Science-backed tools.
Spiritually-based wisdom.

Have you ever noticed how quickly old patterns resurface when you're around family?

Maybe you find yourself walking on eggshells. Struggling to voice your preferences. Feeling responsible for everyone else's emotions. Or slipping back into roles you thought you'd left behind years ago.

In this episode, Dr. Alison revisits one of the most requested conversations from the podcast, exploring how the dynamics we experienced growing up continue to shape our relationships today.

Through the lens of attachment theory, boundaries, and family systems, Alison unpacks five common patterns that can influence the way we show up with the people we love—and how awareness is the first step toward healing.

You'll learn:

• Why family relationships can pull us back into old roles
• What enmeshment is—and how it differs from healthy closeness
• Five family patterns that often follow us into adulthood
• How childhood experiences shape the way we handle conflict, boundaries, and relationships
• Why naming a pattern isn't about blame—it's about healing
• Practical questions to help you begin breaking free from unhealthy dynamics

Healing doesn't require pretending your family was perfect.

It begins by telling the truth with wisdom, compassion, and grace—so you can love others without losing yourself.

More Resources:

‍

You can now preorder Dr. Alison’s newest book, The Secure Soul, and immediately receive the first 3 chapters as well as early access to the companion guide!

‍

Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram

‍

Curious what Family Role may have shaped you? Take the Family Role Quiz to learn how you may be showing up in your relationships with others.

Want to hear more like this? Start here:

Episode 194: When Relationships Start to Drain You—Using Discernment to Stay Connected Without Losing Yourself

Episode 178 How to Recognize Toxic Tactics, and Stop Taking the Bait

📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here

Don't forget to browse this week's sponsors, who make it possible for me to bring you these resources for free + provide you with additional discounts!

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*Some of the links above are Amazon affiliate links. If you choose to purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

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

‍

Hey, everyone, and welcome back to this week's deep dive episode of The Best of You. We are closing

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in on the 4th of July weekend. I cannot believe that. I cannot believe we're nearing July,

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that the summer is already a month. behind us it's flown by i hope your summer is going well i hope

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you're finding some spaciousness for your soul i know in my own experience with summer both when

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the kids were little but also now as an empty nester i love summer but sometimes the absence of

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structure it's it's more chaotic sometimes i can lose sight of my own boundaries my own rhythms the

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things that keep my soul in healthy shape, if you want to put it that way. It can kind of feel off

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kilter when everything's a little more chaotic. There's a lot more time with family and friends and

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even some travel and sometimes family reunions and other types of reunions. And all of that can be

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wonderful. And also some of that can begin to cause us to lose sight of our rhythms.

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And even some of the boundaries that keep us sane and keep us healthy and keep us close to that way

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that we always talk about on the podcast of living from love, right? Walking with love,

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walking in step with God's Spirit versus just kind of being reactive and over-functioning and

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working for love and trying to make everybody happy. And as I was thinking about myself and how I

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can get off kilter in the summer, and I was thinking about you and wondering how that's going for

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you. I thought this would be a great weekend to re-air an older episode. This is an episode from a

‍

ways back. It resonated with many of you. In fact, I shaped this episode around questions I was

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receiving from listeners. And it's all about this idea of enmeshment and how we can become

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enmeshed, particularly in our... of origin from the past, but also it applies to our families in

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the current day. And enmeshment is just the opposite of healthy boundaries. We'll get into that in

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today's episode. But we also get into the importance of boundaries and how to watch out for these

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toxic patterns, both patterns that shaped us back in the past,

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but also patterns that can sneak up on us. in the present last week in my conversation with dr

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stephen tracy we talked about something i think so many of us are trying to untangle and it's all

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about how we honor scripture how we honor god while also telling the truth by not denying the toxic

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patterns that are sneaking in or noticing harm and not being afraid to name it or at least protect

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ourselves from it or protect our kids from it some of this means how do we remain tenderhearted

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without becoming naive? How do we forgive without denying reality?

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How do we honor our parents without abandoning ourselves? Maybe it's our in-laws that we're going

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to be spending time with this summer. Maybe it's our parents. Maybe it's a sibling. Maybe it's a

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friend group. And we're aware that some toxic dynamics can sneak in.

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And we're not trying to blame anybody, but we are trying to be real and wise and grounded about

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protecting ourselves and being wise before God? And these are big questions.

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And for many of us, they're very real. They show up with a simple phone call.

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from a parent where you immediately start to feel anxious or when you maybe set a boundary that you

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really need to set for your own health or sanity, but suddenly you feel guilty or bad or maybe you

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feel even judged by other family members or friends or they show up when you have a preference that

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you're afraid to state or maybe your life looks a little differently and you're not sure how to

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bring that change into a current friendship. And all of this makes me think of one of my favorite

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verses. I mentioned it last week in my conversation with Dr. Stephen Tracy, and it applies whether

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we're talking about spending time with people we love or whether we're walking into potentially

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toxic situations. And it's what Jesus said in Matthew 10, 16.

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He said, be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

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This verse is just so striking to me because Jesus is holding two things together that many of us

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tend to bifurcate, right? We keep them separate. He calls us to be innocent. And there's a

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connotation of innocence, of being kind, of being open, of being available, of being receptive,

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right? He doesn't want us to become cynical or shut down or closed off and definitely not cruel or

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always assuming the worst. But Jesus also calls us to wisdom.

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And again, I think about that snake, you know, the serpent. None of us like snakes. I know I can't

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stand them. They terrify me. But when you think about them as an animal, they're low to the ground.

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They're in the dirt. They're in the mud. They're in the muck. They're very aware of what's

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happening, right? The dove is high above it all. She's not in the midst of it,

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right? She's able to kind of stay outside of things and stay. innocent, but the serpent is in the

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muck and the mud. And Jesus is calling us to both. Don't be naive.

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That's the part like the serpent that's in the muck and sees what's around us. I'm walking into

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something here that may go sideways. I'm walking into a situation where it's possible these toxic

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patterns are going to reemerge. I need to be wise about that. I can't pretend that's not going to

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happen. I want to be innocent and loving and available. And I also need to be wise and shrewd and

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in some ways strategic and smart. about how I enter into this situation.

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And this all means we have to learn to recognize what is actually happening in front of us. We need

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to be able to discern patterns. We need to be able to pay attention to fruit. What's the fruit of a

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certain situation? We need to be able to tell the truth when something is harmful or going down the

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wrong path, even when that's happening with people we love, even within families.

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And in today's episode, I talk in particular about our families of origin. These could be parents

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or grandparents or even in-laws, people who had an impact on your early life or maybe your

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spouse's early life. And one of the things I hear so often is about this,

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one of the 10 commandments, right? One of the greatest commandments, one of the 10 commandments

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that we are supposed to abide by is to honor your father and mother. And that can be challenging

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for many people. Even if you had a healthy family, even if you have healthy relationship with your

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parents, figuring out how to honor without necessarily losing yourself can be tricky.

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Honoring our parents, honoring our family members is a way that we honor God. It's important.

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And it also doesn't mean being naive. It doesn't mean pretending. It doesn't mean putting ourselves

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in harm's way. It doesn't mean denying the impact of what's happening.

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It doesn't mean carrying emotional responsibility that was never yours to carry.

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And in fact, what I would argue is that sometimes the most honoring thing we can do for God,

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for the other person, and for ourselves is to be honest and to name what's happening with clarity

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and compassion. Because when we name the truth of what has happened either in the past or in the

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present, we're not blaming. Naming isn't the same as blaming or shaming. Naming isn't about

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punishing. Naming isn't about retaliation. Naming is about looking at the truth,

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telling the truth, saying this pattern exists. It existed back then.

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It exists now. It's still affecting me. It's still shaping me. It's still shaping my partner.

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It's still shaping my sibling. This pattern is real. And with God's help, I will not let this

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pattern continue to do harm. That's holy ground. That's not blaming.

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That's not shaming. That's not being cruel. That's not punitive. That's the holy ground of healing.

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The truth is every parent falls short. Every single family has wounds.

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Every one of us has places where we need grace, repair, growth, and mercy,

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right? All of that is true. And what's also true is that grace doesn't require denial.

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And healing and growth can't happen when we're not telling the truth. So in today's episode,

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we're going to look at five patterns that can shape us in childhood and that continue to affect us

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well into adult. We're going to talk about unpredictability, parentification, criticism,

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control, and rescuing. Some of these may apply to you. Some of them may not.

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But all of it applies to this idea of how do we create healthy families and how do we heal from our

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own wounds? Again, this isn't about shame. This is about awareness. It's about learning to say

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there is a reason I tend to revert to this old pattern when I'm with this group of people,

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or there's a reason why conflict spikes my anxiety, or there's a reason why I have such a hard time

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stating a preference. or even knowing what I want. There's a reason I feel so criticized.

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Once you can begin to name the reason, you can begin to get to the root underneath the reactions,

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you can begin to heal. And this is why this work matters.

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So today, as we revisit this conversation about how our childhood patterns shape us in adulthood,

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I want you to listen with compassion. Compassion for your parents who were shaped by their own

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stories. Compassion for yourself, because you may still be carrying these patterns you never chose.

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And compassion for the people you are caring for now as you learn to show up differently.

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Now, listen, before we get started, some of you may have really healthy relationships with your

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parents. Maybe they're not perfect, but for the most part, your parents were reliable. They showed

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up for you. They support you. And even when there were ruptures, you knew that you could repair.

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You knew that you could find a way back to each other. For some of you listening,

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there's no relationship anymore with your parents. The relationship got so toxic and the trauma was

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so deep. You can't be. in relationship with those people. And that's so painful when you have to

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remove yourself from those relationships. And for many of you listening, you're somewhere in the

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middle. with your parents. There were some really good and supportive things that you got from your

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parents. And there were also some hard things, some things you're trying to unlearn.

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No matter where you fall on that spectrum, there are two crucibles where we typically become aware

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of these childhood wounds. Number one is our intimate relationships, our relationships specifically

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within marriage. That is so often the relationship where suddenly we begin to notice our own

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patterns and we're like, oh my goodness, why can't I engage? in a healthy conversation about

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conflict. I tend to just go into flight mode or I go into fight mode or I shut down or I withdraw.

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Oh my goodness, that's what I did in my family of origin. That's great knowledge, but now I've got

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to figure out how to heal so that I can show up in this. current relationship in a different way,

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right? So that's one of the gifts of intimate relationships is they bring to the surface some of

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these areas where we've got wounds from our past that we need to heal so that we can show up

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differently in this current relationship going forward. The second big place where a lot of these

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wounds begin to surface is when we have kids of our own. And we begin to realize, oh my goodness, I

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didn't even realize. Now I'm trying to parent this child. I want to do it differently. And suddenly

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I notice myself behaving in ways I don't like. I notice myself getting angry.

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I notice myself getting avoidant. I notice myself avoiding these hard conversations.

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Or I notice myself having a really hard time figuring out how to set boundaries.

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Or I notice myself having a really hard time when I need to let my... find their own way apart from

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me. We begin to notice some of these patterns that likely go all the way back to our own childhoods

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when we begin to parent ourselves. And so the stakes can feel really high because we begin to

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realize I've got to heal these patterns because I don't want to repeat them.

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in these relationships I care so much about in this present day and age with my spouse,

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with my kids, with my friends, right? And so I just want to say to you right at the top of this

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episode, the goal is not perfection. That is not the goal.

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This is a process, that awareness that, yeah, I've got some growing to do.

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I've got some things from the past I have to undo. And it's going to take me a little while,

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but just my ability to name those things and begin to even say some of those things to the people

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that I love. Hey, I know I'm not great at conflict. I know sometimes I can actually flee any

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conflict before it even surfaces. And I want to let you know that I'm aware of that. And I may not

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be able to change that right away. but I'm going to work on it. And I promise you, I'm going to

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keep coming back. Or you might need to say to those loved ones, you know, I know I've got some

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anger. I can get really angry and I'm becoming more and more aware of it.

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And I want you to know that I see it and I'm working on it. And when I notice it,

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I can become more aware of it more quickly. And I can come back to you and say, I'm sorry that

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didn't come out right. Can we do a take two on that conversation, right? There are lots of ways you

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can let your loved ones know, I'm healing some stuff here. These patterns go way back.

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I'm not going to change overnight, but I'm aware. I'm honoring that. And I'm committed to growing.

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and healing, and moving forward in a new and better way. Even when you give yourself that

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spaciousness, you're calming your nervous system, which allows you to show up more authentically,

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with more calm, with more courage, with more confidence. If your spouse or your friend came to you

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and said, hey, I know I still do this thing. It's got a long tail. It goes all the way back.

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This is deeply rooted. I'm aware. I'm sorry. I know that's hard for you. You know,

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we don't expect people to change on a dime, but that awareness is a huge step toward health in all

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of our relationships. So remember, you're committing to this journey of healing,

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this journey we often on the podcast use that Greek word sozo. in the Bible that means salvation,

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that can also be translated as healing. We are on this journey of sanctification.

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We are on this journey of being made more and more like Christ, which means being made more and

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more like that person who God wants us to become the most beautiful version of ourselves.

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This is a process that we will be on throughout our entire lifetime, but every single step you can

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take to own it, to honor it, to name it. without shame, both to yourself and to your loved one,

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is a huge step and a success in and of itself. I want to start off by naming some key anchoring

‍

terms because I'm going to be using these terms a lot. And then I'm going to move into the five

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toxic patterns of behaviors that may have impacted you as a child and that you're carrying with you

‍

into adulthood. The first word I want to name is enmeshment. Sometimes the emotional bond between a

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parent and child becomes so intertwined that it's hard to distinguish who you are and your own

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feelings, your own thoughts, your own beliefs from that of your parents.

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This is what we mean by enmeshment. We can actually become too close, too enmeshed.

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We become so caught up in another person that we don't know where they end and I begin.

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When you're a child, you are dependent on the adult who is caring for you to be the adult.

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It's the adult's responsibility to help honor that balance,

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that dance. I go deep into this topic in my book, The Best of You, but I call it that dance between

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connection and autonomy, closeness and distance.

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We need both in healthy relationships, and it's the parent's job.

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to really delineate that dance of being close, but also honoring difference.

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I love you. You are my child and you're different from me.

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You're a unique individual. And it's my job sometimes to step back and see you for who you are as

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someone different from me. That's a really nuanced dance between parent.

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and child. And enmeshment occurs when a parent begins to blur those lines. And typically the parent

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is depending too much on the child. They want to see the child as an extension of themselves.

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This creates a blurred boundary between parent and child. Enmeshment can make the healthy process

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of what psychologists call individuation, the process of becoming your own person,

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really, really difficult. Even if you've created physical distance, that emotional hold can remain

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really strong. And if you're someone who grew up in an amnesty relationship where your parent lived

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their life through you, even when you moved away from home, even when you got your own job,

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maybe even got married, even had kids yourself, you might find yourself struggling to know what you

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think, know what you want, know your own feelings as separate from the people who raised you.

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You might even feel guilty about that. That's because it's been really hard for you to individuate.

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A parent's job is to essentially raise your child to leave you.

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And I think about this in nature, right? We see these moms that there's a point at which you're

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raising that child, you're nurturing that child, but eventually that child has to leave the nest.

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and learn to fly without you. And so when you have that end game in mind,

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when you understand that eventually your child needs to leave you, you're going to love that child,

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but you're also going to equip them to leave you, to function on their own,

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apart from you. That's your job. And when you do that well, your child will be delighted to

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continue to stay connected to you because those roles are clear.

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You've built that trust. You've made yourself a safe place for your child to return to as an adult

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because paradoxically, you've honored their need to leave you.

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You're not trying to keep them close to you in an unhealthy way. You get that your best way of

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staying close to you child is to honor that they need to leave you. It's a beautiful paradox.

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Now, the other term I want to throw out here is attachment theory. Some of you might be thinking

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about attachment as I'm talking, and it can be a really helpful framework for understanding how our

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earliest bonds with our caregivers shape our future relationship. But for today's purposes,

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it's important to understand that a secure attachment happens when your parents offer that

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consistent love and support where they're allowing you to feel safe with them.

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But here's the thing, they're allowing you to feel safe with them so that you can explore life

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independent from them. That's the essence of secure attachment.

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I'm safe enough with these people who love me that I can go out into the world and explore it on my

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own. And there are different milestones that I go through in the best of you of... that happens at

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different junctures and different ages. But throughout your developing years as a child,

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that's essentially what's happening in a healthy, secure attachment. There's that safety from those

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parents at home that allows you to go out and explore the world independently. And when that

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doesn't happen, we start to notice those anxious attachments, those avoidant attachments, those

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mixed attachments, where we don't have that safety at home. And it inhibits our ability to explore

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the world outside of us with confidence. So there are a lot of things that can disrupt secure

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attachment. Abuse disrupts secure attachment. Neglect disrupts secure attachment.

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And also enmeshment can disrupt secure attachment where it's not actually safety in the sense of

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that stable home base where this person loves you but does not need you.

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When enmeshment occurs, this person loves you to make themselves feel better.

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They keep you close to them. There's a sense of closeness that you learn to understand as comfort

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when you're doing what the caregiver wants and needs you to do for their sake.

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That feels like it's comfort, but it's not actually safety.

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So here's what I want you to remember. Healthy parent-child relationships are built on two key

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building blocks, connection and separation. Both are necessary.

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A parent's job is to help you develop a strong sense of self while also supporting you as you learn

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to live your own life. And so this involves encouraging you to learn how to trust your own

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instincts, how to make your own decisions, how to explore your own ideas and feelings.

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And that leads to healthy individuation. When enmeshment occurs, that process gets thwarted.

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You can feel like you're betraying your caregiver. You can feel like you should defer your own

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needs, your own instincts, your own decision-making to fulfill the perceived needs of the parent.

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Now, there's a really good book. I've recommended this book before. It's a best-selling book by

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Lindsay Gibson. It's called Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. And there's a reason

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this book is everywhere, because she just so clearly lays out what some of these patterns look like

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in emotionally immature. And so I'm going to give a really condensed version of how I have noticed

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some of these behaviors of an emotionally immature parent showing up. But that's really what's

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happening here. It's where a parent doesn't have the maturity to do what the child needs to become

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a healthy, autonomous adult. Number one is unpredictability. When you're parents,

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emotional states are unpredictable. Maybe they had an undiagnosed mental illness.

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Maybe there was an addiction. Maybe they just had a lot of emotional outbursts or any difficulty

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managing their own emotions where they couldn't take responsibility for their own emotions.

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That can leave a child with that anxious attachment. There isn't that sense of safety.

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It's like one day mom is great. The next day mom can't get out of bed. And there's nothing to

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explain that. I want to be clear. It's not that parents can't struggle while raising kids.

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We can. But we have to be able to name it for them. We have to be able to talk to our kids about

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that. Listen, your dad struggles with depression. Sometimes you're going to notice that he has a

‍

hard time getting up. It has nothing to do with you. He's getting help for that. We're working on

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that. We love you. Here's what's happening. This isn't your fault, right? It's in the absence of

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that communication and that honoring of what's truly happening, the kids begin to make up stories.

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This is my fault. And kids start to connect dots that aren't meant to be connected when there's

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unpredictability. I come home from school and my mom is really sad today and she's not naming that.

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She's crying off in the corner and I can see that and that affects me, but she's not talking to me

‍

about it. I don't know what's happening. So as a child in my little brain, what I assume is this is

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my fault. I have to come home from school every day, super duper happy because somehow the way I'm

‍

coming home from school. is making mom behave differently, even when that's not true. So again,

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unpredictability is when a parent's emotional state is unpredictable and unaccounted for.

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The parent does not take responsibility for what's happening. Another example, a parent loses their

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temper and gets really angry. We don't love that. That's not great. That's hard for kids. But what

‍

makes it even harder is when it goes unaddressed and unnamed and unrepaired. If a parent is

‍

struggling with an anger issue and they sometimes come down hard, The ability to come back and say,

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I got angry. I have a temper. That is not your fault. You did nothing to evoke that kind of

‍

reaction in me. That's my fault. That's my job. to work through that anger.

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That is not your fault, right? We're naming it, which allows the child to release the pain of that,

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understand that it's not their fault, and see an adult be an adult. An adult takes responsibility,

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an adult takes accountability, and hopefully and presumably the adult begins to make changes as

‍

well. And so that unpredictability can also just be part of neglect. Sometimes a parent's just

‍

absent. They are not in the room. They might not be yelling. They might not be crying. But due to

‍

their own problems and their own heartaches and their own hardships, they're maybe going through

‍

the motions of sitting at the dinner table, of getting you to bed, getting you to school, but

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they're absent. There's no emotional presence. And it's erratic.

‍

Sometimes they're present. A lot of times they're not. Kids make up narratives in the absence of

‍

consistency. They will make up a narrative about that. Those narratives are almost always self

‍

-shaming. It's me. It's my fault. I'm the problem, right? It's really hard for you to trust that

‍

someone will show up consistently and reliably. Number two, the other one I see so commonly is what

‍

we call parentification. This occurs when the parent relies on the child to meet the parent's

‍

emotional needs. So if you were conditioned to take care of your parents' emotions,

‍

you became the parent for your parents, you may struggle to understand healthy boundaries in adult

‍

relationships. You may feel like it's your job to be the adult in the room for everyone around you.

‍

You may take on more responsibility for other people's emotions than is your responsibility to

‍

take. It's really hard to change this pattern if you were parentified as a child.

‍

So for example, Even a well-meaning parent, maybe you're a highly empathetic kid.

‍

You're pretty precocious and you can kind of read the cues and you can tell that mom is sad or dad

‍

is upset. And you go to them and you say, oh man, are you okay? And slowly over time,

‍

mom or dad or whoever the person is caring for you just begins to confide in you. Yeah, you know,

‍

this is really hard. And you actually have the ability to be there for them, to...

‍

them through those emotions, to cheer them up, to make them feel better. Maybe as you begin to get

‍

a little older, you might even have wisdom for them. And slowly you start parenting your parent.

