Science-backed tools.
Spiritually-based wisdom.

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!

‍

Editing by Giulia Hjort

Sound engineering by Kelly Kramarik

Music by Andy Luiten

‍

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

‍

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

‍

Transcript:

 Hey everyone, and welcome back to 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)

‍

‍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:

‍

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.

‍

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. 

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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. 

‍

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.

‍

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. 

‍

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. 

‍

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. 

‍

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.

‍

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? 

‍

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. 

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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. 

‍

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. 

‍

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. 

‍

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:

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• 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.‍

‍

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

‍

‍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.‍

‍

Transcript:

‍

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.

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Where in your life do you feel the pressure to be small?

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What old messages from family, culture, or church still shape how you see your worth? 

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What is a new message God might be inviting you to consider instead? 

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What might it feel like to remove your own invisibility cloak for today?

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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.

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‍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.

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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

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Order your copy of Holy Hurt here

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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

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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***

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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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? 

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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”. 

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Hillary: What happens when we say that? Ah, it's a little spooky, isn't it? Yeah.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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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Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the invisible yet relentless responsibilities that occupy your mind every single day? You’re not alone. In today’s insightful conversation, Dr. Alison welcomes psychologist and relationship expert Dr. Morgan Cutlip, author of a brand new book, A Better Share, to unpack the complexities of the mental load. Dr. Cutlip brings clarity and practical strategies to a topic that often creates tension and misunderstanding within families.

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Together, they explore:

* The definition and dimensions of the mental load—physical, mental, and emotional.

* Why women typically bear more of this invisible labor.

* How to recognize signs of mental overload and prevent burnout and resentment.

* Practical, real-world solutions for effectively communicating and sharing responsibilities with your partner.

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Get A Better Share by Dr. Morgan Cutlip

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Resources:

• Love Your Kids Without Losing Yourself: 5 Steps for Busy Moms to Banish Guilt and Finally Beat Burnout by Dr. Morgan Cutlip
• ‍A Better Share: How Couples Can Tackle the Mental Load for More Fun, Less Resentment, and Great Sex by Dr. Morgan Cutlip
• ‍Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live) by Eve Rodsky
• drmorgancutlip.com
• ‍@DrMorganCutlip on Instagram

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If you liked this, you’ll love:

• Episode 122: Navigating Anxiety, Therapy, and Spiritual Formation—Balancing Mental, Emotional, & Spiritual Health with John Mark Comer

‍

‍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. I'm so glad you're here today for an incredibly relatable conversation about something that deeply impacts so many women. It's often unnamed, and I have to tell you, this naming for this phenomena was incredibly helpful to me, and I have a feeling it's gonna be incredibly helpful to you as well.

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It's called the mental load. Here's a way to think about this. Have you ever found yourself awake at night, overwhelmed by your mental to-do list, or maybe even stewing about tasks you've handed off to others but aren't sure will actually get done? If this sounds familiar to you, today's episode is for you. 

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I am thrilled to welcome Dr. Morgan Cutlip, psychologist, relationship expert, and the author of two books. Her first book was Love Your Kids Without Losing Yourself, and her brand new book is called A Better Share. 

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Here's the thing about the mental load–when one person in a relationship is carrying the weight of that mental load, it leads to resentment. It reduces the amount of fun that we feel in our relationships, and that affects intimacy all the way through. This is such an important conversation to have and I'm so thrilled to have it with Morgan.

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Morgan combines years of professional expertise with personal, down-to-earth storytelling that you'll absolutely love. In fact, she starts off today's episode with a story about a birthday party she was planning for one of her kids and how it led to a fight with her husband 

about exactly this thing, mental load, that we're gonna talk about. 

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We're gonna unpack what the mental load is, why it disproportionately affects women, and most importantly, how to navigate conversations about it with our partners without defensiveness or blame.

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Toward the end of the episode, Morgan gives us some really practical strategies, including how to have regular check-ins and clear communication as you figure out how to create a better share with your partner, as it pertains to all that goes into managing a household. 

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Dr. Morgan Cutlip is not only an accomplished psychologist, but also a gifted speaker and author. She's committed to helping families find clarity, balance, and joy in their relationships, and she brings wisdom that's rooted in both rigorous research and compassionate practicality. 

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If you've ever found yourself muttering under your breath or finding yourself growing silently resentful in your relationship, today's conversation will give you a name for what you're feeling and provide you with hope, clarity, and practical guidance for navigating this tricky but essential area of our lives.

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I'm thrilled to bring you my conversation with Dr. Morgan Cutlip. 

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***

Alison Cook: I love the opening story in the book, Morgan. It's so relatable. Would you set the stage for our conversation, sharing a little bit about the story of the birthday balloons, which is not really about the balloons, but what they signify?

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Morgan: Oh, I haven't had to tell this story out loud yet, actually. The story is about my son's birthday. His birthday happens to fall during the holidays, and then all of our family has birthdays within about three weeks of each other, plus the holidays. Also, my in-laws were coming to visit. We were planning for a trip with my in-laws. 

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The party, the birthdays, the trip, all of the things were colliding, and it was a really stressful time. I remember saying to my husband, he's like, what do you want me to do for Roy's party? It's our son's name. He's nine. He's not geriatric with the name Roy. But he's like, what do you want me to do? I said, you know what? Just handle the balloons. Start to finish. 

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I want primary colors, the number eight, and a baseball. That's it. He's like, done. I let that go. It was like I say in the book, it was like a sip of water in the desert. It didn't actually help that much, but it was at least one thing I could hand off to my husband. Then maybe two nights later, we're edging up to the birthday party. 

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I was laying in bed and I was like, oh gosh. I don't think he actually knows what to do about the balloons.I don't think he actually has them handled. I'm laying there stewing around this and wondering, my anxiety is heightening, and then you always get this experience where you're like, oh my gosh, now I'm not getting enough sleep. 

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I'm worrying about something now. I'm not sleeping. Now I'm worried about not sleeping. It became this sort of spiral into anxiety. I woke up in the morning and I came up the stairs and Chad is on his computer. He has a spot where he sits and he works. I was like, hey. A little intense, hey, I’m really worrying about something. 

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I couldn't sleep last night. I'm worried that you don't actually have the balloons handled. He looks at me and he is like, yeah, tell me when and where I should get them from, and what time we need 'em, and what you want. I was like, dang it. I was so spot on with my intuition.

He actually didn't handle it. 

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I was so wound up, like a tight spring at that moment, that I didn't handle myself the best. I said something like, I knew it. I knew you didn't have this. He's like, my gosh, and then he snaps back because I come in hot. He comes back hot and he says something along the lines of， you didn't communicate clearly.

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I pride myself in being a very clear communicator, so he knows that's getting me right where it hurts. We go round and round. In the beginning of the book, that's where I start with, telling that story and then analyzing both of our perspectives. My perspective was, you said you got it. You didn't get it. 

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If you were confused, it was on you to follow up with me and to clarify and to ask for whatever instructions, and that's on you. His perspective was, you have really high expectations for birthday parties, which is true, which is totally valid.

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However, with this particular item in the party, I actually did not care at all. He was assuming that I had these very high expectations. I've never done the balloons. I don't know what to do. I thought I would have a little bit more direction, break apart the story, and offer some perspective.

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Alison Cook: It perfectly sets up this idea that you are really dissecting in the book, and it's such a hopeful naming, especially for women, of the mental load. With that word, I'm like, oh, she sees me. I want you to talk about what that is, because in many ways, the story is not about the balloons–it's the mental load you were carrying and what it felt like to you to have that tiny sip of relief, that piece of it being handled. 

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Before I dive into the deep end, what do we mean by the mental load? What is this term and why is it so important to name it, especially for women?

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Morgan: Whenever I define it, I give the general definition that you can find anywhere. Then I give the “in the weeds” definition and I'll tell why that's important. The 30,000 foot definition is: the mental load is the seemingly never ending to-do list that we carry around in our heads that have two key components. The first and the majority of the mental load is made up of invisible things. 

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This is important to understand because it's hard to explain to people when we're trying to get relief from or hand things off, and also because it's invisible, it's hard to get it acknowledged and appreciated, which becomes a really big part of navigating the mental load as a couple.

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The second part of it is that it takes up cognitive real estate. This means that it crowds out space in our brains to do things like find peace, exercise patience, regulate our emotions, and get in the mood for sex and intimacy in our relationship. It crowds these things out. 

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Everybody has a mental load. That's a pushback that sometimes comes up–I have one too. Of course everybody has one. But when it comes to the home and family life, we see over and over again in research that women are the ones that typically carry the majority of this, even if they're working full-time, part-time, inside or outside the home, doesn't matter.

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The “in the weeds” definition, if you'll allow me for a minute, imagine a Venn diagram with three circles. The tasks in the mental load usually fall into one of three domains. The first is the physical and the stereotypical relationship. This is where guys thrive. They're like, gimme a list. Tell me what to do. 

