01] Alison Cook: In fact, you are staying home on Christmas Eve as just as much you participating. Oh, yes. In that story, yes. As anybody else. It doesn't always feel that way. And I hear you, it feels like. We are the ones stepping away when in fact, oh no.
But it took a while. I hear what you're saying to recalibrate in your own body that not just slapping on some sort of cognitive, but really allowing your embodied wisdom to understand. No, this too is part of the story. Yeah. Yes. Wow.
[00:35:39] Stephanie Duncan Smith: Yes. And it is deeply seen by God, and God is grieving. In Rachel's Tears and in yours?
[00:35:47] Alison Cook: Yes. Yes.
[00:35:54] AD BREAK 2
[00:35:54] Alison Cook: You've said this, Stephanie, but I really wanna underscore it because it comes outta your lived experience. [00:36:00] What was surprising to you as you recalibrated not only that season of Advent, but you also kind of began to recalibrate to the different seasons of the church calendar? What surprised you about God?
[00:36:15] Stephanie Duncan Smith: Yeah, I think it's been an unfolding, but. I'll tell you this, I'm looking at it right now over my desk. I have an ancient Celtic symbol and oh gosh, I'm gonna butcher this pronunciation. I think it's a Tri Ketra, and it's basically a sort of Trinitarian image. There's three interlinking arches, and then in the middle there's a center that they create.
And my sisters gave this to me. It's like a stained glass kind of hanging, and they, my sisters gave this to me after my first loss, and I, at the time, hung it up over the kitchen sink and [00:37:00] just started looking at it. And over time, I've really started to see the center of this piece as the place where we are held by God.
I think about this beautiful verse in Colossians that says, in God, all things hold together. And I think what for me has emerged through much contemplation on where is God beating me in this healing process? And. What has really emerged for me is new and kind of renewed images of God, both as mother and midwife.
And I started to think of that verse in Colossians as it got all things hold together. And I started to think of it as, you know, in this center, this space that I'm [00:38:00] visualizing in my tri catchup, we are held together and I think about the imagery of. A woman in pregnancy, it's, we talk about she's carrying and she's carrying life and she's carrying mystery.
And that is very kindred language to the salvation metaphor actually, that Jesus speaks of when he's talking to Nicodemus. And Nicodemus asked, what do I need to do to enter the kingdom? And Jesus says, you need to be born again and. At a very face value reading, who is doing that Earthing, who is doing the divine work of that earthing, it's God.
And that might feel unfamiliar to some Christian practice and it might even feel a little, you know, can we say that? Can we do that? But I [00:39:00] think if you take a close look, you'll find so many. Images and language in scripture that is really rich with these. And you know, it's all metaphor, right? You know, even God as father, that's a metaphor just as much as any of this is.
But metaphor is helpful. That's how we can understand the abstract. And I think it metaphor becomes for us, a, a threshold to new understanding. And that's what it was for me. I thought, you know, I am held, I am carried. And the promise and the presence in that is meaningful to me.
[00:39:37] Alison Cook: That's powerful. And that is, you know, sometimes I think about even when you were saying whether you were working it out, that holding is, it is.
And I think about as you're saying, it's like when we think about the ideal, not that this is everybody's experience, but the ideal of mother love, right. Of it's a love that just holds [00:40:00] through. Yes. Everything.
[00:40:01] Stephanie Duncan Smith: Yes. So I have a master's in theology and I actually did my capstone thesis on images of God for women and what kind of a male savior means for women.
And so I've done these studies and there's one that really interests me. There's a scholar named Phyllis Tribble, and she has done a study of the Hebrew word for womb. And the Hebrew word for womb and mercy share the same root. They're very close etymologically, and there's even a dynamic to this word in the, there's so much you know, to be said about gut's, mercy, and loving kindness.
I think that's the same word here, but she calls it. Kind of one and the same. This is God's womb love. It's a mercy that is all encompassing and [00:41:00] holds it all. This is a love that holds space for us, all that holds our pain. And there's even a dynamic in the linguistic study that talks about this mercy, this womb love that's trembling for the beloved.
Like this is a very active love, a very, you know, dynamic ever present. Stance toward us. And I think that's really beautiful. And you know, for all of the wishful thinking promises that won't hold up, of which there are many, this is not one of them.