‍

Did you know that three out of four U.S. homes have toxic chemicals in their tap water? Even when

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your water looks perfectly clear, it can still carry contaminants that you don't want in your body

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or in that of your family's. And here's what's frustrating. Standard fridge and pitcher filters

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often don't remove most of what's actually in question, and bottled water can come with

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microplastics. That's why I'm excited to tell you about AquaTrue. It's a countertop water purifier

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‍

Now listen, when you're in an adult relationship with your parent, this is going to happen a little

‍

more. We do. move into two-way relationships a little bit with our parents as we become adults,

‍

although it's always really a one-way relationship. A parent always has more power than the child,

‍

even in adult parent-child relationships. But man, when you're a kid, if this is the primary means

‍

by which you're relating to a parent is that you're caring for them, it's a big problem because two

‍

things are happening there. Number one, you're learning how to always prioritize someone else over

‍

your own needs. And number two, you're not getting your needs met.

‍

Think about that. You're not getting your needs as a child met. Your parent isn't attuning to you

‍

and attuning to your emotional states and saying things like, I love your empathy.

‍

I love that you care about me, but I want you to know this is not your problem.

‍

This is my problem. I'm the adult here. Thank you for noticing that I was sad.

‍

I appreciate that. And this is not your problem to solve. This is my problem.

‍

I'm an adult. I have other adults who will help me through this. I'm here for you.

‍

I want to know what's going on with you, right? That's what a healthy parent does. In those

‍

situations, it's not that we don't want to honor the empathy of our kids. It's beautiful. But we

‍

don't want to take that slippery slope down to letting our kids parent us. And it happens all the

‍

time. We have to watch that as parents because two things are happening there. They're

‍

overdeveloping that attunement muscle to other people, but they're also underdeveloping what it

‍

feels like to have someone else attune. to them. And this sets you up for all kinds of issues in

‍

adult relationships. When you go into your adulthood, you don't know what it looks like to be in a

‍

relationship with someone who's there for you. You only know how to show up for other people.

‍

And that sets you up for a lot of codependency. It sets you up to be taken advantage. of by other

‍

people. It sets you up for one-way relationships that are unsatisfying where a lack of intimacy

‍

occurs. So this is a big one to understand if you see some of those patterns in your adult life

‍

where you really have a hard time receiving care from others, asking for what you need,

‍

even identifying what you need. It may well be that you grew up in an environment where you had to

‍

be the adult way too soon. And so already from a very young age, you were pretty good at assessing

‍

the needs around you, but you did not know how to be a child and receive the care of someone else.

‍

And that's really important in healthy relationships, the ability to both give out and receive

‍

care. Thirdly, we're going to talk about criticism. If you grew up in a culture of criticism,

‍

constant criticism, this damages your core sense of self. It's really hard for a child to

‍

understand that all of this criticism around me is not actually about me because these are my

‍

parents. They know best. That's what kids think. So all of this criticism that I'm getting,

‍

that must be the truth. I must be a bad kid. I must not be okay. They're criticizing me for a

‍

reason. This is really unhealthy. We don't grow up with a healthy sense of our goodness,

‍

of our God-given worth, of the beauty in our soul. We grow up feeling inferior,

‍

feeling insecure, feeling unworthy. We don't understand inherently that we are a beloved child of

‍

God. Now you can heal, but it is so important to begin to connect those dots and go, you know what?

‍

Part of the reason I can't actually believe in myself and believe that I'm worthy of good love is

‍

that I've never experienced it. I've been told in one way or another that I was worthless, that I

‍

wouldn't amount to anything, that I was a failure, that I could never get anything right. the day I

‍

was born. I don't have any other memories. So how would I know what it's like to internalize an

‍

entirely different message, which is I am beloved. I am worth love.

‍

I'm not perfect. Of course, who is? And I am a beautiful soul made in the image of God.

‍

Number four, control comes in. If you grew up in an environment that was highly controlled.

‍

Now again, Sometimes well-intended parents want to keep you overly safe and they want to control

‍

everything. Sometimes it's out of a good intention. They don't let you take enough healthy risks.

‍

Sometimes it's coming from a selfish motivation where they're more concerned about how they appear

‍

in the world. And so they control your behavior so they can look good in the world to their

‍

friends. They want you to go to the right school or play the right sport or have the right friends,

‍

right? And that's really more about them than it is about you. So whether that's coming from a

‍

desire to keep you from harm and they control too much, or if it's coming from that more self

‍

-serving place. It makes it hard for you when you get into your adult world to understand how to

‍

take healthy risks. So if you grew up in a highly controlled environment, you might go one of two

‍

directions. You might take too many risks and overcorrect and blow everything up, or you might just

‍

be really, really scared and stay really, really small because you've never learned how to develop

‍

that healthy tolerance for some of the uncertainty, some of the stressors even, some of even the

‍

hardships. of life. And then lastly, I want to talk about rescuing.

‍

And I see this in certain types of families where the parents, out of usually a goodness of heart,

‍

they're constantly swooping in and rescuing kids out of any discomfort, out of any hardship.

‍

They're fighting their kids' battles. Now, sometimes as parents, we need to intervene on behalf of

‍

our kids, right? Something's happening that is wrong. There's an injustice and we need to intervene

‍

to protect our kids. That is absolutely true. But in parents who are rescuing, it's those normal,

‍

everyday incidences that are hard. I didn't get invited to this birthday party. And no, they're not

‍

ganging up and bullying me mercilessly. They're just not including me in their group. And it's

‍

really painful. And as a parent, we got to help our kids honor that that's hard and also teach them

‍

how to tolerate the pain of that. Two things can be true, right? You have to learn how to navigate

‍

challenges in life. You have to learn how to do that with your parents there as that safe anchor.

‍

They're never going to leave you, but they're also not always swooping in to rescue you out of it.

‍

Sometimes doing things that are hard or even doing things where we try and we're not successful at

‍

them are really important for our character and our growth. So this thing of rescuing can also

‍

create a situation in which you arrive at adulthood without those necessary skills to tolerate the

‍

things that come our way in life. As adults, there can sometimes be an entitlement.

‍

There's just this constant kind of feeling of being disappointed by other people when maybe, in

‍

fact, those other people are actually exhibiting normal behaviors. They're not taking

‍

responsibility for something that isn't theirs to take. It's actually yours to take responsibility.

‍

So all of this comes down to that separation and connection. How do I stay connected to people

‍

while also understanding what's mine is mine and what's theirs is theirs? And so here are five

‍

questions that you might ask yourself. Maybe you ask a loved one or a trusted advisor related to

‍

these five parenting patterns. If you suspect that they may have an impact on you today, these are

‍

just some questions to think about and notice and wonder about and get curious about because it

‍

will help you begin to frame your experience so that you can take brave steps toward healing.

‍

So the first one, as it relates to unpredictability, how do I react? when someone I care about is

‍

emotionally volatile or inconsistent? Do I find myself constantly trying to manage their feelings

‍

or walking on eggshells? And if you notice that inside of you, that when someone else is

‍

emotionally volatile or inconsistent, it sort of triggers a part of you that's like, oh, I need to

‍

do something to fix that. I need to change something about myself to fix their feelings.

‍

That's a cue that there's a wound there. that you could begin to heal. Because the truth is,

‍

if someone else is emotionally volatile, that's their responsibility to work through that.

‍

It's your responsibility to be aware, to notice what happens inside of you, to take responsibility

‍

for yourself in that moment. It's not your responsibility to try to fix their emotions.

‍

Number two, as it relates to parentification, do I feel responsible for taking care of others'

‍

emotional needs before my own? In my adult relationships, do I struggle to ask for help or set

‍

boundaries because I'm so used to always prioritizing others? And just notice that.

‍

Notice if that's true. My default is just to immediately take care of them, immediately go to their

‍

needs, whether it's your friends, whether it's your spouse, whether it's your own parents. I've got

‍

to take care of them. I've got to be the bigger person. I've got to do what they need. Versus

‍

sitting with the sometimes uncomfortable feeling of I wonder what I need in this situation from

‍

myself or from another person. And that may be just that beginning to notice the effects of that

‍

parentification in your own adult life. And then number three, when it comes to criticism,

‍

how do I respond to feedback or criticism from others? Do I immediately internalize it,

‍

criticize myself, or feel like I need to perfect myself? to avoid being judged.

‍

In other words, if I notice criticism around me or even any healthy feedback,

‍

do I immediately assume I'm at fault? I must have gotten it wrong. I've got to do better.

‍

And if so, that's something to notice. What if instead I could take a deep breath and wonder,

‍

is it true? Is that criticism even about me? Or is it more about this other person?

‍

It's possible this has nothing to do with me. It's possible I haven't done anything wrong.

‍

And you can begin to build up that new muscle. Number four, control.

‍

Do I find it difficult to make decisions without seeking approval or validation from others?

‍

Am I able to pursue my own interests or do I feel pressure to live up to the expectations of

‍

others? And just notice. If I were to vote a certain way, if I were to attend a certain church,

‍

if I were to wear a certain article of clothing as an adult, is there just sort of this internal

‍

backlash where it's like, I can't do that. I'd get in trouble. Even though I'm an adult and even

‍

though I'm not doing anything wrong, I'm just doing something a little bit different than other

‍

people. Just notice that. Begin to pay attention. What if I could challenge myself to take some

‍

small steps toward autonomy, toward doing some things that I like to do,

‍

even though they're different from what I was taught was okay.

‍

And you might start with some low-hanging fruit, right? It might start with something you wear, a

‍

food that you eat. That's just a little bit different than what you were allowed as a child.

‍

And then number five, rescuing. When facing challenges, do I tend to rely on others to bail me out,

‍

to fix things for me? Or do I feel empowered to tackle problems on my own? How comfortable am I

‍

with allowing others to fail and learn from their mistakes? How often am I wanting to swoop in and

‍

rescue others? That might be another way this shows up. And just notice that. And maybe ask for

‍

feedback, again, from a trusted advisor, because you're beginning to identify patterns. There's a

‍

reason you're this way. Likely this goes all the way back to childhood. So these questions should

‍

help you identify how these early patterns might still be affecting your adult life and your

‍

relationships. And I want you to remember this above all else. Healing starts with you.

‍

No matter what happened in your past, you have the power to begin to change some of these patterns.

‍

You can do this inside of you. It starts with just beginning to notice and name some of these

‍

patterns and beginning to entertain just the thought, what if it could be different?

‍

What if there was another way? And you will begin to unlock the natural God-given healing inside

‍

of your soul. Because no matter what happened to you in the past, your body is designed with a bent

‍

toward healing. Invite God's spirit into that process and ask God to begin to nudge you when one of

‍

those patterns is showing up in your life. And I promise you, you will begin to see numerous

‍

opportunities and numerous occasions to make a tiny change.

‍

One brave step at a time.

‍

Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you

‍

take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to

‍

podcasts and click the plus or follow button. That will ensure you don't miss an episode and it

‍

helps get the word out to others. While you're there, I'd love it if you'd leave your five-star

‍

review. I look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best

‍

of who you are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.

‍

Scripture is powerful. 

It has the power to comfort, guide, convict, and restore. But when it's taken out of context or used to control, it can also leave deep wounds.

In this conversation, Dr. Alison sits down with theologian and Mending the Soul co-founder Dr. Steven Tracy to explore how Scripture can be used as medicine—or as poison—for those who have experienced abuse.

Together, they unpack some of the most commonly misused passages around submission, forgiveness, honoring parents, and divorce, while offering a more faithful way of reading Scripture: one that reflects God's heart for the vulnerable, the oppressed, and the wounded.

Here’s what you’ll cover

* Why spiritually abusive people often weaponize Scripture
* How to recognize the difference between biblical truth and spiritual manipulation
* What God reveals about His heart for those experiencing abuse
* Why humility matters when we interpret Scripture
* How healthy boundaries honor both God and human dignity
* How survivors can begin rebuilding trust in both God and His Word

Whether you've experienced spiritual abuse yourself, love someone who has, or simply want to handle Scripture with greater wisdom and compassion, this conversation offers both clarity and hope.

Because God's Word was never meant to keep you trapped in harm.

It was always meant to lead you toward healing.

‍

More Resources:

‍

You can now preorder Dr. Alison’s newest book, The Secure Soul, and immediately receive the first 3 chapters as well as early access to the companion guide!

‍

Read Dr. Steven Tracy’s book: To Heal or Harm

‍

Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram

‍

Curious what Family Role may have shaped you? Take the Family Role Quiz to learn how you may be showing up in your relationships with others.

Want to hear more like this? Start here:

Episode 163: Healing Spiritual Wounds – Understanding Abuse in Faith Spaces

Episode 17: What is Church Hurt and How Do I Heal?

📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here

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

‍

TRANSCRIPT

Hey everyone. I’m Dr. Alison, and I’m so glad you’re here.

Today’s conversation is a powerful one. My guest is Dr. Steven Tracy, theologian and the co-founder of Mending the Soul, a global mission dedicated to resourcing and equpinpping community and faith leaders in informed and compassionate responses to those impacted by abuse.

He is the author of a new book called To Heal or Harm: Scripture’s Use as Poison or Medicine for Abuse Survivors.

And that title really says it all.

Because Scripture is powerful. It is living and active. It can comfort us, ground us, guide us, correct us, and bring us back to the heart of God. But because Scripture is powerful, when it is misused—when it is twisted, weaponized, or wielded by someone seeking power or control—it can also cause devastating harm.

For so many abuse survivors, including many of you, the wound is not only what happened to you. It’s what was said to you in God’s name afterward.

“You need to forgive.”
“You need to submit.”
“You need to honor your father and mother.”
“God hates divorce.”
“Don’t gossip.”
“Don’t be bitter.”
“Don’t touch God’s anointed.”

These are words and ideas taken from Scripture, but when they are ripped from the larger heart of God, they can become tools of silencing instead of pathways to healing.

And that is what Steve helps us name today.

One of the most painful realities we talk about today is that sometimes the most vulnerable people are the ones most easily harmed by distorted theology because they genuinely want to obey God. They want to be faithful. They want to be gracious. They want to forgive. They want to do what Scripture says.

And yet faithfulness to God never means surrendering your dignity to someone who is destroying you.

That’s where I want to pause for a moment with a passage from Exodus 3 that Steven will expand on in today’s episode. God says to Moses:

“I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them.”

That passage gives us such a clear picture of God’s heart.

God sees.
God hears.
God knows.
God comes down to deliver.

God does not minimize oppression. He does not spiritualize abuse. He does not ask the vulnerable to pretend they are fine in order to protect the powerful. God sees the affliction of his people. He hears their cries. He knows their suffering—not just intellectually, but personally, compassionately, intimately. And he moves toward them with deliverance.

That matters so much for anyone who has been taught, explicitly or implicitly, that God is mostly concerned with preserving appearances, protecting institutions, or keeping a family together at any cost.

The God of Scripture is not indifferent to harm. He is not unmoved by suffering. He is not aligned with the abuser. He is near to the brokenhearted. He protects the vulnerable. He exposes what is hidden. He tells the truth.

In this conversation, Steve helps us understand how Scripture can be misused in marriage, in families, in churches, and in counseling contexts. We talk about common passages that get weaponized around submission and forgiveness. And We also talk about how to read Scripture with humility, with wisdom, and with special attention to those who are vulnerable.

One of the things I appreciated most about Steve is his posture. He has deep theological training, but he also speaks with humility. He names how much he has learned from survivors, from women, from marginalized communities, and from people whose life experiences helped him see things in Scripture he had previously missed.

That kind of humility matters. Because when Scripture is interpreted from a place of unchecked power, it can be used to protect the powerful. But when we come to Scripture with humility, with reverence, and with the heart of Jesus, we begin to see again and again that God’s heart bends toward the wounded, the oppressed, the silenced, and the vulnerable.

So whether you are a survivor yourself, whether you love someone who has been harmed, or whether you are a pastor, counselor, leader, or friend who wants to help without causing more harm, I think this conversation will give you language, clarity, and hope.

The title of Steve’s book is To Heal or Harm. And my prayer as you listen is that Scripture would become again what God intended it to be—not a weapon used against you, but a place where you encounter the God who sees you, hears you, knows your suffering, and comes near to bring healing.

Please enjoy my conversation with STeve Tracy

‍

Alison (00:10.962)

So Steve, you start this book, such a powerful book, and there's a lot in it, but you start with a story of a woman named Cheryl. And the title of the book is To Heal or Harm, right? To Heal or Harm. And she is an example of someone for whom scripture was used in a harmful, very harmful manner. Can you share with my listeners who haven't read the book yet?

‍

A little bit about her story and why it was an important place for you to start to frame this conversation.

‍

steve tracy (00:47.296)

Absolutely. I was introduced to Cheryl through my wife Celeste, through their friendship and

‍

Celesta's ministry and Cheryl's life. And Celesta just spoken so highly of Cheryl and said, This woman is has such a heart for Christ, and she just wants nothing but to honor the Lord, follow Scripture, and sadly Scripture has been really leveraged against her. but I just heard such respect from Celeste for Cheryl as she was in a horrible

‍

Abusive marriage, but but trying to figure out, you know, she had a spiritually abusive husband with with advanced degrees in theology who just weaponized scripture against her. She'd grown up in a very fundamentalistic church that weaponized scripture against her. So she really illustrated at the highest level, most destructive level, how

‍

A man or a woman who wants to follow God has and obeys scripture actually can find themselves in tremendous bondage because of that heart to honor God and follow scripture, when scripture is misused. And Charles

‍

Alison (01:53.278)

Yeah.

‍

Alison (02:09.737)

Yeah.

‍

steve tracy (02:11.563)

become a dear friend and I we just so so respect the journey she's been on and she graciously agreed to you know write that introduction to the book really it comes out of a lot of pain but there it's a beautiful sequel in that we've just seen the Lord's healing in her life and rebuilding, restoring. So she kind of symbolizes the the whole picture of the the harm

‍

Alison (02:24.361)

Yeah.

‍

steve tracy (02:39.935)

scriptures weaponized, but that's not the end of the story. It need not be the end of the story. th those same scriptures that were mu used against us can be a tremendous source of life and healing. So, yeah. She covers the whole thing.

‍

Alison (02:43.049)

Yeah.

‍

Alison (02:54.771)

I love I love how you talk about this because you you talk in the book and it and it really makes sense because scripture's powerful. So when it is weaponized, when it is used against us, it's powerful, but it is also so powerful for healing. I always think of the the verse in Song of Solomon that says, Love is as strong as death. The the love of scripture, the love of God is stronger. but

‍

steve tracy (03:17.74)

Yes.

‍

Alison (03:24.625)

You say in the book, and I think it's a really well put that scripture can become poison or medicine, especially for abuse survivors. And tell unpack that a little bit. What is it? Why is you know, why is it so powerful? How you you know, you're you're kind of getting at it with Cheryl's story, but it's like we we want to follow scripture. So we're primed for a vulnerability there if someone is mis.

‍

using it, especially if we're being already being silenced or abused or or a victim. What have you seen in in how's you know, how that happens and why it's so powerful in that way?

‍

steve tracy (04:06.966)

Yeah. abusers take advantage of vulnerabilities, naivities. abusers and not that one size fits all. There's as many kinds of abusers as there are people, but there are certainly gent some general characteristics. And I liken liken abusers to sharks that n that smell blood in the water. They're looking for the vulnerabilities. So often it's

‍

individuals that just have a an innocent, naive trust, you know, think children, others, that that can be so taken advantage of. Or or an an an innocent, naive again, desire to do what's right. And that's a good thing, but if it's not coupled with life experience and wisdom, and it's that's not a judgmental statement, you know,

‍

sometimes we we just haven't had certain experiences so we're we're naive, not in any kind of a bad sense other than we're more vulnerable 'cause you don't know what you don't know. And abusers take advantage of that. that just innocent desire to honor God.

‍

Alison (05:17.535)

Yeah.

‍

Alison (05:24.608)

Yeah.

‍

steve tracy (05:25.334)

That's beautiful, but if you're if you're not astute to the reality of evil, the the the characteristics of evildoers, boy that that can just be deadly. And so often Christians because we want to be trusting and loving, etcetera,

‍

We don't want to be mean. We don't set the boundaries that we need to set. And I know just from looking at your website, you talk, I think, quite a bit about boundaries that's actually necessary. but if if we don't understand that, we don't know how to do that, we can be really vulnerable. And then scripture is kind of the ultimate tool, so to speak, in a spiritual context. It's God's word. So if I can just

‍

dump scripture on you, I I've I've got the trump card, right? Well, unless you know how to interpret it for yourself with some confidence, then I I you you stand condemned. Like you have to do what I say because I'm saying what God says, so you have to do it. And that that's how this often works.

‍

Alison (06:22.686)

Yes. That's right.

‍

Alison (06:33.47)

Yes.

‍

Alison (06:39.004)

Yeah, and this is the essence of spiritual abuse, right? Taking the name of God in vain, you know, misusing the name of God for power and control and manipulation and ill intent, which is just you such the heart of the work that you're doing, you and your wife, as you're trying to help people heal. yes, I so so Steve, my a lot of my audience, we talk a lot about.

‍

steve tracy (06:42.531)

Right.

‍

steve tracy (06:49.75)

Right. Right.

‍

Okay.

‍

Alison (07:06.098)

And it comes a lot out of my own story of being high in empathy, a natural kind of people pleaser, but but that sort of fond response that has been conditioned, and then it's reinforced in many ways by faith culture. Just as you're saying, we want to be kind. And there's a real genuineness behind that. and I always think of the verse, it's just becomes such a a powerful verse for me. Be shrewd.

‍

steve tracy (07:27.938)

Right.

‍

Alison (07:34.226)

As the snake and innocent as the dove, right? It's both. We have to be shrewd and wise. And for some people, one of the other of those is easier. But for many of the people in my audience, it's learning that the shrewd ways where you can kind of outwit the person who's trying to take advantage of you.

‍

steve tracy (07:37.432)

Love that. Right, right.

‍

steve tracy (07:54.349)

Yeah, ab absolutely. And honestly, I think it's more difficult in the evangelical culture for women. In the sense that there's just a lot of kind of innate patriarchy. I don't want to get into a whole gender role discussion here. That's not my point, but if a man sets boundaries often in an evangelical church context, that's okay, he's just being a man.

‍

Alison (08:01.715)

Yes.

‍

Alison (08:22.42)

Yeah.

‍

steve tracy (08:23.32)

But if a woman stands up for herself and sets boundaries, often that's that that's frowned on at best and really demeaned at worst. And that's that that's

‍

Manifestly un unfair and wrong. Every human it doesn't matter whether you're a man or a woman, this isn't a gender issue. You have a right biblically to set boundaries. And and we need to be able to affirm that for people. There's a way to do it, of course. but that's not being ungodly, unloving, etc., if we set healthy boundaries.