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I'll mow the lawn, I'll do the dishes. Feel better now? We're like, no, we don't feel better. That creates issues. “I do these things. It's never enough”. So in the physical domain, we actually gotta do the thing. 

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The second circle is the mental. This is thinking about the steps involved. A lot of our work life falls in the mental domain–making a list, thinking about what needs to be done, what you're gonna cook for dinner or grab from the store. It’s the mental domain. 

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The third is the real differentiator, and that is the emotional domain of tasks. This is a little bit of a mouthful, but it will make sense to women. It is the ongoing cause and effect calculations that we make on behalf of members of our family to try to maximize positive outcomes and experiences.

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It's future projections that we're worrying about. It's thinking about, oh I'm heading out of the house. How do I make sure my 3-year-old doesn't have a tantrum? What's all the stuff I gotta do to safeguard? How do I make sure I make good educational choices for our kids so that they have good relationships, but also a good, educational start? 

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It's all of these areas that feel like the stakes are really high, and it even goes into dinner and thinking about food preferences. Who's going to eat what, and how do I make sure they eat enough? If they don't eat enough, they get hangry. It's all of these calculations we're constantly making, and this one is very tricky because you can't really hire it out. 

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It requires a deep knowing of your family. It's hard to explain to your partner if they don't think in the same way, and it follows you everywhere. It will whip you out of the present and pull you, like when I was trying to sleep, back into mental calculations and the mess we've got going on in our minds. It steals our ability to be present, to relax, and all these things. 

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Here's the last point. The majority of the tasks in home and family life occur at the intersection of these three circles, which is what I call the triple threat. Most tasks, like I said, making dinner, will involve the physical, the mental, and the emotional domains. What happens a lot of times is women will go to talk to their partners and they'll be like, I'm really overwhelmed. I need more support. 

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Their partner will say, what's going on? They're like, I gotta fill out permission slips. I have to make dinner. I gotta get the kids to here on time and I gotta call the dentist. At the surface, it seems like those are very simple tasks.

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Alison Cook: None of these are hard.

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Morgan: None of these are hard. Yes. We judge ourselves, which we don't need more of. And then our partners don't get it. They'll say things like okay, make a list. Or, you make it harder than you need to. What's the matter with you? It ends up creating a lot of self-judgment, a lot of shame. It doesn't move us forward in our relationships when it comes to sharing some of this stuff. 

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When we look around our home at all of the things that have shown up, in our pantry, in our fridge, in our kids' clothing drawers, we can unpack each of these things to reveal all of our head and our heart work in these three domains that was done in order for this to manifest physically in our lives.

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It makes sense why we're so overwhelmed. It makes sense why it feels much heavier than these one-off tasks that we can list.

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Alison Cook: It is so helpful, the naming, even listening to you and reading your book, that idea that there's a difference between tasks and then that second sphere, which is the process to achieve the tasks. Sometimes my husband and I'll go when we get into this, I'll say, it's actually not a task, it's a project.

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Morgan: Yes. 

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Alison Cook: Naming that helps it. It sounds simple, but it's actually not. What you're doing with that naming, and you do it throughout the book, is validating. There's a different mental process that goes into what seemed simply like, oh, I gotta make dinner, or I gotta do laundry. But that could be a million different things you have to mentally work through to get to that. 

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It's such a helpful naming. Morgan, you said everyone has a mental load. Is there a way in which women carry it differently than men? I don't wanna make a generalization here–there's always exceptions–but it does seem like women are carrying this mental load more when it comes to household management, even if they work outside of the home.

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Why is that? Tell me a little bit about why do women tend to carry this more? I wanna caveat that by saying one of the things you do a really great job of in the book is saying, your partner is not the enemy.

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Morgan: Yeah, it's really important.

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Alison Cook: The mental load is the enemy, but it might affect you differently than it affects your spouse.

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Morgan: Yes. We can dive into that a little bit more even when we start talking about ways we talk about it. There are a number of reasons why women end up carrying it more. I say in the book, the game is rigged. We do need to understand why, because when we understand why we can jump into our relationships differently.

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Again, this naming and defining is really important because it's empowering. It empowers us to make changes to how we relate to things, react to things, in all of these different areas. It becomes very empowering. There are different reasons. One is socialization.

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I remember talking to my husband once, because he travels every single week for work, and in the beginning of my motherhood journey, I was riddled with guilt all of the time for the silly things. I go out for an hour to go to the grocery store and I'm like, I gotta rush back. It's silly stuff that I had to look at and examine and change my relationship with, but I was baffled. 

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I'm like, how do you leave every week and not feel guilty? He says, I felt guilty maybe the first time, but I am providing for my family. That's my role. It's interesting because I work too.

It's not as if he’s the only breadwinner, because I work too. It's an interesting thing and I believe that this is almost a very common experience among men. 

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When you look at research and you look at shifts after kids, men tend to stress out about changes in sex life and, but then also about providing for their family. They feel that extra pressure. Again, there are always individual differences, but the way we're socialized sets us up to handle these things differently. 

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For men, they're socialized to provide and protect. These are top priority. They're checking these boxes. It's almost like everything else is extra and a little gravy. I'm not saying it's correct, and we can absolutely shift this in our lives and many people have. I have. But that's a little bit the default. 

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Women are very much socialized to self-sacrifice for the preservation of our relationships. We are judged based on what our kids are wearing, how they're behaved, and what our home looks like. Our priorities are a bit more on some of these areas, so right out of the gate, we're set up to prioritize different things. It makes us more likely to take on some of the stuff on the home and family front.

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Alison Cook: It makes sense. Whether it's nature, whether it's nurture, it is really the reality in general, for most people. I love this quote you talk about, and it's a really interesting perspective. You say, a woman I interviewed on the mental load recounted a story where her husband gave the kids a bath and did the dishes, and then turned to her and said, is there anything else I can help you with today? 

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She was really angry and couldn't figure out why. He thought he was being so helpful and maybe someone would be super grateful. But for her it was like, imagine telling your husband, hey babe. I took the kids to school. I picked up dog poop. I cleaned those. I thought about dinner. I bought groceries. I filled out permission slips. I enrolled the kids in blah, blah, blah, blah. A million things. Is there anything else I can do for you? 

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Again, this is where resentment can build. If we don't name it, we can feel that resentment of, I'm carrying so much over here. Do you not see this? I wanna talk about that. What are the signs, the warning flags, that this is becoming an issue? We're starting to feel that resentment based on the mental load.

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Morgan: It shows up in a number of ways. One sign can be if you're feeling an incredible amount of overwhelm and anxiety. There are correlations between this experience of being overloaded and more levels of anxiety and overwhelm and burnout.

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All these things are individual costs and individual things to check into, and I am just feeling so burdened. Do I feel like I have a weight on my chest that I can't release? It shows up in these almost universally shared ways, where we might be walking around the house, muttering under our breath.

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One of the things that I noticed in myself is, I would have this running dialogue as I moved through my home. I'd be picking things up, like, I guess I'll take care of this, and guess I'll do that, and must be nice not worrying about that. Having this negative self-talk and dialogue can be a really good sign that it's time to address this differently. 

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When your attitude shifts towards your partner and you start seeing them in a pretty negative light, you develop a storyline about them where they're like the villain in the story. Oh, it must be nice having a maid. It feels like you're another child. These types of things are big red flags that it is time to talk about this in your relationship. 

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That's a problematic dynamic that occurs a lot in these relationships around the mental load. Typically the woman will approach her husband to try to make some changes, and if he does not react in a receptive way, but is defensive, does this tit for tat thing, hardship Olympics, dismisses it, puts it back on her, she has one of two choices, but one of the choices is she gets louder or she starts to chase him.

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When this happens, it creates a dynamic where she is the nagging mother. A parental sort of dynamic starts to develop, and this is problematic for the relationship because she will feel a whole lot of resentment and she will not feel a lot of attraction toward her partner, and this will impact her intimate life.

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She resents that she's been put in this position to occupy this role. It becomes this really tricky experience.

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Alison Cook: It’s a bind because if you don't say anything, then you're silently resentful.

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Morgan: Yes, the dynamic gets layered, where you start to lose track of what you're really upset about anymore. But a lot of times we can trace the roots back to this feeling of inequity, feeling of unfairness, feeling of invisibility in the relationship, like you don't have a partner who's there for you, and all of these things that really set the stage for deeper resentment.

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Alison Cook: It makes a lot of sense. Let's shift into, how do we bring it up? How do we talk about it in a way that doesn't alienate, that doesn't stir up defensiveness, that is a naming? Versus it feels like this is that hot button issue, you called it the Hardship Olympics, exactly. How do we work through this?

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Morgan: I have a lot of strategies in the book, because the hardest part of writing this book is, there's so much nuance in relationships and couples’ experiences, and I really wanted to equip people no matter where they were. A generalized framework is one, you wanna bring this up when things are relatively good.

