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Spiritually-based wisdom.

What do you do with the ache of not feeling wanted? The part of you that wonders if you’ll ever truly belong?

In this powerful conversation with IFS therapist and author Tammy Sollenberger, we explore how the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model helps you turn toward those tender places inside—rather than pushing them away.

This conversation originally struck a deep chord with listeners—and it feels especially relevant right now. Whether you’re hearing it for the first time or tuning in again, it holds fresh insight for your journey.

Tammy shares:

• Her personal story of feeling unwanted—even though her parents loved her.
• Why “parts work” is so transformative in healing emotional wounds
• How self-compassion opens the door to real connection
• A simple practice to begin befriending the hurting parts within

If you’ve ever struggled with feeling left out, overlooked, or not enough—this episode will meet you with kindness, insight, and hope.

📘 Learn more about Tammy’s book: ⁠The One Inside⁠

💬 Got a question or reflection? Call 307-429-2525 and leave a message for a future episode.

If you liked this episode, you'll love:

• ⁠Episode 108⁠ Inside Out—Internal Family Systems, Therapy, and High-Performing Protectors with Jenna Riemersma
• ⁠Episodes 39⁠ through ⁠43⁠ —Boundaries For Your Soul series on IFS in 5 parts

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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.

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Episode Transcript:

Alison Cook: Hi friends. It's Dr. Alison. Welcome back. I'm so glad you're here, and if you're new here, I'm so glad you found your way. This is a space where we talk about the intersection of our spiritual lives, psychology and the healing journey from the inside out.

Whether you've been listening for a while or you're just getting started, I'm so glad you're here.

We've been in the middle of some incredible conversations about how we reconnect with the parts of ourselves that carry pain, fear, or doubt,

And today I wanted to bring back one of my favorite episodes and one of the episodes you have shared and re-shared a conversation that beautifully illustrates what the internal family systems model or IFS for short looks like in real life.

My guest, Tammy Sollenberger, is a licensed clinical mental health counselor and IFS certified supervisor and the host of the one inside, one of the very first podcasts to explore the world of IFS. She's also the author of The One Inside: 30 Days to Your Authentic Self.

A simple, practical guide for getting to know your inner world.

And what I love about this conversation with Tammy is that it's not a teaching, it's a story Tammy shares openly about her own childhood and the parts of her that formed in response to early loss and how those parts shaped her experience well into adulthood.

Tammy's story is personal, it's honest and it's filled with insight for anyone learning how to turn inward with compassion.

We also talk about the inside out movies, which have done such a brilliant job bringing parts language into the mainstream.

If you have not seen the first Inside Out movie or the second Inside Out movie Inside Out two that came out last summer, I highly recommend them as a great starting point for beginning to understand this way of viewing our inner lives. These movies are not just for kids. They are for all of us. They help us understand and name the different parts of us that we all carry.

This episode so beautifully illustrates a larger thread that we're constantly weaving throughout the show. And if you wanna go even deeper into Parts Work or IFS, please check out episode 108 with Jenna Rema for a powerful conversation on parts, pain and compassion. And also check out the boundaries for your Soul Series that whole series episodes 39 through 43 is a great companion to what you'll hear today, and you might wanna especially check out episode 43 where my co-author of Boundaries for Your Soul, Kimberly Miller and I talk about taming your inner critic.

We'll link to all of those episodes in the show notes. You can also find them on my website, DrAlisoncook.com/podcast.

Tammy's story is personal, it's honest, and it's full of wisdom. For anyone who's felt unwanted, cast aside, or not enough, I can't wait for you to hear it.

Please enjoy my conversation with my dear friend and fellow therapist, Tammy Sollenberger. 

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[00:03:17] INTERVIEW

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[00:03:17] Alison Cook: Tammy, I just love talking to you always. We always have such great conversations. I'm such a big fan of your podcast, The One Inside. It's such a great resource for anyone who wants to go deeper. And then your book, The One Inside, which I love, it's 30 meditations.

[00:03:34] Tammy: It is 30 days to your authentic self. And so basically what it does is it's a day by day teaches you the IFS model, but it teaches you by going inside and helping you get to know your own system. 

Like what does it mean for me to have parts and how do I pay attention to my parts? And how do I know who is here and how do I know how to track them, and how do I start listening to them? And it just is a very bite-sized way for you to begin to [00:04:00] understand and learn and befriend your own personality.

[00:04:03] Alison Cook: Well, I love it. And you're a seasoned IFS therapist. You do this work all the time. You actually consult with IFS therapists who are getting their certification. You lead some groups in IFS. I mean, you are seasoned in the model. So the fact that you can take something really complicated and distill it into basic principles is actually really hard to do.

And I. Commend you for it, which is why we love this movie Inside Out and the New one Inside Out too, right? Because that's exactly what it's doing. It's taking it out of therapy and into normal, mainstream life. We all have these parts from little kids to ourselves, to our friends, and it's just such a helpful way to think about the people that we love and ourselves at basic level, at the foundational level of the soul, right?

Is we have different parts of us.

[00:04:48] Tammy: I love it. Right? So an inside out has really done just this marvelous job of making this idea mainstream. Anybody any age can really begin to have this language [00:05:00] of a part of me feel sad. A part of me feels mad, a part of me is jealous. A part of me is bored and I'm allowed to speak for them, and I'm allowed to say them, and they make sense.

Like it makes sense that I would have a variety of parts and a variety of different, different emotions running my system. And so, yeah, I think the movie does such a great job of explaining these kind of higher level concepts, but it does such a good job of making it not that complicated.

[00:05:24] Alison Cook: So toward that end, Tammy, I actually am dying to ask you some of these questions 'cause I don't know these aspects of your story. I know a lot about your current life. I know a lot about, you know, as we've gotten to know each other for some reason, I don't know as much about your personal history we're kind of in this series looking at.

These personal stories about when these parts form, like we see RI, right? She's moved across the country, she's got to deal with new friends, new school, all these things, and we see how that. External experience and the way she relates to her family, her parents, her literal parents, begin to shape the development [00:06:00] of the different parts of her.

I would love to learn a little bit more from you if you would be so gracious as to allow us to go back in time for a moment. As you think about your pre-teen. Self. The younger you, the little young. Tammy, what are some of the characters or the parts of yourself that you now understand were parts at the time?

I'm sure you had no sense of that vocabulary, but how do you see that younger you and how she was existing in the world at maybe sixth grade, seventh grade, middle school? I see your face just immediately grow, compassionate and empathetic. That's beautiful.

[00:06:39] Tammy: Yeah, I mean, so Riley is 13 and so, yeah. I mean, this is a huge time of our lives, right? This huge transition, uh, developmentally, physically. So, yeah, I mean, I think because you're, you, and because we have this relationship, it does feel really safe. And I always say on my podcast too, that like I. I'm not thinking about the people listening, I'm just thinking about you.

So I'm just thinking about [00:07:00] my friend Alison, and me and you having this conversation. So it feels really safe for me to sort of share this. And so growing up, my mom and dad were 16 when they had me, my mom was Catholic, they got married and then they got divorced sort of a year or two later.

So my mom was a single mom. My dad was kind of in and out, but I would see him every other weekend and I still have a relationship with him and, I think I was maybe six or seven when my dad married my 

 stepmom and they had three boys. It was just my mom and I till I was 10. And then my mom married my stepdad. He had a daughter that was my age and then they had a daughter. So So basically I have a dad and a stepmom and three brothers. And then I have my mom and my stepdad.

And then I have a sister who's 10 years younger than me.

[00:07:40] Alison Cook: Slow down for a second because talk about a complicated family system. because what I heard in that Tammy, is you have a few half brothers and a half-sister who's 10 years younger, but, and then also a stepsister who's roughly your same age.

That's a lot of change for a [00:08:00] 10-year-old.

[00:08:00] Tammy: it's a lot of change and what I remember is that I was a really happy kid because I, in general, like I'm a really happy sort of sunshiny person, like as an adult and I was, I was a really happy kid that I remember. I.

[00:08:13] Alison Cook: You have a strong

[00:08:15] Tammy: Yes,

[00:08:15] Alison Cook: I see that

[00:08:16] Tammy: yes. I have lots of joy.

[00:08:18] Alison Cook: the movie.

[00:08:18] Tammy: Anger has been completely exiled, but joy is here in abundance and we like joy and sadness is pretty good too.

 But to bring the IFS piece in and a little bit, so my first big training with IFS was I did a week with Dick Swartz at Cape Cod Institute about 11 years ago. So I did this week long workshop with Dick, and there was times where there was. Pieces of teaching, and then there's times where you could work with somebody kind of one-on-one.

And the first big piece of work that I did was this 10-year-old part of me who lost her mom, and I was sobbing, like hysterically crying, and I did not know that was there. but looking back and thinking about it, I'm like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

'cause for me it was me and my mom. And I remember we lived in this little tiny, we call it the beach cottage. We lived in this little tiny beach cottage and we bought, if I remember this correctly, like we, we each had different types of toothpaste that we bought. And, and to me, I had a happy life. Like my poor mom was a single mom and.

You know, 26 years old with a 10-year-old, you know, so working full time, you know. But I'm like, happy as can be. And then all of a sudden into my system, we move, we move across the street. So I go to a different school. All of a sudden there's a stepdad who's the nicest guy. He's a nice guy, but there's this man.

His daughter, who was very, very tough and ended up getting kind of asked to leave our house when we were 16, so there was a lot of stuff there. And then my mom got pregnant. Basically immediately, so you know, by the time I'm 11, I have a baby sister, a stepsister, a stepdad, a new house. And so there was all this loss, and I think that my system basically exiled all this pain.

And so we're just gonna be cheery. We're gonna be a nice girl, we're gonna be a good girl. We're not gonna cause any problems. and I'm not gonna have any feelings. You know, there's not gonna be any pain or sadness and there's nothing about me.

Right. There's no me here. Right. My feelings about losing my mom and what this was like for me, that that wasn't even. Didn't even dawn on me that I could even speak for like what this was like for me until probably 14, probably when puberty hit. I think I just was super emotional and the word comes up for me as sort of like identity, like like, you sort of see Riley, like she's, she's got hockey.

Like I didn't have a thing. Like I was never really good at anything. You know, I was just okay at school. I didn't really care about school. I cared about my friends, just like Riley. You 

 I tried to find different friend groups. I think this is where sort of the church comes in later, you know, when I've done my IFS work, I have this. This exile around not being wanted. Like of course you weren't wanted, you had teenage parents, you weren't wanted, and my parents were really good about saying, you're wanted and you're loved.

And they would say that they were very good, very good about that. But this part of me says, well, the truth is you weren't wanted, like, let's be honest, Tammy, And so I have this. This part that is kind of in, and it'll say like, it's just in my blood, like not being wanted is in my blood.

And so I have then these other parts that do anything that they can do to be wanted. And we see this in the movie with Riley. Where she leaves her really good friends to go with the popular girls, and she makes some really bad decisions. And I think I would've done anything to be wanted, like, just want me, just include me.

Just let me be a part of it. Give me identity. And so I sort of flounder, right? I flounder with friends. I flounder with. Boys, once, you know, high school comes, I'm just wanting to be wanted by boys. And as a three, you know, three is we wanna be successful. And like I wasn't successful at school, I wasn't successful at sports, but it'd be like, okay, but if I wanna be with this boy, that would be the way I could be successful.

Or, you know, being fun or whatever. Like that's, that's how I could be successful. So then my system, when we think about. Parts, there's a lot of protection around this being wanted, and then what happens when I feel unwanted, and so I have all these parts that kind of swirl around the idea of being wanted and unwanted.

[00:12:19] Alison Cook: Gosh, there's a lot in that and I can tell there's also a lot of years of getting to know those. Different parts, and so this is the power of IFS. It makes sense that a part of you picked up burdens all along the way. I would imagine as you started doing the work with Dick 11 years ago, and there were memories that surprised you of things that happened that reinforced that burden.

That wasn't necessarily true, but moments where maybe even your parents were trying not to reinforce that burden, but maybe something happened that did reinforce that burden. Were there some key memories or moments as you've done some of this work as an adult that you would go back to in your mind?

[00:13:08] Tammy: Yeah. I mean that's part of why this work is so powerful is you can go back, but when I go back, it's not traumatic to go back because then I am there with me, the adult leader, the authentic self like I can be. Then with my. You know, sixth grade part that felt like she had no friends and was sitting in the middle school cafeteria and felt this incredible aloneness.

Like, I can go back and be with her in that moment in the way that she needed someone. Whether she needed my mom or she needed a friend. I can go back and be what she needed and really. Get her out of that place that she's in, that she's still in, where she's still, 'cause that's what happens in our bodies is I still have these parts that feel that unwanted ness or the no sense of belonging or these two families.

But I don't exist really in either one of them. I'm not really wanted in either one [00:14:00] of these families, which again, other parts of me say that's not true at all. But there's this burden of I don't fit, I don't fit, and I'm not wanted.

[00:14:08] Alison Cook: We have these rational, logical parts of us, no, no. My parents loved me, but this is what the listener who hasn't experienced this, I want you to understand these are. Stored in our memories. I remember when I was writing Boundaries for Your Soul and we were supposed to come up with stories, and I thought, oh, my stories are just dumb.

the story that I tell in boundaries for your soul of not making the basketball team in, I think it was seventh grade, right? Which is such a formative year. I worked and worked my tail off a good little Enneagram three part of me. I worked at it, I worked hard to make that team. And when the day came and I walked into the locker room and the list of names was up and my name wasn't on that list, the shame that overwhelmed me.

I had bought brand new sneakers that were the sneakers that the real basketball player girls were wearing. And this was in a time when that was a big expenditure. People just didn't throw away money on brand names, sneakers. It was a big deal. Like I got 'em, I think, for a Christmas present, you know? And then I.

Didn't make the team. And I was just mortified and swallowed up by shame because I've had to then wear those sneakers and I didn't make the team right, and my parents actually loved me through that as best they could. It wasn't even like any horrible big T trauma thing that we might think of had happened, but the way that my parts.

Lined up and the way that that story landed in that moment with other things that had happened to me as a child was just this feeling of invisibility. My name is never on the list. I'm always invisible, and I still to this day have to update that part of me. Because I can find all those moments when that happened and I don't notice the moments where, you know, my friends will say, Alison, are you kidding me?

Like you were always on the honor roll. You're always on all these lists. I'm like, didn't matter. I only remember the ones I didn't make and the shame that I felt, and I bring that in. I hear you saying so well, Tammy, and so clearly, right? Those burdens get picked up and sometimes the memories that we have where there's pain are surprising to the logical, rational parts of us.

They're like, but you sometimes don't make the team. It doesn't matter. I had to go back to the place of that memory and be with the young girl who in that moment just buried that feeling of shame deep inside.

[00:16:24] Tammy: Well, in the movie Ri, you know, she has these balls of memory. And what you see in the second movie is she really joy exiles any. Balls that are shame. She sort of puts up in this little sucker thing and just sort of sucks it away and sort of puts it in the basement. And that's what we do with memories or things that don't align.

And so Joy does that with sort of sad things, right? Or shaming things, right? Nope. We're only gonna keep the Happy balls, the happy memories. The happy moments. The little balls that reinforce that we are loved and we are good, and we are happy and we're a good friend, and we're smart and all these beautiful things that we wanna believe.

We're just gonna keep those balls. But what happens is our system, because it's so protective in nature, we sort of hold onto the balls that reinforce that burden. So if I have a burden of being unwanted. my parts like almost are hypervigilant for looking for anything or any one, right? It's sort of that idea of one person says, I don't like you.

It doesn't matter that there's a million people out there that think I'm the best thing in the world. My system's gonna focus on that one person and like highlight that little ball. That memory then is gonna become sort of stored as evidence of my burden.

[00:17:44] Alison Cook: That is so well stated, and I can then imagine as you're going through high school and the social jungle of high school and young adulthood, the exhaustion. Of trying to make sure every guy, every girl, everyone likes you what do you do with the ones who don't want you?

That would just be devastating as opposed to learning, oh, wait a minute. There's another way to go through life in terms of relating to other people. 

[00:18:16] AD BREAK 1

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[00:18:16] Alison Cook: Tammy, as you got older and you brought some of these burdens with you into adulthood, when did you begin to realize, oh, this might not be working?

This strategy for gaining love and gaining a feeling of being wanted might not be working. I.

[00:18:32] Tammy: That's a good question. We talk about the CS of self energy. So authentic self is that leader, that essence of who we are. The divine us inside is this authentic self, and we use these C qualities and a C that is not listed in the c qualities is choice. And we often think about, if I had choice, if I had more perspective, what choices would I make that would be different, right?

If I'm only making choices that are protective in nature. Because my parts are like, I have to make choices to be wanted or not wanted. So I'm gonna pick jobs or hobbies or activities or friends or people that really try to reinforce and sort of create a space of being wanted. And if I get any, uh, feeling that this person isn't really gonna want me, they're not in the club.

So to answer your question, you know, when I was 21, I got really involved in my boyfriend at the time who became my husband. We got married when I was 22 and we got really involved in his church and that really shifted my whole life for. Probably 20 years that I got really involved in church. And that was a community.

I had a good church experience. I have not had a traumatic church experience at all, even though I don't really go to an evangelical church now. But I had a good experience for the most part. But you know, I think that's where sort of the Enneagram three. Busy, the busyness and the tasks and the being good at something.

That's when that started coming into play. When I was in my twenties, like all of a sudden I wasn't chasing boys anymore. I was like, oh, I'm actually not dumb. I'm actually, I'm kind of smart. And so if I take a class. I want an A plus. If I teach this Bible study, it needs to be really good. I need to spend hours on it.

I want everyone to come to my Bible study. Like it really shifted to this sort of idea of being wanted and the idea of success shifted to be really good at this other thing.

[00:20:28] Alison Cook: So, Tammy, is it fair to say on some level your strategy. Just shifted to more either church sanctioned or socially acceptable sanctioned ways, but really you hadn't healed those deeper inner parts of you. You just shifted from getting the affection of boys and popularity to, I'm gonna be the best Bible study leader.

I'm gonna be the best therapist, I'm gonna be the best wife, friend, church member.

[00:20:57] Tammy: would say yes, except for I don't know that I ever wanted. To be the best wife, which I'm so sorry to my ex-husband. But to be completely honest, that that wasn't there. You know it, and, and I can feel that now because now I have a partner and I feel differently. I feel this idea of like, I wanna be a good partner to him.

And I look back and I think, wow, I never felt that way with my husband. Like there was, it was sort of like, yep, got him. Check off the list, turn around. Let's, what else are we doing? 

[00:21:24] Alison Cook: interesting.

[00:21:26] Tammy: Yeah. Yeah, and that's been something that has been. It. It's just interesting to sort of notice, so I'm not judging it, but I'm just really noticing that like, wow, that was not on my list.

 an Enneagram one is gonna wanna be perfect and be the best at something, and a three's drivenness isn't about that. It really isn't about being the best, it's more about the accomplishment of it. Right? Like I think for me it was that idea, and maybe for you too, it's like the idea of being wanted, right?

So my success is being wanted. It's not even really being. The best at it. When I think about my book or the podcast where I have a lot of like, it's good enough, let's just accomplish it and get stuff done. And so it has a different kind of flavor.

[00:22:07] Alison Cook: It makes sense. And I really appreciate your honesty and I think this is something IFS affords is we can really look at ourselves honestly because we remove the shame and we really just get curious. And I really hear you saying and it makes sense to me that there's an Enneagram three part of you that was like, I can check off the list marriage I've accomplished.

Marriage, which is a very different way of looking at it than what does it mean to consistently show up for this other human being that I've chosen to bring into my life or God has put into my life. And there's such an honesty. I have no doubt there's a whole nother side to that story. We won't go into that, but I do appreciate the.

Honesty of your own ability to go? No. In reality, when I look back, yes, there was a lot of me wanting accomplishments and I think that is, you're right, that's a good pushback on that. It's not being the best, and it makes sense to me that at that young age it's like, okay, I did that,  done next, and that, that probably did impact from your side of things, how you could show up as a friend and a partner and an intimate person.

In a long term relationship. That's really honest. I just wanna pause there. I think that's unusual and worthy of just pausing on, oh gosh, yeah, this is what was going on with me without shame, with real honesty. There's a freedom in that.

[00:23:26] Tammy: Well, I like what you're saying because I think IFS really does that. Like if we look at Riley in this movie, you know, we can really look at these parts of her. But just sort of, yeah, of course there's an anxious part of her. A sad part, like these parts are here. We don't have to judge them or apologize for them, or we can be curious about them.

You know, we can see how much they love Riley and how hard they work for her, and that's. The same thing with our parts, right? the parts of me that were like, let's pick a boy and let's be boy crazy and let's do what we need to do to be wanted. And the parts of me that feel really unwanted,  I really understand them.

Like it makes sense to me that they're there. It makes sense to me why they're there. Not in a logic way, but in a heart way. Like my heart, my open heart, myself. Can really understand in a loving way how these parts are trying to help me. And if we kind of make it a little simplistic, my system really just gets built around this idea of being unwanted in success, right?

Just these two things that are highlighted for me, being an Enneagram three and coming from the family that I did. Then think about the parts of me that work really hard to make sure those things happen, and then think about the parts of me that come in when that doesn't happen. Right? Well, my name isn't on the basketball list, and then all these parts have to come in to help me with these feelings of failure.

With these feelings of being unwanted. I mean, that happens with my son. If my son, my 13-year-old. He's an only child. I had a hard time having him. And so when there's any little hint that he doesn't want me, my system goes haywire. Like and there's rage and there's shut down. 'cause my system is built, 

 around this idea of being wanted and unwanted. And so when there's feelings around that, everyone goes crazy. Right. So then I have to be there to say, Hey guys, I'm here. I'm with you. Turn and look at me. I am with you. Right? And so we have self that kind of steps into the room, which we don't really see that in inside out too.

 I come into the room and I say, I am here. I want you. I love you. Let's see. What do you need from me? Let's have a connection with me. And you sort of see what happens to these sweet parts when I enter the room.

[00:25:40] Alison Cook: Can we move into that a little bit, Tammy? Because I love what you're saying. What does that actually look like? those old childhood, 10-year-old parts of you that felt unwanted. 

 Can you give us a little glimpse of how you've gotten to know those parts that show up? How do you even notice it in your body?

[00:25:59] Tammy: I've noticed it happens usually when I pick him up from school in the car. So I'll pick him up and you know, he's tired, he's anxious, and it's, it's just. Sometimes is a hard transition, and so he'll say something and what I notice in my body is it feels like I disappear. Like

 Like I could be singing and having a little dance party by myself waiting to pick him up. He gets in the car and I'm like, Hey baby, how are you? How was your day? La, la, la, la, la. Right? Because Joy is usually here, and I'm all Joy, joy, joy, joy, joy. And he says something and I enjoy Joy. Joy. And he says something else, and then all of a sudden I feel like.

An invisible cloak has sort of come over me and I don't even feel like I'm there. I'm putting my hands on like 10 and two, right? My hands on 10 and two, I'm driving the car and all of a sudden it's like there's no more personality here, right? It's like I go from singing to, I'm not here at all, and I'm aware.

I but I really feel this cloak of like nothingness that I've completely shut down. Like I'm shut down, I'm numb. It feels like it takes over my whole body.

[00:27:07] Alison Cook: Sounds like a nervous system response, like it's not freeze necessarily, but you really do go into a form of a fight flight response inside of you. A part takes you out. Essentially. We all have those experiences and as you work with the parts, how do you in that moment, hang on to yourself.

[00:27:28] Tammy: so one of the thing, one of the things I think is really true is it's happened so much and this has become a part of me, that when I think about it and I consider some, like some of those moments that were really hard, I'm like, oh yeah, this part's been around for a long time. Right? It predates my son, right?

It predates it. It goes back to when I was little, sort of this really protective kind of cloaking numbing, shutting down. Part of me. And so I think one of the things I really recommend for listeners is to become really familiar with what we call their, your major players. Like who are the major players that are driving your bus, because then you can get really familiar with when they come.

Right? So this sort of shutdown part, I'm like, oh. Here you are buddy. Right? Like, it's almost like if sadness takes over that console for Riley, we all know what sadness feels like. Like you know, she's got her little, her little cute face and her little voice and we're all familiar with that part for Riley.

And so for me, and I think for us it's really getting familiar with like, oh, that's what's here right now. Right? So it's so totally blended. Totally took over that console. Totally started driving the bus. And so what I'll do now is I just will begin to breathe. And I will say, I am here.

And what I'm saying to the part is I know that you're trying to protect me, but I'm letting you know that I'm here. Let me be here. And 

 you see this beautiful scene in Inside Out too, where Riley has this panic attack at the hockey thing. And we sort of see what happens inside with anxiety. But outside what we see when joy sort of takes back over, we see Riley breathe. We see her open her eyes and look down at her skates. We see her senses come back online, right?

We see that she can hear the hockey puck and the hockey skates. We see this beautiful moment of her senses really grounding her. And so that's what I'm doing. I'm saying to this part, Hey, hey bud. I know that you're here. I know you're here for a good reason. Thank you for being here. 

 Let me be here with him. I've got this. You don't need to be here and let's just breathe And I, I'll stop talking to him, right? I'm not, I'm not gonna engage with him right now because engaging with him doesn't work in that moment. I might turn the radio on a little bit.

We're gonna look around, we're gonna look at the trees. We get home. We're gonna take our dogs for a walk, and slowly it feels like I come back online.

[00:29:47] Alison Cook: at that point, you're much more equipped to reengage with your son than trying to fake it in the moment. I think sometimes in those moments we try to fake it or we get mad, or other parts of us take over, but. What I hear you saying is breathing through it, taking your time, being present to yourself, which as a parent, we're kind of jumping into parenting, but the reality is our kids see through our phoniness and sometimes they're just in their own world anyway.

They don't, you know, it's just, they're fine. Sometimes it's like I'm just taking a minute to breathe through it. Right. 

[00:30:22] AD BREAK 2

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[00:30:22] Alison Cook: As you've done this work, as you've reconnected, and I so appreciate your sharing your story from the past and then bringing it into now present day. 'cause it's just so vivid, right?

Like those moments with our own kids replay the tape of our own pain points. That's just what happens. And I am curious, how do you connect spiritually? How is your spirituality of resource to you in those moments?

[00:30:48] Tammy: Yeah, no, it's a great question. I'll answer it sort of broader and then more specific. What's happened over, you know, I was gonna to an evangelical church here in New England, which was fine. All my friends went there and it was, it was okay. And then Covid happened. And during COVID, I discovered a.

Community called Closer Than Breath. And Closer Than Breath is a quote from Thomas Keating, who is a Catholic priest and sort of mystical, contemplative man And he writes that God is closer than our breath. And so I started doing some, some groups with this community and then Enneagram and uh, centering prayer group.

And so I was always curious about Christian, uh, meditation and what that looked like and what did that mean? And so I started doing, uh, these centering prayer groups. And so centering prayer is the idea that we take 20 minutes. We take a, a word and the word isn't necessarily a prayer word. The word is more like a, a windshield wiper.

'cause you know, our thoughts are going all the time, right? Our thoughts are chatty, chatty, chatty, chatty, chatty. And we use the word to kind of clean the windshield and sort of settle back into our heart to settle into like a prayer, to have more connection to the divine. so I started doing those groups and then I ended up going to a Quaker meeting And then I really enjoyed. The silence. You know, I'm a busy, busy, busy person, and so something happened for me during the silence, right? This sort of 20 minutes of silence or sort of the Quaker meeting.