‍

Alison (09:03.048)

Yeah. I love that. So there's two directions I really want to go. One is getting at what you're saying, this idea of how power and and even hermeneutics, how interpreting scripture can get misused. the other way I wanna go is more practical. I wanna start there and then circle back to some of the scripture interpretation stuff. Because I remember when I was I first started seminary, because I did my

‍

Initial masters in counseling at a at a seminary. And I remember my professors saying it was the first time I'd heard this, everybody brings a lens to scripture. And just because you're Protestant or just because you're evangelical, you know, our our Catholic brothers and sisters, I think, you know, you can you can argue with some of the theologies, but they do understand that we're bringing an interpretive lens to scripture. But so are are we Protestants, so are we evangelicals. And you again, you can bring one that's harmful or you can bring one

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steve tracy (09:40.558)

Right.

‍

Alison (10:00.926)

And I love how you land on this in the book that honors the most vulnerable. I I just I think that is such a powerful place that you land. I guess I just went in that, I guess I just went down that path. So we'll go down that path. we'll come back to the actual scriptures in a bit for those of you listening. But I just I think it's important to zoom up for a second and go, how are we approaching the text? Because

‍

You can you can approach the text with ill intent, but you can also be naive in approaching the t the text and do harm. So tell me a little bit about how you arrived. You you've studied, you know, you've been a pastor, you've been in seminary, you've studied scripture, that this idea that we have to read it through the lens of the most vulnerable.

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steve tracy (10:55.758)

Yeah, well I would even even move it up twenty thousand more feet at the highest level and say, I really think the starting point in most respects for sound interpretation of scripture, technical word is hermeneutics, is is to begin with a humble receptive posture. And you know, i in our flesh we

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Alison (11:01.512)

Yes, yes.

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steve tracy (11:24.908)

we tend to not recognize our own vulnerabilities and biases, etc. And that's not only about sin. It's also just about, you know, we're we're products of our culture. So we we breathe the air around us, so to speak. So if

‍

There are certain things that aren't even questioned. If we lived roughly 150 years ago in the South as Christians, we would have thought, with very few exceptions, that slavery was thoroughly biblical. And and it's easy for us in 2026 to look back and say, what idiots they were. How could they have thought that? But

‍

again, we're w we're products of our culture in in so many ways and so we have lenses that we don't even recognize. We we just it's just how we think.

‍

culture as well as sin, but it's both. They're not the same. But that that feeds in it creates a like a you know lens through which we read scripture. So having a humble receptive posture is the beginning place. Just in essence saying to yourself, and I would often tell my seminary students this, have often said this,

‍

You have and I some really wrong beliefs. But here's the scary thing. Most of them we're not aware of. But I think that's a fair starting place to assume because we're fallible, finite, and sinful human beings, there's some things that we think that are not right.

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steve tracy (13:15.648)

And how are we gonna have those surfaced? The only way is if we have a a humble receptive posture. One of the things coming back, Alison, to your comment about

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Alison (13:21.876)

Good.

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steve tracy (13:29.592)

the vulnerable, the marginalized. I I'm the pinnacle of power, right? I I'm white, I'm male, at least in the church world, I have a PhD in biblical studies, like, you know, how in the world am I gonna recognize some of my wrong thinking if I am not willing to listen to the voices of those with very different experiences?

‍

I shudder in hindsight at some of the things I th thought, said, as a young pastor right out of seminary. my goodness. I I was clueless to the experiences of the marginalized of women, people of color, of of abuse survivors. Those weren't my experiences. So my world was so different, and the only way I could and I read scripture accordingly.

‍

Alison (14:18.228)

Yeah. Yeah.

‍

Alison (14:27.199)

Wow.

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steve tracy (14:28.494)

But in over the years, God's really humbled me in a countless ways. And I've learned to listen to those voices. It's not that scripture changes, but the lens that I have through which I read scripture has dramatically shifted. And so I see things in the text I just didn't see before. they were there, but I didn't see them. So yeah.

‍

Alison (14:50.912)

Interesting. It's that's powerful what you're saying, that it was through your own. I love that emphasis on humility because there is humility, your willingness to be with others whose stories were so different from your own that challenged. Was there any specific moment or one that stands out of that lens?

‍

getting shattered or at least challenged because I think that can be that's that's a very formational process to open yourself to that.

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steve tracy (15:30.536)

absolutely. one of those most pivotal moments, it was really a I mean, I look back on it and say, This is the grace of God. cause Steve Tracy needed some massive reframe in his thinking. I share it in the book. I was doing a s

‍

part of a preaching series. I was one of the teaching pastors and we were doing a series on family life. And my goodness, I had a master's in theology, so I and I could read it from the Greek. So I mean I had it wired, right? And I preached one of the sermons on on family life and I thought frankly it was an excellent sermon. And

‍

Monday morning I had a a letter in my box from a young woman in our church. she was in our singles ministry. I ov I oversaw singles among other things. And she unloaded both barrels on me. And and it was very appropriately so. And she basically said, I I've sat through four or five weeks now of sermons on the family. She said it nicer than this, but basically said, You guys are clueless.

‍

You you're telling us to honor our parents, to forgive, to submit. Do you know what it's like to flee from an abusive father who who beats you senseless? Do you know what it's like to be woken up in the middle of the night by your mother fleeing for her life with her children? And then you tell us we're simply supposed to forgive, submit, respect, on and on. Before you

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Alison (16:53.632)

Yeah.

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steve tracy (17:12.788)

Issue your grand again, she said it much more kindly, but what I heard from the Spirit was before you issue your grand pronouncements, start listening to the experiences of your flock that are different from your own, and you will be addressing scripture different differently. That was a moment of tremendous humbling for me.

‍

Alison (17:17.525)

Yeah.

‍

Alison (17:31.61)

Mm. Wow.

‍

Alison (17:37.684)

Yeah.

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steve tracy (17:38.019)

And I have gone back and apologized to that woman. but that was one of the bigger moments. Going to Africa for the first time in 2007 was the second. it was and and that was to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I've been over twenty times now.

‍

have staff there. It's been called the rape epicenter of the world. There's a level of violence, particularly against women, that's it it just takes your breath away, gives you literal nightmares, but God's it work in profound ways. But that first conference, initially it was how can these people be so

‍

malignantly patriarchal and how can they be defending all this? And and we were there almost a month and then they started in appropriate ways challenging me about things that I'd never thought about.

‍

Alison (18:35.624)

Mm.

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steve tracy (18:37.774)

from forgiveness to honoring parents to respect for the elderly to a variety of things. And it and God just overwhelmingly convicted me that I had looked down on people of another culture because I could see certain things that really don't accord with scripture.

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But I was completely oblivious to things in my culture that I didn't even question. And they were pointing that out. And that was a second one

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Alison (19:04.584)

Mm.

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steve tracy (19:08.366)

It was painful, but boy, I needed that. So that's that's just really given those two events in particular. There have been dozens, if not hundreds, of others, but those were particularly powerful in just surfacing my need to come to life and especially scripture with some humbleness, a lot of humbleness, and and receptivity. Lord show me. I I love what David says at the end of Psalm 139 when he has spent

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Alison (19:12.329)

Yeah.

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Alison (19:31.22)

Yeah.

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steve tracy (19:38.413)

the whole chapter, or the author, saying, God knows everything about me. If I go to the highest heavens, he's there. If I go to the shield, he's there. Before there's a word on my tongue, he knows it, you know, etc. He knows everything about me. But then you get to the very end of Psalm 139.

‍

Says, search me, O God, and know me. Well, that's not for God's benefit. He's just said God knows everything. That's for the author's benefit. and see if there's any unhealthy way in me. Lead me in the way everlasting, the way of righteousness. He he's saying, God, I'm assuming there's there's there's

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Alison (20:03.434)

Yeah.

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Alison (20:11.348)

Yeah, yeah.

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Alison (20:19.36)

Mm.

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steve tracy (20:29.27)

All kinds of things that are unhealthy in my heart. I don't see and you see, please reveal that to me. That should be our posture coming to Scripture. God, I'm sure I've got some s some things wrong here, but I don't know what they are. Show me, Lord. And often what God will use to show us will be other brothers and sisters who've had a very different life experience.

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Alison (20:41.501)

Yes.

‍

Yeah.

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Alison (20:55.028)

Yeah.

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steve tracy (20:55.81)

that see things differently. Their experiences are different. And that'll maybe wake up some things in us that need to be woken up, a a shift of perspective. And it's particularly needed right now. in our culture, we are so polarized. It it's, you know, you're on the right or you're on the left. And then that's light and dark. I mean, there is no middle ground. There's no discussion.

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Alison (21:21.205)

I know.

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steve tracy (21:23.456)

And we can't learn from each other. And that's not just sad, but it's tragic. Because there's error on the right and the left in every way, you know. W we need to learn from each other, but only a humble receptive posture is gonna let us get those insights that ultimately then are gonna help shape and correct.

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Alison (21:31.954)

It's tragic.

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steve tracy (21:51.116)

Misconceptions when we come to reading God's word.

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Alison (21:54.611)

It it is so everything you're saying is so profound and so countercultural to your point. I I find myself I do a part part for for many of the reasons you do the work you do, I do a now a daily devotional podcast where I I bring sort of psychological wisdom to scripture and I'm very clear. I'm not trying to argue the the doctrines, I'm simply trying to highlight these themes that I think are so evident, themes like attachment and

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steve tracy (22:00.046)

Yeah.

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Alison (22:24.582)

And securiti and you know, God's love that are in the scripture and suffering and things that don't often get highlighted. And I've heard from so many people that say, Gosh, I I it's so helpful to hear that you know, I I was kind of almost inoculated against those scriptures because of the way they've been used for harm, but then you see them from a different light. And I I say that because sometimes I I sh I personally have

‍

Shy away from taking on some of the, and I guess where I'm going with this is humble receptivity doesn't mean we don't have beliefs. It doesn't mean we don't have opinions. It doesn't mean we don't care. But it does mean we are more interested. I guess I would say I I'm not as interested in being right. I I'm I have, and it gets to me at psych the psychology of differentiation. I can hold.

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steve tracy (23:04.312)

Absolutely. Right.

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Alison (23:21.48)

A view, I can hold an opinion and also understand that I'm still probably missing some things and I have something to learn from you. And that's just hard. Those kinds of conversations are in the public space. I can lots of people in private I'll have those conversations with are very hard to come by. Very hard to come by.

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steve tracy (23:43.032)

So hard to come by. my goodness. but we are

‍

I'll use the word impoverished if we don't have those conversations. We're we'll be in an echo chamber. And then if we're not careful, the only podcasts we listen to, the only news that we listen to, will all reflect our our preconceptions. And so so they just reinforce what we already believe, some of which is dead wrong.

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Alison (23:54.942)

Ooh.

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Alison (23:58.784)

Mm-hmm.

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Alison (24:14.973)

Exactly.

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steve tracy (24:23.124)

So we we've gotta have those conversations and voices.

‍

And and and you rightly say, Alison, it doesn't mean we don't have convictions, but this is how we sharpen our convictions. And even if nothing changes in our conviction, it will dramatically change how we view other people. Even if at the end of the conversation we s we still think our conviction is right and that other posture is wrong, and it may well be that we change, but let's assume we don't change. We will look at that other person.

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Alison (24:43.498)

Good.

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Alison (24:55.337)

Yeah.

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steve tracy (24:58.96)

Differently. There'll be a level of compassion that's and understanding that wasn't there before. And that is that's the heart of Jesus. Like he, there's a reason it was the spiritual leaders, the Pharisees and Sadducees, that hated him and the sinners that flocked to him. And it

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Alison (25:19.657)

Yeah.

‍

Yeah. Yes.

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steve tracy (25:24.262)

Obviously Jesus had, I mean to use your language, strong convictions, of course, but the way he lived those out was was with such tenderness, such compassion, such understanding. You know, like the woman at the well in John 4. He's not justifying immorality in the least, but he he had such an app

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Alison (25:29.246)

Yes.

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steve tracy (25:53.135)

appreciation i i in the sense of deep understanding of her woundedness. She wasn't just a Samaritan, let alone just a slut, basically. That's she was engaging in inappropriate behavior, but that that wasn't all he saw the person and the need.

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Alison (26:14.046)

Yes. What's the whole story? Yeah. Yeah.

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steve tracy (26:16.94)

Right. And that's what we want to learn to do. Jesus models this for us. So we need to do it, especially now in this horrifically polarized age where we slap a label on someone and they're woke, they're right, they're left, whatever, and then we don't hear anything they have to say and we don't learn. We're not challenged and they're they're just a label and not a human being that needs compassion.

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Alison (26:22.048)

Yeah, he does.

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Alison (26:39.701)

Yeah.

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Alison (26:46.28)

Amen. Yeah. Well said. What Steve, what are I'm just curious, in your years of work in the trenches and hearing people's stories, what are some of the most common ways you've seen scripture weaponized, especially in marriage, family, and church contexts?

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steve tracy (27:06.39)

Yeah. A as far as specific texts.

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Alison (27:10.196)

Yeah, sure.

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steve tracy (27:15.186)

It's probably yeah, I mean dozens of texts immediately come to mind. you know, I I give the example Allison in the book years ago when we still lived in Phoenix. We live in Portland, Oregon now, and boy, that's a tale of two cities. Talking about being able to appreciate and understand both both sides politically.

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Alison (27:34.378)

Yeah.

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Yes, I bet.

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steve tracy (27:38.815)

Which has been been really good for for a lot of reasons. But at this time, it was probably close to 20 years ago, one of our board members was on the Phoenix City Council and had a tremendous heart for abuse and abused women in particular and and sponsored a lot of domestic violence programs in the city of Phoenix. So she got me in with all of the domestic violence directors. not

‍

Not just faith-based, but that time there were 12, 14 primary DV shelters, and she got me an audience with all of them, set it up, had me do a presentation, you know, 20-30 minutes on mending the soul and our resources for for abused women, children. And then I took took some QA time and I watched one woman like you can feel the energy, you can like and it was

‍

She was just about to burst. So she I mean, the second I finished and and asked if there are any questions, she literally just jumped up and blurted out, What does many of the soul say about wives smitting? And she in essence was quoting from Ephesians five twenty-four. And again, most of these were not

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Alison (28:51.637)

Yeah.

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Alison (28:56.756)

Yeah. Yeah.

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steve tracy (29:02.978)

Faith based shelters, a couple of them were, most weren't, mainly trained social workers, but boy, all and these were all female directors and w she articulated you could tell what they were all asking. I mean they're all their heads are nodding and I'm on the spot, like what can you say about women submit and everything. So I think that's probably the most commonly as f as it relates to family life, and and the husband's the head from First Corinthians eleven one would be a close second. Those those are really

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Alison (29:15.934)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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Alison (29:32.298)

Mm.

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steve tracy (29:32.865)

overlapping though those two texts because on the face if you don't look if you don't use sound hermeneutics you don't apply don't look at the context you don't let scripture interpret scripture you could take both of those to as many do and say the man has all the power the woman just need to submit that's God's plan and if you're not submitting you're out of the will of God end of discussion and if you do that with those texts that we have we have

‍

basically given a carte blanche opportunity for abuse and it's done in the name of obeying scripture. So that's

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Alison (30:10.291)

Yeah. yeah.

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Alison (30:15.774)

Yeah. How do you so with something like either those scriptures or others, how do you begin to entangle what they actually mean? How how do you approach that? Because I I know sometimes in my own work what I will do is immediately say, I'm not here to to to jump into a debate on whether you're egalitarian or complementarian. I I what I am here to do is say whatever you're you know, believe

‍

you you you that you have to be risk you know we have to honor human dignity. but sometimes I don't know if that's you know how how do you you know so I always try to disarm the immediate like what I feel like is often a red herring like what's the correct interpretation versus what is actually harming human souls? And and and that's sort of my therapeutic lens.

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steve tracy (30:51.363)

Right.

‍

Yeah.

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steve tracy (31:12.31)

Yeah.

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Alison (31:12.518)

Right. So for example, if I have a man and a woman in my office, I I've never done a lot of couples counseling, but let's say, you know, to me it's like I it's less about trying to get the guy to to to have a different doctrine. And it's more about what how can we honor this woman sitting in front of you? Or less about having the woman have a different doctrine and more about how do you honor this person God made you to be? That's my bottom line conviction. But I guess I'm curious because you've been a pastor.

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Ан сортов аз а терапист, томі дас ава інте.

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steve tracy (31:42.051)

Yeah.

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steve tracy (31:45.91)

Yeah, and that's a fair approach at that in that context.

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Alison (31:47.614)

I'm curious how you how you try to untangle that. Do you think

‍

There are inherently harmful doctrines that actually need to be dismantled, or how do you actually kind of dig into teasing out the the passage from the harmful ways they've been applied?

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steve tracy (32:08.492)

Yeah, excellent question. And given my biblical studies training, I go ahead and go for the details. That's what I'm trained to do. But I I agree with you in that you know, in in this book I don't get into issues of ordaining women. I have some real strong views. I'm and if

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Alison (32:09.874)

Okay.

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Alison (32:18.142)

Yeah. Yeah.

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Alison (32:27.55)

Right.

‍

Yeah.

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steve tracy (32:35.202)

I'm not afraid to say Slus and I are I don't even like the complementarian egalitarian language 'cause biblically I think both sides are believe in gender complementation. The question is whether it's hierarchical, in a power sense. I I'd rather use mutualist hierarchical as the two categories. But I I don't get into ordaining women in the book, even though I come we

‍

Alison (32:50.377)

Interesting.

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Alison (32:57.93)

Interesting.

‍

Ye like the hot button issues, you don't

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steve tracy (33:04.15)

Well, it's a i it's a hot button. I'm p not at all afraid to have that discussion, but I try to build on common ground that whether or not one believes that in in more traditional gender roles so to speak, surely from the biblical text we should be able to agree to these things.

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Alison (33:26.272)

Hmm, that's good.

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steve tracy (33:29.686)

I I do and it's probably the lengthiest or at least this one of the lengthiest sections of the book is is unpacking Ephesians 524. Again, I don't approach it in terms primarily of of model gender model of marriage, but just note several things right in the text that will rule out abuses.

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Alison (33:56.97)

Yes.

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steve tracy (33:57.419)

Starting with the fact that that the paragraph begins in verse 21, and that's indisputable, because there is no verb in verse 22. The the verb is assumed from verse 21. and then

‍

Everyone all exegetes agree on that. So the the paragraph on guidelines for husbands, wives and marriage begins with submitting one to another in verse twenty one. Now not all self-identified complementarians agree with me here, but I give arguments for saying, no, that's

‍

That's mutual, that's back and forth. And other passages of scripture support that, particularly first Corinthians seven, one through five, in a context of s sexuality in marriage, sexual intimacy, Paul expressly says the wife does not have

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Alison (34:41.534)

Yeah.

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steve tracy (34:57.868)

authentic authority over her own body, but the husband does, and then he flips it upside down and says the husband doesn't have authority over his own body, but the wife does. I mean that's as mutual as you could ever ask for. So I think that's a very relevant. It's the same author and it's a similar topic. So you know, those are the kind of observations from the text that help really temper even if you one believes that

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Alison (35:08.202)

Yeah.

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steve tracy (35:27.182)

God has ordained gender roles in a hierarchical way in marriage, there's per I I I call it parameters of submission. some guidelines that we should all be able to agree on, whether one comes from a

‍

Alison (35:37.198)

Mm, mm-hmm.

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steve tracy (35:46.157)

self-labeled complementarian or egalitarian position. and then secondly right out of that that passage in Ephesians four, it it's it's amazing to me how and we see this so often with abusive men, they just want to camp on wives submit and completely ignore

‍

the broader context, I mean it's it's just right there in those verses that describe what male I mean if you wanna use male headship language, male authority language, that describe what that looks like. It looks like

‍

self-sacrifice patterned after Jesus who gave himself for his bride the church putting others' needs above one's own, you know, and nurturing for well being. We all wherever we're at on the continuum, we should be able to to agree, 'cause that's what's right there in the text. And if you get that

‍

Alison (36:25.63)

Yeah. Yeah. Laying down your life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's Amen. Yeah. That's right. Yeah.

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steve tracy (36:52.426)

Man, you've precluded abuse. And that's out of the picture.

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Alison (36:54.686)

Yeah.

‍

Yeah. Yeah. I like that. That's a I really like how you're describing it's it's about mutualism, regardless of where you land on some of the and being like Jesus. That's the baseline. You can't you can't you can't really argue with that. and if your if if your doctrine is yeah. Yeah. Ha how how you gosh, I could just I could talk to you all day, Stephen. I wanna I do wanna get to this question.

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steve tracy (37:10.274)

Yeah.

‍

steve tracy (37:14.008)

Shouldn't

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Alison (37:26.568)

We've kind of teased out the way scripture can harm. As you've worked with people with especially survivors of abuse, how do you begin to help people separate out God's actual heart from the distorted image of God through scripture? So that because understandably, sometimes folks, when they come out of abuse, ditch the whole the whole shebang because it's been used against them. How do you help?

‍

steve tracy (37:54.456)

Yeah.

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Alison (37:56.171)

Folks, and give I'm curious of some maybe some words of of hope that you've seen. And I know you we kind of brings us back to Cheryl's story.

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steve tracy (38:05.708)

Yeah. again, e excellent question. I I was very recently did an online training for 150 or so Spanish speaking leaders from twelve different countries and heard some of the most heartbreaking stories, testimonies of of abuse and what what some of these people, men and women had

‍

experienced and also heard God's redemption. But what I focused on in that training and that's what I would pass on here is again it comes back to scripture but taking different biblical texts that describe God's response to abuse and letting that be our paradigm.

‍

It's easy and we don't want to discount our experiences, but we also wanna be sensitive to the fact that our experiences how we interpret our experiences may be f

‍

may be colored, may may be off. And so that's where scripture can be that healthy corrective. And we look in the book of Exodus, I think it's chapter three, when God sees the children of Israel in bondage, they're in slavery. and and the the language that's used there is is is very specific and graphic of their being just ground.

‍

Yeah.