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Don't bring this up when you are frustrated, muttering under your breath and you're like, can't you do more around here? That is not gonna be received well. I know it's hard to ruin a good moment by having one of these conversations, but bring it up in a good moment. It's helpful to give your partner a heads up and ask for when is a good time.

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There's something I really need to talk with you about. It's very important to me. I want you to be in a good head space to be able to receive it. When is a good time? And then set the time up. 

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Another thing that can be helpful, and people love this or hate this, but one of the most common responses I see in my community and when I collected survey data of women is that their partner responds with defensiveness. Love it or hate it, one option is to put that on the table before you enter the conversation. 

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You try to hedge the defensiveness by saying something like, there's a conversation I really need to have with you. I have really worked up a lot of energy and courage to enter into this conversation with you. I'm feeling nervous and what I'm most nervous about is that you're going to get defensive when we talk about it. 

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Before we get into talking about this, can you handle it without getting defensive? It does two things. One, if they start to feel defensive, because they're gonna say they can handle it almost always, if they're about to get defensive, it causes a pause where they're like, oof, if I'm gonna get defensive, I'm gonna go back on what I said. 

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Or if they do get defensive, you can say, “You said that you could handle this, and now it seems like you're getting defensive. Should we take a break? Is this not the time? What are you hearing me say?”. You can check in on some of that stuff, so that can help set it up. 

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The next piece is, when you talk about the mental load, it's very important and what I see as being the most beneficial way forward–if the ultimate goal is to navigate it differently in your relationship, to frame the mental load as the enemy and you two on the same team.

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Alison Cook: That's good.

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Morgan: Because modern family life is relentless. We are parenting very intensely. We are distracted by our devices. It's a hustle culture. We feel pressure to be productive all of the time. We have all of these sources of comparison. We are up against a lot in modern family life. If you talk about the mental load in that way, it can go a lot smoother.

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It might be something along the lines of, there's something that I wanna name that I've been experiencing. You've probably noticed that I am tense, a little stressed out. I'm not as laid back as you probably remember me being, and it's because I'm overwhelmed by something that is called the mental load.

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I'd love to talk to you about it. It's something that I'm experiencing right now in a very heavy way. I know you have your own. But in the home and family life, I feel like I'm carrying a lot of this and I want to find a new way forward together because we have so much on our plates.

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We are navigating so much, and I want to find a way forward that works for our family because me being in a good mood and me being in a good space is beneficial for everyone in our family, and it will really help our relationship. Can we brainstorm some ways of moving forward?

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Alison Cook: That's good. You're casting the positive goal that you both want. You're getting the buy-in. This is for both of us. It’s also validating, because again, we never know the mental load that our partner is holding. It might be different, and it honors and gives space for that. It invites conversation. 

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I get this picture in my mind as I'm listening to you. Instead of going at the person with the issue, it's like you're putting something out on the table. You could almost get your book and put it out on the table. Could we talk about this thing that exists outside of us? We're both at the table, side by side, trying to look at it together and come up with creative solutions. 

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I don't have an agenda. I'm not here to try to get you to do more. I'm here to have an open-minded conversation about this, because I am feeling it. Maybe you are too. I really like that we're a team in this.

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Morgan: Yeah. I interviewed men and women for the book, and what men tend to talk about is, I know she's struggling. I feel it. I can tell something's wrong and I want her to be happy.

Men like it when there's peace in the home. It's important for them to own that, but then also recognize, what can I do to help facilitate more of that? 

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That's another piece worth highlighting in that conversation. You probably feel how I have shifted, and I'm sure it's not enjoyable to you. How do we get to that better place together? A lot of the men talked about that. I know she's struggling. I don't actually know exactly what I need to do to get her to a better place. 

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There are jerks out there. There are on both sides, men and women, but a lot of men really want their partners to be happy and they want to be a participant in that.

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Alison Cook: It's hard because you can get into those tropes on both sides. She's never happy! But for the women's side, “He's never gonna get it!”. We have to be willing to bring in that idea of really seeing each other and committing to try to honor each other's experience, even when we don't fully understand it. 

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One of the things, Morgan, I love about the book, is that you interviewed so many people and included so many stories from real couples. What were some of the things that surprised you? What didn't surprise you? What stood out to you from that research?

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Morgan: It's almost like what stood out was that I wasn't surprised. I've been talking about this for so many years and talking with women in my community and couples that I worked with over the years, and I would see the same themes. What I found is that the same sort of things show up. 

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Here are some examples. The things that women want most from their partner on the mental load and what I would've guessed: number one, more initiative taking. That makes a lot of sense to me. They want a partner, not somebody that they're coaching.

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The second one is, more appreciation and acknowledgement, and I've felt that in my own life. I hear from women where they say things like, if they saw it and valued it, that fills me up. That's such an interesting part of the conversation too, because when we have partners who push back, it's such a shame.

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It's like you're missing these really simple ways to support your partner and lift her up so that she can really feel good and strong in the relationship and in how she shows up in family life. Oh my word. I remember going round and round for probably six or eight years, I don't know. I don't even wanna rehash how, with my husband, this idea of me needing more appreciation and he could not get it. 

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I don't think I share this in the book, but he would do this thing where he'd say, you're a good mom. I was like, no, that doesn't do it for me. You said that about our old neighbor in DC. That's not anything special for me. Then we would fall down this hole where he would say, ah, it's never enough for you. I try and it's not right. You need too much and blah, blah, blah. 

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One day I just had to lay it out and I was like, you say you don't need these things, but every day when you go to work, you collect a paycheck, and a paycheck is a representation of your value contributed. You get a bonus, which is reflective of how hard you worked. It's a thank you, it's an appreciation.

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You get monthly reviews where you have feedback from your boss, where you get propped up and then you go to these banquets that I've sat through for six hours where you're honoring all these employees. You need to understand that in family life, I have no source of feedback except you. It's all unseen. 

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We had toddlers at the time. I was like, do you know the feedback from the kids? It's a tantrum. I make this wonderful meal and they don't like it. That's my feedback. You are actually occupying a very important position in my life that has a lot of power to lift me up because you are my source of feedback. 

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It’s such an important shift for him to understand. Women, sometimes we need this. We have a hard time articulating it. 

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Alison Cook: We're colleagues, and that's language he could understand. Oh, I need to be a good colleague to you. This is your job; these are our different household responsibilities.

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Morgan: You do it at work. I do it at home too. Yeah. Also, to frame things as needy to women is really tricky, because a lot of us have received messages around what it means to be too sensitive or have needs. When we ask for stuff from our partners and they push back, we're likely to shut down because we're like, oh, maybe I am too needy. 

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I'm asking for too much. It's important too, for women to hear, you don't get a lot of these things in home and family life. You don't get a lot of this appreciation that maybe you need, and it's okay to ask for it because there isn't a good source to tap into that a lot of times.

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Alison Cook: This is a really important thing. It's not necessarily about a 50-50 split, it's about a feeling. I kinda like that word colleague. It's about co-laboring, co-sharing. There was a book that came out a long time ago, I can't remember the name of it, but it was talking about the economics of a household. 

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The idea was, figure out what each person is legitimately good at and divvy up the tasks that way, versus based on gender, versus based on who has the career. Hey, this is actually easy for me. I'm a good cook. I was talking to a friend, and she says my husband does all the cooking. He loves it. 

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Have these conversations like, this is easy for me, and we might be surprised at what a spouse says. I don't actually mind doing this. When you have those open-handed conversations, at least in those moments, to your point about feeling invisible, we've talked about it, we've acknowledged this, it's not being taken for granted. 

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We’re not making assumptions about who does what. Tell me a little bit about that piece of it, to the point of your book which is called “a better share”. How do we get to a better share? What’s one thing you would wanna leave people with?

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Morgan: The one thing that really will make a big difference is having regularly scheduled meetings. I have a “share” agenda in there. “Scheduled Home And Relationship Effort” is what the acronym is, but these regularly scheduled times are where we come together and talk about things, and it's important. 

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I know the book you're talking about and it's such a genius solution. Fair Play. Yeah. In my opinion, that's the gold standard for the actual logistics of how you hand things off, but when we're talking about modern family life, like in my situation, for example, my husband travels every week so we can divvy up cards, but every single week it changes.

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What that means to me is that couples have to have a skillset of being able to regularly talk about the mental load, because it changes literally every single day, depending on the demands and intensity of what's going on in your life. If every time we go to talk about it, we end up in a big fight or we're arguing, then it's going to make this part of our relationship really difficult to navigate.

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Ultimately you're gonna get to a place of resentment. I believe that one of the most flexible and important approaches is to regularly schedule time to talk about it. I give an agenda in my book. It's a short amount of time, and you check in, How are we doing in terms of fairness? What's on your plate this week? What's on my plate? 