It's an hour of silence around these people that just have this contemplative experience of God that just feels so beautiful and very aligned with what I know. My little Baptist girl. Inside. It's like that feels attuned and aligned. And also because I did go to a seminary, when they do study stuff that's not aligned, I'm like, that's not right, but my parts say it's okay because I have 

 this foundation and so I can go and I can take, take what works for me and sort of leave the rest kind of idea. So. Anyways, that's sort of where I am spiritually now is just enjoying this, this community of people that are just really connecting to God in this different way. That feels a little bit more experiential.

It feels more IF sy really. Right. It's really about sort of going inside and connecting, I think the Quakers say to that inner light To me, I would say the Holy Spirit or to that, that divine inside. If you're IF Sy, you would say to that authentic self. It's just this way to reconnect.

And to be more grounded and sort of open up to our true nature, right? We've kind of forgotten our true nature and we've forgotten this light that we are. And so it's a time and a space for my parts to quiet down and for me to reconnect to the divine and reconnect to God, and that feels really beautiful to me.

And so my partner is from North Carolina and when I go visit him, he goes to an evangelical church and I enjoy that. It feels like home in so many ways, but often I sit with my eyes closed and just sort of take in sort of, you know, what does God wanna show me or tell me through the music and through the sermon and, 

 but it's also to sort of ask my parts, just to give me space just to be here in this stillness and in this stillness. Nothing needs to be done in this stillness. I'm just like plugging into my power source, that source that wants me and loves me and is light and is love, and I can feel that.

Ultimate wanting, the ultimate healing that is beyond me and beyond, you know, what I can get on this earth beyond what my son can give me or my puppy or my partner, you know, it's, it's beyond anything like that. And then I had this experience that feels really healing.

[00:34:30] Alison Cook: What's kind of running through my mind as I'm listening is be still and know that I am God. Right. And just the way you brought that around to the ultimate being wanted. And the more you sit in that and train yourself through the slowing down, through the being, through the intentional quiet, through the intentional.

Practice of contemplative prayer and you plug in literally to that. No, no. This is where I'm truly wanted deep inside my core, where who I am meets who God is. Your parts start to trust you in those moments. Then when you're in the car with your son, when those parts still rear up, you've begun to retrain yourself.

No, no, There's more here. You know, it's beautiful. I love that you took us there. I also love Tammy, that your joy, your busyness, your, you're such an energy, you're such a life force. You know, you just light up a room. Those parts of you are just beautiful, right? And also, even with your son, you're lighting up the room and then he's kind of, you know, eing raining on your parade, right?

And those parts of you hijack you. All of that is welcome around. That centering place of here is God, here am I. I just love that you're tapping into that. That's beautiful. I.

[00:35:59] Tammy: Yeah. Thank you. I love the way you say that, right? This sort of, this connection, it's like bringing all of me, me, and all of my parts that are welcome and have good intentions and are wounded in some way and have all these burdens. We all come, to the divine for healing and for connection and for light and for just silence, right?

We all come and enjoy and take in this connection.

[00:36:26] Alison Cook: That's beautiful. Tammy, thank you so much for sharing with us. I would love for you to let the listeners know how they can connect with you and your work. Where can they find your podcast and your book and all the things you're doing?

[00:36:40] Tammy: Yeah, so if you just go to my website, everything's there, TammySollenberger.com and that's where my book and podcast and I'm on Instagram at ifs, Tammy. And um, we have a YouTube channel where we're starting to put. There's a really cool new start here where we put five of some of our favorite episodes.

So if you are new to IFS or you're curious about IFS, you can go to the start here page. It's on YouTube and it's not on my website, 

[00:37:06] Alison Cook: Before we close, I'd love to ask you two questions. What would you say to that younger 10-year-old with the wisdom that you have now?

[00:37:16] Tammy: You know, what I, what I would say and what I think about and what I'm, what I'm currently working with, a part of me, I have like a 17-year-old part that I'm, I'm really kind of hanging out with lately is this sort of desire to play more 

 and draw and paint and music, and just try things and really just experiment more. And that's what's beautiful about you. It's not having to succeed at anything, it's just playing. Go be successful at playing.

[00:37:46] Alison Cook: I. Love that. What would you say is bringing out the best of you right now?

[00:37:53] Tammy: You know, I think what's bringing out the best of me is this relationship that I'm in, you know, this long distancerelationship I'm in. It's, it's bringing out the best of me because it's, it's making me think about who do I wanna be? I wanna be more loving. What's keeping me from being loving? It's challenging me.

 to be like, okay, you're 50. Do you wanna be in a loving relationship? Do you want that? So then what do you need to do? What parts do you need to work on? What needs to happen inside of you internally for you to have the external relationship you always wished you had? Because here's the really cool thing, and I don't recommend people get divorced or have two relationships, but when you do and you end up doing the same thing, you're like, oh shoot, that must be me.

And so you can have the same relationship you had the first time. Or you can try something different. So what seems to be bringing out the best of me is being a little bit brave and a little bit vulnerable to love and to be loved in a really different way.

[00:38:59] Alison Cook: Wow, that's a whole word. I love that honesty. Again, Tammy, that's the freedom that comes with this work of really being able to look at your own self, your own parts, get really honest with yourself. What's mine to do differently? I love that you're getting this opportunity. You're the best. You're just such a light and I'm so grateful for the time you gave to us today.

[00:39:24] Tammy: Thanks, Alison, and I could say the same thing about you. I appreciate your friendship and all that you do for the world and for me just as a friend.

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‍

I’m joined by the brilliant and beautifully honest Dr. Heather Thompson Day for a conversation on spiritual wrestling. Heather’s latest book, What If I’m Wrong? Navigating the Waves of Fear and Failure explores what happens when the faith you once relied on starts to unravel.

‍

Heather shares openly about her father’s battle with Alzheimer’s, the spiritual crisis it triggered, and the years she spent in what she calls “spiritual drowning.” We talk about attachment, disappointment, failure, and the unexpected ways God shows up when everything else is falling apart.

‍

This conversation is a powerful example of how doubt and faith can co-exist. If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re allowed to question your faith—or felt like you were losing your grip on God—this episode is for you.

‍

We explore:

• What happens when the God you believed in no longer matches your reality
• How therapy helped Heather not just psychologically but spiritually
• Why what feels like failure may be something deeper—and more redemptive
• The unexpected miracle Heather experienced at the end of her long season of doubt

‍

This isn’t a story of tidy answers. It’s a story of holding on, even when you’re not sure what you’re holding onto.

🎧 Listen now and share with someone who needs a reminder: doubt doesn’t mean you’re losing your faith—it might mean you’re learning to trust in a deeper way.

🔗 Heather’s new book: What If I’m Wrong?
🔗 Connect with Heather: heatherthompsonday.com
🔗 Follow Heather on Instagram: @HeatherThompsonDay

💬 Got a question or reflection? Call 307-429-2525 and leave a message for a future episode.

‍

If you liked this episode, you’ll love:‍

• ⁠Episode 98: I Shouldn’t Feel Alone in My Grief—Why Your Grief Matters & How to Support Those Who Are Grieving with J.S. Park
• Episode 99: I Shouldn’t Feel Like My Spirit is Broken—Exploring a Broken Spirit & the Dark Night of the Soul with Christopher Cook

‍

Thanks to our sponsors:

• This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/BESTOFYOU and get on your way to being your best self.
• Go to ⁠Quince.com/bestofyou⁠ for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order!
• Save an additional 10% on any NIV Application Bible and NIV Application Commentary Resources by visiting ⁠faithgateway.com/NIVAB⁠ and using promo code BESTOFYOU
• Visit⁠ GoGeviti.com⁠ to learn more about how you can start optimizing your health without leaving home today and use code BESTOFYOU.
• Right now, save $10 on your first purchase when you go to ⁠StoryWorth.com/bestofyou! ⁠

‍

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.‍

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© 2025 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage or transcript without permission from the author.

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Transcript:

ALISON Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Best of You Podcast. Before we dive into today's episode, just a quick reminder. You can now call in and leave a voicemail to be featured in a future episode. The number is 307-429-2525. We've already heard from so many of you and it's been incredibly meaningful to connect in this more personal way.

You can call with a question, a comment, or simply respond to this prompt. What is one area of your mental, emotional, or spiritual health where you like to grow? Right now just include your first name, where you're calling from, and your message, and if something from today's episode sparks a thought, that's a great place to capture it.

Again, the number is 307-429-2525. We'd love to hear from you. Now onto today's episode. This is one I've been looking forward to for such a long time. I've admired Heather Thompson day's work from afar for years. 

Dr. Heather Thompson Day is a gifted storyteller, speaker, bestselling author, and the founder of IT is Day Ministries. Heather has contributed to Christianity Today, religion, news Service, Newsweek, and the Bar Group, and she spent 15 years as a communications professor teaching public speaking persuasion and social media. She's the author of several books, including her latest that we're gonna get into today.

It's called, What If I'm Wrong? Navigating the Waves of Fear and Failure In It she invites us into the deep, raw, and very human questions that emerge when our circumstances no longer match the faith. We thought we had figured out in this episode. Heather shares honestly about her father's journey with Alzheimer's.

How it unraveled her own understanding of God and the years she spent in what she describes as a kind of spiritual drowning. We talk about grief, identity, the tension between faith and doubt, and how the experience of suffering became a catalyst for a more honest, grounded relationship with God. This isn't a story of neat answers or tidy theology.

It's a story of holding on even when you're not sure what it is you're holding onto. It's a story about the power of questions, the importance of honoring what hurts, and the miracle of discovering a God who never left. Whether you're in a season of wrestling or just hungry for a faith, it can hold the full weight of real life.

I think this episode will speak to you. Please enjoy my conversation with the brilliant and beautifully honest Heather Thompson Day.

***

ALISON I've known of you, I've seen your work, and so I just love, for me, this is such a great opportunity to get to know someone who I have admired from afar. I feel like we've kind of circled around each other. Yeah. But never actually connected, and so I'm just. [00:05:00] Thrilled to get to meet you today and get to have this conversation with you.

So I wanna start though, Heather, because you actually had me kind of just in that first chapter, just like, oh boy, really? You're gonna do this to me? 'cause I have a dad who's 83. You start off telling us about your dad and his battle with Alzheimer's. Tell me a little bit about why is this the way you started off this book where you're really exploring fear and failure?

HEATHER That story is the defining story of what feels like most of my adult life. Everything that I do. I was deeply impacted by my dad as a child, which I talk about in the book. My dad was the same man in his basement as he was when he was on stage, and I grew up in a van going with him from church to church to church.

Not even just the country. We went internationally too. And so I was always in the room where the Holy Spirit moved. And so I never doubted whether God was real. I've never had that journey. I always knew God was real 'cause I saw him and my dad, it was God and my dad felt very close. And so when my dad, God, Alzheimer's, now that was a different story.

All of a sudden then I started to not question whether God was real, but question whether I understood who God was. 

‍

ALISON You're saying something so important, let's just hit the ground running in terms of attachment, right? So much that primary attachment figure becomes our vision of. Who God is, which could be a wonderful thing for some people.

That's actually why they have a hard time trusting God. 'cause they're like, well, this person didn't model well, God. Well, in your case it was a beautiful like of course God is real. Of course God loves me. And then also that was. When your dad starts to be taken from you. So does also that image of God, that understanding of God.

HEATHER Yes. And it wasn't just the disease, it was the state that it left our family in. My dad gave his entire life financially to ministry. Every dollar he made, he always poured back in. And so here we were trying to figure out how do we afford a nursing home? And I can't even tell you the bitterness that came up.

When I started to feel like, okay, he gave his whole life to you, God, and you can't even make sure that he has a nursing home. That was very complicated for, and, and to be honest, I'm still working through those pieces, especially 'cause my dad always said, we barely talked about the Alzheimer's. I. While he could still cognitively discuss it.

'cause he always said, God's gonna take care of me. God's gonna take care of me. Don't worry about it. And we believed him and then came the time where that doesn't feel true anymore. Right? So what do I do with my image of God now? And so that it, it was like a three year journey of me in therapy and that's when I'm writing the book is.

What do we do in this space where my image of God feels as though it could be wrong? And let me, I'll just say this too, 'cause I know somebody right now is feeling frustrated that I'm even talking so negatively. So let me say this. I sent a text to my mom, and this is in chapter one, and I said to her, it feels [00:08:00] like Dad gave his entire life to ministry and he has nothing to show for it.

And my mom text me back 59 minutes later, though her read receipt said she had read it immediately and she said. You say Dad has nothing to show for it, Heather, he has you to show for it. I think you're wrong. And from that, I started to zoom out and this is like a three year journey, but I started to zoom out and say.

What if this life is not just about me? What if God is answering prayers that my dad prayed in my life? Like what if this thing is more than our singular experience and we're actually a part of a much larger, bigger global family 

ALISON Connectedness. Yes. That God taking care of your dad might look differently than what you had thought and I appreciate your foreshadowing kind of the end of the story.

And I also just wanna say again, from a parts perspective. So we talk a lot on the podcast about different parts. That's the model from which I work. This internal family systems, parts, everything you're saying makes sense. A part of you, right? That's what I love about that model. It's complicated. A part of you is mad, but again, you're trying to fill out a larger story that accounts for all of what you're experiencing, including a little bit of the frustration or a little bit of the doubt.

That to me, and that space makes sense. But let's go to the fact that you, 'cause you talk about this in the book, you went to see a counselor. You specifically chose to see a counselor who was not Christian. Tell us a little bit about that choice and why that was important to you. 

HEATHER My world is very Christian insulated. I worked at a Christian campus. I work in ministry. Some of my best mentors are literally, I think, have prophetic gifts. I am surrounded.

By wise Christian counsel, but my issue that I was struggling with had to do with whether or not my dad was, I say this in the book, there's a fine line between faith and delusion and I didn't know what side my dad was on, and so then I didn't know what side I was on anymore, and so I wanted somebody who would tell me the truth and not Alize it.

And I went to my non-Christian counselor and it was such a beautiful three years that we spent together. She was much less antagonistic to my faith. I was not prepared. I thought she'd be like, this is silly. No. She was like, how has your hope hurt you? You know what I mean? She's like, it seems as though you're living a really beautiful life.

And I said, wow. Okay. That's—I needed to hear that. 

ALISON It's really interesting. It's such an interesting choice. I've done the same thing in my own life for what it's worth. And the question will come up on the podcast. You know, should I always have a Christian therapist? And my answer is, not necessarily, but that diverges from what some other people will say.

And the reason that I say that is that similar to your point I, I'll say to people, you don't wanna see someone who has an agenda with you who's trying to shame you or talk you out of something. That's not the job of a therapist. But the job of a therapist is to hold up a mirror and help you understand your own self and your own faith.

Better, more objectively. And it sounds like for you it's like I'm almost gonna trust this person more if they're asking me questions without any sort of preconceived idea about what the answer should be. Yes. And she was respectful. That's the piece that's important. 

HEATHER She was incredible. And you know what? She was like fresh out of school. It, we just had such a good dynamic 'cause I think she was like hungry to, to be in there doing the work and I lucked out and got her. 

ALISON I love though that you were intentional about noticing this is going on with what's going on with my dad is affecting me. It's not just grief.

It's actually affecting me spiritually, psychologically, and spiritually. I'm gonna get support. I'm gonna get support very intentionally. And tell us a little bit about what some of that rumble was, Heather with. Doubt and faith and how you, I mean it's, this sounds cliche, but it's almost as if you went through another iteration of figuring out how to.

Make your faith, your spirituality, your own, even to another degree, separating it from your dad's.

HEATHER That's exactly what I was doing actually, now that you say that, yes, that's exactly what I was doing. I needed to know who I was. There's so many things that have helped me. Discover that, and I, I will say this to whoever's listening for me, knowing who I am has changed everything knowing who I am and who God is, because my circumstances no longer have to reveal to me what I know to be true about who I am.

And this is a new area of life I that I've ever been in, that I get to walk right now. And I don't think I could be here until I had nothing in my circumstances to affirm anything about who I was. Nothing was working. It felt like everything. I was touching, was failing. 

ALISON Give us an example. 

HEATHER Yeah, so a big thing that I talk about in there was my dream, right? So the book is about passion and how the word passion actually biblically means to suffer. So a lot of times we say, I'm doing this 'cause I'm passionate about it. And it's like I. Well, no, we like affirmation and we like accolades, and we like resources and open doors. Passion is what you cannot stop doing, despite not receiving any of those things.

What are you willing to suffer for and through? And so for me, I had said, oh, I'm a writer. And then the suffering started. Then books aren't selling in the same way that the last book sold. I think my, so my first book that I did sold 5,000 copies in like a week. This last book, I'll See You Tomorrow, sold 511 copies in the first week.

So I had done it. Just felt like, oh my goodness, I'm a failure. That's the only thing I've ran from, I mean, I got a PhD by the time I was 31. I mean, I have tried so hard to go the opposite of what I saw my dad do. My dad went all in with no safety net on just ministry and calling and passion, and so I said I'm gonna get as many degrees as possible to make sure I can have a stable, safe financial life.

Then it still wasn't happening, and I'm writing the book that I felt like God called me to write and it's not selling. I had to come to a place where I separated myself from the work too.

AD BREAK 1

ALISON There's so much in what you just said. First of all, passion as suffering. Wow. Nobody thinks about it that way. And probably you didn't when you went in with all this gusto. 

HEATHER Right. This is how I came to it. I started trying to figure out what's happening. 

ALISON Yeah. Feeling like a failure. Even though you'd worked really hard to not fail in air quotes the same way that you saw your dad in some ways, maybe he didn't fail spiritually, but financially there was challenges.

So despite your best efforts experiencing the very things you were trying to. Avoid. And so all of this, your dad getting sick, you questioning God, you wrestling with these failures, quote unquote, lead you to the place where you feel like you're drowning. Tell us a little bit about that before we get to the good news, because I want my listeners who are feeling that to be with us on this journey.

HEATHER It wasn't just a feeling it was chasing me. I was waking up in the night with nightmares of I'm drowning where I'm trying to get to the top of the water and somebody keeps pulling me back down and I'm somebody who writes everything down. I try to, I started this practice many years ago where. Whatever I'm praying or experiencing, I write it down and I put dates and I'm trying to watch God's involvement in my life, so I wanna see dates.

And what I found by keeping dates is that oftentimes God will keep an anniversary with me that I forgot. So he will answer a prayer sometimes. Maybe three days, but sometimes three years or 10 years to the day that I prayed it to the day, right. I have long since forgotten. And then I'll go back and I'll go through my notes and I say, oh my goodness, God remembered.

And so I'm having all this experience of dreams of drowning. I'm talking to my therapist and for the first time I'm talking with my family. 'cause we didn't talk about it, about my dad's Alzheimer's. We acted as if it, we didn't say the word. I need you to understand. My mom didn't tell her work. My dad had Alzheimer's for probably 12 years.

Her work didn't know until like a year ago. Even me writing this stuff in the book, I could tell she was like. And I'm, at this point, my dad's almost not even remembering anybody's names. Like you would catch now that he has Alzheimer's, right? He could fake it for a long time. Nobody knows. So we were living in this really strange place.

So for the first time I start even talking about it with my own mom, this was a big thing too. I was very afraid about who I would be. This is gonna make me cry when my dad wasn't there to confirm it. Because he believed in me. I, I mean, my dad took me to writing lessons when I was 15 years old. He was a dreamer.

And when I, I got expelled from school in eighth grade from my Christian school. 

ALISON Oh, I wanna hear that story, but keep going. 

HEATHER Yeah, I got expelled from school and I just had such a hard time in middle school because I was very opinionated and I didn't yet fully understand not to share unless people ask.

So I was always giving everybody my opinions. I was probably quite obnoxious, but it was very difficult for a Christian school, a small Christian school, conservative school, the handle in a female. And so I was always getting in trouble and kids didn't like me and I would, I just remember going home and just.

Crying like this. One time these girls left, um, these secret admirer notes for me for several days. And one day the note said, meet me at the fence. So I go to the fence and it's three girls laughing, right? Not this boy that I think is my secret admirer. And so I go home. I just need people to understand who my dad was.

For me. I'm pedaled biking home and I get home and I slam the door and I crawl under my bed and I'm just sobbing. And I can remember my dad coming into the room, sitting on the bed and saying, what's wrong? And I tell him, and he's like, Heather, I. You're gonna be somebody. I know it. I see there is something in you.

I'm just telling you, God is calling you to something. And for so much of my life, I only believed that because my dad had said it. And so without him there to say it, when my dad doesn't know my name anymore, who am I? And I remember my therapist said, you know, like everything your dad has put into your life.

That doesn't leave when he's gone, that stays. And that was a light bulb for me 'cause I just kept thinking about what I'm gonna lose. And then I realized I'm not gonna lose any of the things that he's given me. Yeah. 

ALISON It's in you. It's in you. It's actually internalized inside of you. But parts of you didn't know that, man. That's that's powerful. 

HEATHER Yeah, so I was drowning and I'm still treading water. I would not right now, be like, I'm a strong swimmer. No. I feel like I have better tools now. I know, okay, go on a walk, call somebody and tell them that you're struggling. Go to sleep. I have tools to navigate the situations that I'm in that I don't think I had before. I was using a lot of perfectionism to just numb. 

ALISON Gosh, it makes so much sense again from an attachment perspective, that that safety you felt with your dad that in many ways gave you a positive image of a loving God. Also didn't fully get remapped onto God, and then almost even anger with God for taking that away from you.

HEATHER Now I need to meet with you after. Right. Because it's like, wait a second, and then when I'm losing my dad, I'm losing my image of God. And so now, oh my goodness. It's almost like I'm, I had to go through this rebirthing experience and childhood growing up and learning how to walk with God on my own.

ALISON That's profound. But that process, it makes sense to me. Would have sent you into the drowning. Yes, I've lost God almost. 

HEATHER I lost a God who saved me, like my dad saved me 'cause he wasn't jumping in and saving me and my dad did. And what do we do with a God? So this God? Yes. Who are you? 

ALISON Oh man, I can just feel that. So. You go and ask these questions. This is the title of the book. What if I'm wrong? Is it, what if I'm Wrong about God? Is that kind of where this question, what if I'm wrong? That seems to summarize this drowning experience. 

HEATHER Yeah, so Martin b Copenhaver did some work and he found that Jesus asked far more questions than he gave answers.

Of the 183 questions he has asked, he only directly answers three. Okay, so I had lived a life being told God gives you the answer, and now I'm in a season where I'm not getting any answers. And so what I found were questions. And then I did all this research to try to understand what am I experiencing?

And I realized actually God is far more comfortable with questions than answers. God who has all the answers comes to earth and doesn't feel the need to give us them. [00:22:00] Jesus, who could have written his own gospel. Would've taken very little for Jesus to sit down and pen something directly from his hand, and he doesn't do it.

He allows his story to be told through his people. He allows us to sit and ask questions and wonder, and so I just realized I'm going to have to get comfortable with a God who believes questions are more important than answers. 

ALISON Disorienting, disorienting, and has in some ways created a wound or hurt. In terms of this person you love so much.

I mean, it just, I get it. It just makes so much sense. So through this process of getting comfortable with the questions, what were some key moments, some key lifelines that sort of made you kind of be able to come up out of the drowning? 

HEATHER It just kind of felt like drowning, and then I had one breakthrough that made me realize I was never drowning.

That's honestly what happened. And I tell the story at the very end of the book. Long story short, the same days that I'm writing in my prayer journal, God, where are you? God, don't you see me? God, I have no money in my bank account. God, what am I supposed to do? There was somebody that God had sent into my life.

I just didn't know who they were, but they had been talking to me and, and anyway, that person at the end of the book ends up. Providing for me in a way, literally is funding my entire salary for this year. Multi multimillionaire that had found me on Twitter. Just another crazy story, but that's for the end of the book.

But then I realized, oh my goodness. The entire time that I said, God, where are you? He was right there all along. I had been talking to this woman the entire three years. I just didn't know who she was, right? But she had been encouraged. I wrote about her, I wrote her words in my prayer journal with the date.

No idea that she was gonna end up feeling stirred by God to pour into my [00:24:00] ministry financially. I had no idea. This is what I'm saying about my circumstances. I don't need my circumstances to reveal what I know to be true about who I am and who God is. I know that God is here. I know that God loves me, and actually I know for a fact that God is with me, and if my circumstances don't reveal it.

I'm gonna hold on and I'm gonna wait. 

ALISON Because you had that experience of literally after three years, it's almost like the cloud's lifting you going. Oh, there he was. All along. All along. 

HEATHER As long as I am telling him, you must not be powerful. 'cause if you were, you'd help, something is not right here. And he allowed me to think, to just thrash and thrash and then realize, oh my God, I'm swimming.

This is just what it feels like to swim for 18 hours in tough, current and strong waves. This is just life. 

ALISON Yeah. And so much of it is the wrestling, right. The questions. 

HEATHER Mm-hmm. It sure is. And it's not giving up on the questions—and it doesn't mean that I've done anything wrong. Exactly. And in my search for answers for perfect little Christian answers that I had needed and that worked for me in my past until they didn't, I.

God had provided answers much quicker. This experience was three years where I didn't get answers and things just kept getting stripped away. My podcast, which was a, another line of income for me, stopped growing and we had to cancel that. My book then didn't sell. Then my university is talking about they're going through financial hardships, so they're talking about renegotiating my contract.

Literally everything. That was my safety net that I had. Built with all my hard work and degrees was being stripped away from me and for God to have been with me through that entire thing all the time that I finally see at the end. I'm just, I'll never be the same. I'll never be the same, and he's my God Now.

AD BREAK 2

ALISON To me, this is the literal definition of a miracle. We want the miracle, and the miracle is the lifeline now, or the answer now, but the miracle is that you kept thrashing about in the water for three years, and were willing to ask the hard questions and to sit in this pain and to suffer in amidst passions and things that were not your fault. Long enough to then see. 

HEATHER and I'm just gonna tell you, I will say this, I never stopped praying and some of my prayers were angry. Like I said, you must not be who I think you are. But I never left the room. I just remember Annie saying to me one day it was raining and I was like, I'm not gonna go on a prayer walk today 'cause it's rained.

She's like, you're gonna let a little rain stop you from experiencing God? I was like, no, I'm not. And I went. And so I learned for the first time, I typically, I, I've always done prayer walks, but in Michigan, that's where I lived. When it was winter, I didn't go 'cause I'm, I'm not crazy, right? It's cold. No, it's dark.

There's tons of ice. No, for those three years I walked every winter, you know, and it, something was born within me in the winter that I could not have experienced, I think in any other season. And now I get to take that with me, I hope into. I hope, Lord New Seasons. 

ALISON Yes and amen. I love how you draw upon, uh, that work of wintering. I only read that here. 'cause some in that season, somebody on Instagram said, I think you're wintering. You should read this book. I read it. Oh my goodness. What a beautiful book. Such a helpful naming of Yes, that season. Heather, I wanna just touch on just how you came to terms with failure. The word itself.

I think we could turn on its head because so much of what you described happening was just, it wasn't even failure in the sense of, it was just things were being stripped away out of your control, but it, we experience it as failing. How did you. Come to terms with that. You're a woman who's very capable, who's done some [amazing things.

Not only what does that do to your faith, but how did you come to terms with that in terms of your. Self-concept, 

HEATHER I think, well, part of it, like I let it be, again, this was a three-year process, so I remember days where I really struggled to get out of bed and then I read necessary endings. That was very helpful to me too, to start saying, oh, maybe this isn't a.