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steve tracy (39:42.103)

You know, it's it's metaphorical, but basically they're being crushed by abuse. And then we we read and it's a fourfold response. This tells us God's response to abuse when especially when we feel like he doesn't see, he doesn't care, where is he? this tells us, and it says God saw maybe I should even read it, because it's just so beautiful, and I actually weave

‍

the a whole chapter of the book toward the end around this Exodus 3 7 God said I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt so God sees our our woundedness the things we've experienced that that are so destructive I have heard their cry

‍

Because they're ta of their taskmasters. so he sees what's happened. He hears our cries as we cry out in our pain. I know their sufferings. And and the language here in Hebrew suggests not just cognition, but a heart response. God feels our pain. And I go so far and I make this argument in the book that God God suffers when we suffer.

‍

Alison (40:58.581)

Mm, mm, mm.

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steve tracy (41:10.348)

theologians have debated whether in fact God suffers emotionally, and the consensus historically has been that God's perfect so he can't suffer. I I absolutely reject that 'cause that's not what scripture says. Scripture says God is moved

‍

Alison (41:23.146)

Hmm. Yeah.

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steve tracy (41:28.76)

When his children suffer. And and moved in the sense that he feels our pain. He suffers with us. in Isaiah sixty three it says regarding the Israelites who were suffering because of their own sinful choices, in all their affliction he was afflicted.

‍

That's a different view of God. When I, his child, ache, my heavenly father aches. So that's that's God's third response is he he he feels, he suffers with us. And then finally, I have come down to deliver them. You know, supremely we see that in Christ. You know, if we wonder, well, where's God when we suffer? And and of course in our work I'm I'm asked that frequently. you know, where was God when my

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Grandfather was raping me, etc., etc. And I can't, no, no theologian can completely answer that question, but I know from Exodus 3 and many other texts that God has a plan for deliverance. And I see that first and foremost in Christ. He's not this detached up on Mount Olympus like the Greek gods, unmoved.

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Alison (42:31.552)

Mm.

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steve tracy (42:42.638)

mover. No, he came into this world and suffered with us and for us and he continues to. But he has a plan. He's working a plan. he comes down to deliver. So those four responses from Exodus three give me tremendous hope and confidence in a world of tremendous pain.

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Alison (42:50.912)

Mm.

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Mm.

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Alison (42:56.808)

Mm.

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Alison (43:02.718)

Yeah, that's beautiful. What what would you you and maybe that was kind of it, but just as we as we kind of wind down here, I'm curious, after all your wor years of walking with survivors, what would you most want someone listening who's survived abuse to know about God, scripture, and themselves?

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steve tracy (43:26.734)

Boy, I gotta write another book on that one, Allison. just a couple things. one, you're not alone. There's so many of us. Well, I mean, all of us have experienced at least abuse small a. and a shockingly large percentage have experienced abuse capital A. Those things basically would constitute a crime.

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And and you're not alone. There are countless others, both around you and in the pages of Scripture. We often don't come to Scripture with a lens for abuse because that's not what we're modeled and o often pastors don't aren't trained to give that. I wasn't. but it's there, you're not alone. Secondly, there is absolutely no evil you've suffered, no

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Alison (44:01.129)

steve tracy (44:23.47)

You've experienced that is too great. That is too great for our loving Almighty God to heal, to redeem, to transform. I say that as someone who has spent 20 years working in war zones, working with

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Alison (44:40.0)

Yeah.

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steve tracy (44:42.958)

torture survivors, etc. etc. We lost one of our dear beloved staff members a couple of years ago to a terrorist attack. Like I this this is very personal for me. I mean things we've experienced, but w again, we work in the worst of the worst, and I have just seen God give new life, new hope, use horrible experiences.

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That others have had and and I just shake my head saying, Wow, there is nothing that God can't. There is nothing He can't redeem and transform because I've I've seen it, I've witnessed it. Scripture testifies to that. Whatever our listeners have gone through, God wants to meet you in that place of pain. He's big enough.

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Alison (45:19.336)

Yeah.

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Alison (45:36.512)

Mm. That's beautiful. Tell my listeners a little bit more about mending the soul and what you guys do and what you offer. You've got some fantastic resources for folks. I'd love for for folks to know how to find you.

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steve tracy (45:47.469)

Yeah.

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Appreciate that. Our website is it's pretty simple. W.mending the soul dot org. lots of resources there. we're putting more and more in other languages, lots in Spanish and and this new book, by the way, Doctor Allison, Zondravin has given us permission to translate into Spanish. We're really excited about that. as well as the the

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Alison (46:10.496)

Right.

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steve tracy (46:14.136)

Book right before that, Mining the Soul, Understanding and Healing Abuse, second edition, is done in Spanish and Portuguese and French. and we make the other language translations available as download online. And there's a lot of free stuff. we have a healing workbook that Slusta did out of came out of her years of clinical practice, Mining the Soul workbook for men and women.

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guidelines for facilitators to facilitate small healing groups. We really believe in the power of small groups. So just lots of resources. You know, some are a nominal fee and plenty are are free. our mission is to offer Christ-centered psychologically sound healing resources. I mean that that is what we do domestically and globally. We have a new, I think the first of its kind,

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abuse healing workbook written f that's Christian, written by and for Native Americans. That was a collaborative project and we're super, super excited about that. It's really taking off. Yeah. So lots lots of resources you know on on the website. yeah.

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Alison (47:15.849)

It's incredible.

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Alison (47:25.568)

That's incredible. Well, it's great stuff. I can't, you know, just just think so highly of what you're doing and your years of expertise. And like you said, when you've been in the some of the there's a lot of conviction that comes when you've seen some of the worst atrocities and you see the power of God, you you really live out that love is stronger. You know, love is stronger. It doesn't always feel like it, but it is.

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and I can just sense that coming out of you. You've seen it. You've seen some of the worst of the worst, but you also see the power of God is bigger and that's just a beautiful reminder for all of us today.

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steve tracy (47:54.562)

Yeah.

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steve tracy (48:03.83)

Yeah, I I appreciate that. O often one of the biggest hurdles in beginning a a healing process when we've got some deep wounds is the the thinking that if I open that closet, you know, if I face what's there in my past, I don't even know what skeletons are gonna come out. Yeah, and and it's gonna be a torrent, it's gonna be a tsunami that will engulf me. I I can't afford to even think about what happened to me. I can't handle it. And I I pr I understand and

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Alison (48:17.056)

Mm.

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Alison (48:21.726)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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Yeah.

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steve tracy (48:33.744)

appreciate that. That that's not a a a ridiculous fear. and there's ways to negotiate that and sometimes that involves some professional help and some context, et cetera. But for those who might be feeling that, yeah, you're you're right, Alison, having

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Alison (48:36.928)

Yeah.

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steve tracy (48:52.838)

seen some of the absolute ninety percent of what we see and experience in Congo, I can't talk about here in the US. It wouldn't even be appropriate. I mean it's it's so extreme that there aren't words for it.

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Alison (49:04.458)

Yeah.

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steve tracy (49:05.698)

But it has you're right, it has given me a tremendous boldness and confidence. And that's not to say that healing is easy or I you know, I I've had to walk that road myself and deal with secondary trauma and nightmares and and all that. I I take it really seriously. But in the midst of that, when I say there is no evil, no suffering that's too great for God to heal

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Alison (49:13.802)

Yeah.

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Alison (49:19.52)

Yeah. Yeah.

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Alison (49:23.593)

Yeah.

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steve tracy (49:31.842)

mean that to the absolute core of my being. Yeah.

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Alison (49:33.876)

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. It's incredible. Thank you. Thanks for your time today. It's the book is called To Heal or Harm. It's a powerful book. It's it's meaty, it's deep. There's it's practical, but there's also a lot that I think is really just interesting about how we approach scripture academically and it's just a really rich rich resource. So I highly recommend it and just appreciate you and all all your work.

‍

What if healing isn’t just about changing your circumstances—but also tending what’s been growing inside of you?

Last week, we explored the metaphor of seed and soil: the way your nature and your nurture shape who you become. This week, we’re going deeper. Because your inner world isn’t just one plant—it’s more like a whole garden.

In this episode, we’ll explore the difference between tending your inner garden and tending the outer soil around you. You’ll learn why old patterns can still show up even after you’ve changed your life, why boundaries are not punishment, and how real healing involves both compassion for what grew inside of you and courage to change what surrounds you now.

Here’s what we cover:

*How to recognize the tender, resilient, overgrown, and buried parts of your inner world
*Why changing your outer environment helps—but doesn’t automatically heal the inner one
*The difference between boundaries as punishment and boundaries as self-stewardship
*How differentiation helps you stay connected to yourself, even in difficult relationships
*Why real change is possible, even if the soil around you has been hard

Real healing is rarely a single breakthrough moment. It's the slow, faithful work of tending what has been entrusted to you, one step at a time.

‍

More Resources:

‍

You can now preorder Dr. Alison’s newest book, The Secure Soul, and immediately receive the first 3 chapters as well as early access to the companion guide!

‍

Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram

‍

Curious what Family Role may have shaped you? Take the Family Role Quiz to learn how you may be showing up in your relationships with others.

Want to hear more like this? Start here:

Episode 212: Why You Feel Everything So Deeply (and Other People Don’t): Childhood, Sensitivity & the Nervous System

Episode 20: Making Peace with Yourself (& Facing Your Fear of Disappointing Other People)

📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here

Don't forget to browse this week's sponsors, who make it possible for me to bring you these resources for free + provide you with additional discounts!

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*Some of the links above are Amazon affiliate links. If you choose to purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

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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Last week I shared a metaphor with you that my daughter brought home from medical school. 

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So today we're gonna move into part two. How do you steward this plant? And what does healing actually look like? Not just theoretically, but in practice. So I wanna organize this episode around two themes. We're gonna adjust the metaphor just a little bit. I love that. Metaphor of thinking of your brain as a plant, and we're gonna keep going with it. We're gonna adjust it just a little bit to this idea that your brain is actually a little bit more like a garden of related plants than one plant. The first theme we're gonna dig into today when it comes to healing, when it comes to stewarding that brain of yours, that beautiful brain of yours that you've arrived at adulthood with is thinking of it like a garden. And the first part of healing and stewarding is to tend to the inner workings. Of that garden, the unseen parts. And the second theme we're gonna dig into today is tending to the outer garden, the soil you find yourself in today, because that's what you have control over today. You have control over that inner life of the plant, over the root systems, and the different pieces of the inner workings of that inner garden you've inherited today. And you also have some control over the outer. Soil. You didn't get to pick your family of origin, but now you have agency to adjust the nutrients in the outer soil that is shaping you today. And these two things that inner work and the outer work go together. You need to tend to both components in order to fully thrive. So last week we talked about this research on dandelion children and orchid children, and I heard from a lot of you, and I really appreciated your feedback that resonated. And a few of you wrote back to me and said, I think I'm a little bit of both dandelion and orchid. And I loved that you said that because that is exactly where we're going today. Just to refresh your memory, those dandelion children, these are the ones who by nature. Are a little more hearty. They can grow almost in any kind of soil, and we likened it to dandelions In real life, they can grow anywhere. They don't need a lot of special nutrients or a certain kind of temperature or climate around them. I also likened it to a wildflower. I wrote about it in my email that I sent out to you last week. I was hiking in the mountains and we saw all these different kinds of wildflowers, and there are just some wildflowers that grow. They go through snow, they grow through drought. They just. Grow. And then there are the other kinds of flowers. These are like the orchids or in wildflower language, more like forget me, knots or other kinds of flowers that are really sensitive. They need a specific kind of soil, a specific kind of environment. They wilt if they get too much sun or they don't. Thrive. If they don't get enough sun, they need a certain kind of humidity, a certain kind of temperature, a certain kind of climate around them to thrive. And we talked about last week how these flowers don't do well in certain types of soil, but when given the right kind of soil, they can almost do better and surpass the dandelions. And this is where the science gets even more interesting. 'cause I wanna add to the metaphor, I wanna build it out a little bit this week because your brain is complex. In fact, I ran across some really interesting recent research out of Harvard that uses this phrase called brain architecture to describe how the brain is built over time. This research talks about how simple neural connections form first and then more complex circuitry and skills develop over time. The brain also prunes. Refines those connections, making certain pathways stronger and more efficient. The brain is constantly growing and changing and adapting. In other words, what grows inside of us. This plant that we arrive at adulthood with isn't one single thing. It's evolving. It's adaptable. It's able to be changed. Another word for this is what we call neuroplasticity. So for today's purposes, I want you to think about this inner world, this inner architecture that you've arrived at adulthood with as more like a whole garden of plants. There may be parts of you that are tender and sensitive, like that orchid that have been buried. Or hidden because they weren't in the right soil. And there also are very likely parts of you that are hearty and persistent, like a dandelion. These parts of you may be more natural, or these might be parts of you that you've had to develop to survive. But the point is your soul is more like an ecosystem, a garden than it is one plant. There are likely patterns within your soul that grew strong because you needed them. You may have learned to please others as a form of survival, and this pleasing part of you is hearty like that. Dandelion, no matter what context you find yourself in now, you do not stop pleasing other people even when it no longer serves you. Or there may be pathways inside your soul that became efficient because they helped you survive. You learned to focus on tasks, to get things done, to make things work, and you're still doing that now, even when it comes at a cost. There may be those tender places inside your soul that never got the care and the nutrients that you needed that need to be brought out of hiding and into the light of the sun so that you can finally lean into that sensitivity, that receptivity, that is a beautiful God made part of you. And so the question I want us to sit with today is what is growing inside of me? Now I wanna get curious about this inner garden. What's beautiful, what's buried, what's covered over with weeds, and how can I now tend it? Because the beautiful part of this journey that's ahead of us now as adults is that we can. Tend this garden, we contend it inwardly and we contend it by shifting the soil we put ourselves in, including tending the relationships we put around us. This is the hopeful part. If you've listened to this podcast for any length of time, you've heard me talk about how healing isn't just about what happens inside of us. Our nervous systems are constantly responding to the world around us, and sometimes what feels like stress, brain fog, poor sleep, or just feeling off, can be influenced by factors we don't immediately think about. One of those factors is the air. In our homes, if you notice waking up congested or dusting constantly, or basically things feel heavier than they should, then you might look into investing in Air Doctor. It's the only air purifier we use in our home. What I appreciate most is the peace of mind. I've noticed fewer odors, less congestion, and overall better sleep. But what really impressed me was learning how it works. Air Doctor uses a powerful three stage filtration system that captures particles about 100 times. Smaller than what many standard air purifiers can remove. It helps filter out things like dust, pollen, mold spores, pet dander, wildfire, smoke, bacteria, viruses, odors, smoke, ozone, and VOCs that can affect the quality of air We're breathing every day, and I'm not the only one who's noticed a difference. Over 93% of Air Doctor customers report fewer allergy symptoms and air Doctor recently won Newsweek's Reader's Choice Award for best air purifier. If cleaner air is one small way you can support your wellbeing and create a healthier environment for yourself and the people you love, I'd encourage you to check it out. Head to air doctor pro.com and use promo code. Best of you to get $250 off select Air Doctor Air purifiers, including the 30 504,055 500 models. We're so confident you'll love Air Doctor that every purchase is backed by a 30 day money back guarantee. This is an exclusive podcast only offer. Available now@airdoctorpro.com. That's A-I-R-D-O-C-T-O-R-P-R o.com using promo code B-E-S-T-O-F-Y-O-U. So let's focus first on that inner garden. What's going on inside of you? For example, there may be a part of you that's sensitive, attuned part of you that picks up on the emotional temperature in a room. Maybe you feel things. Deeply. Maybe you notice what's going on in other people, and maybe you even notice things that they tend to miss. It might be your own kids, it might be in friends. It might be that the wild flowers in your life come to you because you have an insight into them that they don't have into themselves. And part of nurturing that inner garden is really honoring. That gift and protecting it because that is your gift to steward, and it also is a gift that can grow weary if overused. The goal intending these more sensitive parts of you is to understand the rhythms that help this part of you thrive. It's understanding that you get to choose, right? You don't always have to extend that gift of empathy. That's your gift to steward. You get to pull back and say, I need to take some space for myself because I've been pouring out a lot, and that's not. Selfish part of stewarding, tending those sensitive attuned parts of you is learning when those parts of you need. Rest. I tell the story in my new book, the Secure Soul of a Breakdown, essentially, that I had in my early thirties, and one story that I don't tell but is pertinent here to this conversation is I went to see a therapist for the first time in my life. Now, that in and of itself is a little problematic because I was. Almost finished with my own doctoral work in psychology, but for the first time, I finally set the help of a therapist and he said something that I just thought was so beautiful to me. I had this gift of being a healer. And I think a lot of you who listen have this gift too. It's what I'm talking about when I'm describing this process of being attuned to the movements of others. You have a high empathy, you have an ability to read emotional subtext. You have a sense of what's going on in the people around you, and that gift is beautiful. But if you don't A, know that it's your gift, and B, know how to pull it back. So that you don't get depleted. It can also lead to burnout. And that's what had happened to me. And I remember this man, this psychologist, he was Argentinian, and I remember he said Jesus couldn't help but heal if people touched his garments. Healing came out of him, and this is why it was so important for Jesus to step away by himself. To rest. And when he said that to me, it gave me permission that my soul is a soul that needs spaciousness. I don't like thinking of it so much as taking space. 'cause that sounds like we're taking space from other people, which can sound negative. I like thinking of it in the positive that my soul is one that thrives. With spaciousness, and what that means is because I absorb a lot of data from people around me and I almost can't help that, it just happens. I need periods of time where I'm away from other people and that's how my soul thrives. Now practically what that means is I sometimes have to say to people, you may not hear from me for a couple of weeks. It's not because I don't love you, it's because I'm taking time to pray and rest and receive, or I have to gently remind a friend if you don't hear back from me for a few days. It's not because I don't care, it's because I don't do well with instant. Communication. Right? I have to translate that reality that mine is a soul that needs spaciousness into communication with others whose souls are wired differently. But that therapist was the first time, and again, I was in my thirties, that. I felt like I had permission to do that, and when I looked at the life of Jesus, I saw that he often stepped away from the demands and the crowds and the people around him. Not because he did not love them or did not care, it's because he needed to receive something himself. Now, different people have different. Needs. One of the most well-researched traits is the introversion extroversion scale. This is one of the big five personality traits, often named by the acronym ocean, and the E is the extroversion scale. This is something that is somewhat hardwired into us. Certain types of people by nature need more spaciousness, more solitude, more quiet to recharge. You probably know who these people are if you're not one. They're the folks who turn their phone off or who don't go on social media or who take a while to reply. They tend to run deep, not broad. Too much social stimulation might deplete them. And if that's you, the tending here is to learn how to communicate on behalf of that part of yourself. Because if you don't learn to take that spaciousness, you do run the risk of depletion and burnout. And resentment. And. And sometimes the wildflowers in your life are higher on that E scale. They are energized by constant connection. They wanna respond immediately to every text, to every social event. They show up all the time. And again, this is a beautiful quality. There's no right or wrong here, but it's so important to know your nature so that you contended. Well, if you're an OrCAD living with a dandelion on this dimension, you have to have conversations about how to navigate rhythms of togetherness and a apartness of spaciousness and of speed. The dandelion in this case has to learn that someone else's need for solitude is real, and they have to learn to honor that and not see that as rejection. That's not a diminishment on their own self. And the reality is if you have that sensitive side of you, you may have learned to adapt based on the soil in which you were raised, whether it was your own family that tended to be more extroverted or more. Emotionally charged, and because that was overwhelming to you, you may have developed a part of you that figured out how to adapt to that and survive that. You've never known how to give yourself permission to actually honor that need for more. Quiet. Now, you don't wanna do away with that. Part of you that learned how to survive, that part of you that learned how to show up in a room full of extroverts, right? That can really serve you in certain situations, right? You've learned how to masquerade as a dandelion in some ways, and that's not all bad, but when it becomes a problem is when it's not you choosing, right? The goal here is. Agency. The goal here is you leading you. You having the self-awareness to know the sensitive part of me needs some quiet. I need to log off. I need to not be reading other people's subtext in this moment, and that's okay, right? This other part of me that's gonna come in and try to criticize me and tell me I'm being selfish. That part of you needs that reframe to step back and give you space to refresh yourself so that you can show up for other people in healthier, more sustainable ways. The bottom line here is that the work of healing, the work of stewarding this plant you've been given, you've arrived at adulthood with isn't to shame any one part of the garden. This is the way the garden grew. If you don't wanna rip out the dandelion part of you that learned to survive because it looks too tough or it's overgrown, right? You wanna help it find healthy boundary lines within your soul, and you don't wanna criticize the more sensitive parts of you, the orchid part of you, because it needs more care. The work of soul tending is to become a wise. Compassionate gardener of your own soul to notice what is growing inside of you, to understand why it grew the way it did, and to offer each part of you what it actually needs. Some parts of you need to be drawn out into the light to be made more visible, and some parts of you need healthy boundary lines, healthy containment. Maybe you grew up in a home where the emotional atmosphere was unpredictable. Maybe a parent was loving one day and then withdrawn, or guilt tripping the next. Or maybe you grew up in a home where conflict was always simmering just below the surface, and nobody ever talked about it directly, and that kind of soil is sensitive, emotionally aware, attuned part of you, the orchid part of you learned. Something maybe you learned that you needed to be vigilant. You had to read the room constantly. You could never shut it down. You had to be ready and prepared, reading everybody's verbal and nonverbal cues to the point where you never learned to read your own exhaustion. Maybe that part of you got really, really good at scanning for danger at anticipating other people's needs at making sure nothing escalated into conflict. And over time that part of you got overburdened. It's been working so hard for so long that it doesn't know how to rest. Or maybe you grew up in a home where achievement was what got celebrated, where love felt connected to performance, where the message around you, whether spoken or unspoken, was that you were valuable, when you were useful, when you were successful, when you had it together, when you didn't have needs or weakness in that kind of soil. The hearty, capable, dandelion part of you got a lot of sunlight. It thrived. It got really good at producing. But the more vulnerable parts of you that are still there in all of us, these are the parts of you that just needed to be held at times that needed to be taught. That it's okay to have moments of tenderness of weakness. Vulnerability and those parts without that learned to go underground. They learned that they weren't welcome and you may have spent years, maybe decades shaming any sensitive part of you for even existing. And because you shame that part of yourself, you sometimes shame the sensitivity in other people. Some of you may have navigated real pain in relationships in a marriage that was hard. A friendship that ended in betrayal in a faith community that was more wounding than healing. And somewhere in that pain, a part of you closed off, decided it was safer not to need people, decided that vulnerability was the problem, not the solution. And so now there's this walled off place within your soul, and you're not entirely sure how it got so thick or how to get to the other. Side of it. These are the kinds of narratives that the soil writes inside of us and the work of healing. Real healing starts with being willing to look at those inner narratives to notice them, to name them. In the framework I use in the Secure Soul, I talk about recognizing these inner bids. For connection, a flash of anxiety, a moment of loneliness, a longing that surfaces seemingly out of nowhere. These are inner bids for connection. Some part of you saying, I need you to recognize what's happening within. And so tending your inner garden starts with something that seems rather simple, but is a practice you have to develop. It means recognizing those inner movements and notice where you feel self-critical. Instead of compassion, where are you rolling your eyes at yourself? Where are you shaming yourself? Where are you telling yourself to just get over it, to toughen up, to stop caring so much? Because that self-criticism, that self contempt, these are weeds that cannot be allowed to crowd out your inner garden. So how do you begin to pull the weeds and prune that inner garden landscape? First, it starts with getting curious. The next time you find yourself reacting in a way you don't like shutting down in a conversation or snapping at someone you love or spiraling into anxiety or resentment, instead of trying to fix that feeling or shame yourself, get. Curious. Ask yourself what part of me is showing up right now? What part of me is longing for connection? Second, it means bringing compassion to these parts of you instead of beating yourself up again. And curiosity and compassion are closely linked, right? Getting curious is often an easier first step to just notice with curiosity why you're feeling the way you're feeling. Compassion takes it one step further to say, I get it. I understand why being around that person brings out the guilt, the anxiety, the big emotions. That part of you has been cultivated in that soil and it needs care, not contempt. And then lastly, this moves into the outer world around us. It means letting yourself be seen. These different parts of us learned to hide and healing asks us to bring these different parts of us back into relationship with yourself, with God, and with trusted other people. Initially, that might mean a therapist. It might mean a spiritual director, but over time it also means the people that you put around you that reflect soil, your soul actually needs tending. Your inner garden isn't a one-time event, it's a practice. It's ongoing and as some of the most important work you will do. If it's really true that we are what we eat, I'm always on the lookout for snacks that actually fuel my body instead of filling me up with sugar and processed foods. That's why I love mosh protein bars. 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Start building Brain Health into every day with Mosh Bars. Thanks to Mosh for sponsoring this episode. Now let's talk about the outer garden because as you well know, the soil you were planted in as a child is not the only soil you're living in now. You've been making choices consciously or not about the soil you surround yourself with as an adult. And some of you have done real hard, courageous work to change. That soil, you changed the kind of people you put around you. Maybe some of you left a family system that wasn't healthy. Maybe you drew a boundary with a parent or a sibling who was harming you. Maybe you ended a friendship that was draining the life out of you. Maybe you found a church community that actually sees you and nourishes you. Feeds you. Maybe you married someone who is genuinely safe. You built a life that looks different from the one you came from, and that was brave. It took a lot out of you, but you've done it. And even as you've changed that outer soil, you still have to do the inner work. I also know that some of you have used this framework in your own families. Right now I've heard from a few of you have already been talking about seeds and soil at your dinner table with your own kids, with your spouse, noticing which of your children are more like orchids, which one are more like wildflowers, adjusting how you tend to each other accordingly, and this is so beautiful. This is the outer garden work in action. You're creating healthier soil for your own family. And here's what I wanna say to those of you who've worked really hard to change that outer soil, who've found healthier relationships, a better environment for your soul, a safer community, you may have noticed that even in that good healthy news, soil, old patterns still show up. Maybe you're in a safe marriage now, but you still brace for criticism. That never comes. Maybe you found a community that genuinely welcomes you, but you still hold back. You still find it hard to trust. You still maybe perform or please or perfect still trying to manage their perceptions. Maybe you know, intellectually that you are safe now, but something in you keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is simply a cue of the earlier soil that still has lasting effects. The outer soil changed, but the inner garden still carries the memory of the old one. This is why the inner work and the outer work have to happen together. New soil creates great conditions for healing, but you still have to tend what's growing on the inside. And some of those roots go deep and it can take a while to change their patterns. Now, some of you listening today still find yourself in difficult soil. Some of you are in a marriage that is really hard. You're not just going through a rough season, but something has been depleting and withering for a long time. You're committed. Maybe there's not infidelity or some other clear cut reasons that would make you feel like you can leave, but something is really hard, whether because of you or because of them, or because of the soil you've tilled together. Some of you are still enmeshed with parents, with siblings in ways that are costing you. You're still getting pulled back into old dynamics, still playing the same role, still shrinking yourself to manage other people. And I want you to know that the fact that you're still here, still listening, still asking questions, still wanting to grow, this is so beautiful. It's actually this seed of healing. You haven't given up on yourself even when the soil around you has made that really. Hard, and there are a couple of things I wanna share with you in particular because I find that when people are in difficult soil, they often see two choices. Stick it out. Or leave, and I talk about this a little bit in my book. I shouldn't feel this way, where there's this third category about moving slowly with wisdom. Because the reality is there's often a lot of territory between those two things. And that territory is where two key terms, differentiation, and boundaries. Tend to live differentiation. This is a concept from family systems. It's the ability to remain in relationship with someone else while staying connected to yourself. Maybe you don't feel like you can leave altogether. Maybe a parent who's been toxic or still is toxic needs your care. As they age, or maybe it's a spouse who's really hard to live with, who isn't doing their own work, but you don't feel like you can leave for whatever reason. You learn how to stay present to the other person without being swept away by their soil. Research on couples and family systems consistently shows that even when one person in a stuck system begins to differentiate, begins to respond differently. That's all that means to make different choices in small, nuanced ways to hold your ground calmly without withdrawing, but without escalating the entire system has the opportunity to shift. You don't have to wait for the other person to change to start making changes yourself. It might mean simply that you stop over explaining yourself. To a family member who is never going to validate you. You're not doing it to be cold or to be punitive, or to be retaliatory. You simply choose to stop outsourcing your sense of reality to someone who cannot see you. And when you make this choice out of agency, out of the own health of your inner garden, the other person will pick up on that. They may not like it at first. You don't need them to like it because you know the truth of what you're doing. It might simply mean you stop participating with certain activities with a spouse or with a friend. You just say, I'm not doing that anymore. You're free to do it. I'm not gonna do it. It's not healthy. For me, this can be so hard to do, especially in a marriage. It's hard to start drawing boundary lines in a marriage, but I just want you to hear me say that drawing boundary lines is not punishment. It's not harsh. It's not about trying to get the other person to change. It's about tending your own inner garden. It's saying, this is what I need to thrive. This is what I need to be a healthy human in this relationship. I can't control you, but I can control me. And then you let them have whatever reaction they might have. Sometimes it's painful, sometimes it doesn't feel very good, but over time, they have an opportunity to change. Boundaries in this context are not walls. They're not ultimatums, they're not all or nothing. They're small, consistent acts of self stewardship. Research on boundary setting and close relationships shows that clear, calm, consistent limits. Even tiny ones, reduce anxiety over time for both people in the relationship. It takes time, it takes work. Get some support as you do this, but you can create new soil. What I most want you to hear is that your healing is not contingent on someone else changing. First, you can begin to tend your own inner garden regardless of what the soil around you is doing, and sometimes, not always, but sometimes when one person in a system begins to grow, heal, and change the system around you begins to shift to. Finally, some of you need to hear that it is okay to create more distance from a soil that is harming you, not because you don't care about the people in it, but because you cannot grow in depleted soil indefinitely. And your growth, your healing matters not just for you, but for your children and for the people you lead and love and care for. Then there's a last group I wanna speak to directly. Some of you didn't inherit your difficult soil, you chose it out of love. I hear from many of you in my email, maybe you're parenting a child who is bringing real turbulence into your home. Maybe it's an adult child whose choices are creating chaos that keeps spilling into your life. Maybe you're a grandparent who stepped in when the original soil was. Two Toxic who said, not on my watch, and brought a child into your home to give them a fighting chance. Maybe you're a foster parent or an adoptive parent or a stepparent who walked eyes open into hard soil because you believed that healthy love could prevail over toxic history. I want you to know that it can, the research on what's called earned security, the idea that a child who didn't receive safe, consistent attachment early on can develop it later through a reliable, attuned relationship. That research is real and hopeful. You are doing something so powerful and so beautiful, and it's also. Really hard. I want you to hear me say, the courage it takes to do this work is real, and it can be incredibly depleting. And I think sometimes people in your position feel like you're not allowed to say how hard it is because you chose it, because you love this child, because you know their history. But knowing why someone carries toxic soil doesn't mean that soil stops affecting you. You are still a plant. You still have a seed with its own needs and you are trying to grow while also neutralizing poison that was never yours to begin with. I think of Isaiah 43 when I think about some of these tricky situations. God says, when you pass through the waters, I will be with you. God doesn't promise that faithful presence will always be easy, but he promises he will be with you. In it. We have really incredible research on compassion fatigue that tells us the most important thing you can do for the difficult soil you've chosen to tend is to make sure you are being replenished. Somewhere you need at least one regulated, nourishing relationship. It could be a spouse, it could be a friend, it could be a therapist, someone who functions as what researchers call a co-regulatory anchor. This is someone who can sit with you through the turbulence. They don't necessarily take away the hard soil, but they can keep you from becoming consumed by it. Often the boundaries that you may most need in these situations is the internal one. You have to work on setting limits with the part of you that is tied to outcomes or timing, or how well or how quickly they improve. The bottom line for all of us is that you can be a faithful. Present loving gardener to others and still tend your own garden. In fact, the research is clear that the caregivers whose presence most effectively creates conditions for change in others are the ones doing their own inner work. Your wholeness, the health of your own soul isn't a luxury. It's part of what spills over to them. Here's where I wanna land today. Number one, the inner work and the outer work are not separate. They're in relationship with each other, just like the seed and the soil. As you do the inner work, as you turn toward the parts of yourself with compassion instead of contempt, when you start to name the narratives the old soil wrote inside of you, you become more capable of making healthy. Choices about your outer soil. You stop unconsciously recreating the environments you came from. You develop the self-awareness to make different choices. And two, when you do the outer work, when you change the soil around you, when you differentiate, when you create healthier relationships and healthier environments. It creates the conditions for the inner work to take root. Good outer soil isn't necessary to change the inner soil, and it also won't do that work for you. Changing your outer soil is only half of the equation. Both matter. Both are essential. Healing is rarely a single breakthrough moment. It's the slow. Patient faithful work tending both your inner garden and that outer garden that surrounds you together. Over time, and here's what I believe with everything in me, both from the research and from what I've seen these past few decades, real change is possible no matter where you are today. Real lasting, meaningful change. Is possible. You can become healthier, not by changing your seed, your DNA, the way God made you. That's not the goal. And you wouldn't want to, but you can learn how to steward how God made you to be. Well, you can tend to the garden you're growing now with the awareness and the agency you didn't have as a child. You're not stuck where you are. You can create richer soil boths inside your soul and outside your soul. One brave step. At a time. If what we talked about today resonates with you, if you're starting to see the connection between the soil you came from and the patterns you're living now, I wanna invite you to go deeper with my new book, the Secure Soul. It also has a secure Soul companion guide. Workbook. It's the heart of everything we've been talking about in these two episodes. You can find a link to it at the secure soul book.com, and you can get the first three chapters of the book as well as the first few chapters of the workbook. Now, when you pre-order, thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you take a moment to subscribe. You can go to apples. Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to or watch podcasts, and click the plus or follow button that'll ensure you don't miss an episode, and it helps get the word out to others while you're there. I'd love it if you leave a five star review and be sure to join us each weekday for the best of you every day, a brief daily reflection to help you start your mornings with a steady dose of wisdom. Remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God. You heal others and you stay true to your God-given self. I.