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Is there anything I could've dealt with better? Is there any information you need from me to accomplish these tasks this week? Do you have any questions for me? Just hash it out. It has a couple of very important side effects that are really good for relationships. 

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One, we tend to be really bad at talking about our relationships because we assume that if we're talking about 'em, it means something is wrong. We have to normalize talking about our relationships. We have meetings in all parts of our life, but then when it comes to a relationship, we're like, it'll run itself. 

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That's wildly irresponsible. The more you do it, the better you'll get at it. The other thing is that women tend to carry, especially as the relationship goes on, the responsibility for managing the relationship. We carry that emotional labor and we're like, how come you used to plan dates and now I'm the one? 

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It seems like I'm the only one that cares about us, and that is really lonely and isolating and frustrating in a relationship. When you schedule this, you are sharing some of the management of the relationship and that one piece is going to help make a major difference.

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Alison Cook: Do you suggest weekly or monthly? Do you have a suggested rhythm for that?

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Morgan: I think weekly is best. Everybody operates differently so I get pushback sometimes, and even from my husband when we started doing these. I get so awkward and I was like, so what? Be awkward in your relationship a little bit. Anytime you're learning a new skill, if you're an athlete, you wanna learn how to be a really excellent hitter, how many times are you gonna step in that batting box? 

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How many times are you gonna go through your mechanics until it feels automatic? The same thing with relationship skills. Be awkward, let it feel mechanical. Eventually it will get more automatic. If you can do it every week, that's amazing because it's changing all the time, and I think as you progress through this and practice it, maybe you don't need to schedule them anymore. Maybe it becomes a normal rhythm of your relationship that you've got natural at.

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Alison Cook: I love that. Let it feel awkward for a little while at first, because again, to use your metaphor of in the workplace, this is normative. You have team meetings to make sure we're on the same page. We are a team. We need to have team meetings and we each get to bring things.

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I love that. Even if, let's say in your case, your husband travels a lot, or you're holding all the cards, you are holding more of it, at least there's a place where that's witnessed and seen, where there can be some gratitude and affirmation. Yeah. I see that you are holding most of the cards. You are holding most of the load. That can be honored.

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Morgan: Yes. That's part of my agenda, which is that you do this expression of appreciation because people need to hear that. You can't overdose on gratitude in your relationship. The more, the better.

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Alison Cook: It's such great work, Morgan. It's a fantastic book. You're so practical there. Like you said, there are so many scripts and tips and an agenda for the family meeting. It's such a great resource. I love that you wrote this book. It's gonna help a lot of people. Tell my listeners where they can find the book and where they can find your work.

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Morgan: Thank you for saying that. That means so much to me. You can find my book basically anywhere that you buy books. You can also grab it on my website and there are some gifts if you're pre-ordering. That's drmorgancutlip.com. You can find it on my Instagram as well. My handle's @DrMorganCutlip, all one word.

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The book's available on Audible as well. I'm the one who reads it. You get all of the downloads and resources even when you do the audiobook. Whatever your preferred mode of taking in this information, you can find it there.

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Alison Cook: I highly recommend if you feel any of the weight of what we've been talking about, this is gonna help. It's such an insidious thing that can be so divisive in marriages so unnecessarily.

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Morgan: Yes. Isn't that so frustrating?

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Alison Cook: People are working so hard and the thing that is pulling them apart is that they're not meeting on how hard we're both working. I love that you've brought this book to life to help people navigate that.

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Morgan: Thank you. I appreciate you!

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In this incredibly thought-provoking episode, Dr. Alison talks with Sheila Wray Gregoire, groundbreaking author of The Great Sex Rescue. They confront harmful misconceptions about sexual intimacy within Christian marriages, amplifying the often-overlooked voices of women.

‍

Sheila shares powerful insights drawn from her extensive research involving over 20,000 Christian women, challenging damaging narratives and revealing startling truths about sexual satisfaction, obligation, and intimacy.

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You'll learn:

* The 4 harmful teachings that negatively impact sexual intimacy

* Why “sex as obligation” is so destructive for women

* How to reframe your sex story with your spouse

* Practical steps toward recovering true intimacy

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Sheila's compassionate yet bold approach offers hope, clarity, and practical wisdom for those longing to rewrite their sexual stories, reclaiming God's true design for intimacy.

‍

Resources:

• The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended by Sheila Wray Gregoire
• ‍The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex: (And You Thought Bad Girls Have All the Fun) by Sheila Wray Gregoire
• ‍31 Days to Great Sex by Sheila Wray Gregoire
• ‍She Deserves Better by Sheila Wray Gregoire, Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach, and Joanna Sawatsky
• ‍The Marriage You Want: Moving beyond Stereotypes for a Relationship Built on Scripture, New Data, and Emotional Health by Sheila Wray Gregoire and Dr. Keith Gregoire
• ‍The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex: Because Good Guys Make the Best Lovers by Sheila Wray Gregoire and Dr. Keith Gregoire
• Genesis 4:1
• ‍baremarriage.com
• ‍Bare Marriage podcast

‍

If you liked this, you’ll love:

• Episode 125: Recovering From Purity Culture: Dismantle the Myths, Reject Shame-Based Sexuality, and Move Forward in Your Faith with Dr. Camden Morgante

• Episode 126: Restoring Wonder & Play in Intimacy—Navigating Sexual Brokenness, Safety, and Vulnerability with Therapist Sam Jolman

‍

‍Thanks to our sponsors:

• Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
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• Go to Quince.com/bestofyou for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order!
• Contact Restoring the Soul today at www.restoringthesoul.com 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, visit www.restoringthesoul.com/bestofyou to download their pdf called "5 Ways Unresolved Trauma May Be Derailing Your Relationship."

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. I'm so glad you're here with me this week. Today, we're exploring a topic that deeply affects so many people, yet it so often remains cloaked in quiet struggle. It's the complex world of intimacy within Christian marriages, particularly the misconceptions around sex. 

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On the podcast, we focus on holistic mental health, which encompasses our hearts, our minds, our spirits, and our physical beings. We understand that a calm and clear and well-cared-for nervous system not only influences our mental and emotional and spiritual health, but also our physical health, including our sexual health.

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Sexual intimacy is where the emotional, spiritual, mental, and physical aspects of ourselves converge. It's such an important component of how God made us. yet there are so many times that couples and women in particular don't experience sex as fun or romantic, or even as a way to feel more connected to the person they love most in the world,

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Sam Jolman, a past guest on the podcast (Episode 126), writes in his book, The Sex Talk You Never Got, “Sex isn't a bodily function or even a need. It's a story, and it's laced with meaning”. He says it's vital that couples learn how to write a better sex story–one that increases connection and passion and intimacy. 

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I love this phrase that he borrows from Emily Nagoski, where she calls this “adding more to the plot”. I love this way of viewing sex as a narrative, as a story, rather than an act. We can write different chapters to our stories and we can add more to the plot. In many ways, a woman's voice and understanding of this story has often been overlooked, especially in Christian faith communities. 

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Women's experiences with sex can be complex, not only because of the way God designed us, but also because many women, in fact, research would suggest a third of all women, one in three of all women, have had a past experience of sexual abuse or pain.

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That's all the more reason why it's so important to uncover the beauty and significance and deeper longing and voice of a woman's sexual story. That's why I'm so excited to welcome a very special guest, Sheila Wray Gregoire, to the podcast today. Sheila's been a pioneer in bringing a woman's voice into the conversation about Christian sex. 

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I first learned about Sheila's work at a retreat for Christian women authors. Her bestselling book, The Great Sex Rescue, was repeatedly recommended as a vital resource. As a clinician who has primarily worked with women, I've struggled to find literature that honors and highlights a female's perspective within a Christian context, which is why Sheila's work is so important and groundbreaking. 

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She conducted a profound survey that launched this pivotal book. It's a survey that involved over 20,000 Christian women. And it unearthed some startling truths about the impact of certain teachings on marital and sexual satisfaction, challenging and reshaping some of the harmful narratives that have not fully recognized a woman's perspective, especially within Christian faith communities.

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Today we're going to discuss those findings, as well as some really beautiful reframes about how Jesus respected, valued, and honored women. Sheila Wray Gregoire is a popular speaker, marriage blogger, and award-winning author of seven books, including The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex, She Deserves Better, and The Great Sex Rescue. 

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She also has a brand new book out, written with her husband, called The Marriage You Want: Moving beyond Stereotypes for a Relationship Built on Scripture, New Data, and Emotional Health. I'm thrilled to bring you my conversation with Sheila Wray Gregoire. 

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***

Alison Cook: ​I'm thrilled to have you here today. I first learned about you at a retreat with Christian women authors, and it was right at the tail end of the pandemic. It was the first time we were all meeting. Of course, the topic of sex would come up, and I was the resident therapist. 