[00:41:36] Alison Cook: I wrote down this quote as toward the end of the book, you do end up giving birth to your first baby girl Quinn.
And here's this quote, I just thought it was. Stunning, and it's similar to what you're describing right now. You're describing your new baby girl and you say, “surely her life. Surely every life will hold a great shimmering spectrum of [00:42:00] everything. Resurrection mornings and dark nights of the soul sweeping pandemics and paper cut griefs. Great loves. Sucker punch losses and disorienting in tweens for all my burning goodwill. As a mother, you're saying, I can't promise my daughter safe passage, but I can promise her presence in any passage, and that's it.”
That's incredible.
[00:42:32] Stephanie Duncan Smith: Yeah, I was really on a mission. With this book to shake the trees free of any kind of promise in the face of pain that wouldn't actually test true.
And this is what it came down to. You just found the very bottom of the funnel. This is it. It's presence.
[00:42:52] Alison Cook: What's amazing about that, and again, this is not, this is the true gospel of death, [00:43:00] resurrection, and ascension. That is the Pascal mystery, right? If you go to a liturgical church, right, every Sunday, Christ has died.
Christ has risen, Christ will come again. This is the ongoing pattern of all of our lives, and you're saying it so beautifully because this isn't a. Superficial bandaid. This is a, oh my gosh. Through my own experience of this incredible pain, I've come to a deeper understanding of what with or presence is.
And now I will have more of that to offer to this little girl, which is really what she needs. And there are just no words to describe this, but that comes pretty close. That's really beautiful, Stephanie. That's just a gorgeous naming.
[00:43:45] Stephanie Duncan Smith: Thank you. I have a brief piece too that I'd like to tag onto that. I had a couple scares during my pregnancy with my daughter, and there was a moment when my doctor, just a routine checkup [00:44:00] and you know, it was like third trimester, everything's looking good. And my doctor said, uh, you're great, but you're out of the woods now. And I sort of laughed bitterly to myself thinking, are we ever, you know, my kids are very earth side army out of the woods.
I don't know. You know, there's still so many unknowns. So I wrote this in response to that. There are so many woods. Life is an outright wilderness of them dividing up the furniture with the one you thought would be your forever gritting your teeth through the toxic work environment because you need the health insurance.
Grappling with the crushing weight of helplessness as the news cycle breaks your heart again and again. While it would be far preferable to live our lives where we can see the sun above the tree line, where we can feel its warmth on our skin and the safety of some gold clearing, we know the forest will always be part of the landscape.
We may not ever be [00:45:00] out of the woods altogether, but we can live our lives in communion. We can live sealed as God's own. Forever. The I am with us in any wilderness. What's more I believe we are meant to.
[00:45:15] Alison Cook: It's beautiful. Thank you for sharing your story, not only with us today, but through this beautiful book. It's called Even After Everything, the Spiritual Practice of Knowing the Risks and Loving. Anyway, and I just so appreciate you're a writer's writer, it's a beautiful book, but you're taking that hard earned wisdom and bringing it to folks so they don't feel alone in it. And I just wanna thank you not only for your time today, but for doing that hard work.
[00:45:45] Stephanie Duncan Smith: And I likewise, I want to toast the courage of all the listeners to this conversation. Whatever unknowns you're facing, whatever risks you are taking on, that makes you one of the brave ones and that matters. And you are. [00:46:00] Radically accompanied. Which is a quote from Wendy Wright in all of that.
[00:46:06] Alison Cook: That's beautiful. Thanks so much for just giving us your time and just so grateful for you.
[00:46:11] Stephanie Duncan Smith: Thank you, Allison. So good to be with you.
Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Best of You. Today's conversation is tender. It's courageous, and I'm just so grateful for this opportunity to share it with you. I'm joined by Stephanie Duncan Smith. Stephanie is the author of a stunning new book. It's called Even After Everything, the Spiritual Practice of Knowing the Risks and Loving.
[00:46:17] Alison Cook: Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You, it would mean so much. If you take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts and click the Plus or. Follow button that will ensure you don't miss an episode, and it helps get the word out to others while you're there.
I'd love it if you leave your five star review. I look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God. You heal others and you stay true to your God given self.
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The Best of You Every Day offers short, daily reflections on Scripture through the lens of emotional health—helping you stay steady, connected, and rooted in love.