Failure. Maybe this is a necessary ending, right? So vocabulary for me as a communication professor, that really helps my brain say, oh, I'm having an inappropriate relationship with this word. So now this new word is helping me reframe. You know, I said this to somebody else in an interview, and I think I offended them because they like corrected me.

So I'm just gonna say it and it might offend somebody, but I'm, I'm just gonna tell you what I experienced. I felt like I did let go of God. I think God did not let go of me. He did not let go of me, and so that got me through. I really think he carried me through. I'm just telling you, if we're on the merit system that I wanted God to operate under with my dad, I no longer received the merit 'cause I said some really nasty things to God.

I kept praying, but I also just said things that I was taught you never say to God, and he just loved me through it. I'll say this too, this language in my brain as a writer, this was helpful. In my brain, I always thought the good part of the story is what happens to you, right? The hero goes through difficulty, but then something beautiful happens and or a miracle comes, and now it's a good story, okay?

The Lord revealed to me, that's not the story. You are the story. So a heart that remains soft, despite circumstances that are hard, that's a beautiful story. It doesn't mean that the circumstances ever change. I don't have to have God bless me in order to choose to bring blessing to other people. I don't have to have God be good to me in order to choose to bring goodness, and that is a blessing that only belongs to the righteous, the wicked would never perceive of doing such a thing.

Blessing and goodness is available to me at any time. And if I partake in that, that's a beautiful story. And so I started living as if the story was just my response, not what happens, which I can't control. 

ALISON It's a paradox. You're saying something really deep. It's in the sense, it's like I'm letting go of old God, you know?

And I don't know what bigger God is, but to me that is the essence of faith. It's almost like calling God, I'm gonna keep doing what I know to be true, even if you are not. Who I thought you were, God. To me, that's faith. And to me also, when you think about the parenting model, you think about a good parent, which is what you are rumbling with in many ways.

A good parent, you think about a parenting a teenager or a young adult, a lot of times they are pushing off of you. That is part of the deal. And a good parent is sometimes knows when to be like, you just keep pushing. That's what you need to do right now. And I'm here and I'm not gonna let this connection be broken.

I'm big enough for this. Right? But it doesn't feel that way from where you are. You feel like I gotta let this go. God's like, okay. You do that, you just, it's, he's not offended by that. You know? Yes. 

HEATHER He was not offended.

ALISON not offend, not easily offendable God.

HEATHER but that's not what I was taught. I'm not saying by my dad, but I'm saying by the system that I was raised in, the church that I went to, the school system that expelled me. That's not what I was taught. I was taught just by what I saw. God very easily gets offended and we have to protect it. 

ALISON Yeah. And gosh, Heather, this is where we could go into so many different directions. 'cause I'm curious how your faith journey is now. This is where I, to me, this is just good psychological development.

This is the overlap where I think the church gets so caught up in kind of keeping us young. And it's not, we're not breaking outta anything. It's just, listen, if you've parented young [00:32:00] adults, this. Your job as a parent shifts, and God designed this so God knows this. We have not changed, but our kids' experiences of us change.

They think they need us less. They actually, in some ways need us more, but the way they need us is different. They're asking different questions, they're trying to differentiate. This is all healthy, but in the church it's almost like we try to keep people fearful and God is so much bigger than that. So I really love.

You were brave enough, I think some of that part of you, you know, that in middle school was willing to, you know, call a spade a spade was brave enough to be like, I gotta be true here. God. 

HEATHER Yeah. Well that's part of the work that we do, right? It's like, if I am, authenticity is very important to me and right.

And so how do I keep talking to people about something if I'm struggling to believe So, yeah, I needed to go on this journey so that I can stay true and authentic in the ways that I serve. 

ALISON What does your faith journey look like now on the other side of this three years? 

HEATHER I feel like I'm learning. I'm still learning. I just had a difficult thing last week, but it was interesting 'cause he followed it up with like the opposite. So somebody modeled for me something that was kind of painful, but then literally three days later I. In a similar experience, somebody modeled for me something that was like above and beyond anything I, I deserve or should have asked.

And I just said, okay, you're revealing to me the type of person I want to be. Like, I want to live the way this second person responded to me. I'm looking at life right now as if there's so much to learn, but I'm hoping to end up in a more joyful state because I've been very serious about God for a long time, and now I wanna find that joy in being.

And laughing. Sometimes that's hard for me 'cause I'm somebody that like, I'm a feeler, so if I see other people drowning, it feels like, should I even be happy right now [00:34:00] if there's, you know, so I'm learning this balance and I feel called into joy. That is what I'm feeling called into. And to know this side of God.

ALISON Now, as God's beloved daughter, yes, again, you never, not, we're not right, but just in that experience of, oh, I do have. Good. Father, I wanna read this, Heather, because this, this is toward the end of the book. You said a month ago, my mom realized my dad didn't know who she was. They've been, they've been married over 40 years.

That's what Alzheimer's will do to a once perfectly happy family. It will make you forget that you are ever perfect or all that happy. I just know I love you. He told her, when she asked him who she was. Then you map it onto your own journey when you don't know who God is anymore. When you don't know what your dreams are or what passion you're willing to keep suffering through, when you can't remember whether you're an option B or option 1 42, I hope those words are all that remain.

Lord, I just know that I love you when all is stripped away from us, as bony Christians. May that be all That's true. Here is what remains. I don't even know that I know you anymore. God. I know that I love you. I mean, that's just so powerful. 

HEATHER I remember I was on a prayer walk. It was this last winter. I just remember saying that out loud.

I said, I don't know anything anymore. But here's what I do know, and I know that this has to be true. 'cause there's no circumstances that would make it true other than it's within me. I know I love you and I know I'm gonna keep showing up to be in this relationship with you, and it's not about what you can give me. And it's not about what I think I've earned. 

ALISON It just is. Even when I don't get it, I sometimes think about it when I kind of. Everything kind of falls by the wayside and I can't make any sense of anything. And I'm like, and here is God. Here is God still. But I love that and, and I still love you. I'm still here.

It's so beautiful. And the power of even that literal sense of your dad, not exactly recognizing your mom anywhere, but I still love you man. 

HEATHER I just learned so much from even watching this phase of him in Alzheimer's. 'cause that's what he was telling her is, I know I love you. I just don't have the words anymore to say who you are, but my heart recognizes you.

I mean, what a beautiful piece of just life and humanity in this really horrible situation that I get to keep another piece, that I get to keep with me long after he'll be gone. 

ALISON This goes without saying, but I just feel so much of God's delight in you and in you telling this story. In your father's delight, in you and in you telling this story.

I love the story that you've told through this book. I think it's gonna help a lot of people who I do hope. So go through this. You know, we don't talk about it enough. How do you let go of your faith and keep your faith? It feels like we've got these two options. You know, I can just burn the thing down or I can kind of fight for it and wrestle.

Maybe not even fight for it at times. Let it go. Thank God. Still remains. It's just such an important offering. So tell everyone where they can find the book and find your work and connect with you. 

HEATHER Yeah. Hey, it, what if I'm wrong? Wherever books are sold, HeatherThompsonDay.com. My website has everything to connect with me and book links and all of that.

ALISON It's just a beautiful journey and I appreciate you sharing it with us. 

HEATHER Thank you so much for letting me share it.

OUTRO

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

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

 What if your most distressing thoughts aren’t who you are—but a signal pointing to pain that needs healing?

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Therapist and author Monica DiCristina joins me to talk about the deeper emotional and spiritual wounds that often lie beneath distressing thoughts. Monica shares her personal journey with trauma-related intrusive thoughts and the power of finally naming what hurt.

‍

We also explore what to do when intrusive thoughts show up in our inner worlds, how to seek the right kind of support, and why healing always starts with curiosity rather than shame.

‍

Pick up your copy of Monica's new book:  ⁠Your Pain Has a Name: A Therapist's Invitation to Understanding Your Story and Sorting Out Who You Are from What Hurts⁠

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Connect with ⁠Monica DiCristina⁠

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📞 Call 307-429-2525 to share your thoughts or a question for a future episode.

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If you liked this episode, you’ll love:‍

• ⁠Episode 134⁠: Bridging Mysticism and Science—A Personal JourneyThrough OCD with Therapist Ryan Kuja
• ⁠Episode 97: ⁠I Shouldn't Feel This Anxious—Insights on Trauma & Healing with Monique Koven

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Editing by Giulia Hjort

Sound engineering by Kelly Kramarik

Music by Andy Luiten

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

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© 2025 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage or transcript without permission from the author.

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Transcript:

Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Best of You Podcast.

Before we dive in, I just wanted to take a moment to thank you. Several of you have left reviews of the podcast recently, and it truly means the world to me.

So much heart and effort goes into creating this podcast and hearing how it's encouraging you personally is truly what keeps me going.

SH2Rose wrote, I like Dr. Cook's perspectives from the psychological and spiritual side of issues. Her vulnerability is an asset as a show host. Wow. Thank you for that. It's hard to be vulnerable, and I appreciate that encouragement.

MobilizerMom wrote, I've read your books, but the daily work is still trying at times, and I appreciate having you in my ear to encourage me onward in it. Again, thank you for letting me know. It really means a lot to me.

MarissasReviews wrote, As someone with anxiety and OCD, I really appreciate Dr. Allison sharing things related to mental health challenges. As a Christian, it's very encouraging.

And lastly, JennaFTally wrote, I look forward to every new episode and even go back and re-listen to old ones. There's always something new to learn, and it's much appreciated.

Gosh, again, thank you. I so appreciate you're taking the time to write these reviews. It's helpful in getting the word out about the podcast, but even more your words are a gift to my own heart and my own soul, and I don't take them for granted.

Today's episode is a powerful one, one that I hope meets you with gentleness and clarity, especially if you've ever struggled to make sense of the pain you carry. I'm joined by Monica DiCristina. She's a therapist, writer, and the author of a brand new book called Your Pain Has a Name—A therapist's invitation to understanding your story and sorting out who you are from what hurts.

Monica's work is rooted in the belief that healing begins when we learn how to name what hurts. Her writing and clinical practice offer a thoughtful, deeply compassionate lens on emotional health, trauma, anxiety, and the. Inner stories we all carry. Many of you may already know Monica from her beautifully encouraging presence on Instagram or her substack where she writes about pain, healing and the slow work of growth.

Monica and I both share a passion and a belief that healing doesn't begin by pushing feelings away, but instead by turning toward them , with curiosity, honesty and care

In today's conversation, Monica shares her experience of an early childhood trauma and the years that followed years marked by intense anxiety and what clinicians call trauma related OCD. That's a term for unwanted thoughts that feel deeply out of character and that Monica couldn't find relief from until she began to get to the root of her pain.

But this conversation doesn't end there. It's about perseverance. It's about what happens when we keep seeking help, even when we're initially misunderstood.

It's about finding the right name for what we're experiencing, and it's about the healing that becomes possible when someone finally sees you clearly and helps you see yourself with new eyes.

I'm so honored to welcome Monica DiCristina to the podcast. Let's dive in to our conversation.

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Alison: Well, Monica, As we were talking before we started recording, we've known each other online and you're such an encouraging presence online and have such beautiful,  wisdom to offer. It's just really fun to get to meet you finally. So thanks for being here.

Monica:  Thank you so much. It's such an honor and I have loved following you online and I'm just honestly so inspired by you and the way that you carry the different topics you carry all at once, it's really awesome. So it's such an honor to be here.

Alison: Well, thank you. I appreciate that. As fellow therapists, there's a lot we surf and to try to figure out how to surf that publicly sometimes is. . .

Monica: It's not easy. That's right. Yeah. I love the way you do it.

Alison: Well, I would love to start with you the way you start in the book a little bit with your own story, as much as you feel so inclined to share. Monica, you share in the book about the importance of naming our pain and, and you get us there through sharing with us your experience of having some pretty significant pain as a sexual abuse, correct?

Monica: Yeah, I would say sexual violations, in my early years. Mm-hmm. Outside of the home.

Alison: Outside of your home—you had a sexual violation that led to years of what you call scary thoughts, intrusive thoughts, how would you label it, sort of trauma induced OCD, like thoughts.

Monica:  Yeah. Yeah. So, as you know, as a therapist, when you experience early violations, what I concluded, and maybe listeners can relate to this, that I was bad. Something was wrong with me, and I walked around like that for years without knowing why I felt so bad.

I didn't know that what had happened to me wasn't my fault. I didn't know what the name for it was. And so walking around with that and hitting adolescents and hearing other things going on in family history or in the world, I developed a pretty intense anxiety disorder, which specifically like you said, I would say was trauma induced OCD, and a lot of us think about OCD, like washing your hands or things like that. I didn't struggle with that. I struggled with something that's even more shameful to talk about for so many people, which is intrusive thoughts, which is scary, violent thoughts that just assaulted my brain and I had no idea what was happening.

You know—no one's talking about this at a sleepover. My parents loved me and they wanted to care for me. They just thought what is happening and just, you know, told me not to worry. They did their best. Right. As many parents of my generation did. It was just a different time in mental health.

Alison: Yeah, so you were telling them about these did after a while.

Monica: Yeah. I was so desperate, you know, that I got over the embarrassment and over the shame and told them and, and nobody knew what to do with it. Nobody knew what was going on with me.

Alison: Yeah, I, and I hear this from friends, from clients, it's not uncommon that when you've been through something, your body registers as traumatic and you don't know how to process it, that your thoughts just start grabbing onto things. You describe it like "it was like living in a horror movie. When these thoughts start to play through your mind, imagine the worst thought that has ever popped into your mind. And then imagine it never goes away, but repeats on a loop and grows limbs." You know, it just takes on a life of its own. And this was most of your teen years and into college that this was happening to you?

Monica: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And like many people, I put on a good front, you know, I white knuckled my way through performing, through making good grades, through going to college, but. All the while I was literally caving in inside, desperate to figure out what was wrong. And so I, I started going to any source that I knew.

And it was right around that time that I found my faith , and started going to alter calls or to any pastor that would listen and any, um, small group or leader that would listen and confessing all of these scary thoughts that was happening. And you can imagine even people who wanted to help, might've thought, what's going on? Right?

Alison: It's so interesting that you use that word confessing, as if you felt like you were doing something wrong.

Monica: I did. And that's one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about mental health and about naming pain is because I didn't know any different. Now, of course, I know different, this is decades ago now, but I didn't know any different then.

And I think a lot of people think they are their thoughts—they are their depression, they are their anxiety. They do feel the need to sort of fess up to it or, you know, confess it when it's, really isn't something you're doing wrong, it's something that's happening in you or to you.

Alison: So let's talk about what happened. Cause this went on for a while, where you're trying to get help through "confessing." You I go see a pastor.

Monica: Yeah, I did.  I was 16 years old, so I'm driving and I went to see this pastor who was kind enough to meet with me, you know, and, and, I think at a precaution for meeting with a young girl by himself, he left the door open with the secretary across the hall. It was evening time, and as I began to tell him, you know, this is what I'm struggling with.

This is what's going on. I have all these scary thoughts and I'm worried about it. I feel like I'm bad. He shushed me the really loud SHHH. As an adult now, I know he was trying to protect me, I think. I think he was trying to protect me from the secretary overhearing what I was talking to him about.

But the experience in my body was a magnification of the shame I was already feeling, which was sh this is. This is not something you wanna tell people. This is not something you wanna talk about. And he had no idea what to do with me either and sent me on my way. He was kind, I think he did the best he could, but he sent me on my way.

Alison: It's such an interesting - the way that you described that, right? That his intentions may well have been noble. And even then you call it—and you and I share this emphasis on naming— there's a misnaming there that this is something  to keep quiet. This is something shameful that contributed to what was already the shame already festering inside of you.

Monica: That's right. You know, even if your story is nothing like mine, if you're trying to get help with something and you run into someone who doesn't understand what's going on, doesn't have the name for it, you often leave feeling more ashamed.

Alison: A hundred percent. It's one of the reasons it's hard for me sometimes—this emphasis on healing happens in relationships, which I know is true. And also when we're reaching out for support, so often when we're struggling with something like you're describing, even the best of people, let alone the worst of people who are actually trying to shame us, which also happens, even the best of people can mishear us, miss-see us, misname what's happening and, and that's not always reliable. It's tricky, especially when you're young and you're trying to figure it out and you're trying to figure out who to trust and you definitely don't trust yourself. It's really tricky. So you, you go on to say you had a friend, I think it's in college?

Monica: Yeah. .

Alison: This is really where it gets interesting, you were very persevering, Monica, in your story, and you'd been telling this friend and she didn't know how to help you, but maybe part of her genius was she knew what she didn't know and she kept trying, right? She kept trying to help you find someone who could help you. So tell us how that played out.

Monica: Yeah, I mean, before I tell that story, I really want to add to what you said that part of her genius was she knew what she didn't know. This is one of the best ways we can love one another is when we are willing to admit our limitations. We are willing to say to someone. I don't know what's happening.

I don't know how to help you, but I care about you and I'm gonna stick with you until you find out what it is. And that is life changing in relationship, right?

Alison: A hundred percent.  I'm not sure but I'm gonna stick with you. Whether you're a pastor, whether you're a parent, whether you're a friend. Whether you're a therapist. We're then not moving into the misnaming. We're saying, I'm with you. We don't have to get it right.

Monica: That's right. Yes. And so this dear friend, took me to go see our pastor, that we were going to this, church in college and you know, the church as many church plants are, was still meeting in a trailer, you know, so it was this sort of gravel parking lot and we're walking up and the squeaky door and this tiny little space that we're sitting down and.

We began to spill my story our working theory was that maybe these thoughts weren't mine. Maybe they were something spiritual happening. And this pastor just kind of leaned back, you know, in his chair. And I know that he wasn't sitting above us, but that's what it felt like. I, you know, like he was sitting above us and, and began to preach down that no.

There's no way, and what felt like condemned me to sole ownership of these thoughts. Now, of course, these are my thoughts. I've learned more about anxiety disorders, but what was the most difficult about that is there was no curiosity. There was no compassion. He didn't look at these two young women and say.

Are you okay? Do you need help? Can I help you find some help? He gave us a sermon instead about what he believed, and we walked back to her little car in the parking lot. And as I had felt before, I felt even more shame in even more alone. The, the more times we go to people who aren't willing to say, I don't know, but I care and I'm gonna help you find out, the more it stacks that we start to feel, gosh, maybe I am the problem.

Alison: He was shooting down your working theory, that it was spiritual and instead where was he locating the problem?

Monica: He was locating the problem as—he didn't say sin, but it was as a me problem. There was an implication of that.

Alison: Okay, so again, you're perseverant, I mean, I was amazed reading this. I'm like, my goodness, at some point I  would've probably, just locked this up behind a brick wall and not told anybody for another 15 years. You kept seeking out—What is happening? It's in the part of your personality. I imagine there are times that part of you might. . .

Monica: Wear me out! (laughs) Yeah. Gosh, I feel so seen by you saying that. Thank you. You know, it was, I think sometimes when we're hurting, even if we run into walls over and over again, we're just so desperate and, and what I believed about my faith, I believed God wanted to help me. I believed that, you know, I really did.

That's part of. What gave me the courage to keep going and to keep looking for help was 'cause the God that I had met, cared. The God that I had met, I knew wanted to help me, but I just couldn't find that help yet.

AD BREAK

Alison: Amen. I love that you knew this was not of God. Even as the shame was building, even as the frustration and confusion was building. Your story feels a little bit like a Indigo Girl song. "I went to the pastor, I went to the preacher, I went to the this, I went to that. . ." I'm just trying to find some answers, right? And so you have a breakthrough moment and this is another friend, a different friend.

Monica: Yes. Thank goodness for college friends. Yeah. So I had another friend who had a father that was a psychologist and this friend was brilliant and, just seemed mystified at, at what I would have to talk to her father about. I wasn't as close to her, so I didn't unload my story to her like I did to my roommate, but I just said, "I think I'd really like to see your father." And she helped set it up., Again, it was a different time—therapy was not as common. It wasn't as de-stigmatized. It definitely was not as spoken about in the church. And so I went to see her dad. And the basement of a Baptist church.

He was a psychologist that had a whole practice there, which now as a practicing therapist, is fascinating to look back and think about. And I remember when he called my name in the little waiting room and I walked around, I was terrified. Keep in mind, I've been running into shame over and over again, running into people who had no idea what was wrong with me, and he just wasn't scared.

And he wasn't shocked and he really normalized my story. He gave names to it. He told me that what had happened as a little girl, of course, wasn't my fault. He taught me about anxiety. He taught me that a thought is just a thought. He taught me about all these things that suddenly what had been the terrifying narrative I'd been believing about myself. Turned out had names, turned out it made perfect sense and I wasn't as bad, quote unquote in that shameful way as I had feared I'd had some hard things happen. I definitely was struggling with an anxiety disorder, but that all had names and made sense, and the relief of that was life changing.

Alison: It's so powerful. This is the name of your book, right? Your Pain Has a Name.

Monica: That's right.

Alison: So talk to us a little bit about that. Why is that movement from no name from chaos into, "oh my gosh, this is what it is." I write about this and I Shouldn't Feel this Way, this naming, This is what it is. Oh my gosh. Even when it's a hard diagnosis but it's like, I, what is it about that, in that moment that felt so freeing to you?

Monica: It is the exhale and the relief of understanding yourself. And in that exhale and relief, you're able, at least in my experience, and I've seen this with clients, to separate yourself from the stories you've been believing. And you can't do that until you accurately name something, right?

You have to remember, I was walking around believing, I'm bad and I'm terrible, and these thoughts are really me and really come from my motivations, right? But being able to name that all the sudden, all those scary stories I thought about myself weren't true. And I think that when we're able to define, put boundaries around identify pain, then we're really able to understand it, to separate our true identity from it and to find what we need to feel better.

Alison: It's so true. It really is. It's Dan Siegel's work in interpersonal neurobiology of "naming is taming". It really is. There's something about it that goes, okay, I now can figure out what to do with this. And in your case, Monica, it seems like it led you into a whole new path, including your current work.

Monica:  Yeah, absolutely. It was so transformative for me to meet with that psychologist, Dr. Barnes, that I thought if I can do anything in my life, it would be to help bring people relief. Like he brought me relief. He didn't solve what had happened to me. He's, it's not a magic wand, but he helped me name it and so.

That is when I decided to become a therapist was that early on in my early twenties, I wanna help people who don't know what's wrong. I wanna help people who feel stuck.

Alison: And there is a name for that experience that you had with them. You talk about it in the book, it's called a corrective emotional experience. It's a great word, but it is again, a helpful naming of a positive thing that happens. What's happening in that corrective emotional experience?

Monica: Yes. It's a good therapy term that we use a lot, which just means that you're having an experience that almost redeems and repairs previous ones, you know, so that instead of going to him and getting dismissed, I went to him and I found answers, and I found also normalization and acceptance and knowledge.

And so a corrective emotional experience can be something like that, or can be something relationally where something, that didn't feel good had happened before, and then you have a similar experience and it feels so much better. It feels healing.

Alison: Yeah, because you'd had all those other examples of going to a male expert authority and having a really painful experience. And I've had those in my own life in different areas, not just in therapy where someone kind of undoes the pain of the past through just one moment. And and it is a little bit of the, "I'm not crazy" what was happening over there was not okay. And my body was reacting to it because it wasn't okay.

And now that this has happened, and this is what I so long for, what I do believe is true and good and healing, and what actually is what I needed, oh my gosh, I'm not crazy. And I wasn't crazy for feeling that way. And now this reveals to me that, "oh, this is what I needed all along. This is what I hoped for all along." It's very powerful.

Monica: It can be transformative and it has an element of validation. You know, where someone sees you and someone sees what you've been through and someone has enough experience, wisdom or knowledge to name what you've been going through with you or for you, right?

And that there's that relief. Gosh, I'm not crazy

Therefore it's not in me.

Alison: I want to Monica, switch gears for just a second into some questions I have for you as an expert, as a therapist, specifically about the nature of your intrusive thoughts. Because I it's not that uncommon. Now, a full blown diagnosis of OCD is a very different thing. We did a whole episode on that with, therapist Ryan Kuja, who talked us through a lot of that. You can go back and listen to that episode, for those of you who are interested.

There's different forms though, of intrusive thoughts, especially if there's been a wound, especially if there's been a trauma that's gone unnamed. It is one of the ways that at times our brain will kind of cue us to: Something's happened. It's like a little kid just desperate to get your attention in those thoughts.

But it's very disruptive and very disorienting if you don't know what that is. Could you share with us a little bit from your expertise about how you understand what was happening in, in your mind and, and in the minds of clients who deal with this?

Monica: You know, the official term that we would use is ego, dystonic, intrusive thoughts, ego dystonic means it goes against your values, it goes against who you are, what you want, what you believe. And when you have these sort of intrusive thoughts that are fueled by an anxiety disorder or fueled by trauma. They often are ego dystonic in nature, meaning that there's something that would scare you or, or that you would never do in real life. But until you know that it's just a thought and it's part of that anxiety sort and and actually loops on itself, and it grows.

The more you fear it, the more it grows. You think, oh my gosh, what am I capable of? What's wrong with me? And, you know, one of the places that we see this as in perinatal mood disorders, right? When new mothers struggle with an ego dystonic, intrusive thoughts, where they struggle with images of their baby getting hurt or them hurting their baby. Now, they don't wanna do that. That's not real. But until they know that this is something the brain can do. It's not you, it's not your heart.

Alison: And you're not going to act on it.

Monica: No, in fact, quite the opposite. That's the irony about ego, dystonic intrusive thoughts is that it's quite the opposite. It attacks exactly what you wouldn't do, but you can imagine anyone, whether it's a new mom or a teenager or someone who has a scary thought and doesn't have OCD thinking, oh my gosh. What does this mean? What does this mean? That I had this scary thought and it's really important to identify and to name a thought is just a thought.

It actually is something that flew through your brain. It's neurotransmitters going through, but it's not what you wanna do. It's not the same as values or motivation or who you are. It's just a thought.

AD BREAK

Alison: I love the examples you're giving where it can become in the form of something I might do to someone else to cause harm. In my experience, it can also happen in the form of and maybe this is more in the realm of flashbulb memories, this might be a little bit different, but where you're getting the intrusive thoughts of something really awful that's happened to you or something that could happen

Monica: Yeah, and I think that there's definitely a Venn diagram there of unwanted thoughts, and it's intruding and it's scary, but there's a difference there where it, it is almost like a memory or a fear that that comes in that form of the thought, whereas more the OCD style is - It's almost more random. Do you know what I mean? It's not attached necessarily to a memory, a painful event.

Alison: But in your case, the intrusive thoughts were to some degree connected to the traumatic event.

Monica: Yeah, and I think that that's an important distinction. I think that what we don't talk enough about with trauma is, when it's, undiagnosed, how it just proliferates into a bunch of different symptoms. And I think that was what was happening for me is that I did have these events that happened early on.

I concluded these things about myself that I was bad or it was all my fault or something was wrong with me. That is what my, scary thoughts fed on oh gosh, there is something wrong with you. And then I would have a scary thought. Well, that confirms it. And then I'd have another scary thought.

And so it definitely was tied for me to that. But there are incidents for sure of people having, intrusive thoughts or scary thoughts that don't have a trauma history. Right. Anxiety is a very multifaceted thing.

Alison: That's right. Well, and your example of, postnatal, is a great example of actually something wonderful has happened the chemistry of the body is just doing such that it's just creating these thoughts that are really outta nowhere.

Monica: That's right. They come outta nowhere, and that's part of what's scary about those kind of thoughts is that oftentimes people have never had them before and they don't know what to do with them.