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I wasn't there as a therapist, but people always ask me for book recommendations, Sheila, and I struggle as a Christian clinician. I think really highly of Esther Perel's work, I think Emily Nagoski is doing really good work, and at the same time, they don't come from a Christian worldview.

So that can be an obstacle for some people. I really struggled. 

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I was asking them and everybody was saying, you've got to get a hold of The Great Sex Rescue. So that's how I first learned of you. I’m so grateful for what you're doing to try to debunk some of the unfortunate messages about sex, especially in evangelical churches, and try to cast a new vision. 

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I'd love to start today with you telling us a little bit about this survey that you did. You surveyed over 20,000 Christian women, and that served as the impetus for the book. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

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Sheila: Let me tell you how we got started. I had been blogging about sex and marriage for about a decade. I have two master's degrees and a degree in sociology. I was a researcher, but I stayed home with my kids. So I did a lot of writing from home. As they became teenagers, I started speaking a lot, and I was doing marriage conferences and we were producing all of this material.

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I was writing The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex or 31 Days to Great Sex. But the one thing I didn't do was read other people's books. I figured, they love Jesus, I love Jesus, we're all saying the same thing, but I was really afraid of plagiarizing. I didn't want to read anyone else's stuff.

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Then one day, I was on Twitter. It was called Twitter back then. And people were fighting about whether they needed love or respect, referring to Emerson Eggerichs’ bestselling book, Love & Respect. I thought, I have that book and I've never read it. This is an amazing way to procrastinate, because I didn't want to work that day.

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So for the very first time, I went and I grabbed someone else's book, and I turned to the sex chapter. It was like a nuclear bomb went off in my living room, because I read things like, “If your husband is typical, he has a need that you don't have. And that need is for physical release. If he doesn't get physical release, he'll come under satanic attack. Why would you deprive him of something which takes so little time?” And I called my team.

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Alison Cook: So it was guilting women into having sex, shaming women into having sex, which is so helpful.

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Sheila: I also don't know why you would brag about it taking so little time, but whatever. So he's saying this, and I called my team, and my daughter was working for me at the time, and she had a psychology degree. She had done a lot of work on survey development, and Joanna Sawatzky, a family friend, was working for me when she was home with her baby, and she was a statistician with a master's degree in epidemiology. 

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We were like, we’ve got to do something. If this is what is being said to women, how is that impacting people? What is this doing? We decided to do what we hoped would become the biggest survey that's ever been done of evangelical women. So we asked women to rate their marital and sexual satisfaction using some validated question sets.

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Then we listed a whole bunch of different beliefs. We said, hey, have you ever been taught this? Or did you ever believe it? From that, we were able to see how certain beliefs impact marital and sexual outcomes.

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Alison Cook: Yeah. Can you tell us some of your key findings, both about the beliefs and and the impact of those beliefs?

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Sheila: Yeah, I like to say we had six big findings. I'll tell you the numbers first, because those are fun. They're depressing, but they're fun. So first, the number 47 is a very important number, and that's our orgasm gap. 95% of men almost always reach orgasm in a given sexual encounter, compared to 48% of women.

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So we have a 47 point orgasm gap in the evangelical church, and we also have an incidence rate of sexual pain disorders of about 23%. Evangelical women suffer from sexual pain at least twice the rate of the general population. We already knew that going into the survey–I'd already written a lot about sexual pain because that was part of my story too.

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One thing we were specifically looking at in our survey was why. What is correlated with sexual pain? We managed to identify four big teachings. There were actually more, but we talked about four of them in The Great Sex Rescue that really hurt women. 

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Alison Cook: Can you tell us what they are?

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Sheila: Sure. Okay, we'll start with the big one. I like to think of this one as like the one ring to rule them all, in Lord of the Rings terminology. I think everything goes back to this one. But it's the idea that a woman is obligated to give her husband sex whenever he wants it. We call that “the obligation sex message” and roughly 40 percent of women said they believed that going into marriage.

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When they got married believing that, their chance of experiencing sexual pain increased to almost the same statistical effect as if they'd been abused. Yeah. Our bodies interpret obligation as trauma.

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Alison Cook: It makes so much sense, and I guess you are adding a layer to the fact that something like a third, I don't know the exact numbers right now, but a third of all women have experienced some sort of sexual trauma or abuse. So already women are struggling with not having had consent on some level, and then suddenly you're being told to have sex on demand. 

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You're adding trauma to trauma. That's what I would hear from Christian women. It's not my area of expertise, but it comes up in the course of “Man, I love my husband. I want to be in a sexually fulfilling relationship. What's wrong with me?” 

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Let's say, in the best case scenario, you're going into marriage with a wonderful man, but you are in that category of women who've had some really hard or traumatic sexual encounters prior to marriage that haven't been necessarily healed because we don't talk about sex well, even with the best of men.

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You're going to struggle a little bit. You're going to take that into marriage. Then, when you add on these messages that you were unpacking, it puts so much burden on women.

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Sheila: It really does, and that “obligation sex message” hurts you even if you haven't been a victim of abuse, and even if your husband is good. That's what's so key, is it's not always about the marriage dynamics. It's the fact that these terrible things that we grew up believing really hurt us because they made sex seem like a threat.

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It’s not what God intends. Genesis 4:1 is a super funny verse. It says, “Adam knew his wife Eve and they conceived a son”. I remember in junior high reading that and thinking, God's embarrassed of saying the real word. But what if that's not what's going on? 

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What if God was serious? Because the root for “to know” there is the same root when David says, search me and know me, God. So sex is supposed to be this deep knowing. It's supposed to be like, “I am bringing everything that I am to the bedroom and you're bringing everything you are, and we're gonna totally know each other”. 

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But obligation tells a woman, it doesn’t matter what you want. What you need is irrelevant compared to what he wants. So now sex isn't knowing, it's owing. It's an erasing of you as a person, and that's a traumatic thing.

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Alison Cook: Yeah, it is. It is. What are a couple of the other lies that you uncovered?

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Sheila: There's one that's very closely related, that a wife should have frequent sex with her husband to keep him from watching pornography. So if your husband watches porn, it's your fault, because you're not giving him good enough sex, which is so wrong. 

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Also, it makes sex into something coercive, because if you have to have sex to stop something bad from happening, then that's coercion.

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Another one would be, and this is related to what we believed as teenagers, that boys are going to push your sexual boundaries, and you need to be the gatekeeper. When girls grew up having to be the gatekeeper, they learned that you had to separate what your body is feeling from what your mind is feeling, and now it's very difficult to inhabit your body when you're having sex.

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Alison Cook: I thought that was so fascinating how you named that in the book. That message alone, putting the locus of responsibility in a woman's body, does something to divide her mind from her body, which you can't magically repair once you're ready to “go all the way”.

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It makes so much sense. That's not the way we're designed. We are whole-body beings. If we've been conditioned to disrupt those natural feelings, there are so many mixed messages that are constantly firing in the nervous system.

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Sheila: Yeah, totally. That's why that particular message was highly correlated with arousal problems. Once you're married, it’s highly correlated with orgasm problems. Mindfulness was too difficult.

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Alison Cook: So on that note, I've heard you say, and I thought this was so interesting. “Wait until you're married to have sex, but don't have sex until you're aroused. Figure out the arousal piece first”. What do you mean by that?

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Sheila: Oh gosh. We've got some more stats coming on this in our new marriage book, The Marriage You Want, and it is so depressing. But when you look at the first time a couple has sex, if they waited for the wedding, that subgroup of the survey respondents, we asked, hey, did you bring her to orgasm before you tried intercourse? 

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Or did you bring him to orgasm before you tried intercourse? We were far more likely to bring him to orgasm. Okay. So women are helping him with orgasm first, but he’s not helping her. Then when you say, okay, who actually did reach orgasm in your first sexual encounter? I don't remember the exact numbers, but 87 percent of men did versus 11 percent of women, maybe.

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It's incredible when you look at how lopsided our first sexual encounters are. There was a really neat study out of the University of Toronto last year, I think 2022, which found that your sexual debut, the first time you have consensual sex that involves intercourse, if she reaches orgasm in some way, her libido is really likely to be basically the same as her spouses or her partners. 

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But if she doesn't, then her libido is more likely to be lower. So our sexual debut matters. I think about all of these Christian couples having sex for the first time, not caring about her pleasure at all. Because when you wait for the wedding, it's this big thing. Oh, we finally get to have intercourse. You have intercourse, and you weren't waiting for her arousal. 

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It didn't flow organically from something you were doing. We're doing it backwards. I'm not saying that people should have sex before the wedding, but think about what happens when a 17 year old has sex by accident.

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They weren't planning on having sex, but they were making out for three hours, and then they got more and more excited. And that is what is supposed to happen. There's supposed to be this sexual response cycle. Now, not when you're 17, but that's the way your body is supposed to work.

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But what do we do? We get married and then, oh, now we finally get to have intercourse. So you don't do any of the other stuff. You don't know what you're doing. You feel embarrassed. 