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Why do certain situations overwhelm you while someone you love seems completely unaffected? 

In this episode, Dr. Alison explores one of the most important questions we ask about ourselves: Why am I the way I am?

Using the image of a seed planted in soil, she explains how your God-given wiring, childhood environment, sensitivity, and nervous system all work together to shape the person you are today.

This conversation offers a compassionate framework for understanding yourself—and the people you love—in an honest, empowering way. (You’ll want to share this episode with your loved ones!)

You’ll learn:

• Why your brain is like a plant
• How childhood shapes your mental and emotional health
• The difference between your wiring and your wounding
• The research behind “orchid children” and “dandelion children”
• How different kinds of “soil” shape your nervous system, relationships, resilience, and sense of safety
• Why highly sensitive people may struggle more in hard environments—and thrive more in healthy ones
• Why healing begins when you understand both the seed you were given and the soil that shaped you

This episode will help you see your story—and your loved ones—with more clarity, compassion, and hope.

‍

More Resources:

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You can now preorder Dr. Alison’s newest book, The Secure Soul, and immediately receive the first 3 chapters as well as early access to the companion guide!

‍

Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram

‍

Curious what Family Role may have shaped you? Take the Family Role Quiz to learn how you may be showing up in your relationships with others.

Want to hear more like this? Start here:

Episode 143: Reparenting Your Younger Self—How to Stop Seeking Approval From Others & Find Inner Security

Episode 22: How to Build Trust with Yourself 

📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here

Don't forget to browse this week's sponsors, who make it possible for me to bring you these resources for free + provide you with additional discounts!

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*Some of the links above are Amazon affiliate links. If you choose to purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

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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Your brain is like a plant and every plant, if you think about it,

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starts with a seed. It's the wiring you came into this world with, the way you process the world

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around you. This is your seed. Now let's talk about the soil because you can have the most

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beautifully made seed in the world and if the soil is wrong, if it's depleted,

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if it's toxic, if it just doesn't have what that particular seed needs,

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the plant, is going to struggle. It might survive but it won't thrive.

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The seed and the soil don't operate in isolation. They're in constant relationship with each other

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and that relationship is where a lot of the story of your current life actually lives.

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Hey, everyone, and welcome back to this week's Deep Dive episode of The Best of You. I'm Dr.

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Allison, and I'm really excited about today's episode because I want to share something with you

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that I learned recently that I couldn't wait to share with you here on the podcast. It's a

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metaphor. I heard it from my daughter who was recently home visiting us. She's in medical school.

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She was sharing it with my husband and I as we were driving up for a weekend getaway into the

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mountains. And honestly, it stopped all of us in our tracks. We couldn't stop thinking about it and

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how it applied to our own lives individually and the lives of people we love. Because I think this

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metaphor helps explain one of the most tender questions so many of us carry.

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Why am I the way that I am? Why do I get overwhelmed so easily?

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Why do I shut down when someone gets too close? Why do I feel anxious even when everything is

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technically okay? Why do I keep reacting in ways I don't want to react? Why does healing sometimes

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feel so hard? Why am I the way I am?

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And underneath those questions is so often an even deeper one. Is this just the way I'm wired or

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did something happen to me? And if so, what? In other words, how much of who I am is just my

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nature, my biology, my temperament, my nervous system, my genetics, and how much of who I am is

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nurture, the environment I grew up in, the relationships that shaped me,

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the stressors, the wounds, the messages I absorbed along. way.

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And here's where this gets tricky. When we put too much emphasis on nature, we can start to feel

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helpless. We think this is just my brain. This is just my personality. This is just how I'm wired.

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And while there may be truth there, it can leave us feeling stuck as if change isn't really

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possible. But when we put too much emphasis on nurture, especially on parents or childhood or

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family systems, we can end up feeling overwhelmed in a different way. We can start searching for

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someone to blame. we can feel crushed under the weight of trying to figure out exactly what

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happened and how to fix it. And if you're a parent yourself, that kind of nurture emphasis can also

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become terrifying because suddenly it feels like every mistake you make might permanently damage

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your own. child. Either of those extremes can leave us with a victim mentality,

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feeling helpless or stuck. We feel like we can't change ourselves or we can't change what happened

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to us. We need a better way to understand the relationship between how we're wired and how we've

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been shaped. A way that tells the truth without making us feel hopeless. A way that honors the

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impact of our environment without reducing us to our

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ourselves with compassion and still believe that growth and change and healing is possible.

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And this is why I love this metaphor. Here it is.

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Your brain is like a plant. And every plant, if you think about it,

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starts with a seed. That seed is your nature. It's your DNA,

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your temperament, the raw material that God put into you before you ever took your first breath.

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It's the wiring you came into this world with, the way you process the world around you,

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the things that come naturally to you, the things that cost you, that are hard for you. This is

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your seed, the seed of this plant. that is your brain. And that seed gets planted in soil.

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The soil is your nurture. It's your family of origin, your parents or step-parents,

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your grandparents, the town you grew up in, the culture and community that surrounded you.

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The soil is everything that was already there when you arrived. You didn't choose it.

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You were just planted in it. Now, here's the thing. Both make up who you are today.

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The seed cannot grow without the soil. And soil without a seed is just dirt.

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Both matter. Both shape who you become. And the relationship between them,

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between the seed you were given and the soil you were placed in, that relationship is,

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I would argue, one of the most important things you need to understand about yourself.

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In today's episode, we're going to dig into both of these elements. What kind of seed were you

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given? What uniquely makes you you that cannot be changed? And what kind of soil shaped you?

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We're going to go through some of the different types of soil that I see and how that impacts the

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way your brain, your nervous system, who you are today developed. Because I don't think you can do

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the real work of healing, of becoming the best, most whole version of yourself without getting

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honest about both. So I want to start with the seed because I think this is where a lot of us have

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some catching up to do in terms of our own understanding and self-awareness. Seeds are not all the

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same. I have this Christmas cactus sitting in my office. And this is a true story.

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I'm a little embarrassed to tell you this, but I have not watered it in over six weeks. I haven't

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touched it. My mom gave it to me and I was so excited. I do well with succulents. I am not a plant

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person. I don't have a green thumb. I'm a little too, let's say, scattered. I get distracted and I

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forget to take care of them. This hasn't been touched in six weeks and it still looks pretty good.

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It's a little droopy. The dirt this morning was just bone dry. I've watered it now,

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but it's a lot. it's still looking okay. And this is the thing about a cactus or any sort of

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succulent. But this is the thing about a cactus or any sort of succulent. The seed is just hardy by

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design. It can go without a lot of nutrients for a stretch of time and still be okay. It still

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suffers, but in a different sort of way. It was built differently. And then there are other kinds

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of seeds in the plant world. These are seeds that grow into some of our most beautiful flowers,

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the gardenias, the orchids, and flowers like those. And these types of plants,

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these flowers, these are not like my... cactus, they need regular watering.

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They cannot have too much direct sun. They need rich soil, careful tending,

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the right temperature, the right humidity. If they get neglected, they wilt or die on the vine.

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But here's the thing, when they're cared for well, they're extraordinary. There's nothing quite

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like a gardenia in bloom. I love both types of flowers. I love my succulents and I love my more

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delicate blooming gardenias. And here's where I think this gets interesting.

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This is supported in research in psychology. Researchers in psychology...

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childhood development have actually found something very similar in humans. There's a concept in

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developmental psychology called differential susceptibility. It's a term that was developed by Jay

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Belsky. And the shorthand version of Belsky's research, it's fascinating, is this.

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Some children are by nature more sensitive to their environment than others.

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Belsky used the metaphor of orchids. and dandelions. Dandelion children are the ones who can thrive

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almost anywhere, put them in a challenging environment and they survive, put them in a flourishing

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environment and they do well. hearty. They're resilient. You've seen these people,

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maybe in your own family, maybe in your friend group. Maybe you are this person. I like to think of

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them as wildflowers instead of dandelions, but these are the people that just seem to get up and

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get going no matter what soil they're planted in. And then there are the orchid children.

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They're more sensitive to their environment, to stress, to conflict, to the emotional temperature

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in a room. In difficult soil, they really struggle. But here's what the research also shows.

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When orchid children are placed in a supportive, nurturing environment, they don't just do okay.

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They flourish often more than their wildflower peers. The same sensitivity that makes them more

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vulnerable also makes them more responsive to goodness and nourishment.

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There's another framework that I think also speaks to what Belsky's research is getting at.

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And this is the well-established framework called the highly sensitive person. This is research

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that was originally developed by psychologist Elaine Aron. And if you've never heard this term

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before, it might be worth pausing here for a moment and checking this research out. About 15 to 20

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% of the population is wired with what she describes as a deeper processing of sensory information.

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Highly sensitive people notice more. They pick up on subtleties in a room,

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in relationships, in tone of voice, in the unspoken tension that other people might walk right

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past. They feel things more deeply. They tend to get overstimulated more easily.

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And I've worked with a lot of women in particular who have this designation. And sometimes we can

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shame ourselves for being too sensitive when in fact, this is a beautiful way that God has made us.

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I've always been highly aware of the emotional environment around me. Even a little bit of unhealth

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in a room registers in me. It always has. And for a long time, I didn't understand why other people

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seem to just be able to move. through the world and in and out of groups of people and not be

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affected by things that would have derailed me. And when I've come to understand that this is not a

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deficiency, it's the seed God gave me to steward. And that seed needs a very specific kind of soil.

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On the other side, I think of people I know. One of my closest friends, a roommate I had for years

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comes to mind. My mother-in-law comes to mind. These are people who grew up with very little,

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who've navigated enormous hardship. My mother-in-law ended up as a refugee in a resettlement camp

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for years. She then became an immigrant in this country where she spoke English as a second

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language. And she is just... She can just adapt. She just shows up in a certain kind of strength

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wherever she is planted. She's a wildflower. I see it in her.

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I just... Throughout the course of different seasons of her life where I've traveled with her, I'm

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just amazed at her ability to adapt to hard situations.

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We need people, friends, family members, loved ones, maybe it's you,

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people who can hold steady when things are hard. Now here's why this matters.

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Neither is right or wrong, good or bad, better or worse. Neither kind of seed is the problem.

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But if you don't, know what kind of seed you are or what kind of seed your loved one is,

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you will likely spend a lot of time either berating yourself or struggling with things that don't

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seem to bother other people, or you'll be completely blind to what it's costing you to keep pushing

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through without care. And both of those things will catch up with you eventually.