Alison: So I love this naming of scary thoughts. For the listener who  had experiences of that particular naming of this ego, dystonic OCD, or this scary thoughts, how would you encourage them?

Monica: I would first encourage them by normalizing it. If you look at the research, it is remarkable how common this is. So one of the scariest, most shameful part is that. Oh my gosh, something's wrong with me. No one else has ever felt this or thought this, and I've got news for you: They certainly have, and so many of them have, myself included. So I would first just normalize it.

And second is part of the lie that comes with that is that there's something wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you. Your brain is firing in ways that is creating some suffering and fear for you, but there's nothing actually wrong with you.

And then the third is that. You're not your thoughts. I mean, if I told you right now to think about pink elephants, well, I bet you just thought about a pink elephant, right? It's just a thought and it's really important and freeing once you begin to separate yourself from those thoughts.

Alison: And my guess is if you're someone who struggles with that, there's a flip side of that sort of creative thought process that is also very enlivening. Me bringing my sort of IFS lens to it—there's a part of you that kind of can come up with these dark, intrusive thoughts that is not wanted. Also, my guess is there's a flip side to that.

Monica: Yes, uh, this is anecdotal, so it's not research based, but anecdotally, my experience with people that struggle with anxiety or, scary thoughts are often so creative. They often have incredible imaginations. Right. And it is, it is like the flip side of that.

Alison: So, to broaden this conversation out, tell us a little bit about what you're hoping to do with the book with Your Pain Has a Name.

Monica: Yeah, you know, I start the book with my story to kind of, as we would say, go first, right? To to let you know you're not the only one who's had something or felt embarrassed about something. And we can talk about hard things and we can name them, but it isn't a book about OCD or intrusive thoughts.

It's really a book about pain. And I have found that so much of the research we read, the amazing books we read are really naming things and, and it's so important to name things because once we begin to name what hurts or doesn't feel good, we're already.

Three steps closer to separating ourselves from that pain or from the false stories it's told about us, right? Because you, your pain might be a critical upbringing, right? Where it was never good enough,  you were never good enough, and you've walked around carrying the ghost of that all your life and being able to name that pain.

Accurately is gonna be a really important step for you, getting free from that and remembering or returning to who you actually are. So my hope is really to help people as they name their pain, to be able to come closer to who God made them to be. You know, pain often gets us very lost and especially when it's undefined once we define it, we can find our way back home.

Alison: Yeah. I just love that, that naming what's trauma, naming what's upbringing, and even to the point of some of my work, which is naming a part, naming an inner critic. This is actually an inner critic at this point. That can be part of the journey. At points naming what is spiritual, right. Sometimes it is; a lot of times it's not. And you do a great job of that in the book too, we both talk a lot about this thing of spiritual bypassing where we realize things that are not in fact spiritual. So it's a false naming, and at the same time, sometimes it is a spiritual root. And so naming is a really— It takes some skill. It takes some work. And that's what I love about your story that you shared in the book that permeates and is showcased in your ongoing expertise - it takes some grit, it does take a little bit of perseverance to get the right name. I wish sometimes it was easier.

Monica: I wish it was too. And as I was writing the book, I thought, is this gonna be marketable? Because I really try to honor the grit and, the, how long it can take to find names for your pain. I even say at the end of the book, I may not have named it, but this is one more step where you're learning to name it. And, and I think it's important to note too, that some of the pains we name. Can't be healed. They have to be weathered and honored, like grief, There's grief, there's big grief that we can all recognize and understand as grief, but people are often also carrying grief about relationships or, um, not being where they wanna be in their life.

And it's helpful to name that, not to solve it, but to honor it.

Alison: You know what else? Even just as we're talking, it occurs to me, there's a certain naming, and I hope this is encouraging to the listener who's like I, I haven't been able to figure it out. There's a certain normalizing of saying, you're in process. You don't have the right name yet, and that can feel very disorienting. I don't know why I'm feeling the way that I'm feeling, or I don't know why this doesn't seem to be working, but even just naming that.

Monica: Yes. I just couldn't agree with you more.  I could just celebrate that because it's so true. And I think that we live in a fast culture. And I love social media with all the therapy things, and I participate in it, but there's a lot of before and after, there's a lot of fast fixes.

There's a lot of: "Three steps to your best self," and the reality is it's not always that easy, and it's important for people to know they're not alone in that there's nothing wrong with them. And this to be a gentle reminder to keep going.

Alison: I'm gonna find that person at some point or that moment

Monica: Or that book.

Alison: That's so true that breakthrough of, "oh, this is what's going on for me." Monica. What would you say to that younger you now?

Monica: Such a great question. I would say there's nothing wrong with you. You know, some hard things happened. Your pain is real. You're struggling, but there's nothing wrong with you. That scary old story that you've carried around, that you're somehow other or there's something wrong with you, just was never true, you know?

And you're okay. And you're gonna be okay. That's what I would tell her. Or anyone who can relate to that listening.

Alison: I love that. And what's bringing out the best of you right now?

Monica: I would say honestly it is walking my dogs. It is so therapeutic for me. You know, the bilateral stimulation of walking, but also the fresh air and it makes them so happy, which makes me happy and it  in a busy life and a lot happening everywhere.

It feels like my exhale, it feels like. Time away. So I would say that that is definitely bringing out the best of me right

Alison: That's beautiful. I love I that. I concur - I have two dogs too. And it is, it is just a highlight. Tell my listeners where they can find your brand new book - this is your first book - find your work, find all the things that you're doing.

Monica: You can find me on Instagram. It's @Monicadicristina and dicristina has no h—it's a common, a common thing I run into, or my website is monicadicristina.com and there you can find links to my Substack, which is my favorite place to share, just longer form than Instagram. The book is Your Pain Has a Name and it's everywhere that books are offered. And it'll be out May 13th.

Alison: That's awesome. I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful for your work, for taking your own pain and transforming it into healing resources for others. It's so important. It's such beautiful work. You're the real deal. Just a beautiful presence. So smart. It's such a great book and just thrilled to have gotten this chance to connect with you today.

Monica: Thank you so much. I just admire your work and you create such a safe space in this podcast and just in everything you, put out in the world. So thank you. Thanks for having me.

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We're tackling a topic that continues to strike a chord with so many of you: how to make a change when you're stuck between loyalty and growth, guilt and freedom, regret and redemption.

If you’ve ever struggled with a complicated relationship or wrestled with the quiet shame of feeling stuck, this episode is for you.

We explore:

The 3 brave paths you can take when a relationship feels hard.

A powerful story of a woman confronting regret.

How to distinguish between true guilt and false guilt

What "radical surrender" really means.

‍

Whether you're braving a big life change or feeling held back by old emotional patterns, I hope this episode gives you courage, clarity, and compassion.

📞 Plus, don’t forget to call 307-429-2525 to share your thoughts or a question for a future episode.

‍

If you liked this, you’ll love:

• ⁠Episode 140⁠: If You Struggle with Guilt and  Second-Guessing Yourself, This Will Set You Free – How to Stop Blaming  Yourself for Things That Aren’t Your Fault

‍

‍Thanks to our sponsors:

• This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/BESTOFYOU and get on your way to being your best self.
• Visit cozyearth.com and unlock an exclusive for 40% off best-selling sheets, towels, pajamas, and more with code BESTOFYOU.
• Go to AquaTru.com and enter code BESTOFYOU at checkout to get 20% OFF any AquaTru purifier!‍
• ‍Get up to 50% off your custom-fit mouth guard at www.shopremi.com/BESTOFYOU today!

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Editing by Giulia Hjort

Sound engineering by Kelly Kramarik

Music by Andy Luiten

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

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© 2025 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage or transcript without permission from the author.

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Transcript:

 Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Best of You podcast. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to give you just a quick reminder that we are inviting you to be part of a future episode.

We've opened up a phone line where you can call in and leave a voicemail with your thoughts, questions, and comments. You can share with me a question you'd love for me to address on an upcoming episode. You can share with me an area where you've been trying something new but feel stuck.

Or, I'd love for you to simply answer the following question: What is one area of your mental, emotional, or spiritual health where you'd like to grow right now?

Just call 307-429-2525 and leave a quick voicemail with your first name, where you're calling from, and your response. We've already started listening to some of your messages, and I can't wait to share more of your voices and thoughts and stories in future episodes.

And if something sparks your thoughts from this week's episode, it's a great place to capture it. Again, the number is 307-429-2525. I'd love to hear from you.

Now, for today's episode.

It's been exactly one year since I Shouldn't Feel This Way released into the world. And today I want to return to a chapter from the book that continues to speak to me and to so many of you who have reached out to me this past year. It's from Chapter Four—all about braving a new path. If you've ever found yourself stuck between guilt and growth, this one is for you.

I wanna start with the story of a woman named Priya.

I've changed her name, and the names and details of all the stories in this episode, to preserve confidentiality. But I wanted to share these stories with you because there's something in them for all of us.

I saw, years ago, Priya loved her mom. She was loyal to her mom. They'd been through a lot together, and in many ways, they'd been more like best friends than mother and daughter. When Priya was 13, her mom had finally left an abusive spouse and years of turmoil behind her.

Both mother and daughter had become inseparable. But as she had become an adult, Priya had noticed that her mom's love had strings attached to it.

When she left home and started to forge her own life—especially including marrying and having kids of her own—her mom seemed to resent it.

As Priya and I began to meet, she explained to me the complicated feelings that she was feeling. She loved her mom. She admired her resilience. She was grateful for their relationship. On the other hand, she was really frustrated and angry about how controlling her mom had become.

She found herself hiding aspects of her life from her mom—even lying to her mom at times—to avoid conflict, because she just didn't know how to deal with her mom's criticism and passive aggression.

As Priya laid out all the different truth pieces of what she was feeling, a picture of a complex situation emerged. She loved her mom and felt loyal to her, and at the same time, her mom was exhibiting some problematic behaviors.

Priya was frustrated and angry with her mom, but instead of dealing with the situation, she was lying to avoid conflict.

Like many of us, she felt trapped between frustration on one side and loyalty on the other. She was grateful for her mom's good qualities.

She didn't think her mom was a bad person. But she also didn't like how her mom would try to control her through passive-aggressive remarks and criticism. She didn't like feeling guilty for having a life apart from her mom. And she also didn't like that she was lying about it.

As I worked with Priya, it struck me that so many of us find ourselves in situations like these—relationships that aren't bad enough to leave but aren't the healthy, vibrant relationships that we crave.

And this framework that I lay out in I Shouldn't Feel This Way addresses these kinds of complicated situations, where you name what's hard, frame your reality, and then brave a new path.

Priya's story resonates because so many of us have felt caught between what we've always done and what we suspect we might need to do.

The moment we start to name this divide—this dissonance inside our own souls—we're stepping onto a brave new path.

When it comes to braving complicated situations, I’ve found one of the most helpful frameworks to guide your next steps is to consider the following three options:

1. Fight for change.
2. Leave the relationship or the situation.
3. Suffer it wisely.

I want to unpack each one of those a little bit.

The first option is to fight for change. You might fight for something within yourself. For example, you might fight for improved mental or physical health, or better coping strategies.

You might fight for healthier boundaries. Or you might fight for a healthier relationship with someone else—a friend, a parent, a child, or spouse. You might fight for a job or for a dream. You might fight for justice in the world around you. You might fight for the health of your community.

Alternatively, through this process, you might determine that the best course of action is to leave something or someone behind. It may be that you need to leave behind a way of thinking, a habit, or a coping tactic that's not serving you anymore.

You might need to leave a relationship that's causing harm. It's simply not wise or sustainable to continue to give this person access to your soul. You might need to leave a job, a church, or a group.

Finally, in many cases, you'll choose the third option: to suffer wisely.

Now, when I share about this framework, this last one is the one that gets the most attention. Some people love when I lay out this option. Sometimes it's very activating for people. So I wanna make sure you understand what I mean by suffer wisely.

Sometimes it's the only choice you have.

For example, you might need to suffer a health condition or a painful medical diagnosis. You can't make it go away, but you can take brave steps each day to care for yourself.

You might have to suffer a job that you do not like but need. Or you might have to suffer a challenging relationship.

For example, maybe you have to co-parent with an ex who betrayed you. You can't remove yourself from the relationship entirely, but you can work to mitigate further injury.

There are also times when you deliberately choose a challenging path. You might decide to remain in a challenging situation for specific, clear reasons.

For example, you might choose to stay in a marriage or in a relationship that's hard but not bad enough to leave. You might not sever ties with an adult child who is mistreating you, even as you set boundaries to protect yourself. You might choose to care for ailing parents, even as you work to shield yourself from their criticism or constant guilt-tripping.

To brave the path of suffering, regardless of the cause, is a nuanced and complex decision.

It's a path we all face at various times in our lives. Suffering wisely is not passive. It requires wisdom, clarity, and intentionality. It requires healthy boundaries, self-care, and a skill psychologists call radical acceptance.

Radical acceptance does not mean you approve of a situation or believe that a certain behavior should continue.

Nor does it mean you're resigning yourself to misery or giving up. It's not martyring, nor is it pretending something isn't hard. Instead, it means equipping yourself to deal with a hard situation realistically—taking charge of what you can while releasing what's out of your control.

Whether you choose to fight for change, leave, or suffer wisely, you give yourself the gift of agency.

Healthy actions in any of these three paths flow from a place of self-awareness, inner conviction, and integrity. While you cannot remove all suffering, you can wisely brave your way through it—empowering yourself to navigate challenges with resilience and self-compassion.

As you think about your own complicated situation or relationship, which of these paths calls out to you?

Do you feel a nudge to fight for change?

Do you feel that quiet voice of it might be time to leave?

Or are you aware that this might be a situation that you have to suffer wisely, with intention?

Notice what you feel as you consider each of those three paths.

***

As you brave a new path, no matter what you choose, do not be surprised if you notice guilt, regret, or even ambivalence as you move. It's so normal for these feelings to surface in the wake of challenging decisions, and it's so important, when you notice any of these emotions, that you pause to notice those feelings with compassion.

It's normal to feel these emotions after you make a hard decision.

For example, when you take steps to brave a new path, you might notice the voice of regret:Why didn't I figure this out sooner?Why did I waste all that time?Why didn't I know better before?

When you make a change, you often stir up old wounds that remind you of past mistakes or regrets. This is a normal part of growth. The trick is to honor the feelings of regret, even as you don't let them hinder the progress you are making.

My client, Ava, taught me a powerful lesson about regret in my early work as a therapist. By the age of 38, she had already weathered more than her fair share of storms. A pattern of abusive relationships, stemming from childhood traumas, had cast a shadow over much of her adult life. Two years prior to starting therapy with me, she'd managed to finally break free from the latest cycle of physical and emotional abuse.

She'd sworn off men, gotten a place to herself, and embarked on a journey of healing. In many ways, she was doing great, but she was also living in isolation. One day, as we sat in my office together, Ava told me that she had run into a childhood boyfriend.

His name was Tom. He was a kind-hearted guy who had loved her through her tumultuous teen years. They had dated briefly, but mostly he had been her best friend. Seeing him again years later stirred up a cauldron of emotions,

and she became filled with regret.

"Why was I so stupid?" she said to me, angry with herself. "He's such a great man now, and a wonderful husband and dad to someone else. Why did I walk away from him? That could have been my life."

As I listened to Ava, I fought against all the things I wanted to say to comfort her or to make the pain of regret go away.

Instead, I sat with her quietly, feeling that pain with her. After a few moments, I asked her a question that was formulating in my mind:"Ava, is it Tom himself you want, or are you longing for something he represents?"

She reflected for a moment.

"It's not Tom. I'm happy for him and the life he's found. I'm just so sad about the girl I was back then. The girl he saw in me. The girl I lost shortly after we broke up."

"And what was she like, Ava?" I asked.

"She was smart, good-hearted, full of life. She had dreams. So much promise and potential. And he saw that in me. He saw the woman I could have been."

"What if that woman he saw is you?" I asked. "What if she's still in there?"

She nodded thoughtfully and then said softly, "I want that to be true."

She told me later that something profound lifted from her that day. As she honored her regret, she'd bravely gotten herself out of a toxic pattern of relationships.

She was in a better place, but she was hesitant to brave the next leg of her journey.

She had wanted to open up to the possibility of healthy, loving partnership again, but some part of her was whispering, "It's too late for you."

When she faced regret head on and worked her way through it, she was able to reframe that old message. While she couldn't go back in time, she could brave a new life ahead.

She realized something incredibly powerful about the subtle nature of regret. She didn't regret that path not taken way back then. She regretted the person she hadn't become—and it was not too late for that.

I love this story because it reminds us that it's never too late—not for growth, not for courage, not for change.

As you consider the challenging situation you are in, is it possible that feelings of regret about the past are keeping you from braving a path forward into change?

***

There's one more obstacle to braving a new path I want to discuss. The most ubiquitous obstacle most of my clients face when they start to brave a change is guilt. When you make a change that's wise for you, it often means disappointing someone else.

Guilt messages swoop in. If you're not careful, these messages will lure you back to that place of confusion and turmoil—right back to that place of confusion and turmoil, right back to where you started—that "I shouldn't feel this way" moment of beating yourself up instead of braving a new path.

And that's why it's so important to name guilt when you feel it, frame it accurately, so that it doesn't hold you back.

The bottom line is this: The presence of guilty feelings does not mean you have done something wrong. It might mean you've done something brave.

I want to pause here because this is such a powerful truth: The presence of guilt does not always mean you've done something wrong. It might mean you've done something brave.

Guilt is an emotion—not necessarily a direct message from God. Therefore, braving guilt involves getting curious about it, just as you would any other feeling, such as sadness, anger, or fear.

Guilt has important information for you, but it does not always have the full perspective. It is helpful to distinguish between true guilt and false guilt. The messages of true guilt show up after you've done something wrong.

You'll know it's true guilt if you can name the thing you did wrong:I yelled at my kids. I lied to a friend. I betrayed someone's trust. I shared their confidential information in a moment of gossip.

In these cases, true guilt brings conviction. It involves a clear prick of the conscience, followed by clarity about the offense.

You'll then need to determine your next braving steps. You'll work to change your own behaviors, and if it's appropriate, you can apologize or make amends.

On the other hand, the message of false guilt shows up when you haven't done anything wrong.

You'll know it's false guilt if you can't name an actual thing that you did wrong.

You might feel a vague sense of not measuring up to some impossible standard either you or someone else has set.

For example:I feel guilty that they feel disappointed. I feel guilty that I'm not available 24/7. I feel guilty that other people might be inconvenienced.

In the case of false guilt, you can tell yourself a thousand different ways that you shouldn't feel guilty, but you do. Guilt clings to you like a frightened child:What if I have done something wrong? What if I've hurt someone? What if I've made a mistake? What if they'll never forgive me?

The solution in this case isn't to try to shoo guilt away. It's to gently reframe guilt and give it a new name—one that more accurately describes what you're feeling.

The truth is that false guilt often protects you from facing other more vulnerable emotions, like sadness, fear, and even helplessness.

These emotions can be challenging to face:I'm sad that I'm disappointing my friend—I don't wish to.I'm worried I'm letting my kids down—I want to do right by them.I feel helpless that I can't improve this other person's situation.

Of course you don't want other people to feel disappointed or let down, or even inconvenienced. You don't want others to be hurting. But it's not helpful to tell yourself that these things are exclusively your responsibility.

When you experience false guilt, you essentially feel guilty for being human. You feel guilty that you are finite. You feel guilty that you're not omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.

In other words, you feel guilty that you're not God.

The good news is: You're not. You're finite. You're limited. You're human. We all are.

The antidote to guilt in this case is radical acceptance of your human limitations. It's what we mean by the word surrender.

***

When you surrender, you reframe your expectations of yourself:

Guilt says, I should be perfect.
Surrender says, I'm not perfect—and God is enough.

Guilt says, I should have done more.
Surrender says, I gave my best—and I have to trust God with the rest.

Guilt says, I'm letting people down.
Surrender says, I am limited—and God's grace is enough.

Do you see what I am getting at? The antidote to guilt is a radical acceptance of our dependence on God. It's choosing to bravely suffer the reality of our human limitations wisely.

God, I don't want to disappoint this other person. I don't want to make a mistake. I don't want other people to suffer or hurt or be inconvenienced. And I have to be brave. I have to make decisions. I have to live within the limits of my own capacity—of my own humanity.

Braving radical acceptance and radical dependence on the One who actually holds all things together is the work of an active faith. It isn't shrugging your shoulders in the face of complex challenges and saying, "God is in control."

An act of faith means taking steps to change what you can change. It means taking responsibility for what is yours to own. It also means bravely surrendering to the reality that you are not ultimately in control.

There's a profound shift that happens when we surrender—when we glimpse the end of ourselves and reach the boundaries of our own capacity. A moment of surrender is quite possibly the bravest act there is.

It's not that challenges magically resolve themselves. It's that when we become aware of our own limitations, our own frailties, our own finitude—we discover that's where God loves to enter in.

It's where we stumble upon a deeper strength. Surrender does not mean passivity. It does not indicate a lack of effort. Nor is it giving up. You are doing everything in your power. Yet these problems are just so big at times.

In a moment of surrender, all that mental work comes grinding to a halt. You stop. You breathe. You release your grip. And in that moment, something clicks together. Our loving God, who has been there all along, breaks through a little bit. That divide between where you are and where God is disappears.

Your mind calms. Something inside your body shifts.

You take a break. Move your body. Call a friend. You let the tears flow freely. And sometimes, you just sob.

And then—you get back up. And with God's help, you take that next one brave step.

As we mark this one-year anniversary of I Shouldn't Feel This Way, I hope this excerpt reminds you that no matter what you're facing, there is a brave step you can take.

Your regret doesn't have to hold you back. It can become a redemptive signal. And your guilt doesn't have to be your enemy. Sometimes, it's just a sign that you're stepping onto unfamiliar—but sacred—ground.

If this episode speaks to you, I hope you'll share it with a friend.

Remember: You are already beloved. In light of that truth, what's your next one brave step?

What if fear isn’t a warning sign—but a signal you’re stepping into something that matters?

‍

I’m joined by the brilliant and creative Mary Marantz to explore why fear often shows up right before a breakthrough—and how to stop seeing it as a reason to back down.

‍

We also get into:

* How fear hides behind perfectionism, people-pleasing, and procrastination

* The surprising link between fear and creativity

* Why grief is often the first step in learning to trust yourself

* What it means to become the “grown-up in the room” for your own healing

* How naming your inner critic can help disarm its power

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Check out Mary’s new book Underestimated!

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📞 Don’t forget—We want to hear from you! What’s one area of your emotional, mental, or spiritual health where you’d like to grow? Call 307-429-2525 and leave a voicemail with your name, where you’re from, and your answer. Your voice may be featured in a future episode!

‍

Resources:

• The Mary Marantz Show
• Check out Mary's earlier books: Dirt and Slow Growth Equals Strong Roots
• ‍Underestimated: The Surprisingly Simple Shift to Quit Playing Small, Name the Fear, and Move Forward Anyway by Mary Marantz
• The Best of You by Dr. Alison Cook
• ‍achieverquiz.com
• ‍Get the first chapter of Underestimated at marymarantz.com/underestimated
• @MaryMarantz on Instagram
• ‍Dr. Alison on The Mary Marantz Show

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If you liked this, you’ll love:

• Episode 10: What are Limiting Beliefs and How Do I Overcome Them with Mary Marantz
• ‍Episode 20: Making Peace with Yourself (& Facing Your Fear of Disappointing Other People)

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‍Thanks to our sponsors:

• Go to Quince.com/bestofyou for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order!
• Save an additional 10% on any NIV Application Bible and NIV Application Commentary Resources by visiting faithgateway.com/NIVAB and using promo code BESTOFYOU!
• Visit GoGeviti.com to learn more about how you can start optimizing your health without leaving home today and use code BESTOFYOU.
• Give your loved ones a unique, heartfelt gift you’ll all cherish for years—StoryWorth! Right now, save $10 on your first purchase when you go to StoryWorth.com/bestofyou!
• ‍For 20% off your order, head to Reliefband.com and use code BESTOFYOU.

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Editing by Giulia Hjort / Music by Andy Luiten / Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik

© 2025 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.

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Transcript:

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Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. Before we dive into today's episode, I wanna share something new we're trying, because I'd love to hear from you.

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We're opening up a space for your voice on the podcast. We wanna hear your questions, your comments, and from time to time, we wanna hear your input–what's going on in your life, what you're noticing, where you wanna grow, or where you're gaining wisdom.

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For now, the question I'd love for you to answer is, what is one area of your mental, emotional, or spiritual health where you'd like to grow right now? To answer the question, call 307-429-2525 and leave a voicemail with your first name, where you're calling from, and your response. 

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This is something new for the show and I'm really excited about it. There's something powerful about hearing your voices and weaving your wisdom and questions into future episodes. So again, that number is 307-429-2525. I can't wait to hear from you.

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And now for today's episode. Have you ever felt like fear shows up right when you're finally stepping into something meaningful? Or maybe your inner critic with its tired, familiar scripts is waiting in the wings to remind you that you're not quite enough?

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Today, I am joined by the brilliant and wildly creative Mary Marantz. You may know her from her own podcast, The Mary Marantz Show, or from her earlier books, Dirt and Slow Growth Equals Strong Roots. She's back today with a brand new book, Underestimated: The Surprisingly Simple Shift to Quit Playing Small, Name the Fear, and Move Forward Anyway.

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What I love most about Mary is how she brings together soul, deep honesty, and storytelling that makes you laugh, cry, and recognize yourself in the most unexpected ways. In today's episode, we talk about why fear shows up right when the work really matters and how to recognize the many faces fear wears–perfectionism, people pleasing, imposter syndrome, and more.

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We talk about what it means to become the grownup in the room, the one who can be trusted, and how a moment from reading my book, The Best of You, became a meaningful turning point in Mary's own journey. You'll also hear us talk about how grief is often the very first step in learning to trust yourself again.

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This conversation is filled with deep insight, eighties metaphors, and some seriously powerful truths about reclaiming your voice, trusting your timing, and facing fear with courage and compassion. I'm so thrilled to share my conversation with Mary Marantz.

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***

Alison Cook: I'm thrilled to have this conversation with you, Mary, about this incredible book. I know you've been on the podcast before, but for those of my listeners who are new to you and your story, I wanna start with your background, because you talk about growing up in poverty and being the first member of your family to go to college. 

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It wasn't really even on the docket for you, and yet you end up at Yale Law School. You have this saying, “growing up without a lot does something to your brain”. Tell us a little bit about that.

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Mary: Yeah. I don't know if maybe it's the prefrontal cortex still developing the neural pathways over time, but these bad generational thoughts turn into bad generational patterns. Maybe it's inhaling all the mildew. But there's something that happens in your brain that makes you expect to fail before you even start. 

‍

It is this idea that no matter what you do, you will never be enough. And what's interesting is, man, there's just so much nuance to this, Alison, and before I even jump into that, thank you so much for having me here, for endorsing the book, for believing in this book from the very beginning. 

‍

As I'm sure we'll get into, it was a conversation with you that sparked the book idea. So your fingerprints are all over this. But one of the things that I think you know about me, about the books I write, about the conversations I have, and I think it's very true of you as well, is there's a lot of nuance in what we talk about. 

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Things are not just an easy yes or no. It's not black or white. There are a lot of shades of gray. And so even that word poverty gets really interesting. One of the things I learned through writing my first book, Dirt, is that there are a lot of different kinds of poverty. There is poverty of food, like food insecurity, and I never personally experienced that, but I would say that I had poverty of home, like the home condition.