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Alison Cook: Even psychologically, we live in a culture where we have to be preparing our girls and boys for healthy sexuality. It's not enough either to give them the abstinence message that I got in the eighties or the purity culture stuff, obviously, which got so toxic in the nineties and two thousands. You're right. It's delicate to talk about it, but I love that you're looking at the facts. 

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Here's what's happening for women. Sheila, I really appreciate that you're trying to amplify the voices of women and women's experiences, to try to close that gap. You do these reframes and you start off the book emphasizing the mutuality of sex. 

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It sounds so simple when I say it, but it's actually a profound reframe. “Sex was designed to feel good for both people. Both people in a marriage desire sex”. Instead of “guys want it, girls don't”, you're really trying to reframe that messaging. Tell me why that's so important for women.

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Sheila: Think about what we have normally heard over and over again in almost all of our marriage bestsellers and sex bestsellers. It's that men have needs. Men have sexual needs, and women need to meet them. We see that in For Women Only. We see it in His Needs, Her Needs. We see it in Love and Respect.

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Sex is a need that men have, not a need that women have. It's called a need. God created men with these needs, and it is your job to meet them. That is so often the message that we get about sex. That it's not about our autonomy. It's not about our desire. It's about a man using a woman's body to meet his needs. 

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That's not an intimate thing. That is a very shallow thing. When you talk about sex that way, I'm amazed that we then berate women for having no libido, because what do we expect? If you tell women their whole lives, hey, men have these needs that you need to meet. Why would any woman get excited by that? 

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Every Man's Battle, that book series, sold 4 million copies. It literally called women the methadone for their husband's sex addictions. Do they think that this is going to excite women, that this is going to make women want to have sex?

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Alison Cook: It's so dishonoring to both men and women. You say that in the book, it's so one-dimensional. It's such a caricature of men. It's so dishonoring to both.

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Sheila: The last teaching that we mentioned that really hurts is also really dishonoring to men. It's a huge one, and it's the idea that all men struggle with lust. That's hugely destructive. That's one of the biggest reasons that women lose libido, is believing that or hearing that as a teenager. 

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The authors of Every Man's Battle literally say that men don't have a Christian view of sex–what they're saying is that men were made inferior to women. There's something wrong with men that women need to fix. So women were created as sin management tools for men. We are sin management tools. That is not sexy, people.

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Alison Cook: Yeah. It's not helpful. It's not helpful. You're really clear about that. I’d love to go back to what you were saying about that biblical idea of knowing. That word was not a mistake–Adam and Eve knowing each other is the same term that David used to ask God to know him.

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I heard you say something to the effect of, this evangelical framework in particular has turned sex from knowing to an unknowing or an unseeing, especially of women. I think that's really profound. That's part of why this book is touching a nerve in women, is that longing to be known and to be seen. What would you say to the woman listening, who has that longing? Where can they start to begin that journey?

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Sheila: Yeah if we want to fix our sex lives, first of all, we need to believe deep, deep down, truly believe that we matter. Because we've been told all kinds of messages that we don't. Sex will never be intimate unless we know that we matter, that we know that we can speak up, that we know that we can say, hey, I don't like this, or I do like this, or I'm not really feeling it right now.

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We need to be able to speak up, but we can't speak up, if we feel like we don't matter as much, or if we feel like he's going to sin if I don't do this, that's not a healthy dynamic at all. I think there are a lot of misconceptions around whether or not sex contributes to intimacy, because they're often used interchangeably.

In sermons, when pastors are afraid to say the word sex, they'll say intimacy–that marriages need physical intimacy, as if intercourse is automatically intimate. It's actually not. 16 percent of women reported that their primary emotion after sex is feeling used. That's not intimate. 

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That means that for them, they would feel closer if they hadn't had sex. Then there are others that may not feel used, but they don't feel good. There are a lot that really are not enjoying it and it's not bringing them closer together. If their husband watches porn, if he has a pornographic view of sex, a pornographic way of relating, if sex is shallow, then it's not going to make them feel more intimate. 

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But a lot of men don't know how to share their feelings, don't know how to open up and be vulnerable. For them, sex seems like it provides connection without making them have to do the work of connecting. So they feel connected, but they're actually not.

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I think that we need to get away from speaking about sex as if it automatically is intimate, because it's not. And that's something that I think women need to hear–you're not alone if sex makes you feel lonely.

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Alison Cook: That's really good. That's so important. Maybe don't start with sex as in the act of intercourse. Maybe start back all the way up to dating when we're 17. What does it feel like to be sitting in the movie theater with your husband, and start there, almost back into that feeling of connection, of closeness.

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We don't have to go right to “let's make the sex great”. It's almost like we have to re-tap into that innocence, that play, that got lost somewhere along the way. That is well before the actual intercourse, that flows naturally from that excitement and from those good feelings.

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Sheila: I think play goes away for very obvious reasons. So let's say you have a Christian couple, and they want to wait until they get married. They do, or maybe they might've had sex a few times, but it may not have felt that great, whatever. Okay. But they go into marriage, not really experiencing great sex yet.

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The first time they have sex, when we asked women to name the main word that they felt after their first time having sex, the most common word was bewildering. That's not a good word. That is not a good word. But it's the most common one that we got. 

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You have sex, you have intercourse, and it wasn't what you thought it was going to be, but often he has a really good time. It feels good for him and he wants it again. He wants it to reassure himself that they're going to have a good sex life. He wants it because it feels good. Maybe they keep doing this and it never feels good for her.

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She starts to believe, “I'm not sexual because he wants it all the time. So he's obviously sexual and he orgasms really easily. So he must be more sexual than I am”. We forget we were made differently. Our bodies react differently to stimulation or types of stimulation that we like, or types of stimulation that bring you to orgasm. 

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When we asked both men and women, Do you do enough foreplay? 96 percent of men and 88 percent of women say, yes, I do, or yes, he does, if she frequently reaches orgasm. But if she doesn't, 71 percent of men and 52 percent of women still say that he does enough foreplay.

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So that's over half of women think that he does enough foreplay, even if they're not reaching orgasm. What that tells me is that we've internalized the idea that we're broken. We're not sexual. Because the first time you have sex, or the first few times, it works for him and then his experience becomes the default. It has become the norm. 

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Alison Cook: It works in one sense, in a very finite, tiny, limited understanding of “works”. I hear what you're saying–it's the normalized messages. “It's working for him. It's not working for you”. As opposed to, it's actually not working for either of us in the fullness of how God intended it.

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Sheila: Yeah, because sex is supposed to be mutual, intimate, and pleasurable for both. That's the short form that we use all the time. If he's the only one really enjoying it, then honey, you're the one being deprived, yet we use those verses against women so much. “Do not deprive him”. 

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Look, if he's had an orgasm every week for seven years and you've never had one, you're not depriving him by not having sex very often. You are so deprived, or maybe you are reaching orgasm, but sex makes you feel used. You're still being deprived because sex, the way God intended it, is mutual and intimate and pleasurable for both. It's not merely intercourse.

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Alison Cook: Yeah. That's so good. It's so good. You go on to these different pillars of sexuality. Again, it's recasting a message in the mutual way that God intended sex to be. It should prioritize both partners. Sex should be pressure free. Sex is a gift that is freely given. Sex should put the other first. 

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Both members of the partnership have to put the other first. Sex should be pure. It sounds so simple, but it's actually so revolutionary, especially for women. I really appreciate all the work you did on this and all the research to back it up. Any other findings that you think are really important for women to hear?

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Sheila: This is actually a finding from a men's survey. So this one's from the book, The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex. But I have some good news about pornography, because we often hear bad news about pornography, and for very good reason. Porn is super destructive in marriages. 

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But what we found is that if a guy's been watching porn and he quits porn and he gets rid of the objectified view of women before he marries, he's pretty much going to have the same sex life as if he'd never watched it.

So porn doesn't ruin your life forever. I think that's important to hear, because one of the problems with purity culture is that we tell girls, hey, if you have sex before you're married, you've ruined everything. I think we're doing the same thing today to both boys and girls who watch pornography.

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If you give it up and you get rid of the objectified view of women, you're actually in pretty good shape. Now, if you don't give up porn till after you're married, you don't necessarily get all of the intimacy and great sex that you would have, but it's not that big a difference.

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It's not like it's a huge difference. You can still have a really great sex life and a really great marriage. I want people to hear that. Porn is something that an awful lot of people put behind them, but it isn't enough to get rid of the pornography. You also have to address, why is it that you turn to it in the first place?

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What are you hiding from when you use it? If we're using porn as a self-soothing technique, which quite often people are, to avoid boredom, worry, insecurity, shame, whatever, then what are you gonna do in its place? How are we going to address those things instead? Because I think what often happens is people try to white knuckle it.