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So I want to pause here. for a moment and ask you as you're listening,

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where do you land? Are you more like a wildflower, like a dandelion where you can land almost

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anywhere and land on your feet? Or are you more like an orchid where you need the right kind of

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soil? You're sensitive, you're attuned. If something's off, it's going to get to you. Or are you

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somewhere in between? How much do you... understand about the raw material you came into this world

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with. The way God designed your nervous system, your brain, your psyche to work and move through

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the world with its unique gifts and unique challenges. Because that self-knowledge,

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that ability to understand yourself, this isn't just interesting. It isn't just good for cocktail

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conversation. This is foundational to how we see ourselves and how we become a healthier,

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more whole version of who God made us to be. Now let's talk about the soil for a minute.

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Because you can have the most beautifully made seed in the world. And if the soil is wrong, if

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it's... if it's toxic, if it just doesn't have what that particular seed needs,

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the plant is going to struggle. It might survive, but it won't thrive in the way it was meant to.

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And the thing about soil is you didn't choose it. None of us did. We were planted and we grew up in

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whatever was already there. I want to walk through a few different kinds of soil,

‍

and I'm going to be personal here because I think sometimes stories are the best way to make this

‍

real. In my own case, you already know I was given a highly sensitive disposition.

‍

I grew up in a small town. My parents were good, kind people. My grandparents lived down the

‍

street. Wherever I went in this town, people knew who I was. There was good and bad with that, but

‍

there was a stability and a rootedness to my childhood that I didn't fully understand until I left

‍

at 18. That soil had a lot of nutrients in it, genuine connection.

‍

consistency, the security of being held by a community. And I don't want to paint it as perfect.

‍

It wasn't. You'll read about some of the wounds I carried out of that childhood in my new book,

‍

The Secure Soul. They're there. We all have them. No soil is perfect.

‍

But looking back, that soil gave me a really strong root system.

‍

But here's the problem. When I left that soil as an adult,

‍

when I stepped into the real world with all of its complexity and hardship, I wasn't always

‍

equipped. There were rainy seasons. I didn't know how to navigate dark seasons,

‍

lonely seasons. I hadn't learned certain skills because my soil had been in many ways.

‍

sheltered. Good soil can sometimes mean you haven't been exposed to enough of the hard things that

‍

build resilience in a different way. So I struggled a lot in my early years as a young adult.

‍

Now, I want to contrast that with a different kind of soil, a soil that is also characterized with

‍

loving, good nutrients, but where hardship enters in young. And for this soil,

‍

I think of my own two stepchildren who came into my life having already navigated.

‍

profound loss. At a very young age, they lost their mother to a terminal illness.

‍

They had to adjust to the loss of their mom, to grief, to so much change,

‍

and then to me, eventually coming into their family and their family structure shifting.

‍

Now, there were a lot of really good, beautiful ingredients in this soil. They had a wonderful dad,

‍

an incredible grandmother, my mother-in-law, who I told you about who stepped in to that role in

‍

those couple of years. And then I came in and I think I understood because of my own disposition

‍

and my own wiring, I understood intuitively how to be a healthy presence as they began to slowly

‍

attach to me in new. So there was a lot of good in this soil,

‍

but it was still bumpy. It was still rocky. It was soil that required them to adapt and develop

‍

resilience. early on and these two kids i'm so proud of are some of the most resilient people i

‍

know now as young adults the soil they grew up in demanded something of them very young and they

‍

rose to meet that challenge cultivating skills at a level of maturity that i see in them as young

‍

adults that still is amazing to me and i'm so grateful for that you may relate to that kind of soil

‍

where there was a lot of good nutrients But there was heartache or suffering or sorrow introduced

‍

early on that gave you an understanding of what grief feels like,

‍

of what resilience requires in a way that not everybody has.

‍

I just learned that your skin can absorb more chlorine in a 10-minute shower than from drinking

‍

eight glasses of tap water. And I love a long shower, which made me think differently about what I

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was actually showering in every single day. That's why I love AquaTrue Shower. It's a filtered

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dot com. Promo code. S-H-B-E-S-T-O-F-Y-O-U.

‍

And then there's a third kind of soil. And this is the one I think about often in my work.

‍

And you may relate to this. There are people who grew up in soil that was in ways you may not have

‍

fully understood at the time, genuinely harmful, constant lying,

‍

deception. gaslighting, maybe bickering or fighting that never resolved,

‍

maybe walking on eggshells, maybe a home where love was conditional or unpredictable or chaotic or

‍

simply absence. And the painful thing about this kind of soil is that you don't always know it's

‍

toxic until you're out of it because it's the only soil you ever knew. Had a conversation about

‍

this with my guest, Melanie Schenkel. We'll link to that episode in the show notes.

‍

But she talks about her experience of getting to adulthood and looking back and realizing this

‍

childhood wasn't normal. The way my mother treated me wasn't okay. This soil wasn't just neutral or

‍

benign or filled with a certain kind of suffering. It was toxic. It wasn't only lacking certain

‍

essential ingredients. It was also poisonous. Now, I want to name here that as we talk about the

‍

soil you were planted in, this isn't about laying blame. I want to say that clearly because I know

‍

that a lot of people I encounter feel some resistance to this kind of looking back.

‍

It can feel disloyal. It can feel like you're reopening something that you'd rather just leave

‍

alone because you can't change it. here's what i've come to believe you cannot heal a wound you

‍

haven't named you can't tend a garden you've never actually looked at and naming what was real and

‍

hard in your soil, especially if there were toxins there. This isn't the same thing as blaming the

‍

people who were in it. Sometimes the harm was so pervasive and deep and profound that there's

‍

hardly any good that you can see in it. Sometimes it was otherwise good people who were wounded and

‍

as a result wounded you. Often it's somewhere in between.

‍

of these cases the work is the same you have to be able to see the soil clearly to understand how

‍

to heal the you that came out of it you have to be able to understand where were their nutrients

‍

where were their good things and where were their deficiencies where was their toxins or poison

‍

that was never actually named that i need to be able to name in order to move forward in healing

‍

Where was there too much shade where I was left alone too much and was neglected to where parts of

‍

me were never really seen? And where did the sun shine so harshly that maybe all of my achievements

‍

or all of my performance or all of my pleasing had a light shined on? But the other parts of me

‍

never got seen, the ones that were messy, the ones that needed care too.

‍

Where did things in my life and my soul not get watered or tended and they had to learn to go

‍

without? Where were you not taught how to survive the hard seasons, the droughts,

‍

the dry spells? Because nobody around you knew how to do that either. Here's the thing,

‍

if you can't look back at the soil in which you were shaped, it's really hard to steward the plant

‍

God has given you to steward now. It's hard to have those hard conversations with a spouse about

‍

why you sometimes do the things you do. It's hard to explain to your own kids, hey,

‍

I'm not making an excuse. for this behavior, but I want you to know this is something that happened

‍

to me that I'm trying to change when it comes to how I'm showing up for you.

‍

If you don't take the time to look back and understand that soil that shaped you,

‍

it's really hard to show up in healthy ways now. Again, this isn't to blame our past.

‍

This is to see it clearly, to name it. Honestly, and it's the root of what I think brings about the

‍

ability to heal. So now I want to bring these two things together because the seed and the soil

‍

don't operate in isolation. They're in constant relationship with each other. And that relationship

‍

is where a lot of the story of your current life actually lives. I want you to think about it this

‍

way. A hearty seed, a wildflower or dandelion, whichever you prefer. planted in difficult soil will

‍

probably survive, maybe even thrive in certain ways. But even that seed has limits.

‍

Even the most seemingly resilient person has a point where the soil has taken too much from them.

‍

And the thing is, they don't always. know it because they've spent their whole life being the one

‍

who's fine, who's getting by, who's being strong for others. I hear this a lot from couples,

‍

actually. One partner is more of a sensitive seed, more like the orchid,

‍

and they tend to know they're struggling because they feel it and they need something to change.

‍

And the other partner is more like that wildflower, dandelion, more blinders on. And they've been

‍

pushing through for so long without tending to themselves that they sometimes lack empathy for

‍

others or for themselves. They sometimes deny the reality that the soil could and should change.

‍

Sometimes these folks are resistant to change, right? Both. Types of people need to grow in self

‍

-awareness. Both people need to know what they're working with in their raw material to have that

‍

perspective, to see the other, to see outside of their own box, to see that the two together make

‍

something beautiful. And then there's another thing that happens that I think about a lot. A tender

‍

seed, an orchid, is planted early on as a child in depleted soil,

‍

you needed. This is where some of our deepest wounds come from. And here's what I want you to know.

‍

It also is where some of the most profound healing is possible. The research on highly sensitive

‍

people actually shows this, that when an orchid child or an orchid adult finally gets the right

‍

environment, the right support, the right nourishment, they don't just catch up.

‍

They often surpass what anyone expects. The sensitivity that makes you so vulnerable on one hand to

‍

hard things also makes you exquisitely responsive to the good things.

‍

So wherever you land in this conversation, whatever raw material you are getting, whatever soil you

‍

are planted in, neither one is a verdict. If you identify more with the orchid type of seed,

‍

it's an invitation to recognize that you can flourish, to look at the soil and begin to understand

‍

the nourishment that your soul needs to thrive. And if you identify or if one of your loved ones

‍

identifies more with that wildfire, you've just plowed through the soil and kind of stayed hardy

‍

without. ever really taking a look the invitation for you is to take a look is to recognize that

‍

that soil still matters just because you've survived doesn't mean You're thriving.

‍

And this kind of honesty, this kind of ability to name and to see is how we begin to heal and

‍

become the best version of who God made us to be. We do it for ourselves and we do it for our

‍

families, for our children, for our marriages. We do this work of honest naming in order to heal.

‍

Here's where I want to land today. Every single one of us carries something from the soil we were

‍

planted in. It's true for all of us. There is no person listening to this who came through

‍

childhood without some deficiency in the soil, some place where it was too dry,

‍

too harsh, too uncertain, or simply not enough. This isn't a flaw.

‍

This is just the condition of being human. And here's what I've seen over and over again in my own

‍

life and in the lives of the people I've worked with. Healing is possible. It's more than possible.

‍

It's one of the most amazing things that God has designed us to be able to do. Real,

‍

meaningful, lasting change is possible. You can't change the raw material,

‍

the seed you were given. You wouldn't want to. This is how God made you to be in this world who you

‍

are inherently. matters not only to you, but to the world around you. You are a part of this

‍

overall system, this ecosystem of humanity and who you are in your essence matters.

‍

But you can change the way you carry that essence forward. You can change the soil you create

‍

around yourself now as an adult with the awareness and the agency you didn't have as a child.

‍

And this work starts with two. things. Number one,

‍

knowing the kind of seed, the raw material, really understanding it without judgment.

‍

And number two, looking honestly at the soil that shaped you without blame, but without flinching

‍

either. Next week, part two, we're going to... about what that healing actually looks like as you

‍

do it, what it means to notice and name and tend the garden you're growing now with everything

‍

you've learned about the ground you started in. For today, I want you to... sit with a couple of

‍

questions first what do you really know and understand about the seed the essence the raw material

‍

god gave you this can come through looking at personality styles or tools we have a podcast episode

‍

on ocean the the personality traits we understand to be the most inherited the most in that nature

‍

category i'll link to that in today's show notes that could be a place to start understanding

‍

yourself as a orchid as highly sensitive, looking at patterns that have just been true your whole

‍

life. Make a list. Begin to talk to God about God. What are things that are just how you made me?

‍

Things I accept about myself, even am fond of in myself. Yes, there are things about it that

‍

sometimes drive me crazy. And also, I'm grateful, God, for the person you made me to be.

‍

And then number two, what have you been willing? to see and really look at about the soil that

‍

shaped you, what was good, but also hard at times,

‍

what was lacking, what was not there at all, and what maybe was toxic,

‍

poisonous even, that you haven't really fully wanted to name, which means that toxin still has some

‍

access to your own soul. I want you to get honest with yourself about these two dimensions of your

‍

own being. Let these questions sit with you. Pray over them. Talk to God about them. God,

‍

help me to see. Become a student of your own soul in partnership with God's spirit.

‍

And if you want to start going even deeper, a lot of what we're talking about today is at the heart

‍

of my new book, The Secure Soul. It's all about healing the wounds that form when the soil around

‍

us wasn't quite what we needed. You can actually start reading the first few chapters as well as

‍

the first few chapters of the companion guide workbook. Now, when you...

‍

-order. You can find the details about how to get that information emailed directly to you at

‍

thesecuresoulbook.com. I'll also link to all the other resources I mentioned in today's episode in

‍

the show notes, or you can head over to my website, drallisoncook.com backslash podcast.

‍

Thank you so much for being here. I can't wait to be with you for part two next Thursday.

‍

Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you

‍

take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to or

‍

watch podcasts and click the plus or follow button. That'll ensure you don't miss an episode and it

‍

helps get the word out to others. While you're there, I'd love it if you leave a five-star review.

‍

Join us each weekday for the best of you every day, a brief daily reflection to help you start your

‍

mornings with a steady dose of wisdom. Remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor

‍

God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.

‍

When did being a responsible adult become synonymous with being serious all the time?

Somewhere along the way, many of us learned that curiosity, playfulness, imagination, and wonder were things we needed to leave behind in order to grow up. But what if those qualities aren't distractions from a meaningful life?

What if they're essential to it?

In this episode, Dr. Alison Cook sits down with entrepreneur, creative visionary, and author Piera Gelardi to explore why playfulness is far more than a luxury—it's a powerful source of resilience, creativity, connection, and emotional well-being. Together, they unpack how stress, perfectionism, and the pressure to "have it all together" disconnect us from our authentic selves, and how reclaiming play can help us feel more alive.

You'll learn:

• Why playfulness is a sign of emotional health—not immaturity
• How stress, perfectionism, and the "cool police" rob us of joy
• The surprising connection between play and resilience
• How to move from a pressured state into a playful state
• Practical ways to reconnect with curiosity, wonder, and creativity
• Why your childlike qualities may actually be your greatest strengths

This conversation is a gentle invitation to loosen your grip, laugh a little more, and rediscover the parts of yourself that make you feel most alive.

‍

More Resources:

Order Piera’s book, The Playful Way: Creativity, Connection, and Joy Through Everyday Moments of Play

You can now preorder Dr. Alison’s newest book, The Secure Soul, and immediately receive the first 3 chapters as well as early access to the companion guide!

‍

Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram

‍

Curious what Family Role may have shaped you? Take the Family Role Quiz to learn how you may be showing up in your relationships with others.

Want to hear more like this? Start here:

Episode 188: Tiny Joys, Big Healing: Retraining the Brain for Hope with Dr MaryCatherine McDonald

📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here

Don't forget to browse this week's sponsors, who make it possible for me to bring you these resources for free + provide you with additional discounts!

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

‍

TRANSCRIPT

‍

I hoped I would get to the next stage of my career by cosplaying serious adult. I felt more

‍

disconnected. It was like I kind of lost my intrinsic motivation. So she said, what do you think

‍

the qualities are that got you here? Curiosity, experimentation, creativity, my joyful,

‍

creative personality. So why do you think that those qualities you have to like...

‍

throw in the trash can to get to the next level. She said, what if you actually lean into those

‍

more as your superpowers to grow? When we listen to the cool police and we try to not be cringe,

‍

we try to not stand out. We're not expressing ourselves. We feel a bit empty in life.

‍

When we try to be a responsible adult and make that mean just being completely serious and zipped

‍

up in our serious suits, we lose connection and joy and wonder and curiosity and all of these

‍

beautiful things that make us feel alive, creative, connected to each other.

‍

Hey everyone and welcome back to this week's deep dive episode of The Best of You. Have you ever

‍

noticed as we enter into these summer months how quickly the summer can begin to steal your sense

‍

of playfulness? These are the very months that are supposed to be more laid back and carefree and

‍

yet they can become the season of stress. There's less structure. And I know structure for me is

‍

often what keeps me steady. So in the summer, it can throw me off kilter. Often our kids are at

‍

home, which is fun, but also creeps into our downtime, our sense of order. Lines are long.

‍

The weather is hot. Someone says the wrong thing. Your child won't cooperate. Your inbox is

‍

overflowing. And before you know it, you're running on fumes. You're tense, maybe even short with

‍

the people you love. And you start to become that anxious, tense adult who isn't any fun.

‍

Well, today's episode is an invitation for all of us back into a playful spirit,

‍

because here's the thing about playfulness. It's not only good for our relationships and for our

‍

emotional health, it's part of our spiritual formation. Jesus says in Matthew 18,

‍

3, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

‍

Now, I want to unpack that for a second. What does Jesus mean there? What does it mean to become

‍

like little children? Obviously, we're adults. We're caring for other people. We need to be

‍

responsible. We need to be mature. We need to work on ourselves, right? All these things we talk

‍

about. And Jesus isn't calling us to become irresponsible or childish.

‍

This isn't an invitation to become something we don't want to be. However,

‍

there's something so important here that Jesus... and I tend to think of it like this.

‍

If you think about the context of this passage, the children are running to Jesus.

‍

They're curious. They're open-hearted. They're excited. They're trusting.

‍

They sense someone who is there for them. And I think this has something to do with that childlike

‍

spirit Jesus is calling us. to recover. Children, when they feel safe,

‍

are naturally curious. They're imaginative. They're in their bodies. They laugh easily.

‍

They trust easily. They experiment. They're adventurous. And all of this happens because when

‍

they're safe, they're securely attached. They know someone is there looking out for them,

‍

which so often is our job in the summer. But what if we too can learn from the children around us?

‍

because we too have one who is always looking out for us. But somewhere along the way,

‍

so many of us have learned to leave that part of ourselves behind.

‍

We've learned that being responsible means being serious, that it means we have to hold everything

‍

together, that we have to try to be perfect or polished. We've learned that being spiritual means

‍

being serious. We've learned that the only way to survive is to tighten up, look down,

‍

and try to work harder. But here's the paradox.

‍

Sometimes the very qualities we think we have to abandon in order to be serious adults are the very

‍

qualities that bring us back to life. Curiosity,

‍

wonder, playfulness, movement, imagination, joy.

‍

These qualities are a crucial part of resilience. They're a part of how God designed us to move

‍

through hard things. And they're also part of what helps us love other people and ourselves better.

‍

Richard Schwartz, the founder of the Internal Family Systems model of therapy, described

‍

playfulness as a quality of the true self. comes, it flows out of that centered,

‍

grounded, spirit-led place inside of us. It's not forced positivity or pretending everything is

‍

fine. It's a spaciousness, a freedom, a vitality, an ability to drop your shoulders,

‍

take a breath, and laugh at yourself and at all the shenanigans and absurdities around us.

‍

Playfulness helps us stay present to what's hard without being consumed by it.

‍

And this is what I love about today's conversation. My guest is creative visionary and author,

‍

Piera Gilardi. And she tells this incredible story about being stuck in a long TSA line.

‍

It's one of those tense moments where everyone is frustrated. Everyone is anxious. The atmosphere

‍

feels like it's buzzing with tension. In the middle of it, she makes a tiny,

‍

playful choice. That choice doesn't change the length of the line.

‍

It doesn't magically fix the situation. But it changes her experience of the frustration.

‍

And that in turn changes the experience of the people around her.

‍

I've noticed in my own life recently that when I can find my way back to a good inner eye roll,

‍

I can laugh at myself. I can laugh playfully with the people around me.

‍

The room changes. The stress lifts. Suddenly you're back in that spirit-led place with just a

‍

little more creativity, a little more joy, a little more lightness as you walk through the day.

‍

This is the power of playfulness. It doesn't deny the reality of what's hard,

‍

but it helps move through reality with more connection, more creativity,

‍

and more humanity. And a lot of us need this right now. The world has been a lot.

‍

The summer can be a lot. can be a lot. Marriage and family and relationships and friendships and

‍

church life can be a lot. And maybe the invitation for you today is not to try to do one more thing

‍

better or get one more thing right, but instead to return to a playfulness that God has placed in

‍

you from the beginning. A little wonder, a little laughter, a little curiosity,

‍

a little freedom, a little joy. My guest today is Piera Gilardi.

‍

Piera is a creative entrepreneur, speaker, author, and the co-founder and former executive

‍

creative director of Refinery29, where she helped shape one of the most influential media brands

‍

for women and launched an immersive creative experience, 29 Rooms.

‍

She's also the co-founder of NumaLuma, which is a platform devoted to helping people rediscover

‍

creativity and play in everyday life. Her new book The Playful Way is a beautiful practical

‍

invitation. to move from pressure into possibility. And she helps us reclaim play in practical

‍

ways. You're going to get some practical ideas in today's episode to reconnect to a sense of wonder

‍

and play. I love this conversation. It's so refreshing. It had me smiling from ear to ear,

‍

and I know it's going to have something for you as you enter into the week.

‍

Please enjoy my conversation with Piera Gilardi.

‍

The founder of the model, he talks about the qualities of kind of when we know when we're in the

‍

true self, when we're in that nervous system regulation, when we're connected, you know, and a lot

‍

of them are clarity and calm. But one of them is playfulness. Right. And that's what you're

‍

speaking to. So I would just love to kind of start there because you opened the book with such a

‍

relatable. frustrating story I was just in one of these where you're I think in a TSA line at the

‍

airport so frustrating and you have this moment of becoming playful could you could you share that

‍

with us yeah absolutely so I was at the airport and there were huge delays the TSA line was you

‍

know snaking this way that way it looked like it was miles long and our flight was in an hour and

‍

we were going on a vacation that we really needed um and have been really looking forward to and so

‍

we're just looking at this line and you know the the atmosphere in the airport is so tense you know

‍

it's like it's like a thousand like stress flies like buzzing in the air it feels like and you know

‍

everyone's huffing and puffing and getting annoyed with each other when you know they accidentally

‍

bump each other with their roller suitcases and whatnot and i feel myself starting to just have

‍

that internal voice of like why didn't we leave earlier why did you know that spiral and i

‍

recognize it i say oh i'm spiraling into you know i'm spiraling and i decide to just i we're we

‍

started around the first bend of the first turn in the line and i just made a split second decision

‍

i raised my hand to my partner and he looked at me confused but he gave me a tentative high five

‍

and i said yes one turn closer and he kind of giggled and then like the people around us looked at

‍

us you know they were like slightly amused confused uh so then the next time we went around the

‍

next turn my partner philip was ready so he raised his hand we both high-fived we said in unison

‍

one turn closer and that time people you know chuckled around us and by the third turn in the line

‍

this dad raised his hand for a high five before we even raised ours and You know,

‍

he and his kid were laughing. And then by, you know, basically as we went along in this line, each

‍

turn more people got involved or started to laugh. And so what had been this very pressured,

‍

stressful situation where everyone was, you know, kind of isolated in their own frustration became

‍

suddenly laughter, camaraderie. You know, we weren't going any faster in the line,

‍

but we. felt so different. And we had sparked this moment of laughter and connection for the people

‍

around us. And so ultimately, the state that we were in before that, where we were spiraling,

‍

we were white knuckling, we were stressed out, we were in our minds fighting against what was

‍

happening. That's what I call the pressured state. And when I took a breath and caught myself and

‍

realized that i had a choice to show up a different way and i chose the playful way it didn't

‍

change the situation but it changed us and it changed the people around us it's such a powerful

‍

story because i loved that opening and you're such a great writer you just bring it to life but i

‍

just thought oh my gosh that's it it's so simple but we so often don't choose that You know,

‍

that moment was just this, you know, just a second of you making a different choice.