‍

The condition of the trailer was in really rough shape. The ceiling was caving in, it was raining as hard on the inside as it was on the out, the floorboards were caving in, and there were mushrooms growing out of the carpets and every imaginable bug and undesirable animal you can imagine.

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Then there's poverty of love, there's poverty of family, there's poverty of parenting. I didn't have those in particular either. I am from a region of Appalachia where we would bristle at that–”ooh, could we even call that poverty”? But as a grownup now standing on the outside, looking back at my condition, I can say, yes, there were parts that were poverty. 

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If that sort of living condition existed in New Haven, Connecticut, somebody would intervene. That's not acceptable or normal in this part of the country. So we're really proud people. We're really stoic people, and we’re underestimated. I write a lot about how that has influenced me, walking around in the world in this very self-sufficient turned self-sabotaging way. 

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I don't want you feeling sorry for me. I don't want you averting your eyes from me in some sort of sympathy shame on my behalf. I do not want your advice unless specifically asked for, because it burns in my ears and tastes like condescension. I don't want you to worry about me. Then I'll have to worry about you worrying about me. 

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And so it really does shape how you walk around in the world. There's a lot of nuance there.

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Alison Cook: I can hear the different parts of you wrestling with it. There's an honoring, and I love that about your work, Mary, an honoring of the way you grew up. And also, there are ways it really created some neural pathways in your brain that, to this day, that's a big part of the new book that you’re wrestling with.

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Tell me a little bit about fear as one of those voices that shaped some of those internal messages.

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Mary: One of the things that I have learned, both in my own life and through my work coaching women who wanna write books, people who wanna have businesses, who wanna build courses, who wanna speak on stages, is they need a signature talk. I started to notice that a lot of the same kinds of sentences were flying out of their mouths at a lot of the same parts of the process. 

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Fear can be so frustrating and resistance can be so frustrating. It got to the point where I was like, right on time, there we go. Of course fear's gonna show up and say that right there. Of course, that's what he does right now. It led me to pick up my phone one day and hop on Instagram a couple years ago. 

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I filmed this video outta frustration at fear, and then posted it, and it took off. It was like, it's all been done, it's all been done better, it's all been done by somebody the world actually wants to pay attention to. I can't start until it's perfect. I can't start until I am perfect. What if I start and I don't know all the steps in the blueprint? What if I start and I can't stay consistent with it? 

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What if I don't have the bandwidth? What if I start and the critics come? What if they say, who does she think she is? What if my voice doesn't matter? What if I don't really matter? What if it's already too late? 

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This was like a head-exploding-emoji moment in my life. It's the kind of high that every writer dreams of. It's that moment when two dots connect in your limbic brain in a way that we've never seen them connected before quite this way. And it was, what if fear attacks creatives in particular, because it is jealous that it itself is not creative at all? 

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It is not tethered to muse or melody or the force of all creation. The only gift it is imbued with at all, is this ability to throw its voice and pretend like it is your own. So it attacks creatives because it is not creative at all, and it's jealous of that fact. Fear is not a creative guy. But he is a productive guy and a busy guy. 

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Like any productive overachiever, he's learned how to prioritize and he's gonna only show up if the work you're about to do really matters. So we can actually use that if fear shows up–good. You're about to do work that matters.

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Alison Cook: Okay. There's so much in this. The first thing I love is the personification of fear. We do a lot of IFS work on the podcast, so I'm thinking about the movie “Inside Out”. Fear in the way that you're describing it becomes that ubiquitous voice. 

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Mary: Yeah. I love that. And I love that's where your brain went, because for me it’s very similar. In the book. I actually made a joke about it–I want you to picture nothing short of the Grinch making his to-do list: stare into the abyss, solve world hunger, tell no one. That's the productive overachiever whose heart is three sizes too small, that I imagine fear to be.

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Alison Cook: Ugh. That's so good. That's so good. Fear is there. It's there for all of us.

I love that you're highlighting that these messages were so consistent because when that voice is in our own heads, it feels very unique to me.

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Mary: That's right.

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Alison Cook: This is all about me. This is very personal. I'm not good enough.

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Mary: And you start noticing, wait a minute, the voice of fear is very similar.

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Alison Cook: It’s not creative. It shows up particularly when we are being our most creative,

and then give me the reframe again.

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Mary: He's not a creative guy, but he is a super busy guy. And like any good productive overachiever, he's learned to prioritize. If you're already playing small, if you're already hiding in plain sight, a little maintenance by fear, a little self-sabotaging, a little perfectionism sprinkled in, and you're all set. 

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But show up and actually do the good work that's been prepared for you in advance, the work that's actually gonna change lives and help people? You’d better expect fear to show up, teeth bared and snarling in this entirely different version of itself.

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I did this Instagram post a couple days ago actually, where I took this and ran with it a little bit and I said, what fear doesn't know is that we've actually pulled a classic rope-a-dope. We've pulled him in close enough to wear himself out, and as our Rocky 4 soundtrack swells, we're getting ready to hit him with the knockout punch.

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If fear is the most boring, unoriginal, uncreative, predictable force out there, now we use that weakness against him to predict when we're on track, because he wouldn't show up if the work we were doing didn't matter. He would just sprinkle some perfectionism on us and let us go. And so now it's like, cool, fear's in the room. Great. I'm on the right track. 

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I've really used that in my own life. Every day of my life at this point, I'm a little bit afraid, and I'm like, great, that means I'm doing stuff that matters.

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Alison Cook: That's such a powerful reframe. I think you say, fear becomes an invitation instead of a stop sign. I think this is a quote from you–”you must really care about this

to feel this afraid”. So fear becomes a cue. “This really matters to me”. Okay, so how is fear different from this inner critic I believe you've named in your life John?

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Mary: Dear John. Dear John.

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Alison Cook: Tell us a little bit about that.

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Mary: Okay, so one of the things for your listeners to know that's really cool is fear is a boring liar, and it wears the same sorts of faces and names for each of us. It attacks us with the same boring, busted scripts. Each chapter then tackles a different face of fear. So we have self-sabotage, second guessing, not-enough imposter syndrome, overthinking, perfectionism, people-pleasing, procrastination, failure, criticism, distractions, and even success.

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One of the things that I learned in my previous career being a photographer and a photography educator where I would build courses for people, we learned very quickly, I have a very natural teacher's heart. I speak fluent movie quotes, so this stuff started coming outta my mouth organically. 

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But we started to notice how people would really latch onto it and they would pick up on it, and it would hit them in a way that straight technical jargon never would. And so we are wired to learn by story. We are wired to learn by metaphor. We think about the greatest teacher that ever walked the planet, who taught by story and metaphor. 

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And if the first story or metaphor didn't totally make the people understand, he wouldn't be like, okay, here's what I was doing there. Let me explain it. He would be like, here's another metaphor. And so for each of these different chapters, the different faces of fear, I have used all of the powers of Mary. 

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My friends have joked, because I'm bringing my IQ and my EQ, my movie quotes and my deep thinking. The tug on your heartstrings, we're gonna cry for a while, but then we're gonna laugh in a really sharp, edgy kind of humor way too. And I'm giving each component a really visceral visual for you to remember. 

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And so when we're in the criticism chapter, we're talking about both criticism from other people, but then we're also gonna talk about that inner critic. This is dear John. And that part begins by talking about Ryan Reynolds giving an interview to Hugh Jackman, where Hugh Jackman said, hey, you've been really public about talking about having anxiety. How does that affect your work?

And Ryan Reynolds said, anxiety has such an ecosystem of awareness. Whew. Anxiety has such an ecosystem of awareness. When I'm making a movie, I am not just the actor saying the lines. I am also the harshest critic sitting in the chairs, sitting in the seats going, nope, I don't like that. I don't buy that. That's not good enough. And he actually uses that ecosystem of awareness to push himself to be better.

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I'm not saying you gotta do that, but I think the ecosystem of awareness is interesting. And I so resonate with that, because I'm so aware of my own worst critic sitting in the audience, that I've given it a name. Dear John. And I say, dear John wears khaki pants or jeans creased from the iron. He wears a shirt with a boring, beige, plaid crisscross of colors, but nothing too bold or bright. 

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None of that Vineyard Vines nonsense for dear John. Only ecru and taupe and eggshell. And he doesn't like anything that has color outside of his boring beige lines. Anyway, it goes on and on from there, basically talking about this character who hates when I walk into the room and have any kind of self-confidence at all, any kind of belief in my own worth, any opinions about the trajectory of my career. 

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True to his name, he wants to get me to break up with my biggest dreams, because a dear John letter is a breakup letter. 

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Alison Cook: So dear John and fear are intimately connected

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Mary: Yeah. I would say dear John is a different face of fear.

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Alison Cook: Again, what I love about the book and you're saying it so well for the listener. I laughed, I cried. There's wisdom and then the way you write, in the way you're sharing it with us now, you make all these great connections that we see the humor in ourselves a little bit too. It's such a fun book to read in that way. 

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There's so much life in it and so much of you in it and it's very different from many books that you might pick up, in the sense that it's not a memoir by any stretch, but it is personal and it is an exercise in creativity. It's fun to read. It's a real delight.

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Mary: Because I get pictures in my mind, and that's what a story does. I get a picture of the inner critic and fear can show up in that inner critic who has got a different tactic for keeping you down.

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Alison Cook: It is rooted in “don't get too big”. And again, it exposes it, it pulls back the veil a little bit to go, oh, I see you there. I see what's going on there.

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Mary: Yeah, so something a friend of mine said who's gotten to read the book early, she was like, Mary, this is like a 74,000 word Taylor Swift lyric. And I was like, I'll take that. What a huge compliment. Yeah, it's that metaphor and imagery. If you love plays on words, you're gonna love this book.

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Alison Cook: You're a wordsmith. Yeah. You're a poet. Even the way you speak, I hear the rhythm of it. And again, to your point, I could imagine fear has, throughout your life said, oh, don't do that, trying to keep the lid on what is really a superpower.

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Mary: Oh, a hundred percent. I love that you said that because, okay, here's a really fun one. This is gonna make people understand what I mean about we're bringing all the parts of Mary to this book, more so than even my previous two books. I gave myself permission to be a hundred percent Mary in this book.

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In chapter two, which is “Fear’s a broken script”, it kicks off by me talking about when I was a kid. I knew I wanted to write a book since I was five years old, and I was this decidedly different sort of kid. To give you an idea of how different I was, most kids were thinking about which Care Bear they wanted to own.

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Come Christmas morning, I was thinking about which Care Bear I would turn into if I was ever somehow sucked into the television through the giant NASA size satellite dish in our overgrown yard, outside our single wide trailer, a 1980 status symbol if ever there was one.

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Everybody wanted to be Cheer Bear, the pink, bubbly one with the rainbow on her belly. But I was doomed to be boring, brown, Tender Heart because Tender Heart was the leader. The leader shows up wearing their heart on the outside, where they run the risk of getting hurt, and they have this ability to look ordinary on the outside, to shine a spotlight on others.

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And then full circle moment in the Fear chapter, I talk about how Dear John was like hissing on my shoulder, being like, are you serious? Are you really gonna talk about Care Bears in a very serious thought-leader book? Who is ever gonna take you seriously that way? And having to be like actually, for my people, the people I was created to serve, that's gonna actually make them trust me more. 

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That's gonna make them love me more. Maybe they also grew up in the eighties and also wondered which Care Bear they would be. But they're gonna know that I have been thinking about what it means to be a leader since I was five years old, and I don't take this lightly.

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Alison Cook: Ooh, that's powerful. I'm sitting here thinking, wow, I didn't realize. That's a pretty deep metaphor among the Care Bear creators of the Tender Heart leader. There's so much to that. Again, to your point about story, the best stories, the best children's stories, even toys, light up our imaginations.

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Mary: Right. Yeah. Valentine Rabbit–you're only ugly to those who don't understand. Yeah.

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Alison Cook: I've thought about the Grinch a lot. That metaphor is really powerful. So Mary, this leads a little bit to my role in the book. You're talking about your adult self and how you, again, even in that moment, pushed back with Dear John, like, it is a thought leader book. 

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You're also incredibly generous with not only your almost photographic memory for movie lines and scripts and all that, which is so fun because we grew up in a similar era, but also your generosity to give credit to folks you've got ideas from. To the point of the thing about fear, there is no new idea under the sun, but there's no one else but you who can give voice to certain ideas in new ways. 

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And so that's the beauty of creativity. The flip side of “somebody's already done this”, is “Mary has never done this. Mary will do it completely differently”. To the point of you learning to push back on some of those narratives, no one's gonna like this, there's a line in this book where you say you got this from me, from The Best of You. 

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There's a grownup in the room who can be trusted, and that grownup is you. Why was that so pivotal for you?

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Mary: Woo. Okay. I've been thinking about this all morning, and I knew this part was coming and I was like, oh boy, Mary. Hold it together. Okay. I'm gonna set the scene for everybody listening. It needs a little tiny bit of a backstory. We were set to record to talk about The Best of You. It was our first time recording together. You've now been on my show a couple times. 

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I've been on yours a couple times. We had met recently at a retreat in Arizona, where ironically I'd also cried there the whole time for about three days. Anyway, that's irrelevant, but we need to honor that for a second. And for everybody listening, I first have to admit to you my very guilty pleasure. 

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Most people have the Kardashians, or Bachelor in Paradise, or whatever. I follow really cheesy success accounts on Instagram. The ones with a lion and a Lamborghini that say, “roar until you get everything you came for”. Mostly because I like to mock them in my head, but one day there was one that went by. 

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It was a quick scroll by and I wish I could have found it again to give true credit to whoever posted it, but I've never been able to find it again. And it was a picture of a shot glass and it said, if you think you have the capacity the size of a shot glass, then anytime you get a little bit more than that, you will subconsciously shrink yourself until you, and then I added this part, fit yourself back into the tiny containers you believe you belong in.

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I brought that up in our episode and I said, Alison, how do we stop doing this when most of the time we're doing it subconsciously? We don't even realize we're doing it. And we pulled up this long form quote from The Best of You that was talking about if you didn't have a lot of stability in your childhood, if there was a lot of chaos, that you've never been taught safety, you will live in an internal place of chaos and survival mode. 

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And the way that we break this is by setting small but important commitments to ourselves. They can't be too huge. It's gotta be small steps, but they also have to actually matter to you and then you actually keep them. Then you looked me in the eye through the screen, like we're doing, and you said, as you do that you are showing yourself there's a grownup in the room who can be trusted. That grownup is you. 

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And I burst into tears on the spot. Because I think there are so many of us who had hard stories. Listen, if you are listening right now and you feel like your whole life has been this series, this running metaphor through all of Underestimated about pushing a boulder up the mountain, almost being at your breakthrough moment.

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We can taste the rarefied air and at the last minute, when we realize all the eyes on us looking from home, like Wiley Coyote about to get his comeuppance, for a second we defy gravity and then the bottom drops out. We lose our grip, we lose our weight, and the boulder rolls all the way back down the mountain and we keep starting over.

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Meanwhile, other people can implement, execute and achieve like it's no big deal. Elle Woods–what, like it's hard? And if you have felt that your whole life, it's because maybe there's something in your story that taught you it's not safe to trust anybody, including yourself. 

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And so for you to actually give a pathway forward of small but important commitments where day by day, you are reestablishing a sense of safety and showing yourself there is a grownup who can be trusted with this more to steward this. It's you. It kicked off the whole idea for the book. 

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Now every chapter ends with a small shift based around that idea. Everybody thinks you quit playing small by taking a big leap, and the net will appear, but paradoxically, some of the most important work we'll do is small shifts.

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Alison Cook: It means a lot to me, first of all, that you so generously honored my work in that and my role in that, because I had no idea. I knew in the moment you really took that in–

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Mary: –from the sobbing.

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Alison Cook: Yeah. I knew that, but to see then, how you went on and presumably began to retrain that trust of yourself in that way, with those small micro-steps–it's so true. You and I both know that's part of the issue with self-sabotage. Again, back to your point about nuance, these big messages of “Do it scared”, I love that metaphor, that one really spoke to me in the book, but what if you're someone who's done it scared and then the boulder goes all the way back to the bottom time and time again? 

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That can feel like I'm the problem, as opposed to, what do I need to do to train myself to be more prepared to really keep that boulder going at a steady pace? There is actually a different way to do it and I might have to do some retraining along the way.

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You did that. And then the fruit of it in this book, you see the more whole picture of who you are, that you know, I'm not gonna play small here. I'm talking to you about it and I'm also showing you all of who I am.

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Mary: Yes. Yeah. I love that. It informs this whole book, because each chapter is a deep dive on why we are the way we are. Why do we actually procrastinate? What's happening on a scientific level when we overthink and we wanna switch from the hard problem to the easier win? That's actually a science thing.

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Your brain is self-preserving. There's glutamate building up in your prefrontal cortex, and it's reaching potentially toxic levels that are affecting brain functioning. So as a survival technique, you will switch into a more immediate gratification win. You handed me this baton and it set off a million different ideas and a million different ways of what it actually looks like to trust yourself in the face of each of these different versions of fear. 

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Because fear's like a chameleon, like that shapeshifter–it can throw its voice. I should add, the other gift it has is changing its face. But when you think about that, that kinda reminds me of a horror movie. This enemy that's taking on all these different terrifying faces. It's gonna haunt you in your dreams.

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So then it was like, okay, all right, fear, I see you now. What if I actually go toe to toe with you, chapter by chapter, for every face you try to put on?

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Alison Cook: As you began to internalize that idea of “I am the adult in the room”, what are some of the early steps that you took to retrain the way that you interacted with yourself?

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Mary: I'm gonna be honest with you, the first step that it took for me, and the first step it's gonna take for a lot of people, is grief. You're gonna have to grieve the 20 or 25 years, or however long you feel like you've been stuck in this place of perfectionism or procrastination or pushing the boulder up the hill. However long you've been living like that. 

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I actually have these scenic overlooks in the book as places where we pause and rest and we pay honor to how far we've come. We also prepare for how far we still have to go. And one of them is that grief is a story not yet lived, and it talks about mourning how much further along we would be by now if we hadn't had to stop to do all this healing first. 

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And even in the end of the first section, in chapter one, it's talking about how we forget that we don't all start at the same starting line. For some of us, we've believed the lie our entire lives that more would one day be our downfall. We have these limiting beliefs tied up like heavy weights around our ankles, and we wonder why we keep getting tripped up. 

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The work involves healing decades-old traumas and generational beliefs about what happens to a person when they finally get more. So there's a grief to it. You gotta spend some time mourning how long it's taken to even get to this point, to start to trust yourself.

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Alison Cook: Oh, that's good, Mary. That's a good word because it's honest. There is a reckoning with reality that's both liberating and comes with grief, and to let it have a seat at the table versus trying to work around it.

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Mary: Yeah. Because in chapter three, the star of the show is self-sabotage, a shot glass. And it's not about drinking, it's about the tiny containers we put ourselves in. We like to sip ourselves, –a little light self-deprecation among friends never hurt anybody. We prefer it in tiny doses, where nobody starts to take notice. 

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Chapter four is second guessing. Self-sabotage is a shot glass. Second guessing is a missing handbook, and it's for all of us who feel like we’re not given that handbook for life that everybody else seems to have gotten when they were eight years old. Chad, pass the mashed potatoes and oh, by the way, make sure you understand compound interest. 

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And we therefore spend our whole lives feeling like we don't have all the information. We don't know all the things other people somehow inherently need to know. So somebody else should always be the one trusted to go do the thing. Somebody else will always show up better. And I go into great detail describing the missing handbook. 

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It's from the 1970s, the color of an old school national park pamphlet, and page 47 is the missing secret formula for how to get the shiny, perfect Pantene hair. I've never been able to get this wild thing untamed. I go on to say, for those of us with the missing handbook, we feel like we're walking around the world without all the pertinent parts.

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Edward Scissorhands drops down in the middle of some pastel suburban hell, scars now on full visible display in the midday sun, bumping up against all these pastel, pretty smiling ladies with their powers of blending in where we don't know the rules. So we're always breaking the rules and we are somehow the ones who die by a thousand cuts.

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Now, for somebody who feels like, why am I always second guessing myself? Why do I always feel like there's somebody who's gonna show up better? They now have this imagery of Edward Scissorhands. So the next time they're doing that to themselves, they can go, Edward Scissorhands alert. We've been here before.

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That's the biggest work this book does, is giving incredible visuals that you can recall, and you capture fear right in the middle, mid-sentence, and say, I know what you're doing. It diffuses all the power out of the room. 

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Alison Cook: I'm not alone. I cried at that part, because I'd forgotten that movie. When you described that experience, you're like, I can't help the fact that I have scissors on my hands where everybody else has nice red fingernail polish. It makes sense that when you're inhabiting that and you've felt that for so long, this idea of, oh wait a minute. There's an adult inside of me that can gently help me learn how to put the scissors down. 

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It's such a beautiful part of you. And also, let's figure out not how to camouflage, but I wanna help you actually show up vibrantly as yourself. It doesn't have to come from outside of me. There's one other kind of theme in the book. There's a lot to it. Again, it's the many faces of fear. You've said 'em, perfectionism, people pleasing, but how there really is at the root of it, this fear. 

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There's a theme that I really wanted to ask you about before we close down, and that is, you say, proving other people wrong is a powder keg. There's a fine line between finding your own agency, empowering yourself to become who you really are, and trying to prove other people wrong.

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Talk to me a little bit about that. I think there's a lot to that and I think it's really important, especially in our culture today.

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Mary: Yeah. Okay. So really quickly, going back to what we were talking about earlier with the grownup in the room who can be trusted. That grownup is you. And we had mentioned that chapter on criticism. “Criticism is an inside job” is chapter 12. And you had mentioned Internal Family Systems, IFS, and in digging into that, I start to introduce internal family systems a bit.

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I'm sharing a few things from Dr. Martha Sweezy. She gives a script that we reference but don't directly quote, where she tells you how to walk through introducing grownup you to the inner protective part of your inner critic. And you ask that inner critic, how old do you think I am right now?

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And it's I don't know, five, seven, 10, somewhere in there. It's gonna be shocked to find out you're actually a grown woman. And she says, as you begin to introduce that inner protective part to your grownup self, you can ask it to make some room for that version of you, and you will feel yourself become more expansive, calm, relaxed, grown up.

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As those other parts make some room, this is the true version of you that emerges essentially. And so the way I lay it out is, you feel expansive, calm, grown up, as those other parts make some room. I love to reward our people who have listened long into the episode, because this is such a fun, my head exploded moment, that I wanted to make sure you knew. 

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I was staring at it and I was like, oh my gosh. There it is. There is a grownup in the room. That's right. Who can be trusted? That grownup is you. I'd always thought it was like the physical rooms we were walking in, but it's this room up here. And my head was like, what am I seeing? Like, you're in chapter three all the way in chapter 12. You're coming back around.

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Alison Cook: Yes, there's a grownup in the room. Even here. Yeah. I love that.

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Mary: Okay. Powder cakes. This is in the last chapter and it's really getting into, what is this fear of success actually about? And that chapter kicks off with “the underdog is the role of a lifetime”. What I mean by that is, if we are not careful, we could spend our whole lives playing that part, and proving other people wrong is actually a really terrible form of jet fuel. 

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It's explosive. You'll see some really big surges ahead, but it will leave you as this hollowed out, burned out shell of yourself in the process. It is not a renewable fuel source, and I started talking about this sugar factory that actually exploded in Georgia. I think it was in 2007, 2008, and it killed a bunch of people, burned a bunch of people. 

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It's a really horrible accident. Afterwards, the CEO of the company said that it was caused because when they were processing the sugar, all of this sugar dust settled in the silos in the basement. They weren't doing the housekeeping to clean up that mess. And the sugar dust acted like gunpowder. 

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It was a sugar dust turned powder keg. I won't read it word for word outta my brain, but there are excerpts from both Dirt and Slow Growth where I'm talking about achievement being like the Pez dispenser. Keep the candy coming, God doling out hit after hit. Will I ever feel like I matter? 

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In Slow Growth, some days I think I might disintegrate altogether, these million atomized molecules floating like sugar dust. And if we're not doing the housekeeping to clean up that mess of more sugar, more achievements, more gold stars, maybe that'll make me matter, maybe that'll make them choose me, maybe then I will belong, that sugar dust can turn into a powder keg and we are the ones who get burned.

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Alison Cook: It's so good. You see it where that becomes an identity for years. You get that visibility through energy through proving other people wrong. That's so interesting and honest. Wow.

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Mary: Yeah. Oh yeah. At the end is perfectionism, “hiding with better PR”. That's chapter 10. I talk about how I started using perfection as a weapon when my mom left when I was nine. I wanted to make her sad. She missed how good my life turned out. Oof. Now we're really getting real.

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Alison Cook: That's a gut punch. Because it’s also so understandable at nine. That makes sense. But again, and this is where these young parts of us that have been so hurt, that adapted with these strategies, again, as we get older, it's like oh, but there's an adult in the room. That adult in the room can help you reframe that strategy. Again, without shame, but there’s that re-parenting piece that is so important.

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Mary: Yeah. In Dirt, I talk about the rest of that excerpt. It reminds me of a daisy growing wild in a scorched earth wasteland. Sure, you can grow beautiful things out of the ground of revenge, but how long can it really survive that way? That was the moment when I had to decide–if I'm gonna build a beautiful life, let me not do it out of revenge,

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Alison Cook: Mary Marantz, you are a wise poet. You really are. There's a such a lyrical way you paint these pictures for us. And I'm so grateful. I'm really grateful for the way you use your talents, for the way you're stepping into even more of your voice. It's gonna help a lot of people. Tell my listeners where to find your work, where to find the new book.

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Mary: First of all, I'm gonna say thank you for saying all that. And I know at this point in book launching, that was a lifeline to me. I feel like I am powered up. We always joke that one of our golden retrievers is a super extrovert. Addie, when he meets people on the seawall outside our house, you can literally watch him like Mario Brothers get a  power up. 

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So I feel like I powered up over here. Yes. Okay. A couple places I wanna tell your people about.

One is that I started talking about these characters in Slow Growth, but they carry over into Underestimated. And they are all these different ways we can perform to try to prove other people wrong or achieve for our worth. Or they actually end up turning into us playing small. 

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There's the performer, which is what I am, who's always on her toes to show both herself and other people how far she's come. The tightrope walker could care less who's clapping, but they need higher and higher death-defying feats in order to feel the same amount of good. The masquerader hides in plain sight and shoves other people into the spotlight. 

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The contortionist is our classic people pleaser, which is chapter nine. They contort because it's easier than to be criticized. The illusionist in the distance, that's chapter 10, she waits for herself and all the conditions to begin, to be perfect before she thinks she can even start. 

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If you go to achieverquiz.com, it takes about two minutes to take the quiz, 10 minutes if you really overthink it. The questions are super fun. And in true Mary form, the results go super deep. We talk about each type, why you are the way you are, why you play small, why you get stuck, and how we move forward. So that's achieverquiz.com or marymarantz.com/quiz. 

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Then if you go to namethefear.com or marymarantz.com/underestimated, we have the whole first chapter free for you up right now. You can grab it and start reading today. If you wanna pre-order, because pre-orders are so huge for authors, especially newer authors or ones who are still trying to get the stores to pick up the book, the first three chapters are available for you, and also the audio book.