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They say, okay, I'm going to quit. That doesn't work, because you have to look at the underlying things. But when people put the work in and when they do quit porn and quit the objectification of women and get rid of that obligation message, they really can flourish. It doesn't mean that it's over now, big caveat there. 

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If a guy says he's quitting, but he won't let you see his phone and he's not going to go to a counselor, he hasn't really quit. I'm not trying to say that you should let all the husbands off the hook. I'm saying if he does the work, there is great hope.

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Alison Cook: Yeah, the way you're describing it reminds me of any sort of addiction model. I work in the internal family systems model. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, where there are three parts of us. One part is that firefighter, that self-soother, that escape artist, that you have to replace with healthy comfort. 

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Anything that you give up, if you use willpower, you're not healing the vulnerability underneath, which is what leads to intimacy. But I love that note of hope, that it's so possible. The impetus to reach for porn isn't because the wife isn't doing her job. It's something broken or hurting that needs healing inside of you. It can be healed, and also it’s important that ownership is taken. 

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Sheila: Yes, and if there are pastors listening to this, please stop blaming women for men's porn use. It's unbelievable how often people say they wouldn't turn to it if the wife was doing more. The vast majority of porn use pre-dates the marriage. They came into marriage already watching porn or using porn.

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So this isn't on her. This is a habit that he formed. This was a form of yes, self-soothing that he started. It's not on her. Okay. Big soapbox here. Sex and porn are not substitutes for one another.

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That's the insinuation. “He wouldn't watch porn if he had sex with you”, but porn is using it for your own gratification. Sex is a deep knowing. Those are two opposite things. They're not substitutes. They're opposites.

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Alison Cook: That's so good. Sheila. The other thing I really like that I've heard you say gets at how we've located, whether consciously or subconsciously, whether it's been intentional, whether it's been a complete horrible oversight, we've located the problem in women's bodies. 

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The other message that women have gotten is, you're responsible for men's lust. In some cultures, men are taught, don't look at the women or don't be alone with the women. I love how you said this. You said the solution to men's lust is not to stop seeing women. It's to learn to truly see women. 

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Jesus, you say, saw women. I love that. I want the women listening to hear that. You're not the problem. Jesus sees you and knows you. That is so powerful. I love that.

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Sheila: Because this whole advice to men, to bounce your eyes, don't look at women, that is seeing women in the same way that pornography does. So you know, they're told, hey, the way to beat lust and porn is to not look at women. But in both cases, you are seeing women primarily as a sex object.

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You're seeing her as a threat to you, a threat to your purity. That's not how Jesus sees us. Jesus didn't refuse to look at women. Jesus chose to truly see us.

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Alison Cook: Yeah, that's right. In our fullness, in our wholeness.

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Sheila: Yes. The solution to lust is to learn to actually see women and not objectify, but learn to respect women. That's what we need to be teaching our boys.

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Alison Cook: That's right. Which ironically then leads to that intimacy, that curiosity about who the whole person is, that then will lead down the road with the right woman, with your wife, the better sex if you're seeing her as a whole person.

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I love that. I have one last question that I like to ask all my guests. Sheila, what would you say to the younger version of you, maybe however old she was, based on what you know now about this sexual journey?

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Sheila: Speak up sooner. I spent a lot of years and like I said, sexual pain was a big part of my story for the first few years of marriage. I pushed through because I didn't want to deprive him. I wanted to be a good wife. I was afraid. I was afraid of all kinds of things. But speak up because you matter, I would say. 

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Alison Cook: That's beautiful. Thank you for your work to uncover a lot of these lies that have hurt so many women. Where can people find you and your work and what do you have coming up next?

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Sheila: We're at baremarriage.com. I have the Bare Marriage podcast every Thursday. I write on my blog almost every day and all my social media links are there. Instagram and Facebook are super fun. You can also find our orgasm course, our libido course there and my books. 

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Then coming out this March is our book, The Marriage You Want, which my husband and I wrote together based on our matched pair survey that we did last winter. It's going to turn the Christian marriage industry on its head because it's not saying any of the typical Christian marriage stuff.

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Here's the stuff that actually matters. I'm really excited about it. It's going to be such a healthy and biblical book.

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Alison Cook: I love it. Thank you for the work that you're doing. Thank you for giving us your time today. I appreciate you.

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Sheila: Thank you. I appreciate being here too.

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In this week’s episode, Dr. Alison explores the pervasive issue of narcissism—a term that's become increasingly relevant in today's culture. From toxic relationships to leadership failures, the influence of narcissism is widespread, affecting many without us even realizing it. Dr. Alison explains what it is and offers strategies to protect ourselves from its insidious effects.

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You'll discover:

* The true meaning of narcissism beyond the buzzword.

* How to recognize love bombing

* The dangers of gaslighting and manipulation

* The tactics of triangulation

* Practical steps to guard your emotional health and develop resilience.

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‍

Resources:

• ‍Episode 1: What Is Narcissism Really?
• ‍Proverbs 4:23
• ‍Psalm 1:1-3

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If you liked this, you’ll love:

• Episode 13: Dr. Alison Answers Your Questions: Criticism, Narcissism, and Boundaries

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‍Thanks to our sponsors:

• Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
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• ‍Go to Quince.com/bestofyou for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your 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.
• 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.
• Contact Restoring the Soul today at www.restoringthesoul.com 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, visit www.restoringthesoul.com/bestofyou to download their pdf called "5 Ways Unresolved Trauma May Be Derailing Your Relationship."

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 diving into a topic that is so important. It's one that affects so many of us in ways we may not even realize, and the topic is narcissism.

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We hear this word a lot these days. It gets thrown around in conversations about toxic relationships, leadership failures, and even the broader culture we live in. Lately, I feel like I’ve seen this deepening pattern of what I would call image management, where we live in a culture where there's so much focus on the persona, on perception, on how to craft my image about how other people see me.

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Whether it's through social media, whether it's through reality television, whatever it may be, there's such a focus on that image, on that perception, on manipulating how people see me.

There's so much focus on that, as opposed to a focus on this inner work of really becoming a person who is good and kind and true and confident and empowered and full of life. 

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Where there's this deep well of goodness and character and integrity. That takes work to invest in, that process of becoming a whole and true person. Sometimes, and I'm going to be honest with you, when I'm looking at the culture around us, I get a little dismayed. 

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I feel like the focus is so much on those surface images, on the persona that we want the world to see us as, that we are neglecting the much more important and deeper work of really attuning to the parts of our own soul.

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It's brought to mind this conversation about narcissism. We hear this word a lot, but what does it really mean? More importantly, how do we protect ourselves from it? Not only in our relationships–how do we spot someone with narcissistic tendencies so that we can protect ourselves–but also from the particles of narcissism that exist in the air around us, in the culture around us?

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How do we protect our own souls? Here's the truth. When we aren't deeply connected to our own emotions, our own boundaries, and our own Spirit-led inner compass, our own inner wisdom, we become more vulnerable to the manipulation, to the gaslighting, to the emotional entanglements, to even some of the superficial posturing in the world all around us.

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And here's the even harder part. Many of us were never taught how to prioritize this inner work in the first place. Many of us have been taught to look to others, to be trusting of others, to prioritize being loving toward others. These are all good qualities, but as important is what the Bible says about not being naive, about being wise, about being discerning, about being shrewd as the serpent and innocent as the dove.

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We so often have not been taught how to do this work, to listen to our own inner wisdom, to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, who cues us to dangers in our environment, to untruths in our environment, to agendas in our environment that are not of God.

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The Bible itself affirms the importance of this inner compass. Proverbs speaks of guarding the heart because everything flows from it. Jesus models inner integrity where he is never swayed by flattery, nor does he shrink back in fear.

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He stands strong and anchored and rooted in the power of his inner conviction. In a world that is increasingly chaotic and confusing, where everyone seems to be trying to manipulate the truth for their own agenda, one of the most powerful things we can do is cultivate this Spirit-led inner discernment within ourselves.

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It takes work and it takes attunement, but when we truly know our own selves, we can begin to recognize manipulation faster. We can more quickly get to those healthy boundaries and we can learn to trust our instincts, that God-given inner alert system, and our spiritual discernment. That's why today's episode is so important. 

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I'm going to first share with you an excerpt from an old episode. It was actually the first episode of The Best of You Podcast, where I talk about what narcissism really is and the signs to watch for. Then, I'm going to come back in with some commentary about how to protect yourself through doing this inner work.

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So whether you've experienced a narcissistic relationship in a church community, in a marriage, or in your own family, or whether you're someone who is troubled by what's going on in the world right now, you feel unsettled and you can't figure out where the truth lies, I hope this episode will help provide some clarity for you.

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Not only in what to guard against, in the world around us, but also the incredibly powerful gift God has given us of agency and holy discernment within our own selves. Let's dive in to talk a little bit about “What is narcissism really?” 