‍

And you talk about how as children, this is much more normal for us.

‍

We kind of automatically are we're automatically able to play. It's so sort of intuitive.

‍

But as we become adults, we lose that. Why? What's your talk? And how do you describe in the book

‍

why we lose that that childlike desire to play? Yeah,

‍

play is intrinsic to all humans and we... we always can have access to it but we have to practice

‍

it and we we often lose touch with it so i think of it like a muscle that you know if you decide

‍

that you want to be more in touch with it it's about choosing it and finding those moments to

‍

practice it but as as we grow up a lot of things happen i mean unfortunately for a lot of people

‍

they have adverse childhood experiences that might you know mean they have to grow up much faster

‍

there are also a lot of like systemic and privilege-based barriers who's allowed to play and

‍

where. So all of those things are definite realities. And then there's also just the social

‍

conditioning that we get from a very young age. When you think about it, as you start to get into

‍

grade school, all of a sudden, play is just for resource re you know recess so it's this very very

‍

small pocket of time you know unless you go to a school where play is integrated more mindfully but

‍

at most schools it's really about you know doing things a certain way point a to point b it's sit

‍

you know sit still pay attention don't joke around and you're you're you know that's like how how i

‍

grew up you know all my report cards kind of talk about that so there's that then there's sort of

‍

the layer of you know as we get older being a responsible adult and sort of being taught that that

‍

That means being joyless, you know, for whatever reason, that responsibility means seriousness and

‍

approaching things seriously. We have that perfectionist voice that tells you, you know, I

‍

couldn't, I can't afford to make mistakes. So I'm not going to experiment. I'm not going to

‍

explore. I'm just going to try to get the right answer and do it perfectly. So we get all these

‍

voices. There's the cool police, you know, tells you don't stand out. Don't be cringe, you know,

‍

and all of these things, you know, slow. slowly remove you know pull us back from our playfulness

‍

and they pull us back from our authentic selves right like when we're not when we're so

‍

perfectionistic that we're not taking any risks or doing any exploration you know we lose we lose

‍

so much of you know what could be and and that those sparks of inspiration those um those trials

‍

that actually get us to a better answer and something that's more aligned for us when we you know

‍

when we listen to the cool police and we try to not be cringe we try to you know not stand out

‍

we're not expressing ourselves you know we we feel a bit empty in life.

‍

When we try to be a responsible adult and make that mean just being completely serious and,

‍

you know, zipped up in our serious suits, we lose connection and joy and wonder and curiosity and

‍

like all of these beautiful things that make us feel alive, creative, connected to each other.

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It's so true. It almost gets conditioned out of this.

‍

And I almost see it in different... The older I get, it gets conditioned out of me in different

‍

ways. And I was noticing, you know, I'm... in my fifth you know I'm menopausal and I've got to get

‍

to the gym right and get those those and I was at the gym the other day it just reminded me of this

‍

when you said this and I was so out of place I wasn't it was not cool you know this was like a

‍

everybody there was under 30 with like huge biceps you know I was not you know the cool police I

‍

was like I am I am not the cool police here I am so sticking out like a sore thumb and it was just

‍

stressed me out like this And then this older woman, and you could just tell she did not care.

‍

She was much older than me, just came running over to me. And she's like, we have the same orange

‍

shoes. And we did. And it was so adorable. And just to your point, I immediately found joy.

‍

And it was her being connected. And it made me think of it when you said the cool place.

‍

Why is that still getting to me?

‍

it doesn't matter i walk into a room where i'm not fitting in and i immediately sort of shrink and

‍

then this one yeah and this one person who doesn't care and that just changed my whole experience i

‍

had a great time we kind of like kept checking her yeah yes and it's it's powerful it's really

‍

powerful and yeah i the way i think of it is that that pressured state yes what we get into when

‍

we're feeling perfectionistic, when we're feeling judged or self-conscious, you know, that,

‍

that, Oh, I don't want to stand out kind of voice. Like all those things shrink us. So I sort of

‍

think of that pressured state as being clenched hands, right? It's like in our body, we can feel

‍

it. Like everything is tight. Our shoulders are up, you know, maybe we're clenching our jaw,

‍

our hands, you know, our breath is maybe shorter and we're white knuckling, you know? And when

‍

we're in that playful state, we're more like an inflated balloon we're like that woman you know

‍

pointing out the orange we're we're more filled with air um so i always i always kind of think

‍

about that and how what state even just noticing what state am i in right now um is really helpful

‍

just the awareness so you you talk about a point of burnout in your own life and realizing that you

‍

were thinking about it as burnout. You were thinking about it as a creative block maybe. And that

‍

was really underneath it was a disconnection from play. So what, how did you recognize that?

‍

How did you, you know, cause you're in the white knuckling. How did you recognize what was actually

‍

going on there?

‍

Yeah. So, I mean, I grew up in a very playful family and I, you know, moved to, I was,

‍

I'm very, you know, colorful, exuberant. creativity has always been core to my life and my career

‍

and so when I was starting my company Refinery29, my first company,

‍

I brought a lot of playfulness and a spirit of curiosity, exploration,

‍

experimentation to the work that I was doing. And that really served me.

‍

We built a company that was growing and we were hiring a bunch of people.

‍

We started hiring people from more corporate backgrounds.

‍

We also had a lot more pressure on us, a lot bigger goals, you know,

‍

investors that were looking at our progress. And so it started to feel very pressured.

‍

Yes. And I also started to feel like I was standing out in a not good way with my,

‍

you know, being this colorful, creative, playful person that was now sitting in boardrooms where

‍

people were slinging all this jargon that I didn't know and saying things I didn't understand. And

‍

so I had this, you know, I had this huge imposter syndrome and I had and I thought,

‍

you know, I think these playful qualities that got me to this point now aren't appropriate,

‍

you know, and I want to be taken seriously. So I need to be serious. And so I and I think of it

‍

like we're zipping ourselves into our serious. So good. Like it's like. You're getting in there and

‍

it's a tight suit. So I started to stop exhibiting these playful things.

‍

I thought if I asked a question in a meeting, then people would immediately know that I didn't know

‍

the answer. I thought if I floated big wild ideas, people would think I was an unrealistic dreamer.

‍

And I thought if I cracked a joke in the meeting, I would be seen as a joker. So I stopped doing a

‍

lot of these. things that were really natural for me to do in my work. And I hoped that I would be

‍

taken seriously from that. And I hoped I would get to the next stage of my career by cosplaying

‍

serious adult, basically. And what happened was that I wasn't learning.

‍

I still didn't know the answer to these. you know things i mean i was googling like a maniac but

‍

like i still didn't you know still didn't have the answers i felt more disconnected it was like i

‍

kind of lost my intrinsic motivation um i just felt yeah i felt very disconnected and i really lost

‍

my perspective too I remember laying on my apartment floor and crying about what a failure I was,

‍

like sobbing hysterically about what a failure I was. And I wrote this list of all the ways I was

‍

failing. And it was at a moment when the outside world would have thought, you know,

‍

this was my career peak thus far. But inside, I was so brittle,

‍

so depleted.

‍

I was able to realize that I was underplayed and overworked because I had the,

‍

had the privilege at the time to recognize that I was in this bad state. I actually thought, I

‍

thought I should probably just leave my company. I should resign because I wasn't clearly wasn't

‍

cut out for this. Um, and fortunately I got connected to this coach,

‍

Katya Verison and, uh, When I talked to her, the first thing she asked me was,

‍

what do you think the qualities are that got you to this place in your career where you have all

‍

this pressure, you know? Because in some ways, like Billie Jean King said, pressure is a privilege,

‍

right? Like in this case, you know, I had built something. It was a result of success in some ways.

‍

Yeah, it was a result of a certain kind of success, you know? A certain kind of success, that's a

‍

good way to put it, yeah. Yeah, and so she said, what do you think the qualities are? that got you

‍

here. And I said, curiosity, experimentation, creativity. You know,

‍

I also said, I think my personality, my joyful, you know, my joyful creative personality,

‍

like allowed me to meet and connect with a lot of people. And so she said, so, so why do you think

‍

that those qualities you have to like throw in the trash can to get to the next level?

‍

She said, what if you actually lean into those more? as your superpowers to grow and so I didn't

‍

necessarily know if she was on the right track or not but I decided you know I mean right now I'm

‍

at this place where I'm thinking of quitting my own company so I might as well try it and so I

‍

started you know I started leaning more into these playful qualities and what I saw was you know

‍

when I asked questions in a meeting I actually wasn't left out of the room. In fact, people leaned

‍

forward to hear the answer and thanked me afterwards for asking because they were too afraid to.

‍

So my curiosity was helping me to get more knowledge and it was helping me to actually help other

‍

people to also have a better understanding and to clarify what was happening.

‍

I started going back into that big idea. visionary you know imagination mode and what happened was

‍

that we started to have these breakthroughs these like breakthroughs and innovation and do things

‍

that you know ended up being sort of the most the thing our company was most known for came from

‍

leaning into being more imaginative and i started just bringing back my my joy and my humor and

‍

that made me feel much more connected and my day-to-day brighter and so yeah in that moment i was

‍

like so burnt out i was just so so brittle yeah and i found that yeah like i identified that i was

‍

overworked underplayed and when i brought that playful spirit back it brought me back to life

‍

there's such a your time you know i think about the word authenticity right as you're when we are

‍

when we are really inhabiting our true selves, like who we were made to be,

‍

that's when we're going to bring the best. We're not only not going to burn out, but we're going to

‍

bring the best of who we are to the table. I love that.

‍

I love that story. I think it also makes me think of there. You said something really profound that

‍

it was like you had reached this level of success, which is when the pressure. came in.

‍

And I even think about that happens in so many different ways. It can happen with work. I just was

‍

listening to you going, oh my gosh, I've been thinking about that this last six months. I'm like, I

‍

notice I'm losing the play. I'm trying to be somebody because I, you know, and it's not sustainable

‍

and it also isn't your best work. But I think it happens. I was thinking about parenting where we

‍

think our kids need some type of person or some perfection. And really what they need is us.

‍

and our realness and our playfulness. You know, but it's like when the stakes get higher,

‍

something in us goes back to that pressure cooker when actually as the stakes get higher,

‍

that's almost more when we need the playful self.

‍

Yeah, we think of play too as something, oh, I'll do that when times are good or I'll do that when

‍

I have a little free time. Yes, yes. Or, you know. when it's low when it feels low stakes and the

‍

thing about it is that play play is the most helpful actually in those in a lot of those more high

‍

stakes moments when we need you know because play play that playful spirit of exploration

‍

experimentation curiosity that taps us into being stronger problem solvers it helps us to be more

‍

connected to each other and more collaborative it helps us to lower our stress which you know

‍

stress you know shrinks like shrinks our creativity and our resources for finding solutions finding

‍

answers um so playfulness actually is really incredibly practical and useful but we see it as

‍

something that is frivolous and recess That's so, so true. So you've already talked about this a

‍

little bit in your own story and just there that sort of almost the opposite is the inner critic.

‍

When criticism comes in, either towards ourself or towards others, what are the kind of the most

‍

common voices that will shut that play down? You've kind of talked about this, but I think it's

‍

helpful to really name them and notice them because that's when we can make that pivot. Yeah,

‍

you know, I think something people also don't think about, they think of playfulness as being,

‍

because we see it as being frivolous, we don't see it as being courageous. And it's incredibly

‍

courageous to be playful because it requires us to be our authentic selves. It often requires risk.

‍

It requires us to stand out. And so it takes a lot of guts.

‍

And so in the book, I talk about these different powers of play, but I did a whole chapter about

‍

self-compassion at the end because in order to have that courage,

‍

I think we have to nurture our own inner voice and our own self-compassion because there are these

‍

voices that kind of tell us not to play. And those are that voice,

‍

the perfectionist voice that says, I can't afford to make a mistake. I need it to be perfect.

‍

I can't, you know, I can't explore and experiment and play. There's the voice that says I have too

‍

much responsibility to play around. There's the voice that says,

‍

yeah, blend in, don't stand out, don't be cringe.

‍

Yeah, I'm trying to think of some of the other voices, but those are some big ones. You're going to

‍

make a fool of yourself. That's a big one, I feel. You're going to make a fool of yourself. Yeah,

‍

that one really. Yeah, no one's going to take you seriously.

‍

Yeah. A lot of times it's like we're trying to meet serious energy with serious energy.

‍

Yes. Like we think it's a mismatch to bring playfulness into a situation.

‍

What I've been loving is I've been as I've been doing this book tour, I've been going to done this

‍

in four different cities now. I've been hosting these story hours where I share some of the

‍

different powers of play. curiosity, imagination, wonder. And then I tell a story about a time that

‍

that quality has helped me in my life. And then I have the audience share their own stories.

‍

And it's been incredible to hear, you know, people telling stories about being at their parents

‍

funeral and bringing humor with their siblings into it as a way of connecting with each other.

‍

you know, helping to like move through the grief and also to connect to their parents who are, you

‍

know, deceased, but were playful, funny people. Or, you know,

‍

someone shared this hilarious anecdote about going home for the holidays and deciding, you know,

‍

that they wanted to break the cycle of constantly fighting with their parents and trying to change

‍

their parents and reverting to like an adolescent state. So they said they decided they were.

‍

not going home for the holidays they were going on safari and when you're on safari you don't try

‍

to change the animal's diet you don't get in the animal's face about you don't like that they did

‍

you just sit back and think wow this is wild it's

‍

been so fun to hear people's stories a lot of parents you know sharing you know funny ways they get

‍

their you know they like get cooperation their kids brushing their teeth um you know people have

‍

been sharing ways that they're transforming you know mundane tasks through you know through play um

‍

so it's been that's been really fun to just hear these firsthand anecdotes.

‍

And I think everyone has one when they start to see also gratefulness as not just goofing around,

‍

but how it's, how it also represents, you know, humor and curiosity and wonder and imagination.

‍

you know, moving, you know, moving our bodies is so playful. So once I start to kind of open people

‍

up to these different powers of play, the stories that I'm hearing are just so incredible and

‍

vivid. I love that. And I love that you call it a power because it is powerful. Like even just

‍

listening to you tell those, I'm like something shifts and you've touched on these,

‍

but I really kind of want to just take a second and drill down on these. I think there's eight of

‍

them. Yeah. Can you, can you say them again? I've heard you say curiosity.

‍

Yeah, I will say, I will say the powers of play. Let's see if I can remember all eight.

‍

It's a pop quiz.

‍

There's the joyful gesture. So this is someone who brings humor and levity, and they're really

‍

amazing at diffusing tension because humor helps us to de-stress. It helps us to have a little

‍

distance between us and whatever's going on. So the joyful gesture, their power of play is humor

‍

and levity. Then there's the visionary dreamer. So they're the... one with a big imagination who

‍

sees beyond the you know what is to what if um so they're really great at imagining new

‍

possibilities um then we have the curious quester so the curious quester is someone that might go

‍

down rabbit holes of curiosity there they ask a lot of questions they're more of an experimental

‍

you know take a more experimental approach to life And so that's always really good for finding new

‍

ways and also illuminating situations. We have the mover and shaker.

‍

So these are people who find play through moving their bodies.

‍

And they're really amazing at recognizing that our bodies are also,

‍

you know, powerful for helping our minds to get unstuck. So they can help move through stuck

‍

situations by moving their bodies. um we have the wonder wanderer so this is someone whose powers

‍

of noticing are really amazing so you might be walking down the street with them and they're the

‍

one that's pointing to the cloud that's shaped like a rhinoceros or the little you know sparkly

‍

bracelet that's in the crack of the sidewalk they're just always noticing they notice patterns they

‍

notice um and they're also really tapped into just the beauty of day-to-day life

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That's a pretty good list. And I think the listener can go get the book to get the rest of them.

‍

Yeah, get the book to get the three that I'm not remembering right now. I love the way that there's

‍

different, you know, because we're going to resonate with different ones. Because, you know, then I

‍

can almost feel the tension of, I'm not funny, you know, like. But then it's like, but I'm a

‍

dreamer. It's like there are different ways we all play differently. And finding your own kind of

‍

unique. I think of people I know who have sort of a dark sense of humor that sort of is like,

‍

that see the, and I'm like, there's a playfulness in it. And again,

‍

I think what's interesting is you're not talking about We're not trying to bypass what's hard.

‍

No. Right. And any of these things, just like we talk on the podcast all the time, any any strength

‍

or anything can have can become a mask. Right. Right.

‍

But at the same time, that that ability to the flexibility that we know is such an important part

‍

of resilience to kind of flip into. I love the story about going home and seeing the family as the

‍

safari to harness that. as a tool to use in a hard situation is,

‍

is really powerful. And then kind of knowing your own unique way you're going to do that.

‍

Yeah. Yeah. When I, what I was hearing from a lot of people was that I'm not playful.

‍

And when I, you know, double clicked on that, what I would find was that it was because people

‍

think of play as being the joyful gesture, basically. Yeah. Funny.

‍

Silly, light. And so if they're not that or they think of play as being the fun one,

‍

you know, I'm not the fun friend, so I'm not playful. So what I really wanted to do in the book was

‍

to show all these different facets of playfulness and so that people could see themselves in it.

‍

And they could also understand how if they if there was a quality that they wanted to develop more,

‍

how they might do that. and how they might practice that in their day-to-day life.

‍

So let's talk a little bit. So for the listener who's been in that pressure cooker, maybe feels

‍

like they've lost a little bit of that sense of play where you were when you had that.

‍

What's a practice, you know, we can do to, because you do talk about moving out of your head,

‍

right? So then we can get in our head with it. So what's a way that we can begin to shift from

‍

pressured to playful? Yeah. So I think the first thing is recognizing that you're in that pressured

‍

state. So then you kind of feel it. So the way I have, I have an acronym,

‍

even though acronyms are my kryptonite, I have an acronym for kind of shifting state and it's play

‍

P-L-A-Y. So it's pause. And like when you're pausing,

‍

you recognize, oh, I'm in the pressured state. Everything's tight. I'm stressed out. I'm spiraling.

‍

Okay, pause. And then you lighten. So you can lighten with a breath. You can lighten with a,

‍

you know, moving your body or laughter. But essentially,

‍

you want to just kind of try and go from being that clean. from the clenched fist to like a little

‍

bit more of an inflated balloon. Then you activate your play power. So whatever,

‍

you know, you kind of tap into that, whichever play power feels right for the situation or right

‍

for you. And then you're basically saying yes and. So you're saying, which is an improv principle,

‍

but you're saying, okay, this thing is happening. I might not want it to be happening. And I can

‍

look for a playful approach here. So that I find really helpful for adults that feel like they've

‍

completely disconnected with their playfulness. I usually tell them to look in the lost and found,

‍

like go back to childhood. What made you lose track of time?

‍

What, you know, what did you just love doing? And often there's a kernel,

‍

it might not be that, you know, you might, might not want to play with Barbies as an adult, but

‍

maybe that role playing, you know, that you did means that you love, you know,

‍

you love narratives. So you love, maybe you love like sitting on the train and like imagining the,

‍

what the different people's like lives are like, or maybe, you know, you love doing.

‍

improv now or you know there's like so finding the thread like for me as a kid I loved beachcombing

‍

I grew up in Maine and I loved looking for treasure along the beach and so now as someone who lives

‍

in New York City as an adult I love going on wonder wanders so I go for a walk and I just basically

‍

try and like I'm like I'm tuning my dial to delight And I look for things that are interesting to

‍

me. And I look up, I look down, I look all around, I put my phone away unless I need to take a

‍

picture of one of the amazing things that I find. And so that's sort of a practice that relates

‍

back to a childhood practice, but it now fits my adult life and my environment. So I think people

‍

can, yeah, look back and see if there's an adult version that seems appealing of like that

‍

childhood interest. i love that because there's a there's definitely a connection like i was

‍

thinking when you were talking about like the imagination you know i could just imagine worlds in

‍

my head and sometimes i'll go back and read the books that sparked the kids books it sparked the

‍

imagination because somehow it just opens up that pathway back yeah in my brain you know whatever

‍

was tapped into Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And in the book, I also have like these daily,

‍

these small practices. So a couple of my favorite ones that people want to practice play.

‍

One is move to get out of our heads is to do a shake break. So, you know,

‍

I think we think of a lot of times as adults, we're like, I need to move and it's tied to a should,

‍

right? It's all about exercise. I need to be, you know, need to be healthy.

‍

But. kind of finding some space for just like a little bit of free movement. So Shake Break is I

‍

put on a song. I just move freely however I feel like for a minute.

‍

And I did it before this podcast. I do it whenever I need to, you know,

‍

like move through. Sometimes it's nerves or I just want to like wake up my energy if I'm feeling.

‍

anxious i'm feeling sad i take a shake break i love that that one i love that's one of my own

‍

practices that i do all the time the other is the wonder wonder which i just told you about and

‍

it's you know we can even do it in our environment and just say like i'm gonna look up and find

‍

five things that are green or i'm gonna look up and see if i can find five things i haven't noticed

‍

before in my space um so that's that's one just to tap us into that the wonder that's always around

‍

us. And, you know, so often we're so in our head or we're so in our to-dos or our stress that we

‍

don't actually notice the world around us. And that's one that's been, as someone who lives with

‍

depression, going on Wonder Wanders has been so helpful for me. It's such a gentle,

‍

it's like a gentle form of play for me. I love that. Yeah, so I love that one.