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So it's getting two books for the price of one, and I read it. So if you've enjoyed hearing me wax poetic for the last hour, you will love the audio book with all of my movie quotes and quirky Care Bear stories all the way through. So that's namethefear.com or marymarantz.com/underestimated. I’m @MaryMarantz on Instagram–come tell me what achiever type you get, or if you liked the episode. 

Alison Cook: I love it. It is truly a delightful book about a hard topic. I was like, gosh, for all these things that I really struggle with, I'm having a lot of fun reading through this, which is such an art. I couldn't sing your praises enough and the book’s praises enough. You're the real deal and I'm so grateful for your time to share your wisdom with us.

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Mary: Thank you for your time and sharing me with your audience. I know that's a sacred space to invite someone in. So it means the world. As a podcaster myself, I know what goes into that and it means the world. Everybody go listen to Alison on my show too!

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Alison Cook: Yeah, we'll link to it. Thank you, Mary.

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Mary: Thank you. 

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Why do I feel guilty for protecting my time or energy?

‍

Is this a boundary—or am I just avoiding someone?

‍

Boundaries stir up a lot of emotions. But what if they’re not about building walls, avoiding people, or being “selfish”?

‍

In this episode, I share a deeply personal and surprising take on what boundaries truly are—and why they matter more than you think.

‍

You'll hear:

*Why healthy boundaries begin not with rejection, but with rhythm

*The two most common ways we misuse boundaries

*A powerful metaphor that changed how I think about relationships

*How codependency, enmeshment, and burnout signal boundary issues

*Real-life scripts and strategies to set boundaries with compassion and clarity

‍

Resources:

• Episode 153: Embodied Healing, Spiritual Trauma, and the Journey Home to Your Body with Dr. Hillary McBride
• ‍The Best of You by Dr. Alison Cook
• ‍I Shouldn’t Feel This Way by Dr. Alison Cook

‍

If you liked this, you’ll love:

• Episode 124: Boundaries & Numbing—How to Set Healthy Limits and Stop Avoiding Your Feelings
• ‍Episode 24: Boundaries, the Spectrum of Toxicity, and a Note About Evil
• ‍Episode 7: Why Are Boundaries So Hard to Set?

‍

‍Thanks to our sponsors:

• Turn back time on the appearance of your skin with Purity Woods’s Age-Defying Dream Cream. Go to puritywoods.com/BESTOFYOU or enter code BESTOFYOU at checkout for an additional 10% off your first order.
• This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/BESTOFYOU and get on your way to being your best self.
• Visit cozyearth.com and unlock an exclusive for 40% off best-selling sheets, towels, pajamas, and more with code BESTOFYOU.
• Go to Quince.com/bestofyou for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order!
• Visit GoGeviti.com to learn more about how you can start optimizing your health without leaving home today and use code BESTOFYOU.
• Contact Restoring the Soul today and learn how their Intensive Counseling Process can jump start your journey to the place you want to be. As a special gift for The Best of You podcast listeners, download their pdf called "5 Ways Unresolved Trauma May Be Derailing Your Relationship."
• I want all my listeners to enjoy a deep, restful night’s sleep with a new mattress from Birch. Go to birchliving.com/bestofyou for 20% off sitewide!

Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik

© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.‍

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Transcript:

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Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. Today we're talking about boundaries, a topic that can stir up a lot of mixed feelings for many of us. On one hand, boundaries can feel empowering, like a reclaiming of your voice, your time, your wellbeing.

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On the other hand, if you're on the receiving end of someone else's boundaries, it can feel confusing or even like rejection. For some of us, boundaries can feel at odds with being a loving, kind, or generous person.

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I've struggled with boundaries most of my adult life. I've struggled with being too rigid, using boundaries like a fortress to keep people out. Sometimes that has looked like ending a relationship too quickly instead of having an honest conversation, and telling myself I'm being clear, when I was actually afraid of the emotional discomfort or even feeling awkward.

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It has looked like saying no across the board as a default, not because I didn't care, but because I didn't trust myself to give without losing myself. It has looked like overscheduling or over-structuring my life to the point that there was no room left for spontaneity, presence, or unexpected moments of connection. 

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I've also struggled with being far too permeable, rationalizing and overgiving out of guilt or a sense of over-responsibility. For me, that has looked like attuning so much to someone else's perceived needs that I ended up over-enabling the other person and jeopardizing other healthier relationships. 

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It has looked like feeling so desperate not to hurt someone else that I avoid the hard, necessary conversations. Conversations that if I'd been brave enough to have them earlier, might have actually saved certain relationships. It has looked like taking on more than I can handle at work, convincing myself it's being servant-hearted, when in reality I'm neglecting my own health and priorities.

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It's taken me a long time to figure out a healthier rhythm when it comes to boundaries–a way to enter into the beautiful mess that is all of our relationships, with wisdom, discernment, and healthy boundaries.

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As we discussed in last week's episode on codependency, healthier boundaries have come as I've learned to trust my own inner voice, to honor my own needs, my own intuitive instincts, my own desires, even as I've learned to stay present to the inherent complexities of relating with other complicated humans.

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What I've learned is that tending to our boundary lines is an ongoing practice. It's not a one-time decision. It's not a hard and fast set of rules. It's a rhythm of staying attuned to yourself, to your circumstances, and to the gentle leading of God's Spirit.

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I'm guessing that most of you also feel this tension of vacillating between wanting to flee hard, complicated conversations or situations in your relationships, versus being too porous, too available to bend, too yielding to the needs of other people.

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That's exactly why I wanna have this conversation with you today. Here's the thing. Boundaries are one of the most misunderstood tools of emotional and spiritual health. They're not about building walls to keep people out, they're not weapons to get other people to change, and they're not excuses to avoid conflict, hard conversations, or the beautiful mess of real relationships.

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Here's a metaphor that I have found to be really helpful in my own life. Recently, I spent the morning walking through greenhouses and rows of plants and flowers, each one different, each one needing something unique from the gardener. 

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Sunflowers turn their faces toward you and grow tall with the light. Roses are beautiful, but come with thorns. You learn to enjoy them gently, maybe even from a distance. Yellow daisies bloom brightly for a season and then they fade. Others, like lavender or sage, are grounding and enduring, showing up year after year, steady and healing.

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Some, like morning glories, open briefly and unexpectedly, offering surprise beauty that you hold lightly for a season. Then there are the ones that grow wild–wisteria climbing into spaces it doesn't really belong in, or ivy that spreads so fast it begins to choke out other plants. These require pruning care or a strong trellis to guide them. 

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Our relationships are like a garden–beautiful, messy, each one needing different things from us.

Boundaries are the tools–the gardener's glove, the pruning shears, the watering can, even the protective fence. Boundaries are essential tools for tending to the garden of your relationships. 

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They're nuanced and nimble, not hard and fast, and they're never there to punish the plant or the relationship, but to help each one thrive in the right place, in the right season, with the right care. Boundaries aren't about control. They're about cultivating what's good, letting go of what no longer blooms, and protecting the beauty of what's growing.

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Your job isn't to control every plant or every person in your garden of relationships. It's to tend your garden with wisdom, discernment, and a gentle touch, having confidence that you have what it takes to nurture a garden that is alive, vital, healthy, and growing.

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Here's the thing. Back in the day, when my boundaries were too rigid, I had a beautiful plot of soil with no weeds and no flowers, and that's not exactly the kind of vibrant garden I wish to cultivate in my life, nor is it the kind of garden I think God means for us to have.

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Having healthy boundaries does mean wading into the messiness of relationships. If we left every relationship when things got messy, we wouldn't have any relationships left. On the other hand, if we don't have the tools to tend to our relationships with confidence and with strength, we'll let that garden be completely overgrown and chaotic, and we'll feel overwhelmed by what's in front of us. 

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Boundaries aren't about perfection. They're about cultivating a healthy sense of order. Your garden will look different from mine, and that's okay, but what matters is that we find a life-giving sense of order that honors our need for human relationships and our own personal capacities.

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So today I wanna take you on a journey. First, I'll give you a high level view of what I think is the original design behind boundaries, all the way back at the beginning, what we see in the creation story.

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Then we're gonna end with some practical stories from real life situations as well as scripts and tips that you can start using as you cultivate your own garden of relationships. So let's start at the beginning with a high-level view.

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In the creation story, God brings beauty out of chaos, not through domination, but through separation, through healthy differentiation. Light from darkness, land from sea, day from night. Each act of separation wasn't about exclusion. It wasn't about hierarchy. It wasn't about division in the way we often think of it today.

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It was about making room. In the beginning, God didn't build walls, God created spaciousness. These early distinctions between day and night, land and water, work and rest, weren't punishments. They were gifts. They were the foundational rhythms of our lives. They gave shape to time, meaning to movement, and form to relationship. They made life possible.

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We work, we rest, we commune with each other, we commune with God. We're together. We're separate. All of this existed in perfect harmony before the fall. This is the essence of boundaries–creating form so that flourishing can happen, and this is what theologians call original goodness. 

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I touched on this back in Episode 153 with Dr. Hillary McBride. Before there was sin, shame, and divisiveness, there was goodness, honor and harmony, not only in our relationships with other people, but in our relationship with God and with the land that we inhabit. That's our original inheritance.

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Boundaries were part of that original harmony. They were there before sin and shame and brokenness entered in. They were never walls to keep people out, but rhythms that made life sustainable. The problem is, somewhere along the way, we've started to see boundaries primarily as defensive tools, as ways to protect ourselves from the harm and chaos of the world around us. 

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Yes, boundaries can be protective. They do help us navigate the pain and confusion of broken relationships, but that's not where they begin. Boundaries begin in goodness, not as a reaction to what's wrong, but as a structure that protects what's right. 

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For those of you who have read my book, The Best of You, I redefine the primary question to ask yourself when it comes to establishing healthy boundaries, not as what you need to say no to, but what you need to say yes to in your life, proactively. What is the goodness, the beauty, the health that you're trying to protect?

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So right here at the front end of this episode, if you're struggling to set boundaries in your life, think about it for a minute. Are you trying to figure out what you're saying no to, and that seems impossible or hard or cruel or inherently rejecting?

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If that feels like your situation, “I can't say no to this person 'cause I don't wanna hurt them”. “I can't say no to this commitment, because I don't want to be ungenerous or unkind”. “I can't say no even to this toxic situation because I also care about this person even though I can't stand some of the ways that they're treating me”. 

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Flip that question on its head and ask yourself, what do I need to say yes to instead? I need more healthy relationships in my life. I need more spaciousness for myself, which means I have less tolerance for some of these other harder, more complicated relationships. Remember, boundaries aren't primarily about saying no to bad things. 

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They're about saying yes to the things that matter most. Start there. If you're struggling with your boundaries, sometimes I call this creating a Yes list. Again, if you think back to that garden metaphor, think about the flowers that draw you in and help you come alive and help bring joy into your life and a sense of goodness, a sense of peace, a sense of rest, and start there.

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By prioritizing those relationships in your schedule, in your calendar, in your day-to-day life, the rest will begin to take care of itself. There are two specific kinds of ordering that come with boundary setting that I wanna touch on in this episode today. The first is ordering your life and picking between good things. 

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It’s just the everyday reality that we have to say yes to a certain number of things. We're finite, we're limited. We can't say yes to everything, which means at times we will be saying no or reducing our capacity in things that we really love, within relationships that we really value or respect or care about, but we don't have the capacity for in the same way.

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Lemme give you an example from my own life. In the last 15 years, I've undergone so many changes. I went from being single to being married. I went from not having children to stepping into really significant co-parenting duties as a step-parent.

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In the meantime, my work life has grown. I've published a couple of books. I've grown a really strong online presence where a lot of people, including those of you listening, look to me for support and for guidance.

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I shifted into three new roles that significantly altered my time and energy and capacity very quickly, and that forced me to make some changes in my life out of sheer need. This was hard.

I've also moved. I've taken up roots in a new geographic location. These were significant changes that impacted my capacity to invest in long distance relationships that are really meaningful to me. 

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I've had to figure out different rhythms to honor those relationships, but in new ways. I've had to say no to some work opportunities, including those that require a lot of travel. These are constant negotiations in our global world that many of us are having to make about our work, and our relationships.

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And all of these decisions require communication. It's communicating to those people, you matter to me and my capacity to show up in this relationship has to change. Or it means communicating to a boss, I can't travel to that event because I have these other commitments that are important to me. 

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Are there other ways that I can show up digitally to make my presence known in these spaces? This kind of boundary setting isn't about choosing between good and bad. It's about knowing my own values and prioritizing accordingly.

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Boundaries help us survive and flourish, and it takes some work on the front end. If you're someone who's struggling in this category of boundary setting, the most important thing you can do is make that priority list. It's not a yes list of all those things you want to say yes to, it's prioritizing what are the ones that matter most.

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They all matter to me, but what matters most? Then the other thing I found really helpful when it comes to prioritizing in very full seasons is to think seasonally. What needs to be in my daily rhythms? What can be in my weekly rhythms? What can be in my monthly rhythms? And what is in my quarterly or annual rhythms?

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Don't underestimate the value of an annual rhythm or a quarterly rhythm. These are really valid and valuable ways of honoring different relationships and different work commitments. For example, if you have a friend or a group of friends that don't live near you, prioritizing annual or even every other year get-togethers to see each other is placing significant value on those relationships.

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It's far better than letting them go by the wayside. Same with quarterly rhythms. Quarterly check-ins via phone are really valuable. That's a significant investment in a relationship that you can no longer figure out how to work into your day-to-day or your weekly rhythms.

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Expanding your understanding of rhythms to thinking seasonally can be a really helpful way to add some of your boundary lines. Another example for me when it comes to traveling for speaking is, instead of feeling like I'm always saying no, I say yes to one or two speaking events a year. That's what I have capacity for. 

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By naming that clearly, I'm able to choose events and opportunities that have the most value for me personally. I know what I'm saying yes to, which can help relieve the stress of having to say no to otherwise really good things.

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Secondly, I wanna talk about boundaries in the context of relational struggles or even relational toxicity. Again, I always say this, but it bears repeating. I don't believe in toxic people. I believe in the image of God in all people, but I do believe in toxic patterns of behavior.

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When I'm talking about boundaries, I'm not labeling other people as good or bad, or toxic or not toxic. I'm looking at patterns of behaviors, and I'm asking myself this key question: what needs to shift in this relationship in order for me to live honestly with integrity and with respect for the image of God in this other person?

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That's a loaded question, so I'm gonna unpack it for a second. What needs to shift in order for me to live honestly, so that I'm not lying to myself or to someone else? With integrity, so that I'm staying true to myself and to my own values? And simultaneously, with respect for the image of God in this other person? 

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So notice I didn't say with respect for how this other person is behaving, because I'm respecting their inherent humanity while also staying true to my own convictions, my own integrity, my own values. So if someone is demonstrating extremely toxic behaviors where it's hard to see the image of God in them, and I know many of you have people like this in your life, what needs to shift?

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What might need to shift is, I cannot be in communication with this person anymore because their behaviors and their strategies and their way of showing up in the world has gotten so toxic that I cannot put myself in their presence. And that is the best thing I can do to honor myself and honor the image of God in them, because I am not gonna honor the way they're showing up in the world.

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There's no way that I can be in a relationship with them and still honor myself and the image of God in them, because there's no access to that image of God. Now, these are extreme cases, but it does happen. Other relationships get more complicated. Boundaries often come into focus when something doesn't feel quite right.

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I wanna talk through three common situations where this happens. The first is enmeshment. When our own identity is too tied up in someone else's needs or opinions, this gets back to codependency, which we talked about in last week's episode. 

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Number two are toxic patterns. When the relationship involves manipulation, control, guilt-tripping, or repeated harm, and again, in this case, I'm not talking about those people that you have to remove yourself from entirely. I'm talking about people that have some good qualities, but also demonstrate some of these other qualities that are harmful.

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Number three, a chronic imbalance, when we are always the one giving, always the one fixing, or always the one carrying the emotional load. 

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Let's talk about enmeshment. When you've lost your voice in a relationship, boundaries can help you reclaim it. Not to control the other person, but to become more honest with yourself.

Let's say at work, you've been overworking to appease other people, maybe your boss, maybe your colleagues.

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You're afraid to disappoint or fall short. Start with recognizing what you need. I need to reduce the things to which I'm committed, and it's not about going to other people. It's first about identifying in yourself, this is what I'm doing. I need to figure out a better way to communicate.

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Initially, the boundary isn't about going to other people. It's first becoming clear inside yourself, I'm taking on too much. I am the problem. In this case, you might practice some of the following scripts, simply saying, oh, that doesn't work for me right now. Here's what's already on my plate. I can't take that on, but I'd be glad to help you find someone else. 

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Or a simple statement of, I'm no longer going to answer work emails after 6:00 PM. The first step of establishing a healthier rhythm starts with you speaking up. Maybe it's your marriage, where you feel like you've lost your voice. Instead of trying to change the other person, start with what you need to change in yourself. 

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For example, you might say something like, I've decided to start counseling even if you're not ready to join me. You're taking initiative to do the thing that you know you need to do. Maybe you start scheduling something each week that's life-giving for you, instead of trying to get your spouse to do something that they've shown no interest in. Simply tell them, I've decided to start doing something each week that's replenishing for me. 

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Another helpful script when you're learning how to find your voice in an intimate relationship is to simply name what's happening. “I'm still figuring out what I want. I need some time and space to think”. Ask for the spaciousness you need to sort through your own voice.

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Maybe it's a friendship where you need to name a pattern that you're going to change. “I realize I've been saying yes when I actually need more rest. I'm gonna start being more honest about that”.

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Or, “I so appreciate how much you care, but I really need to make this decision without outside input. I'm really trying to listen to myself” or “I'm gonna have to skip this event. I don't have the capacity right now”. These are tiny steps of introducing more of your voice into these relationships. 

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Remember, setting a boundary in an enmeshed relationship is not an act of rejecting the other person. It's an act of returning to your own self so that you can reinvest in a healthier way. In these cases, the other person may feel disappointed or confused initially, but when you're clear about what you need and your respect for the other person, you're starting to introduce healthy change.

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Let's talk about toxicity. In these situations, it can be more challenging to set a healthy boundary, and you need to be aware of the other person's toxic patterns. When the relationship involves manipulation, control, guilt-tripping, or repeated harm, boundaries are about clarity, protection, and often creating distance. 

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For example, if you've got a friend who is constantly critical, you might need to name to them, “I wanna stay in this relationship, but I cannot take in all this negativity. I'm really working on my own mental health, and for me, I've gotta stay in a more hopeful mindset”.

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You might try playfulness sometimes. That's a great way to introduce change in a relationship. You might say, listen, I hear you. I know things are hard. Now let's each name one good thing that happened to us this week. Sometimes the other person will respond favorably to these bids for a different way of doing things. 

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Sometimes they won't. In those cases, you might simply need to name what's true. I wanna stay in this relationship, but not under these conditions. Or, I need to take a break from these conversations. If someone responds with a guilt-trip, they try to make you feel bad for what you're saying. 

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You can say, I hear that you're disappointed. I get that, and I also need to make this decision.

Or, I love you. I care about you. I don't want you to be disappointed, and I still need to do this differently. You can validate their emotion while simultaneously staying firm in what you need to do. 

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Then lastly, if they really won't let you off the hook, you might need to say, I'm not comfortable continuing in this conversation. I'm going to excuse myself. Simply close the conversation. 

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Finally, when you're dealing with chronic imbalance, when you feel like you're the one who's become the dumping bag, the listening ear, all the time, boundaries in these cases are about naming your own limits, but also learning to ask for shared responsibility. 

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For example, if you're struggling because your spouse maybe isn't helping you out around the house with household tasks or even emotional labor, you can say, listen, I love how much you do for our family, and I need more help around the house. Or, can we talk about how we're dividing up household management? Or, I'm feeling overwhelmed. I'd love to make a plan together. 

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In friendships, sometimes friends unwittingly have been leaning on you and maybe don't even realize it, and there are ways you can begin to introduce more of your needs into the relationship. You might say, man, I wanna be there for you, but I'm really emotionally tapped out today. Can we check in tomorrow? 

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Or you might even say, I'd love to support you, but I'm also struggling myself today. I wonder if we could take turns listening to each other. Sometimes you need to be direct. I'm realizing that I've been doing most of the initiating. I wanted to see what that's about. Is there any way that we could create a more mutually honoring rhythm in our friendship?

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Boundaries and relationships aren't about changing the other person. They're about protecting the part of you that's learning to stand in truth. Remember, when we stop over-functioning, we give others a chance to step into their responsibility. We're restoring natural harmony. To continue to take on more than our fair share is actually not good for anyone. 

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You never know how your honesty might help unlock something good inside of someone else. You may not see that in the moment. They might not like it, but at least you'll know you're doing your part. You'll find tons of scripts and tips in both my books, The Best of You and I Shouldn’t Feel This Way, if you want more practical suggestions.

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For now, please hear me say that someone else's disappointment or guilt does not mean you've done something wrong. Sometimes the guilt you feel isn't about the boundary you set. It's about the role you played before you set it. Staying firm to this new boundary is a great opportunity to work through the discomfort that you feel apart from this other person or this role you've taken on.

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You can always honor what they're feeling. You can say, I wish I'd done it differently, or, I hate that you're disappointed, and still move forward in strength. You can acknowledge the mess without stepping back into the same dysfunction. So here are our main takeaways today.

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Boundaries are a part of God's design for harmony. They're not a punishment. They're not a rejection. They're a return to what's healthy, what's real, what's good. A return to healthy rhythms, a return to your God-given worth.

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Boundaries don't have to end relationships. They redefine them and that work, while hard, is holy and good. It's part of what we're made for. Boundaries are how we make space for love to grow without losing ourselves in the process. 

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If you’ve ever felt emotionally exhausted—even while doing all the “right” things—this episode is for you.

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I’m sharing a personal story and unpacking something I see in so many women I work with: the quiet, often unnoticed pattern of denying your own needs in the name of being kind, helpful, or faithful.

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We’ll talk about how these patterns take root, how faith communities can unknowingly reinforce them, and why that emotional exhaustion you’re feeling might be trying to tell you something important.

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In this episode, I explore:

* How codependency hides behind helping & overfunctioning

* How the fawn response might be showing up in your life

* The impact of church messages that tell us to "die to ourselves" without teaching us how to live

* What healthy dependence looks like

* Why your locus of control—internal vs. external—matters more than you think

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Resources:

• The Best of You by Dr. Alison Cook
• ‍Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself by Melody Beattie
• ‍Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A Guide and Map for Recovering from Childhood Trauma by Pete Walker
• ‍Jeremiah 17:9
• ‍Jeremiah 31:33
• ‍John 12:24-25 MSG
• ‍John 1:11-13 MSG

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If you liked this, you’ll love:

• Episode 5: What is Codependency and Why Does it Matter?
• ‍Episode 14: The Fawn Response & The Hidden Root of People Pleasing

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‍Thanks to our sponsors:

• For 20% off your order, head to Reliefband.com and use code BESTOFYOU.
• Go to Quince.com/bestofyou for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order!
• Visit GoGeviti.com to learn more about how you can start optimizing your health without leaving home today and use code BESTOFYOU.
• Contact Restoring the Soul today and learn how their Intensive Counseling Process can jump start your journey to the place you want to be. As a special gift for The Best of You podcast listeners, download their pdf called "5 Ways Unresolved Trauma May Be Derailing Your Relationship."
• I want all my listeners to enjoy a deep, restful night’s sleep with a new mattress from Birch. Go to birchliving.com/bestofyou for 20% off sitewide!

Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik

© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.‍

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Transcript:

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Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast, where we're going to slow down together for a moment and listen to the quiet of our own hearts beneath all the noise outside of us. I'm so glad you're here.

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Today's episode is for all of you who feel spiritually strong, but emotionally weary. You trust God, you pray, you try to care deeply for the needs of others, and yet something inside feels stretched thin, frayed at the edges, quietly hurting. If that sounds familiar, you may be carrying more than your soul was made to hold all alone.

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Today's words are drawn from the pages of the first solo book I wrote. It's called The Best of You, and the book came out of my own life and my own journey of feeling strong in my faith, but emotionally fragile at times.

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The book was the heartbeat behind this podcast and behind the work that I've been called

to do, and when I recently asked you through a poll on social media what topics you wanted me to cover on the podcast, the topic of codependency was one of the most commonly requested. So that's where we're headed.

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Here's how we'll spend our time. First, we'll name and explore what codependency actually is and how it quietly takes root. Then, I'll share a personal story that shaped my own understanding of invisibility and self-protection and reflect on how faith and church messages sometimes reinforce these patterns.

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Finally, we'll look at the invitation of Jesus not to disappear, but to come alive to your truest self. At the end of the episode, I'll share with you some questions for your own reflection and journaling. So if you're weary from trying to hold it all together, if you're longing for something deeper than the surface answers you've been given, this space is for you. Let's take a breath or a sip of coffee or tea together, and dive in. 

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Every week I talk with women who are moms, who are bosses, who are artists, doctors, teachers, women who are anchored in their faith, and yet feel untethered inside. They ask questions like these: Why do I feel so overwhelmed even though I'm trying so hard to be a good person? Why do I keep running on empty? Isn't my faith supposed to be enough? 

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Maybe you've asked these questions too. The truth is, you can be spiritually strong and emotionally stuck. You can trust God and still feel lonely, or like you're running on empty.

You can have a deep faith and still feel anxious or invisible in your own life, because somewhere deep inside, you learned that taking up space is dangerous.

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I still remember the first time I felt that instinct to shrink back. I was in sixth grade. I was cast as the Queen of Hearts in our school play. I was so over the moon excited about this play. I had the red dress, the collar that stood tall, and I even got those red press-on nails for dramatic flare.

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When the curtain rose and the spotlights were on, something inside of me collapsed. Who was I to be so bold? Who was I to take up space? Who was I to try to play this Queen of Hearts? I watched as the other girls seemed to shine as they stepped right into their roles and I started telling myself, why can't I be more like they are?

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Just like that, I began to disappear, to crumble inside myself. I missed my cue. I stumbled through the scene, and afterward, I was mortified, filled with shame. I laughed it off and praised my friends and told them how great they were, but inside, a new rule took root inside my soul–don't be too much. Stay small and you'll stay safe.

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I'm guessing that you might remember a moment like that in your own story. Maybe in your case, it wasn't a school play. Maybe it was a classroom, a sports team, maybe a family dinner table, maybe it was with your peers. A place where you wanted to speak up or step forward, but some part of you whispered, “don't, you're not enough” or even worse, “you are too much”. 

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For a moment, let yourself go back to that space, not to stay there, but to honor what you felt in that moment. What was the fear that prompted you to silence your voice in that situation?

What decision did you make about yourself at that moment? What quiet rule did you begin to live by?

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These inner rules don't come out of nowhere. They're formed at the intersection of where we've been hurt and where we've learned to survive. Over time, they shape how we relate to others and to ourselves. For many of us, this leads to a hidden pattern we don't often name, but it's called codependency.

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Codependency is more than unhealthy relationships. It's a way of being in the world, a way of organizing your life around everyone else's needs, while staying disconnected from your own. It looks like always being the helper, always being the peacekeeper, always being the one everyone else depends on, until one day you realize no one really knows the real you.

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Maybe even you don't know the real you. The term codependency was first used in the context of addiction recovery. It described the behavior of loved ones who became so entangled in trying to help meet the addicted person's perceived needs, that they lost their own sense of identity, and even unwittingly began to enable the other person. 