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(See “Episode 1: What Is Narcissism Really?” for transcript)

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***

Alison Cook: I want to shift now to talk about some of the specific toxic strategies that narcissists might use in their relationships. Because again, this is about arming yourself with knowledge.

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The first one is what's called “love bombing”. You may have heard this term. It means that at the start of the relationship, this person might shower you with intense affection, flattery, and gifts.

They shower you with all the right things to woo you. They might say things like, I've never met anyone like you. I love you so much. You're my soulmate. 

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They might say these things very quickly. It might even throw you off guard a little bit, but it also feels good. But the problem is that this doesn't gain traction over time. The actions don't line up with the words. You're left with this vague feeling of confusion. 

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They're saying one thing, but we're not getting any deeper. I'm not seeing how their actions back this up. I'm not sensing any depth to this. This feels really on the surface. 

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Number two, this word gaslighting gets overused, but can really happen. This is where someone with narcissistic tendencies will try to distort reality. They'll try to make you doubt your own perceptions and your own sanity.

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They might say things to you like “That never happened. You're overreacting. It's that you're sensitive. You're the problem”. They try to maintain power by making you question your own memories, your own emotions, your own experience. It's a really effective strategy, because we're human and we're imperfect.

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We do sometimes overreact, we do sometimes misremember things. This is why that pattern of behaviors over time is so important to remember. When you're in a new relationship, whether it's a new faith community, whether it's a new friendship, whether it's a new love relationship, whether you're trying to figure out whether to trust someone in leadership, be wise and exercise some caution. 

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If someone's coming on really strong at the start of a relationship, inside your own Spirit, hold that posture of “actions will speak louder than words”. There's a quote that I love that says, your actions speak so loudly, I can't hear your words.

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This is the kind of thing we want to watch for. Your actions speak so loudly, I can't even hear your words, because your actions are telling me everything I need to know. You're doing the things I need. You're showing up with integrity. You're honoring me in actions every single day. That means so much more to me than words. Your actions are speaking loudly. Watch for the actions.

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Number three, we talked about this a little bit in Episode 147 with Adam Young, triangulation. Someone who has a very fragile sense of self, who cannot stand in their own inner conviction, will try to triangulate. They'll try to bring in other parties. They might say things to you like, well, my ex never acted like this, or my other friends don't question me in this way, or no one else in our faith community is raising these issues.

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They might even be more overt. Like, look at all these followers I have. Look at how many friends I have. Who are you to question me? Someone has to triangulate, to bring in other people, to make themselves feel good. I would be curious about their actions. 

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When someone is healthy and strong in their own inner conviction, they don't need to rely on that kind of triangulated herd mentality. They know they can say, listen, my actions speak for themselves. I'm not perfect, but my actions speak for themselves. Look at my actions. I don't need to convince you of the truth of my character, of the integrity of my character.

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Number four, blame shifting. They'll often shift blame onto others. They'll blame others for their own flaws instead of taking responsibility. “You're the selfish one,” when actually they're the one being selfish. “You have anger issues”, when they're the one who is actually raging out of control. They want to avoid accountability and they're constantly shifting the blame onto you.

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Lastly, playing the victim. They flip the narrative to make themselves look like the victim, even when they're the one causing harm. It might sound like this. “After everything I've done for you, this is how you treat me? I was trying to help and now you're attacking me?” They're trying to manipulate emotions and avoid responsibility. 

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A healthy person can say something to the effect of, I hear you. I get that you're hurt. I understand. They might even take it one step further and say, I'd like to share with you my perspective, because that wasn't my intent. Two things can be true in healthy relationships: I didn't mean to hurt you, and I can honor and validate that this was hurtful. 

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A healthy person can have that healthy two-way back and forth. They're not constantly playing the victim. Now in church environments, this can take on an even more insidious and subtle approach, with spiritual gaslighting, where someone uses Scripture or religious beliefs to invalidate your concerns.

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“Well, you need to pray more. God told me this. So you're actually questioning God”. Someone's hiding behind God to defend their poor behaviors. “You're being rebellious. You're being divisive”. I've heard this one a lot, where there's toxicity in leadership.

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Again, there are ways to hear people out and hear their concerns and honor someone's humanity. It doesn't mean, if you're a leader listening, I know this can be hard because sometimes people come to you with complaints and you're like, I'm doing the best I can. You don't have to honor every single complaint someone brings to you as a leader.

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Sometimes you can say, “I get it. That's hard. I want to hear you out”, even as you're reckoning with the fact that you've got to lead in this way. But there's always humility at the root of that. You're never trying to gaslight someone else.

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Another thing I see, and I hate to name this, but it's true so I'm going to, is this kind of false humility, which is a form of image management. This is so prevalent in our culture today, but we do see it in our church cultures too, where someone wants to appear humble. They want to appear self-sacrificing.

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They want to appear deeply spiritual, but they only want to appear that way for public admiration. So this might look like serving very loudly and visibly, while secretly behind closed doors, seeking power or trying to get ahead out of selfish ambition instead of really trying to lift up other people.

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Sometimes I see this in the form of people really loudly saying, “I do this all for God's glory. It's only for God”. But really, they like the recognition and loyalty. I'm going to be honest. I'd almost rather our Christian leaders say publicly, something to the effect of “there are parts of me at times that really do look at the numbers and that really do want people to follow me and like my work”.

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That's part of being human. I also hope that through my own feeble and complicated human efforts, that somehow the goodness of God would be revealed to people in need of God's love and God's goodness. I tend to be drawn more toward folks who take that posture, where there's that self-awareness of our own human frailties and complexity.

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Another way that I'll see some of this narcissism play out in church communities is through shaming and public call-outs, where individuals are called out publicly, in meetings, or even in prayer groups. That gets really insidious, to pressure them into compliance, where there's this kind of gossip.

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“Some people in this church are being divisive and we've got to call them out. We've got to hold them accountable”, when in fact those people are really and truly trying to stand up for what's right and what's true and what's good. That person in leadership is simply trying to avoid taking accountability.

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It's toxic to faith communities. So how do we protect ourselves from narcissism in our relationships, in our cultures, in our communities? Number one, we have to learn to honor our own God-given instincts. This is to the point of that internal work that we are often talking about on the podcast. If something smells funny, pay attention to that.

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Notice that part of you. Get curious about it. It takes some time to learn how to attune to your own inner compass because our own compasses can get out of whack at times. I'll be honest with you. At times, I've had to call a friend and say, I'm really triggered by this behavior, but I'm not sure if it's my own past wounds that are heightened to this particular type of leadership, or if this person is really doing something wrong.

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That's number two–get a few trusted advisors to bounce things off of, to help you grow in that holy discernment, to give you that objective take. “I see it too. What you're saying doesn't sound good. I think your instincts are right on”. Or to say, “listen, I hear what you're saying and I get it. I've had a different experience with this person. I found that they can actually take accountability”.

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Number three, again, another big part of this inner work is to learn how to differentiate from the approval of others. We've been talking about this a lot recently on the podcast, that when we need external approval at all costs, we set ourselves up for being manipulated by others. It's never right to try to manipulate or exploit or hurt someone. 

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But our part of the equation is to get really good at being okay with sometimes introducing healthy conflict into a conversation or relationship. Sometimes, I call it “testing the relationship”. Introducing a different opinion, introducing a preference, introducing a question mark. I'm not sure I agree with you on this, or I'm not sure I see it the same way you do. Are you open to hearing my perspective?

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You're testing that relationship a little bit, and that takes some core strength, because they might not like it. That person may ghost you. They may try to manipulate you. They may turn away from you, but better to find out on the front end of any new relationship.

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So here's the bottom line. The more deeply you know yourself in partnership with God's Spirit, the more intimately you are connected to your thoughts, your emotions, your boundaries, your internal compass that God has given you to help you navigate your way through life, the less vulnerable you will be to narcissistic manipulation. 

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This isn't just good psychology. This is spiritual wisdom. Proverbs 4:23 tells us, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it”. Guarding your heart isn't about building walls or shutting people out. It's about wisdom, discernment, and clarity. 

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It's about learning to recognize when someone is drawing you into dysfunction versus when someone is inviting you into a true, healthy, deep relationship. When you know yourself, when you tend to your inner world with honesty and care, you become someone who cannot be easily deceived.

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You become someone who doesn't fall for flattery, manipulation, or guilt-tripping. You become someone who walks in strength, wisdom, and deep alignment with God's truth. I want to close with Psalm 1:1-3, “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord and who meditates on God's law day and night”.

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Remember, God's law is written on your heart, through the coming of the Holy Spirit. This is what Jeremiah prophesied and Jesus made true in John 14. God's law has been written on your own heart. “That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season. the leaves will not wither. Whatever you do will prosper”.

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When we root ourselves in truth and God's wisdom and an honest relationship with our own soul, we become like that strong unshakable tree. We stop being swayed by flattery, fear, or manipulation.

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