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Later authors like Melody Beattie helped popularize the concept more broadly. In her groundbreaking book, Codependent No More, Beattie suggested that codependency reaches much more broadly than crafting your identity around someone else's addiction. It's a pattern that can show up in any relationship, where you chronically ignore your own needs in order to care for others.

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Often this looks like avoiding conflict at all costs, needing external validation from other people to feel okay, saying yes to others when your heart is saying no, and losing your voice in order to keep the peace.

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You start to hide your needs so no one views you as a burden. You begin to enable other people or make excuses for other people's dysfunctional behavior. You might tell white lies to avoid any form of conflict. You might rely excessively on others in order to make even the simplest of decisions. You might discount your own needs, your own wants, your own instincts, your own inner wisdom.

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Codependency is often linked to a survival strategy known as fawning. Therapist Pete Walker introduced this term in his book on complex trauma. Many of us are familiar with the idea of fight or flight or even freeze; these are nervous system responses to threats in our environment.

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You go into fight mode when you go on the attack or confront someone else, and you go into flight mode when you flee or try to avoid a conflict. Both of these are nervous system responses to threats in our environment. You go into freeze mode when it's almost as if both of those reactions are happening simultaneously. You freeze, which means you feel like you can't respond–a deer in the headlights moment.

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The fawn response is a fourth category that's newer to the vocabulary. But I think it's a really powerful descriptor of the way many of us learned to cope or to survive, especially as it relates to codependent patterns.

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I think about an experience I had as a young girl growing up in the mountains of Wyoming. We would bump into all kinds of wildlife on family hikes, but one time we actually bumped into a baby fawn. It was laying in the grass, all curled up, blending into the environment around it. We could have easily missed seeing it. 

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Here's the thing about a baby fawn. They don't fight. They don't come after you. Neither do they flee. They don't run away. Instead, they get smaller. They get even tinier. They attempt to disappear and camouflage into their environment. It's an extremely adaptive survival response.

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As psychologists studied the impact of our childhood wounds on adult behavior, they detected this additional conditioned response, this fawn response that doesn't look like fight, flight, or freeze. Instead, it looks like playing small, blending in, muting your voice, shrinking down.

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On the outside, it can look like kindness, generosity, and flexibility, but on the inside, it's driven by fear. “If I can hide and stay small, maybe I'll stay safe”. This message is particularly important for women to understand. Now, guys, if you're listening, I hope you'll stick with me because many of you struggle with this too.

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But I'm gonna speak directly to the women, because we've been given a whole other set of messages that reinforce this idea that we should play small. As women, we've inherited a legacy of being taught to stay small. Many of our mothers and grandmothers grew up in generations as women who faced extremely limited options.

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For example, some of our great-grandmothers weren't allowed to vote, and many of our mothers and grandmothers weren't allowed to apply for their own credit cards without their spouse's signature or approval. In fact, women weren't officially allowed to compete in US marathons until the early 1970s.

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Sometimes we can be hard on our mothers and on the generations who came before us. But imagine growing up with some of these pervasive cultural messages. “Your voice doesn't count. You can't depend on yourself. Your talents don't matter”. And if you don't think these messages still affect women today, consider that women are diagnosed with depression and anxiety at significantly higher rates than men. 

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Let me be clear, this does not show that there's something wrong with women. This reveals the lingering legacy of misunderstanding and devaluing women. We women are tough, and we have been all along. We're in the trenches trying to improve our societies. We're nurturing children, supporting friends, strengthening our communities, and producing important work alongside our colleagues. 

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Yet we've also paid a price. So many women are taught to put others first before we are taught to cherish ourselves. Faith communities, even with their best intentions, can reinforce these patterns. We often hear messages like, “Sacrifice for others. Put others first. You can't trust your heart. Die to yourself”.

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The subtle power of these messages is strong, but the problem is, what if the self you're dying to isn't the selfish part of all of us, but the true self God created in love? When you're taught that you can't trust yourself, you have no choice but to rely on other people to guide you. Furthermore, when you're taught to always put others first, you disregard your own needs. 

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Taken together, these commonly taught messages leave you with only two options to guide your decision making. Number one, only trust other people. You have to look to external sources to figure out what you need or want. Or number two, to only put others first, to always consider what other people need and want. 

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Notice how there is no place for you, for your own wisdom, in either of these options. You are focused on meeting other people's needs or looking to other people for permission or for approval. Your eyes are always on them. Nowhere in this equation is there a place for you to sort out who you are and what you want or need. 

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This isn't healthy spirituality. This is not what God intended. It is one thing to sacrifice in healthy ways for other people. It's another to betray yourself altogether. It's one thing to use the strength that you have gained to help a loved one who's in need. It's another to bypass your own healing work.

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When you neglect your own self, your own healing, your own growth, you aren't living out of the fullness of who you are. There's a difference between dying to your ego and disappearing altogether, and this message is particularly important for women to understand. So many of us have been taught to die to a life that we haven't yet learned how to live. 

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Instead of encouraging you to stay small and sacrifice for others, I wanna give you a counterbalancing message. Here's the truth. Jesus didn't ask women to make themselves invisible. He didn't ask them to play small. In fact, he did the opposite. He spoke directly to women. He honored them and gave them a sense of agency. He empowered them. He sent them out with good news.

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I wanna ask you this question today. What if following Jesus isn't only about sacrificing for others? What if it's about coming alive, fully and wholly–body, mind, heart, and soul–to your truest God-made self?

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You may have grown up hearing that being kind means never having needs, never getting angry, never taking up space. But kindness without boundaries is not love. It's martyrdom, and

and that is not what God asks of us.

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So what's the alternative? If codependency keeps us hidden and emotionally disconnected, what does healthy connection actually look like? What does it look like to be in relationship with others without losing yourself?

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I wanna be clear about what it's not, because our culture can give us confusing messages. Healthy dependence isn't the same as hyper-individualism, or isolating yourself from others. Or I'll do me, I only answer to myself. That's not healthy dependence.

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Healthy dependence means that you can trust others and trust yourself. You can share your needs and your opinions and your ideas and your dreams without shame. You can set a boundary with another person when it's the right thing to do. You can be in a relationship without disappearing into the other person.

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Codependency says, I'll tell you what you wanna hear. It's easier that way. Healthy dependence says, I'd value the opportunity to talk this issue through with you so that we can both be heard.

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Codependency says, I need your permission. I can't do it without your approval. Healthy dependence says, I don't need your permission, but I value your perspective.

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Codependency says, I can't be alone if you don't give me the validation that I crave. Healthy dependence says, I need time alone to cool off and gather my thoughts before circling back to this conversation,

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Codependency says, I can't live without you. Healthy dependence says, I'm better with you in my life.

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The antidote to codependency is healthy interdependence. In codependency, we're often looking outward. What do they need? What do they think? How do they need to feel my love?

When we're interdependent with other people, we also look inward. What do I need? What do I think? Can I love this other person and still honor myself?

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Healthy dependence isn't always a perfect balance, but it does require mutuality, respect, shared responsibility, and a back and forth and that includes your relationship with God.

God doesn't call you to erase yourself to connect with Him. God calls you to be grounded in his love, both for the sake of others and for the sake of yourself.

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Now I know that for some of you, when we talk about honoring yourself, trusting yourself, listening to yourself, your theological radar might go up, and so let me share something I believe Scripture clearly teaches. When the Bible says that the heart is deceitful and wicked, Jeremiah the prophet was referring to our broken state, what some theologians call original sin.

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There's something that every single one of us inherits as part of being human, and that is that we're imperfect, we can all go astray. But the very same prophet who declared this bad news about our deceitful state also foretold the good news about what would happen one day when Jesus would come. 

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In fact, Jeremiah prophesied the solution to this problem in the coming of God's Spirit: I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts through the power of God's Spirit. What had once only been available externally through the law is now available internally to every single one of us through the power of God's Spirit.

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This teaching in Jeremiah is underscored by an idea in psychology related to the locus of control. When you have an internal locus of control, you tend to look to resources within yourself, including God's Spirit, to affect change, make decisions, and create impact. You have a sense that you can, to some degree, take charge of your life.

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In contrast, when you lead toward an external locus of control, you tend to view what happens to you as outside of your control. You view external sources such as circumstances, fate, or other people as responsible for your wellbeing. 

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An internal locus of control relates to higher levels of confidence and improved mental health, while an external locus of control tends to correlate with increased feelings of anxiety, helplessness, and depression.

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Some psychologists believe that an internal locus of control is one of the most important factors in creating healthy relationships throughout life. It's not that you don't also need trustworthy people in a healthy community around you–you do. But in order to engage those external resources in helpful ways, you have to be able to rely on your inner resources, including emotional cues from your nervous system, your critical thinking, and inner wisdom.

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Not surprisingly, women are far more conditioned toward an external locus of control than men are. Women are taught to look outside of ourselves for solutions, and I would argue that this is particularly true in faith communities. But focusing exclusively on external resources isn't healthy. 

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In fact, research in the psychology of religion has shown that when you recognize that God is empowering you to take action, it's good for your mental health and your spiritual resilience. It's also what we see taught in scripture.

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Jesus used a grain of wheat to describe the process of dying to yourself. In John 12:24-25, he says, “Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal”.

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That's The Message version. I want you to consider this. The grain of wheat represents your old ways of surviving–the pleasing, the producing, the perfecting, the codependent patterns of relating to other people.

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Those ways may have worked for a time, but they no longer serve you nor anyone. You have to change. You have to die to those old ways. It's hard. It might even feel like a loss initially, after all these ways have served you in the past. But to become a truer version of yourself, you have to release these old ways.

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It's the only way to grow. What if dying to yourself means letting go of those old ways of learning how to disappear, how to please, how to organize your life around the needs of others? What if it means coming alive to the person you really are, the person God made? This idea is echoed in other Bible passages. 

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Here's what the Apostle John said: 

“But whoever did want him,

    who believed he was who he claimed

    and would do what he said,

He made to be their true selves,

    their child-of-God selves.”

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Here's what I believe. Dying to yourself means dying to the old survival patterns, the pleasing, the hiding, the shrinking, the playing small. It means coming alive to the true self, the wholeness of yourself, God-made, the one with the courage to stand up for what's right, the clarity to name your calling and your needs, and the compassion to love others without losing yourself.

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This isn't easy. It can feel like a loss, like you're laying down a cloak that once kept you safe, but that cloak was never your true covering. Love is. Love calls you out of hiding. It frees you. It fills your soul and flows from within you out into the world around you. So as we close, I wanna ask you a few questions to consider.

‍

Where in your life do you feel the pressure to be small?

‍

What old messages from family, culture, or church still shape how you see your worth? 

‍

What is a new message God might be inviting you to consider instead? 

‍

What might it feel like to remove your own invisibility cloak for today?

‍

You were never meant to disappear. You were made to be known, to be seen, to be loved as you are. If these ideas have stirred something in you, I'd love to invite you to pause, journal, or even take a walk with these thoughts. 

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If you're ready to go deeper into this journey, join me next week where we're gonna talk about how boundaries can flow from love. You are not too much, you are not alone, and you are already deeply loved.

‍

‍This week, I’m joined by someone whose work has profoundly shaped my own healing journey—Dr. Hillary McBride. A psychologist, researcher, author, and speaker, Hillary is a leading voice in the integration of embodiment, spirituality, and trauma recovery. We discuss her personal story as well as themes from her powerful new book, Holy Hurt: Understanding Spiritual Trauma and the Process of Healing.

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‍Whether you’ve struggled with body image, experienced spiritual harm, or simply long to feel more whole—this conversation is for you.

‍

We explore:

* Hillary’s personal story of healing from an eating disorder—and how it led her into her life’s work

* Why body image issues are never just about the body* How trauma fragments our nervous system and disrupts our sense of safety, trust, and self

* What spiritual trauma is and how it can quietly take root in early beliefs and experiences

* How our attachment to God is often shaped by relational wounds—and what healing can look like

‍

Order your copy of Holy Hurt here

‍

Resources:

• Holy Hurt: Understanding Spiritual Trauma and the Process of Healing by Hillary L. McBride, PhD
• Other books by Hillary L. McBride, PhD:
  • ‍The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Connection through Embodied Living‍
  • Mothers, Daughters, and Body Image: Learning to Love Ourselves as We Are‍
  • Practices for Embodied Living: Experiencing the Wisdom of Your Body‍
• ‍https://holyhurtpodcast.com/‍
• The Birth of the Living God by Ana-Maria Rizzuto

‍

If you liked this, you’ll love:

• Episode 48: Loving Your Body as a Spiritual Practice, Why the Flesh Isn’t the Body, and 3 Heresies We Kind of Believe‍

‍Thanks to our sponsors:

• This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/BESTOFYOU and get on your way to being your best self.
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• Get up to 50% off your custom-fit mouth guard at www.shopremi.com/BESTOFYOU today!

Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik

© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.‍

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Transcript:

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Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast today. I couldn't be more honored and thrilled to share a really insightful conversation with someone who has helped me a ton on my own healing journey. It's Dr. Hillary McBride.

‍

Hillary is a psychologist, researcher, speaker and author, known for her compassionate, holistic approach to embodiment, spirituality and healing trauma. Her groundbreaking work has been pivotal in helping countless individuals, including myself, as you'll hear me share with Hillary in today's episode, understand and heal in so many ways, but especially our relationships with our bodies. 

‍

She's the author of several books, including The Wisdom of Your Body, Mothers, Daughters, and Body Image, and Practices for Embodied Living. Today we're gonna talk about some of those themes, but we're also gonna talk about her brand new book that's coming out this week. It's called Holy Hurt: Understanding Spiritual Trauma and the Process of Healing. 

‍

I was so honored to play a role in this project. Hillary reached out to me and asked me to lend my voice to the conversation, both for the podcast series called Holy Hurt, and this book that Hillary has written that courageously explores the intersection of spiritual and bodily trauma.

‍

In today's episode, we dive into some fascinating insights on a couple of different topics. We're gonna touch on how body image issues often reflect deeper spiritual and societal wounds, and why simply focusing on body image isn't enough. 

‍

We're gonna talk about the profound impact of trauma on our nervous systems and why it leads to fragmentation, disconnection, and such a lingering sense of unsafety, some of Hillary's insights on spiritual trauma, and how it can be rooted in our beliefs and early experiences.

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Hillary shares her personal and professional insights with extraordinary warmth and depth, helping us understand how reconnecting with our bodies and addressing spiritual wounds can lead to authentic lasting healing.

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If you've ever felt disconnected from your body or even your spiritual identity, or simply long to find deeper integration and embodied wholeness, this episode is for you. I am thrilled to bring you my conversation with Dr. Hillary McBride.

‍

***

Alison Cook: I'm so thrilled to have you here. I can feel so much anticipation in my body and I will say, Hillary, before we dive into this topic of spiritual trauma, that I really am so excited to have this conversation with you and this beautiful book that I got to be a small part of, which is really meaningful to me.

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Hillary: You are a very important voice in it.

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Alison Cook: It really meant a lot to me that you included me. Your work on embodiment has meant a lot to me in my own journey. I would love for you to share with my listeners, who may not be familiar with you or your work, a little bit of why that topic became so important to you to write about. That was really the beginning of your public work, if I understand your body of work correctly.

‍

Hillary: Yeah. Thank you for that invitation. I always like to anchor interviews like this in the personal, because that's the place where all of our material comes from. As much as we like to say otherwise, we do this and do it with passion and commitment because it touches some place in us. 

‍

The work of spiritual trauma and embodiment are not so separate for me. I can talk about that as I transition us maybe out of my story. But I came to the work of embodiment through my own profound experience of disembodiment. I came to understand embodiment because I didn't actually know how to be in my body. 

‍

The background of that is, I had an eating disorder for many years. I had been in the treatment circuit. For anyone who's familiar with the eating disorder treatment circuit, it is often a series of revolving doors that people walk through, wherein we are told as patients, you can't trust yourself, can't trust your body, can't trust what you want for your body. 

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Here are the guidelines. Here's something outside of you that's gonna tell you how to treat yourself, because you essentially can't be trusted with yourself. I remember I had this one therapist and we actually didn't talk about my eating disorder. We didn't talk about my weight. We didn't talk about my dietary concerns. We didn't talk about any of it. 

‍

She really invited me into this consciousness-raising space, where I started to see that my hate of my body and trying to make my body disappear was actually me being a good woman in my faith context and in my sociopolitical context.

‍

When we look at North America, when we look at so many of the religious contexts that many of your listeners come from, I think about how often we are told that when you hate your body, when you subdue your body, when you control your body, when you make your body nothing,

you're seen as more valuable.

‍

You're seen as being good. Like, you're doing it right. For me, that really started a conversation internally and externally with people around, what are the other ways of being? I ended up going to grad school and I was researching body image. I was looking at, how do we actually foster healthy body image?

‍

If we know that there's a relationship between eating disorders and negative body image, could it be that if we have positive body image, it inoculates us against eating disorders? Jokes on me, because I found this whole body of research that said body image is actually insufficient as a way of understanding the full experience of being in yourself.

‍

Because if we break down that term for a moment, image is only one dimension of the human experience. If I have a positive body image, that's great. I like how I look on the outside, but how I look is like what? 1% of who I am? I have an embodiment teacher who says, you have a million miles of unexplored territory inside of you.

‍

Cool. As long as we're thinking about body image, that's great if you like yourself, or that's hard if you don't like how you look. But actually, that's not really the thing that we need to be orienting towards, if we're trying to repair our relationship with ourselves and move through the world in a way where we have integration, where we have presence, where we are connected to ourselves and others.

‍

So I found this research and it was Dr. Niva Piran, her work, and the developmental theory of embodiment. It radically changed the direction of my research and the trajectory of my career. I started talking about embodiment and publishing about embodiment and really trying to research, what is this? How does it show up across the lifespan? 

‍

I looked at embodiment for aging women and in particular, perimenopause, for my doctoral dissertation. Embodiment in perimenopause. What does it mean to become even more connected to yourself through that transition? What I found is that there is a story that people were carrying, the people who struggled the most to be in their bodies, and the story that they were carrying was one, my body is unsafe.

‍

That was usually connected to trauma–physical trauma, sexual trauma, experiences where the body felt like the scene of the crime. The other one was, my body is evil or sinful. What I was starting to hear in this work for people is that believing they could even get access to their body felt impossible. 

‍

Because they had years and years of people they trusted and family members and Scripture and prayer and any number of theological traditions and whatnot, saying the only way you'll be close to God is if you get away from your body.

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Alison Cook: The flesh gets conflated with the body, and it's bad. It's a gnostic heresy.

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Hillary: Say it. Say it.

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Alison Cook: It’s a heresy that the body is bad. But it is often the message in church cultures.

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Hillary: Exactly. What I found is that I couldn't really address embodiment without also addressing spiritual trauma. And I couldn't address spiritual trauma without also looking at the legacy that it has on our relationships with our bodies. 

‍

People who grow up in the church are hearing these ideas over and over again, but even just looking at the way that evangelical theology and that movement has shaped so much of the meta-culture in America, I don't know if there's anybody, regardless of their religious ideas or their spiritual practices, who hasn't been touched by this pervasive fragmentation at the level of mind and body. 

‍

We have started to see that bodies are subservient or secondary or at worst, evil and awful. That's baked into our philosophy in Westernized, white supremacist, Eurocentric, post-colonization cultures. So it's here, whether we name it as such. It's here, and that's how I think these topics are related.

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Alison Cook: You're so right. I promise to the listener we're gonna get into spiritual trauma. But this morning, actually, as I think about that word, “embodiment”, and how you have brought that word, it's a positive. Embodiment is a direction in which one can move.

‍

Just this morning, I have a very spiritualizing, anxious part of me, and when I do parts work with this part of me, God comes into that part, lays a hand, and embodies this part of me. “You have a body”. And I have to sit with that. But I hear your voice, because you've even tried to take it to, “you are a body”. 

‍

Hillary: What happens when we say that? Ah, it's a little spooky, isn't it? Yeah.

‍

Alison Cook: You've also talked about when it's really hard to understand our embodiment on that deepest felt level, to take it to the third person. Your body is a she. I can be kind towards something outside of me. I can begin to see my body as almost a part of me. She is a good body. 

‍

Anyway, you've discussed this and you've brought this positive trajectory I move toward, versus what is not working. So I wanted to share that with you. Your language is so powerful, and I'm so grateful to you for that vocabulary.

‍

Hillary: Yes. I love knowing how it's living inside of you and the wrestling and the tension and the possibility that it could be more than a thing, that our body could be someone, that it could be an aliveness, and it could be actually our aliveness. I know that can be a little tricky for some people to step into that.

‍

That feels a little scary sometimes, because if I am my body, then everything that happened to my body happened to me. So that can be a tricky one for folks sometimes, but I am appreciating knowing more about how that lives in you. It feels so good.

‍

Alison Cook: It’s scary to be a body in this world as a woman, as a sensitive person. Also it is our holy invitation in this healing process, that it is in fact, good. With that in mind, I do want to segue, Hillary, you speak so beautifully and in such a gentle way about the reality of trauma in

women's experiences. I'd love to hear how it lives in the body, and then move into spiritual trauma. That's a huge question.

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Hillary: It's a huge question. There's a scholar named Michelle Panchuk whose work I've become really familiar with. I hope to meet her. I learned from her from afar at this point. But in one of her academic papers, she calls trauma multiply ambiguous. What she means by that is, we use the word trauma to mean so many things. 

‍

We use it to mean the thing that happened. We also use it to mean the way it happened and how it lives on in us. Sometimes we use it to talk about the big things that are insufferable. Sometimes we use it colloquially to talk about things that were hard. We can talk about trauma at the level of the individual nervous system as well as systemically. 

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If I'm thinking about all of those things at once, I come back to two or three main points. The first one would be fragmentation, this kind of split or schism within ourselves or between us and others at the point of overwhelm, which is the second word that often we use related to trauma.

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When something is too much for our nervous system to process or make sense of, it feels like such a threat to our ability to be connected, to have our needs met, to survive, that our nervous system tips over into this place of not processing, of not integrating, of not holding sensation in mind. 

‍

At the same time of not storing memory, it lives on in perpetuity inside of us, and our nervous system is responding as if the thing is still happening because it doesn't have that sequencing, of feeling over. That's part of our body's way of keeping us alive. It is saying, I'm gonna be at the ready. 

‍

Because this is not done, and I need to keep protecting you through dissociation, through terror, through flashbacks, through whatever it is, through this sense of losing contact with the sense of safety in the here and now.

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When we think about that word fragmentation, I think it helps us hit the multiple levels of how we can experience trauma. Because trauma, yes, on a neuro-anatomical level, there is a split that happens. We call it the corticothalamic uncoupling. 

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Cortex and thalamus, two parts of a brain that normally are talking and integrating sensation, presence, emotion, memory ideas, meaning making, time–they stop talking to each other. There's an inability for us to complete a response or get through to the other side of something. 

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But we can also look at fragmentation in terms of me and you, or me in the world, or me and God, or me and my meaning making system. When something is so big that it fractures something inside of us, another word I would use instead of fragmentation is “shattering”. It touches every part of our life and touches all the ways we relate to other people.

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All it takes is a survivor of relational trauma to know, our bodies are really good at generalizing, and it's not the person who hurt us that feels scary. It can be any other person. So that's what I mean when I say there is a shattering. Previously, people might have been good and trustworthy. Because of the trauma, it's not that person who hurt me that I can't trust, but it's any other person who could hurt me.

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Alison Cook: When you describe it that way, what's happening in the body, we cannot help that. We can't will ourselves to get those parts of our brains to reconnect. That's not a willpower thing. That's not a, “what's wrong with me”, which is often where we go in self-shame. We're aware–I had this bad experience at this one place. Why do I still feel it? I love how you described the literal fragmentation

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Hillary: Yeah. Thank you. You're setting me up really nicely to talk about the spiritual trauma piece of this. The way that I understand spirituality is that spirituality is an inborn human desire for meaning-making, for connection, for a sense of trying to pursue connection.

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It's this inborn human natural desire for us to discover, to seek purpose, to feel connected to ourselves and others, and ultimately to God. Spirituality is not what we practice. Those are spiritual practices. That's how we enact our desire to connect. Spirituality is not religion, which is a culture of how we as a group of people say, hey, we're gonna practice answering these big questions we have.

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Spirituality is an inborn drive for connection. That's the most simple way of describing it. So let's go back to trauma for a second–shattering and fragmentation. If we hold those two side by side, I don't think that there's any trauma that isn't also spiritual trauma, because trauma at its very core is getting in the way of connection within me, between us, and in the big picture.

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If what gets shattered is that sense of, I can move towards others for help, or I can trust my body, or I believe that God is here with me even though it's hard, I don't understand how any trauma at its very root is not also spiritual in nature.

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Alison Cook: So this is exactly what I wanted to ask you. Because religious trauma might be a distinct thing as it happens within an institution, but that's what I wanted to ask about spiritual trauma. I think a little bit about attachment theory. I was really informed by Ana-Maria Rizzuto, The Birth of the Living God, and how our earliest experiences of mother love, father love, that attachment, that safety maps onto and shapes and influences our experience of God. 

‍

I know that's a simplification of what you're saying, but that is an example of wherever there is trauma or a wound or a fragmentation to the soul, it permeates all of our relational connectivity, including our relationship with God, but also our relationship with other people. 

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Hillary: Oh, that makes perfect sense. I think we can even simplify it further, or maybe you tell me if it's simplifying or complexifying, that our brain-body system is an association making system. Which means that our brain-body system is always looking for connections between things and it's pairing things, especially things that are threatening and dangerous.

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For example, it doesn't take long if you burn your hand on the stove, before you realize you gotta be careful around the stove. When the element is red, it's hot. Or when you're in you're walking in a dark alley, if you feel someone's footsteps behind you and you don't know what's gonna happen next, it would make a lot of sense if the next time you're in a dark alley that you're gonna be on the lookout and you're gonna be listening for footsteps.

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You're gonna be watching and wondering, where's the exit? How do we get out? Who's around? Our brain is constantly making associations, and good ones, helpful ones–this is part of our survival. If you think about what you're saying about early attachment experiences, where we learn, daddy's unsafe, mommy's unsafe, daddy hurts me, mommy hurts me, whatever the story is, then you go into a church where people are saying God is like your father, God is like your mother…

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Your brain is saying, I'm going to take this impression that I've made over here and transfer it over here. I don't even think we have to talk about it from a symbolic lens. We can say quite literally, the injuries that we have that are encoded related to father, of course, are gonna be pulled up when someone says God is father. 

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It makes perfect sense from a neurobiological perspective, so I'm glad that you brought it up. That's how brains work. That's true.

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Alison Cook: You say it so well, and then I think to myself, then the self-shame comes in.

What's wrong with me, that I think God is mean? What's wrong with me, that I have a fight-flight response when people are talking about God the father? As opposed to, my brain is making an association that is for my survival.

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Hillary: Yeah. It's almost ubiquitous that people have that response. What's wrong with me? I would say, again, that happens in religious spaces and culture at large. There is something in trauma literature and in particular, religious trauma literature, that we call hermeneutic injustice. 

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The idea is that frameworks for meaning making and understanding what is happening inside of us are often deliberately kept from people, such that they can't then know how to make sense of what is happening inside of them, which is a really useful tool to get people to feel shame and blame, and like they need to do more of the things that return them to the place where the injury happens. 

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There is this cycle of abuse that can happen where you keep people in the dark, uninformed about their bodies, about trauma, about healthy systems, about healthy family dynamics, about power and control, about abuse. If you keep people in the dark about that and you tell them everything happens for a reason, and you tell them that their bodies are bad, and anytime their bodies afraid it's because they're sinning, then it's really easy for people to disavow the messages that bodies give them that say, this does not feel safe.

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We hate the body instead of thinking critically about the context that's making us feel unsafe. So what you're saying is, at the very core of a lot of these normative spiritual trauma experiences, people blame themselves because they've been taught to blame themselves without being given the opportunity to look and ask why.

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Why do I feel so much shame? Why do I feel so scared? Why? Why is that the go-to inside of me? Maybe it's not because I'm bad. Maybe it's because the context I was in was harmful to me, or that relationship or that leader or that idea injured me in some way.

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Alison Cook: When you introduce the Holy Hurt podcast, you ask this series of really powerful questions that I think is a little bit of what you're saying. They're so good. 

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How do you point to something specific that was so regularly occurring that it was actually woven into the fabric of your development?

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How can you name what was wounding when the source of the trauma causes you to sever the knowing that a wound existed in the first place? 

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Hence, we arrive at adulthood with all of this stuff going on inside of us without the tools to critically evaluate the context. So what do we do? How do we unravel this? How do we begin to heal? I wanna get there, but I wanna circle back to this idea of spiritual trauma. 

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I think many people listening, when they see those words, are thinking to some degree, it's a trauma that relates to my prayer life. It's a trauma that relates to my experience of church. It's a trauma that relates to my relationship with God. In your experience as a clinician, as a researcher, what are peoples’ lived experience of what we're calling spiritual trauma?

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Hillary: Yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this too, because I imagine we could collaboratively make quite a list for people. But I would say it spans everything from clergy sexual abuse all the way to being spanked, which we know in Canada is illegal. It's a form of child abuse. 

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And being told, this is because God loves you, this is because I love you. The things that many of us considered is how we raise kids. It’s just normal parenthood. My parents are just doing this because they love me and because someone at the church told them to. 

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There's a whole spectrum that includes the really obvious things that have major religious connotations, all the way to the things that are seemingly not religious in a way, because they're happening in our homes. But I think that probably the most common hallmark of spiritual trauma, and I'd be curious to know what you have to say about this, I believe it is people being told that they are bad to their core.

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You are bad and that's why you need Jesus. You're actually fundamentally bad. For people to be told this in a very confusing way that sounds loving and sounds like this is the right way, and we're celebrating you. I think I could boil it down to this: spiritual trauma is believing it is so good to believe you are so bad,

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Alison Cook: That's well put. There is an embodied component to that. There's a split. I am bad. I don't think it's biblical, this idea that we have to hate ourselves to know God's love. It makes no sense. I like to emphasize the original goodness. Yes, we are imperfect. Sin is so misunderstood. So I'm with you on that, Hillary, you said that so well. It makes no psychological sense.

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Hillary: In any other context, my secular psychologist friends, if they came to me with a case and they said, oh my gosh I'm hearing from this patient that as a child, they were told, you're bad, here are all the things you have to do, under no circumstances would we question it. That's abuse.

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The clinical guidelines are so clear. That's extremely damaging to a person's sense of self.

It's the shattering that we were talking about earlier, and yet when we put it in a spiritual context, people say, oh, but this is how we raise children. This is how you actually get close to God. 

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It is really messy because people feel a sense of needing to buy into that belief as a means of connecting to their community, which is a fundamental human need for survival as well.

To be close, to be connected, to belong–we will do any number of things to belong to people. I think there's no fault in that. We need community. But it's wild how normal these things can sound when it seems like everyone around us believes them too.

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Alison Cook: I love also how you're painting the spectrum all the way from the more obvious clergy sexual abuse, which is horrific and I'm so glad you're naming it, to cultures of abuse where there's narcissism. 

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Our friend Chuck DeGroat writes so well about narcissism, and what we're talking about here, where otherwise really loving parents have inherited or ingested, maybe even in a well-meaning way, a really bad theology. It's in the air that we breathe in many ways.

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Hillary: Yeah. I think that can be scary for some of us who are parents. We're listening to this thinking, oh, I don't wanna change my view of my parents. They did some of these things. What should I do? It can be really scary to open the box on what “normal” experiences did I have or did I create for someone that were inherently spiritually traumatic?

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What I like to remind myself is, you cannot heal something that you pretend does not exist. So if we are thinking about moving towards integration, the way towards the wholeness that we're after is not to pretend that didn't happen. Also it's important for us to recognize, on some level, trauma in its ubiquity. 

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It's around us and in us. Gabor Mate writes about this exquisitely, that there's actually something about us being able to see the scale and the scope of it that can move us towards reorganizing our systems, that can move us towards seeing, whoa, no wonder things are awry. We all are fragmented from each other and we use the earth and our capitalist society is more interested in money than preserving relationships.

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Oh my gosh, trauma is baked into the foundation of the way that we exist, I would argue. But for me, my journey of spiritual trauma healing has included looking at how I have perpetuated it. It takes a really clear sense of knowing I am good to be able to do that. There's this interesting thing there; when I am connected to the truth of who I am, that I am loved and good, then I don't have to put blinders up to how I've hurt other people. 

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It actually is part of the healing, not inside of me, but between us, for us to look at, ooh, how deep does this go?

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Alison Cook: It is a paradox. Shame keeps us fragmented. I often think it is a miracle, in light of all of the toxicity, that we still catch glimmers of this being who is love and who does call us good and beloved and delighted in. It's a miracle in many ways that triumphs through all of the clutter that so many of us inherited. 

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I wanna also touch on this for the listener. You do such a beautiful job of validating the different journeys people find themselves on when they begin to do this work of naming, oh, this has been toxic. 

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Hillary: There are some people, like you said, who need to get as far away as they possibly can from anything that signals danger, of course. That's really hard to do when you've been told that your perpetrator is omnipresent. That's really hard to do when you've been told that the abuser, the person who is making this all happen, is God. God is everywhere.

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So I wanna acknowledge the complexity of that. Spiritual trauma is so hard. So there are the people who need to get as far away from that as possible to, like you said, the people who are in this tension of needing to disorganize and reorganize their meaning making systems, their relationship to spirituality. 

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Then I would say that there are some people on the other end of the spectrum whose religious tradition and spiritual practices will be the thing that helps them navigate and heal and mend. But it's really hard to do that if you believe that God wants you to suffer, that God wants you to be disconnected from your body, et cetera. 

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So there are some tensions there that people need to work out, but I would say that spectrum is so important to acknowledge, because for some people who are in one place and have found one location of orienting to spirituality as the place where they've done their healing, it's so easy for us to ascribe to other people that it needs to look the same. 

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I actually think that part of an integration on a we-level is our ability to tolerate difference and still see value in belonging. So stay in the church, if that is what matters to you and that is helping you heal the wounds. I am so glad you are healing those wounds. 

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As well as the person who's in the church looking at the person who's running, saying, I am so glad you're getting away from what feels scary, the place you were told you had to stay put and sit down and be good. You get out, you run as fast and far as you can, and you have me with you, my hand at your back, every step of the way. 

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If we can do that for each other, we actually begin to mend on a systemic level, the spiritual injuries that fragment us from each other.

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Alison Cook: I love that. I feel that in my body when you say that, I feel like some of the divisiveness of how we're supposed to heal breaks my heart, because it is such a personal journey. I have friends and family members who, to your point, have had to run, and their only way to salvage a semblance of the love and goodness and beauty is to disassociate.

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I wanna, quote you Hillary, because I think this is one of the more powerful quotes. “Spiritual trauma is someone handing you an inner critic and telling you it's the voice of God.” That's what we're talking about. When we have to disentangle from that, it may look like throwing the baby out with the bath water to some degree, because it's so hard to disentangle. 

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So let's talk about healing, with this idea that it will look different for everybody. But on some level, we've associated shame and fragmentation and pain and self-doubt and self-hatred with the voice of God, and we begin to realize this is not in fact God. How would you invite the listener to begin the process of healing?

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Hillary: Coming back to safety in the body could be the place people start. It might be the last place people go, because being in a body has been so difficult for them. But I think increasing levels of skill around tolerating discomfort, being able to stay with sensation in the body long enough that we can get to the other side of hard questions and hard conversations allows us to then be able to tolerate the discomfort of being able to say, what if that's not who God is?

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That was the story about God I was told, and that story is wrong. There's a great unraveling that happens on the other side of that, and it can feel like a free fall into nothing. If that's a story, how do I trust any other story, and which story is true? What do I do and do I decide or is it someone else's decision?

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Who outside of me is gonna tell me what to do? There is an incredible, visceral terror and dis-ease that people feel as they start to pull apart their meaning-making structure. I think, again, this is my embodiment lens, if we can stay with the body and learn how to be with sensation and learn how to talk to our body. 

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“Thank you for telling me this is a scary question and I'm realizing, body, that this is a lot for us to be with. You're telling me you need to move my body, because there's a lot of energy here”. That allows us to hang with some of those questions over time and learn to be in the uncertainty for a season.

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So I would say that being with the body is elemental for recovery. I would also say that finding new connections and spaces for belonging is essential too, because most of us have these experiences baked into our social networks. If you think about being in a church and being raised in that church, it's where you go five times a week and it's your friends and it's your youth group and it's your babysitter and everybody's there. 

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It's really hard to move away from that meaning-making system and the beliefs and the ideas if it's also the way we get belonging, which as I said earlier is our fundamental need. So if we can find access to connection with people, whether it's through therapy or support groups or peer groups or extending our relationships to people outside of that worldview, then we can begin to think critically.

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To bring us back to body image, how do we change our relationship to our bodies, when the world around us is saying, hate them? It's good to make them disappear, alter them, cut them up, chop them off, do all sorts of things. 

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If we have a subgroup that we identify with who thinks critically about what media is doing and body narratives, then even if we live in this big meta-system that's saying bodies are bad, we actually can protect and preserve our relationship with ourselves because we have relationships with others who reinforce different ways of thinking about ourselves. That's true for body relationships and spiritual remaking.

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Alison Cook: The solution to the fragmentation is connection to body, connection to others, I might also say connection to nature. That's been a source for me of embodiment. But that's really beautiful, Hilary. You take it right out of the abstract, it’s so earthy.

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Hillary: You said earthy right after you were talking about connection to nature, and I wanna highlight that for a moment because I think part of the question of how have I perpetuated spiritual trauma or how have I benefited from others’ spiritual trauma takes us back to colonization and fragmentation of the land between us and the land.

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The way that we use land as a thing instead of aliveness that is supporting our aliveness–it has really been my indigenous friends and community that have taught me, trauma didn't really exist until colonization happened because no one was ever separated from themselves. No one was ever separated from the land.

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No one was ever separated from their community and their family. We all lived together. We all had practices. We were all in relationship with medicines and land and ceremony, and that for me was a huge wake up call. Trauma is a relationally mediated process. There's always an element of relationship that helps us heal and some sort of connection that gets fractured at the heart of trauma.

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Again, baked into the fabric of our society is a fracture with the land. It is the fact that many of us don't even think of the land as another parent who can hold us, the fact that we don't think about land as a source of medicine and communication and aliveness and vibrancy, you could say, a primary incarnation as some theologians would say.

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The place where we actually see God's self revealed, the fact that we don't even think about that or the fact that we don't even think about our bodies, those are symptoms of these downstream effects of trauma that is happening at a major systemic level for us that we don't even know about. I'm very grateful you added land there.

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Alison Cook: Yeah. I grew up at the base of a mountain, and that mountain is very much like an attachment figure to me. I tend to attribute that to the Creator, to God. I think about it like top-down and bottom-up approaches in psychology to healing. Top-down is, I go to God and then I appreciate nature. That can be very common. 

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What you're saying is, go to nature, or go to your body. Start there. And using my words, that will bring us into a relationship with the author of all things good and beautiful and loving and kind. That's beautiful.

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Hillary: I have never put that language on it in terms of this material, so thank you for that. That insight so resonates with my work. We heal in a bottom-up way, so of course we would heal from spiritual trauma in a bottom-up way too.

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Alison Cook: Yeah. As we close, Hillary, I shared about Holy Hurt in the introduction, but I'd love to hear your heart behind it more personally and also what you are doing in this space, to help folks who have been hurt. 

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Hillary: Yeah. To tell a brief story, it's not really a story, but it's more of like my positionality as a trauma therapist. Some people think about my work as being extremely heavy and painful and exhausting, and yet what I know is, at the end of the day, I am more connected to a source of hope inside of me.

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Not only because I see people mend and remake themselves, but because I see people being brave enough to look at where it hurts and believe there is something of value there. When I think about this project, it is heavy material. It is not easy to walk into and not easy for people to walk into themselves.

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But I ultimately think that there is a message of hope in this, because as I said earlier, we can't mend injuries that we pretend aren't there. For us to be able to move towards where it hurts is ultimately us moving towards the wholeness that's on the other side. I mean that for people who are a million miles away from church doors. 

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Great. Wonderful. Look at what it took for you to have to run so far. I also mean that for people who are in the church who are new to this conversation, who feel scared and overwhelmed by looking at it. What does that mean? Does it mean that I am violating my commitments to these theological positions or my community? Can I even look at this? 

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What I wanna say to you is, I think this is a love letter to the church. I think that this work around holy hurt is a love letter to religion, because it's a way of saying, hey, if we are not considering the injuries, then we are missing the place where we need to bring love the most.

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If we are missing the injuries, we're not seeing how we are perpetuating the injuries. There's such a beautiful example we can think of in Scripture, of Jesus risen from the dead saying, hey, look at the wounds. Look at them. Do not look away from the injuries. There, to me, feels like invocation to say, if we're gonna take our faith seriously, we actually need to see there is something prophetic about the injuries.

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So whether you're in the church or outta the church, that's actually not what this is about. My primary orientation in writing this was to tell stories that help survivors. But underneath that, gosh, if we are not changing things at a systems level, we're gonna have more and more people injured by these patterns that continue and we can do it differently. 

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So wherever you find yourself, I hope that there's something in this book for you.

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Alison Cook: That's beautiful. I wanna personally thank you again, not just for your work and embodiment, but I think what you're doing here is so necessary and so needed, and you speak with such wisdom. You have such a unique blend of gentleness and wisdom and truth-telling, because that's what you're talking about, is telling the fullness of truth. 

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I'm so grateful that you put the work into this. 

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Hillary: Thank you so much. It's not easy work, and I'm so grateful to not do it alone, and I couldn't have written this book, it would've been incomplete, without your voice and the pieces that you added to it. So thank you for contributing and for folks who are listening to our podcast episode, Alison's contribution to the book is so rich.

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Alison Cook: There needs to be a very large table of us trying to figure this out. It is not solo work. We need different voices, lots and lots and lots of different voices, and I think that's what I feel–I'm so grateful to have been one voice among a chorus of very different voices trying to untangle some of these knots. 

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Hillary: Yeah. Well-said.

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Alison Cook: Thank you so much, Hillary, for being here. So grateful for you.

Hillary: I loved it. I loved it. When my head hits the pillow at the end of the night, I'll think about this conversation and what it felt like to be in the energy of this work with you.

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Do you feel constantly driven to get everything right—to be the perfect partner, parent, worker, or friend? On today's solo episode, Dr. Alison explores the hidden relationship between perfectionism and anxiety, revealing how trying to be perfect is often a disguised way of managing deeper fears.

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You'll discover:

* Why perfectionism is rarely about actually being perfect.

* Dr. Alison's own journey with anxiety, perfectionism, and discovering what's beneath the constant need to perform and please.

* The main ways anxiety cleverly disguises itself.

* The surprising, compassionate question you need to ask yourself when you can’t stop perfecting.

* Practical steps to gently uncover the fears behind perfectionistic behaviors, helping you move toward freedom and connection.

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If you liked this, you’ll love:

• Episode 29: Perfectionism and Proving Your Worth: How to Stop Chasing Approval and Start Living the Life You Actually Want
• ‍Episode 112: Navigating Anxiety—Practical, Compassionate Insights to Recognize and Manage Anxiety

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‍Thanks to our sponsors:

• Go to Quince.com/bestofyou for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order!
• Visit GoGeviti.com to learn more about how you can start optimizing your health without leaving home today and use code BESTOFYOU.
• Contact Restoring the Soul today and learn how their Intensive Counseling Process can jump start your journey to the place you want to be. As a special gift for The Best of You podcast listeners, download their pdf called "5 Ways Unresolved Trauma May Be Derailing Your Relationship."
• I want all my listeners to enjoy a deep, restful night’s sleep with a new mattress from Birch. Go to birchliving.com/bestofyou for 20% off sitewide!

Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik

© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.‍

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Transcript:

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Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. Today's episode is for the part of you that tries really hard to get it all right. You might even say it's trying to get things perfect, whether it's in your work, your relationships, your faith, your parenting, or even just in your image, the way you show up in the world.

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This part of you is compulsively trying to make things perfect. And here's the twist. This part of you might look put together on the outside. It might do a pretty good job of keeping things going, of keeping things looking perfect on the outside, but underneath, these perfecting parts of us are often driven by anxiety.

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Now, I've talked about anxiety on the podcast before, but this isn't your usual take on it today. I want to explore the way anxiety disguises itself, especially through perfectionism. Not necessarily the loud, “Here I am!” perfectionism that you're aware of, but more the subtle kind, the insidious kind, the kind that looks like overworking, people pleasing or just trying to get everything right.

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This is where my own story comes in, and I've got a long history with anxiety, but I began to realize that the roots of my anxiety story started up far before I actually had the experience of feeling anxious. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about my own experience with anxiety and how it disguises itself. 

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Then I'm gonna walk you through what I think is the most important question to ask yourself if you find yourself doing any of these things that masquerade as anxiety. I'm also going to offer you a guided reflection that you can do in real time at the end of today's episode.

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So if you're someone who has ever felt exhausted from trying to do all the things for all the people, trying to just get it all perfect, this episode is for you. 

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Here's the key takeaway that I want you to remember. I'm gonna give this to you right here at the top of the episode. Perfectionism is never about being perfect; it's about trying to manage fear.

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In my own story, I never used to think of myself as an anxious person. I was very productive. I got things done. I knew how to connect with other people. I knew how to keep going, and it took me years to realize that what I called a strong work ethic or responsibility, or you can always count on me, was actually anxiety in disguise. 

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For me, anxiety initially didn't show up as that feeling we often talk about in the psychological sense–a racing pulse or spinning thoughts or even panic, like we're overwhelmed, like the world won't stop spinning around us. It eventually ended up showing that way, but for years it only showed up as different forms of perfectionism.

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It showed up as overworking on all of my papers in graduate school as saying yes to other people when I was dying to say no, as trying to perform my way into feeling connected, feeling accepted, and feeling safe in my communities around me. I remember vividly, during one season when I was working full-time, I was also in graduate school full-time as a student, and one by one my friends had started to move away. 

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Many of them had gotten married, some had started having kids, some had taken different jobs, and increasingly I was isolated in my life, but I wasn't pausing to pay attention to what this shift was doing to the inside of me. I just kept working harder. I just kept coping through taking on more work, through helping more people. 

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And I remember one weekend where this all came to head really vividly. I had a paper due for a class I was taking. It was on the Psychology of Religion. It was a really interesting class, but I was working on this paper, and in the paper I had to describe this cathedral I had visited in town. I was describing this service and the liturgy and the mass and all the details of what that meant to the different people.

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I could not stop perfecting the words. I kept just replacing one word with another word, or one sentence with another sentence, or trying to rearrange paragraphs. I was trying to get the paper to be perfect. It was my way of trying to be perfect. 

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Some people do this with their physical body. Some people do this with their homes or with their cooking. Some people do this with their work in different ways. For me, it was this process of trying to get this paper to be perfect. I began to just barely become aware–something's wrong here. Something's wrong here. 

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There is no such thing as perfect, but I couldn't stop myself. The paper was far beyond good enough, but I couldn't stop myself in that moment. I couldn't stop rearranging words and sentences to get it more perfect. A few days later, after turning that paper in, I had the first of a series of panic attacks. 

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The truth is, anxiety, for years, had been showing up in increasing forms of perfectionism in my work. Because I was disconnected from the anxiety and the fear that was driving that perfectionism, I was disconnected from myself. And the truth is, at the heart of it, I was afraid if I slowed down. What would be left of me if I said no? 

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I would lose the little bits of connection that I still had. If I wasn't perfect, I might be left behind. But all of those things had already happened. I was deeply lonely. I wasn't connecting with other people. But the productivity and the perfectionism and the hyper-responsibility was keeping me from having to face those very normal feelings of grief, of loss, of isolation. 

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All of that perfectionism kept me from connecting with the parts of myself that really needed my attention. It took a series of panic attacks for me to finally face all of that pent up loneliness and sorrow that was underneath all of that perfectionism.

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Here's what I learned through my own experience and through walking so many other people through their own perfectionism. Anxiety is a master of disguise. It often shows up as perfectionism, as control, as people pleasing, as overproducing, as avoidance, or even overachieving. 

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Anxiety is really clever and we don't always understand that it’s underneath all of those behaviors. You might be really great at helping others, you might be really great at always being the responsible one, you might be really great at helping keep the peace through managing other people's emotions. 

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I don't deny that you aren't really good at doing those things, but the question I want you to think about today, as you're listening, is whether there is anxiety underneath some of those  behaviors.

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Let me give you two contrasting examples. You're hosting a dinner party. You want the house to look nice, you want the meal to be delicious. You work hard to get that done, but at a certain point, you're also able to take a deep breath and say, this is good enough. 

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What really matters is the company, is the conversation we're gonna have around the table, is the opportunity to be with people that I really love. If this dish isn't perfect or if this part of the house isn't just right, it's gonna be okay. That's the beauty of good enough. 

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But when you slip into perfectionism, there's an anxious part of you driving you and that shows up more like, “If it's not perfect, it's a complete failure”. You can feel the tension in your body as you work. You're not working from a place of joy, from a place of delight, from a place of overflow. Your work is fueled by that anxious part of you that has to get it just right. 

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Here's the truth about perfectionism. Perfectionism is never about being perfect. It's about trying to keep yourself safe. Safe from the scrutiny of others. Safe from judgment and criticism. Safe from our own inner shame, our fears of being rejected, of being abandoned, of being unworthy, unwanted, or not good enough. 

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But here's the thing. Perfectionism will always keep you disconnected. It keeps you disconnected from yourself, disconnected from other people, and disconnected from God. Again, imagine those two different scenarios. 

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The one where you're planning a dinner party for friends and you know when to say it's good enough, because what I really want is to be with my friends. That's what really matters, and I don't wanna be with the kind of people who wouldn't enjoy coming into my home if it's not perfect. Imagine that kind of freedom. 

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On the other hand, when perfectionism is driving you, you're not even enjoying the time with your friends. You're so worried that they're gonna see something out of place. They're gonna see some dirt in the corner. They're gonna see something that's not quite right, and you're not even able to take a deep breath and enjoy the camaraderie of the moment.

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If you relate to what I'm saying, if there's an anxious part of you driving you toward perfectionism, you know what a dead end road that becomes. There is no perfect–it's an illusion, a mirage. It doesn't really exist. 

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Here's what I want you to know. The surprising antidote to perfectionism is to ask yourself, what am I afraid would happen if I stopped? What am I afraid will happen if I stop editing this email for the 17th time? What am I afraid will happen if I stop cleaning? What am I afraid will happen if I stopped trying to make everyone happy? 

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If I stopped over preparing, over-functioning, and over-performing, what am I afraid might happen? Would I feel the angst of what it feels like to show up as a human being? Would I feel alone, unseen, unworthy?

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When we name these fears, we begin to loosen the grip perfectionism has on our lives because almost always, underneath our compulsive need, is a fear. I'm afraid they'll be mad at me. I'm afraid I'll be alone. I'm afraid I'll look like a fool. And these fears are very real. I don't mean to minimize them.

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Sometimes we face our fears and we realize, I don't even know why I'm afraid of that. That's not real. Sometimes we face our fears and we realize they might be real. I might be in a situation at work or at home or with a family member where I might be criticized if I don't get it just right. 

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These are vulnerable places. These are tender truths, but it's a little bit of a paradox. As you get to the root of the fear underneath your perfectionism, it begins to loosen its grip. As you get to the root of your fear, you can lead yourself through it. It may be that fear is of something that'll never happen. 

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Your kids are gonna be okay. Your spouse isn't going to hate you. Your work colleagues already know that you're putting in more than your fair share, and you can walk yourself through that fear and gently tell yourself the truth.

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In some cases, you'll get to the root of your fear, and you might notice that, yeah, someone might be disappointed. Someone might misunderstand me. Someone might not like what I did or how I decided to show up. And even if that's the case, you will still be okay. 

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You will still be loved, you will still be held by a God who is not evaluating your performance but delighting in your presence. You do not have to be perfect to be loved. You don't need to manage every reaction to stay safe. You just need to be here, present with yourself, with God, with this new understanding of what's going on inside of you. 

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Perfectionism is never gonna get those people to stop feeling or doing or thinking about you, what they're already gonna do, think, or feel. Once you become aware of that fear, you can lead yourself through that situation with healthier boundaries.

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The work is never to perfect your way into belonging or into approval or into someone else's good opinion. That's never the path to take. The path is to reconnect with the part of you that's terrified and to let her know, I'm not gonna leave you alone in this. 

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You are already enough. You are already held by a God who does not need your perfection to earn His love. If you are noticing any of those perfectionistic behaviors driving you, take a minute and ask yourself, what part of me is trying so hard right now, and what would it be like to sit with her and honor her fears in partnership with God?

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I wanna close today with a short guided reflection. You can take a minute if you want, if you're at home or in a place where it's safe to pause what you're doing, and close your eyes and follow along with me as I guide you through these questions.

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You might take a few deep breaths, inhale slowly, and then exhale. And let your body arrive right here in this moment, and just notice, what's one area of your life where you're trying really hard to get it just right. Maybe it's your parenting, maybe it's your spiritual life, maybe it's your work, maybe it's your physical health. 

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Notice that part of you that's working so hard to get it right, and see if you can get curious about her without judgment or criticism. Then ask yourself this question: what am I afraid would happen if I stopped trying to be perfect?

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Just let that question sink in for a moment and stay curious to whatever it is that comes up. 

Maybe you're afraid that everything will fall apart, or that people will finally see who you really are. Maybe you're afraid you'll disappoint someone who's counting on you, or maybe you fear someone else's anger or criticism. 

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Maybe you're afraid that you'll be seen as lazy, selfish, or irresponsible, or maybe you're afraid to feel how tired or lonely you really are. These are all valid fears. Whatever that fear is, just notice it, maybe jot it down. Notice how you feel when that feeling surfaces, and above all, stay curious and compassionate with yourself.

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Take another deep breath as you notice that fearful part of you emerge, and say to that part of you, I see you. I get it. I know you're scared. It's okay. You don't have to hold it all together. You're not alone in this. I am here, and God is here with us too. Together we will find a better way.

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Notice how that fearful part of you responds to your presence, to God's presence, to that feeling of not being alone in this. And then jot down one thing you'd like to do. Maybe name that fear to a friend, or simply honor it in your journal, and check back in with yourself later on today or tomorrow.

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Notice what it's like when you feel that perfectionism starts to take over and what it's like to acknowledge that fearful part. This is where healing begins–when we connect to the fearful part of us with compassion and we begin to gently show up for ourselves more fully, more wholly, more spiritually alive.

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It's okay to feel this fear, but I'm also not gonna let it drive. You're slowly retraining your mind, your body, your spirit, your emotions to trust that you can show up for you. You don't have to be perfect to be safe. You don't have to be flawless to be loved. You are already held just as you are.

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