‍

And then another one that I really love is Find the Funny. which is basically looking back at my

‍

day at the end of the day and finding something that I can look at through the lens of humor. So

‍

maybe it's a moment I took myself too seriously that I can laugh at. Maybe it's a situation that

‍

stressed me out, but that if I imagine it in a sitcom, all of a sudden it seems so hilarious.

‍

Or if I dramatize it, it feels hilarious. But it's a great way to look back at your day and kind of

‍

find the lightness. put a little distance between you and whatever was frustrating you or stressing

‍

you out. And then I find that because I've, because I practice it sort of retroactively,

‍

then in the moment, I'm more able to see the lens of humor on things.

‍

And it really, it just helps me so much to like laugh about it a little. It's not about not,

‍

it's not, and I think we think of play as this thing that's. the opposite of seriousness.

‍

Yeah. But it's really that that playful spirit helps us to move through through seriousness with a

‍

little bit more flexibility, levity, resourcefulness. Exactly.

‍

It's so well stated. And those are such practical. I love the the practical.

‍

I love that idea of just thinking over your day. I just did it. While you were talking about it, I

‍

was like, oh, I've been taking myself so seriously there. And I can almost imagine the screenplay.

‍

I can almost imagine the script, kind of inner eye roll. I have like an inner eye roller.

‍

I just start, oh, gosh. And it's not being mean. And you're so right. It's such a paradox. It's not

‍

being mean to yourself. It's actually kind of like seeing yourself. And it's just, again, I always

‍

think about, we talk a lot on the podcast about kind of reparenting these. parts of yourself right

‍

it's a gentle and you know think about with your real life kids like if they're doing something

‍

sometimes that eye roll when it's done in love not in anger it's an actual really like side eye

‍

you're you're actually showing confidence you're showing courage and that tracks so much more with

‍

a kid than you know getting all serious and giving them a lecture And it's right. And it's kind of

‍

the same with ourselves. It's kind of like, oh, gosh, you know, if I can if I can sort of laugh at

‍

myself, like I'm pretty free, actually. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's not about being mean and

‍

being like, oh, why did I why was I like that? It's just more like, oh, my God, there I go again.

‍

Freeing. It's it's very it's it's very paradoxical. I love that you're kind of highlighting that.

‍

And even just I appreciate your vulnerability and saying you've dealt with. depression right it

‍

doesn't these things coexist and in many ways playfulness you know some of the funniest people i

‍

know are the people who can kind of see the humor in the darkness yeah and it's not and this is

‍

where just to circle all the way back what i was saying about richard schwartz the founder of this

‍

ifs model that's where he talked about that playfulness is a it's part of our design that is the

‍

healthy kind of resilience, you know, that's allowing us to hold what's hard and also,

‍

you know, just kind of hold it loosely, you know, hold it with a little more lightness.

‍

I really like that. That's beautiful. That's beautiful the way you put it. Yeah. Well, I think,

‍

you know, we also, we internalize a lot of binaries,

‍

you know, and that is so destructive. And so playfulness is holding,

‍

it's holding both and it's a yes and sort of energy.

‍

And I think that that helps us to feel more whole and connected and to be able to sit with the

‍

beauty and the pain and the... know the it's not you know the complexity of of life I love it tell

‍

my listeners a little bit more about where they can find the book it's such a great read it's it's

‍

filled with and you embody I just want to say the playfulness about which you know I felt it even

‍

And I can tell it's a practice because I felt it in myself as we were talking. And I see that in

‍

the book, too, right, that you're embodying it as you go. And it's really powerful. Where can

‍

people find it and find more about it? Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, I embodied all these

‍

practices as I was writing it as well. So I really challenged myself to lean into my own

‍

philosophy. And it helped me so much. Listeners can find the book where,

‍

you know, major online sellers where books are sold the playful way. And if you want to also

‍

practice play day to day, I have an app called Numaluma currently free that is all about creative

‍

play in your day to day in those in between moments of your life where, you know,

‍

you have a few minutes and you might be doom scrolling.

‍

it's giving you an active form of low stakes play. So I would love to,

‍

yeah, all about spreading play ripples. And I hope that this book and these practices help people

‍

to feel more connected, creative, alive in their day to day.

‍

I love it. Thank you so much for sharing your time with us. Thank you so much. I loved our

‍

conversation. It was so delightful. Thanks for playing. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for joining me

‍

for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you take a moment to

‍

subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to or watch podcasts and

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click the plus or follow button. That'll ensure you don't miss an episode and it helps get the word

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out to others. While you're there, I'd love it if you leave a five-star review. Join us each

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weekday for the best of you every day, a brief daily reflection to help you start your mornings

‍

with a steady dose of wisdom. Remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God,

‍

you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.

‍

‍

What does it actually mean to raise an emotionally mature child?

In this powerful conversation, Dr. Alison Cook sits down with renowned psychologist and bestselling author Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson, whose groundbreaking book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents helped millions name what they didn’t receive growing up.

Now, Dr. Gibson turns toward a new question: How do we become the kind of parents who help our children feel safe, seen, respected, and emotionally strong?

Together, they explore the emotional foundation children truly need—not perfection, but presence. They unpack what emotional maturity looks like, the impact of being raised by an emotionally immature parent, and how we can begin to give our own children the kind of parenting they need.

You’ll explore:

• The signs of an emotionally immature parent
• What a “good enough” parent actually looks like
• How repair builds trust more than perfection does
• The dance of balancing connection and autonomy 
• How to create emotional safety for your child

Whether you’re parenting toddlers, teenagers, or adult children—or simply learning how to become more emotionally mature yourself—this conversation offers a hopeful, grounded framework for growth.

Because healthy parenting isn’t about raising perfect kids. It’s about creating the kind of emotional soil where both you and your child can grow.

‍

More Resources:

Order Dr. Lindsay’s new book, How to Raise an Emotionally Mature Child: Your Blueprint to a Lifetime of Happiness and Success for Your Child

You can now preorder Dr. Alison’s newest book, The Secure Soul, and immediately receive the first 3 chapters as well as early access to the companion guide!

‍

Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram

‍

Curious what Family Role may have shaped you? Take the Family Role Quiz to learn how you may be showing up in your relationships with others.

Want to hear more like this? Start here:

Episode 175: A Game-Changing Toolkit to Help Kids Conquer Worry and Build Courage with David Thomas and Sissy Goff

Episode 68: How *Not* to Lose Yourself—Remaining You While Raising Them with Alli Worthington

📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here

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

‍

TRANSCRIPT

‍

You can't do these things that encourage emotional maturity in your child if you're not also

‍

simultaneously working on this within yourself. How are you going to orient your beingness toward

‍

your child in such a way that you will create the best possible soil for them to grow in?

‍

And that is your mindset. That is your attitude toward your child.

‍

This attitude that says, I know that you're real inside. I'm very interested.

‍

Hey,

‍

everyone, and welcome back to this week's Deep Dive episode of the Best of You podcast. Today's

‍

conversation was such a gift for me personally, and I know it's going to be for you.

‍

We're talking about parenting. We're going into summer, and we're not talking about it as a set of

‍

techniques or skills or tips, but as one of the deepest invitations to our own emotional and

‍

spiritual growth. If you're a parent, you already know this. Our children have a way of bringing up

‍

parts of us that still need tending. Maybe it's a part of you that is desperate to get it right,

‍

to correct any of the wrongs that maybe happened to you. Maybe it's a part of you that feels

‍

completely overwhelmed, like you're losing yourself in the work of parenting. Maybe it's a part of

‍

you that worries constantly. Am I doing enough? Am I doing it right? Am I doing it wrong? Maybe

‍

it's a part of you that remembers what you received or didn't receive from your own parents,

‍

and you're constantly comparing and constantly stuck in the past. And this is where parenting,

‍

as challenging as it can be, is also such a beautiful and sacred work because we're not only

‍

helping our children grow into emotionally and spiritually mature human beings,

‍

we're also being invited to grow into emotional and spiritual maturity ourselves.

‍

You can't really become a healthier parent, as our guest today shares with us,

‍

without becoming a healthier human. And the reality is there's a dance at the heart of parenting,

‍

at the heart of any healthy relationship. It's the dance of connection and autonomy, of coming

‍

close and of letting go, being needed, and then also letting our children move out on their own.

‍

They're making their own choices, having their own interests, becoming their own. person.

‍

And today's guest is just so gifted at naming these experiences,

‍

both of parenting ourselves, but also of being parented. She's someone who has mentored me from

‍

afar. I'd never met her before today, but I've read her books. I've recommended her books so

‍

frequently. I'm sure many of you have already read some of her books because she's just such a mix

‍

of kindness and honesty and deep wisdom. I was just so honored to get to have this conversation

‍

with Lindsay C. Gibson. Dr. Lindsay Gibson is a clinical psychologist with over 30 years of

‍

psychotherapy experience. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Adult Children of

‍

Emotionally Immature Parents. This is a book that has sold over a million copies and has been

‍

translated into 38 languages. Her work has helped so many people name what they didn't receive

‍

growing up, not necessarily through harsh labels or blame, but through the deeply clarifying lens

‍

of emotional immaturity. And now in our brand new book, How to Raise an Emotionally Mature Child,

‍

Lindsay turns toward the question so many of us are asking, how do we become the kind of parents

‍

who help our children feel safe, seen, respected, and emotionally strong?

‍

What I love about this conversation is that it's not about perfect parenting. In fact, we talk

‍

about how perfect parenting does not set our kids up for success. In fact, Lindsay gives us so much

‍

relief around this idea of a good enough parent. She even quantifies it for us, what it actually

‍

means in real life. Spoiler alert, it is the parent who misses things sometimes,

‍

who gets distracted sometimes, who loses attunement sometimes, but learns how to come back,

‍

repair, and reconnect. This conversation is for any kind of parent,

‍

parents of toddlers, teenagers, adult children, step-parents, and honestly, for anyone who is just

‍

learning how to become more emotionally mature in the presence of another human. I am so thrilled

‍

to bring you my conversation with Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson.

‍

Well, I couldn't be more thrilled. As I said just before I hit record,

‍

I feel like you've mentored me for these past years and how many times I recommend your work.

‍

I kind of want to start. They're Lindsay bridging to the new book. I think that the naming of your

‍

first book or your previous book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents,

‍

was so powerful for so many people because it's less stigmatizing.

‍

Many of us, you know, many folks who I interact with or talk to are clients or, you know,

‍

we... have this sense of something was missing. But almost in our culture,

‍

it can be like, well, it's got to be narcissism or something extreme or it's perfect.

‍

And it's like, well, no, it wasn't that. It's just something was missing. And I think you really

‍

named something so helpful, gave people a way to frame their experience.

‍

I think especially for my generation, Gen X, where some of this was just not in the air that we

‍

breathed. back in the 80s this idea of emotional maturity i i would love to just hear your thoughts

‍

about how that's been for you to see how that has landed so viscerally with so many people and just

‍

what that what that's been like for you yeah well it's it's funny because the The title was

‍

something that we left until fairly late in the process, my editor and I, of writing the book.

‍

And it was recommended by somebody, it might have been a consultant from Barnes & Noble,

‍

I'm not sure where they were from, but they said, no, you've got to describe what's in the book.

‍

You've got to say what it is in the title. And so so we were kind of reluctantly,

‍

OK, we'll we'll you know, we'll we'll make it a descriptive title if you say so. And we laugh about

‍

it, you know, all the time from, you know, do you remember when we had this other title and how

‍

funny that would have been? Anyway, so. Yeah. So, yes, it was it was something that I think.

‍

needed to be articulated needed to be put into words for people like you say people already knew

‍

what this was but they just didn't have a a way of defining it or talking about it that didn't

‍

automatically make them feel like they were throwing their parent under the bus with a psychiatric

‍

diagnosis which is also kind of a You know, it's sort of a euphemism for saying that they're bad.

‍

Yeah. I mean, emotionally, you feel like you're saying something awful about them when you give

‍

them a diagnosis like that. And I was just trying to describe in as kind.

‍

and yet accurate a way as I could what this kind of behavior was all about.

‍

And what it's all about is that the person never got the chance or never had the capacity to be

‍

mature enough to think about other people and to imagine what the experience of other people was

‍

like and have that govern their behavior. So yeah, I was trying to trying to get at this thing that

‍

I knew people knew about and yet did not have the language for it yet.

‍

It's so powerful. Before we segue into how we raise emotionally mature kids,

‍

can you give us just an overview of what are these qualities of an emotionally immature parent?

‍

Because that's essentially with this second book we're trying. to figure out how to be emotionally

‍

mature as a parent. So our children can be emotionally mature. So what is it?

‍

How do you see it at a high level, an emotionally immature parent?

‍

Yeah, no, what you said was very interesting because if you are trying to raise an emotionally

‍

mature child and that's your mindset, you actually are going to be emotionally maturing yourself.

‍

It's like the hidden benefit. You can't do these things that encourage emotional maturity in your

‍

child if you're not also simultaneously working on this within yourself.

‍

You don't have to be doing that consciously. It can happen indirectly as part of the process of

‍

trying to help your child attain maturity. It's kind of a cool twofer thing.

‍

It's an added benefit of trying to approach your child in this way. You will actually be increasing

‍

your own maturity. But to go into the qualities of emotional immaturity,

‍

we recognize this. all day, every day,

‍

whenever we have an unpleasant interaction with somebody.

‍

And it's that the other person is...

‍

Basically, they're egocentric. Their focus is necessarily on themselves because they have never

‍

psychologically developed to the point where in their inner world,

‍

there is a place for the inner subjective experience of another human being. They're like big four

‍

-year-olds. They've got language. It looks like you should be able to reason with them because

‍

they can talk now.

‍

But emotionally, they just can't imagine that there's anybody else in the world but them that

‍

counts. And so they're very self-preoccupied.

‍

All roads lead to them. And they have very low empathy. They have some empathy.

‍

You know, if they're not stressed, if they're not tired or, you know,

‍

maybe feeling under the weather. Yeah, if they're in peak form. they have the capacity to show some

‍

empathy and that's what confuses people because they they think well there was that time when i was

‍

sick and mom brought me the stuffed animal or you know i remember when dad um you know took me out

‍

for pizza and they have empathy but they're so self-absorbed yeah that they can't tune into that

‍

unless they're so well resourced that they've got plenty of extra energy.

‍

They also don't have the capacity for self-reflection usually. Again,

‍

things are going great. They can sit back and maybe self-reflect, but it doesn't go very far and

‍

it doesn't last very long. They don't ask themselves, you know, gee, maybe it was something I said,

‍

or maybe I could have handled that differently. Or, wow, I'm really sorry, you know,

‍

seeing the look on my child's face that I said that. I need to apologize. That is so upsetting to

‍

them that they just stay away from it. And then the last two things are emotional intimacy is very

‍

hard for them. They like to keep things simple and they like to keep things on the surface. I

‍

described it with one of my clients as... You know, could you think of yourself as 3D and maybe

‍

your mom as 2D? And would that help you to understand how she experiences life and why it's so

‍

unsatisfying to you as a 3D person? And that really helped her.

‍

And then the last thing is that their relationship to reality,

‍

how they see the world, how they think things work,

‍

optional they dismiss deny distort reality in whatever way that will make them feel good about

‍

themselves and make them feel less stressed so that that really you know opens wide the floodgates

‍

for misunderstanding because if you try to talk with them about something or communicate something

‍

about the relationship You know, A, they're terrified of the emotional intimacy of that. They don't

‍

want to get close to that meaningful stuff. And, you know, secondly, they will just say that didn't

‍

happen or I didn't mean that or you're way too sensitive. They'll shut it down by distorting the

‍

reality that you thought, you know, was something that you shared together because you were there.

‍

But that doesn't hold them back from rearranging things to make it feel better to them.

‍

Yeah. And what is then, if we're thinking again, if you're raised by someone who has this kind of

‍

emotional capacity, and I always think to myself, you know, if your parent had the emotional

‍

intelligence of maybe a five, six-year-old up through five or six of your own life,

‍

that might have been fine. But then as you develop, what is the impact? And especially as you

‍

become an adult, how does that affect us? How does that affect our own ability to form emotional

‍

intimacy and empathy and have these skills? Yeah,

‍

well, first of all, it's going to make you feel very lonely. Because if you as a little child

‍

person have a deep need for emotional intimacy,

‍

meaning you want to share your inside world with someone else and you want to hear theirs back and

‍

you want to have that meaningful, deep connection at that profound level. And you can't connect up

‍

with this incredibly important person in your life, the basis of your security,

‍

and you can't find or form a bridge to them. You're going to feel very emotionally lonely.

‍

And of course, for a child, you know, because everything to them feels like they caused it or

‍

they're the root of it. There's that nice egocentrism again of the very young. They're going to

‍

feel like there must be something in the matter with them. Yeah. And so maybe it would be better to

‍

kind of keep all of this stuff secret and don't share it with other people because their experience

‍

with an emotionally immature parent is that the parent actually. you know draws back and you know

‍

puts up a kind of a shield. They don't come toward the child with interest.

‍

And so they learn to keep all this stuff to themselves, which is tragic.

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‍

Lindsay, it's so powerful. You talk about the work of parenting to segue into this new book as the

‍

psychological construction of another human being. You're providing the atmosphere.

‍

And I love what you just said. It's so interesting. It's kind of touching me personally because I

‍

wrote a little bit about the process of moving toward the parts of my own self that felt so lonely

‍

and unseen in this new book, right? They always needed that.

‍

These parts of me always needed that presence. And I had to find for me other ways of getting it

‍

for myself and from God, you know, from that sense of almost that withness that we just need.

‍

And there are ways, you know, I know part of why I love as we were talking before we record this

‍

inner work is, is it sort of like, because what do I do? You can't change what you got as a parent,

‍

right? So how do you find a way to bring that kind of loving presence into those parts of us?

‍

I wonder about, and I'm sure you get this question all the time,

‍

right? So we're aware of that, how important that is. And then we become parents.

‍

And so we're trying to figure out how to not create that gap. that loneliness gap,

‍

that gap of being unseen with our own, you know, and you speak about this so well in the new book.

‍

And so I kind of want to pivot there to, you know, for the listener who's kind of hooked on what we

‍

just talked about, please check out, if you haven't already, about your own parents, the, you know,

‍

what sort of the residual effects of having an emotionally... immature parent, but now pivoting to,

‍

gosh, now I know this. I've seen in my own self how valuable and important that withness is.

‍

It can be kind of terrifying. How do we begin to think about our own children without sort of

‍

collapsing into fear and pressure, but also recognizing how important that role of...

‍

kind of creating that emotional atmosphere for this little being, this little soul that's getting

‍

formed. Yes. Well, you know, what just occurred to me when you said that was,

‍

if you have been doing any kind of self work at all, and I would imagine that probably a lot of

‍

your audience has already been engaged in that. You are already doing that with yourself.

‍

In other words, you are, instead of allowing yourself to remain unseen to yourself and just sort

‍

of, you know, heaping blame on yourself, like there must be something wrong with me or maybe I'm

‍

the crazy one or I want too much or something like that. If you're engaged in any kind of self

‍

-discovery, you are already putting yourself in the mindset of that withness and that presence.

‍

with yourself, okay, with whatever that spark is within us that we recognize as me,

‍

myself, who I am. If we are already engaged in that process of being in communication with that,

‍

we are set up perfectly for doing that with our child.

‍

It's really only when, you know, for people who are very emotionally immature,

‍

They just don't turn inward. Inward is a scary place. They construct a kind of a facade in order to

‍

shore up their self-esteem and to keep themselves emotionally and socially stable. So they live

‍

kind of from the outside in. But if you have any interest in what's going on inside you,

‍

and you've been working on it at all, or reading interesting books on that subject,

‍

then you already know implicitly the right attitude to have toward your child in order for your

‍

child to grow up with the best chance for emotional maturity. And let me tell you how this works.

‍

So when I wrote this book, I thought... are a million books out there, really good books,

‍

that will tell you what to do when your child has a tantrum, that will tell you how to do illogical

‍

consequences or how not to do consequences, how just to be collaborative with your child. I have

‍

such respect for that. I have a whole section in the back of the book about resources for those

‍

very books.

‍

I didn't want to write a book that would just be about addressing specific behaviors.

‍

I really wanted to write a book that would be a sort of a, to use your language,

‍

Allison, a soul orientation. Okay. How are you going to orient your beingness toward your child in

‍

such a way that you will create the best possible uh soil or her ground for them to grow in and

‍

that is your mindset that is your your attitude toward your child and this goes back to that part

‍

about also doing self-discovery and work on the self because if you approach your child as someone

‍

who is real inside The inside world is as real as the outside world.

‍

If you approach your child with that attitude and you approach yourself with that attitude, now you

‍

are positioned for really deep, true emotional intimacy because that's where it resides.

‍

It's not in your communication skills. It's not in how you phrase your questions or how many times

‍

you ask. It's this... It's this orientation,

‍

this attitude that says, I know that you're real inside. I'm very interested in what's going on

‍

inside there. And I am going to attend to you in such a way that you and I both learn together who

‍

you are as an individual, how you feel, and I'm going to help you find the words.

‍

to be able to express that so we can communicate about it. And I'm going to take your emotional

‍

needs completely seriously. I don't care if you're 2 or 12 or 17.

‍

I'm going to treat your inner world like something that is as essential and important as anything

‍

in the outside world that our culture values. You are precious to me for who you really are.

‍

And I'm going to get to know you at that level. And we're going to delight in each other.

‍

That's powerful. If you get that going, you are going to do just fine.

‍

That's so encouraging. It's such a paradox in many ways that listening to you,

‍

the more we cultivate that soil in our own soul, that's what spills.

‍

out. You know, that's what spills out. That's what's our kids. And I'm aware of that.

‍

The more I'm with myself, I kind of figure out what I actually need from me, from, you know, from

‍

even I think spiritually for me, like kind of learning that's what it means, God with us, you know,

‍

rarely to be fixed, rarely to be lectured, sometimes a boundary, sure.

‍

Always with understanding. That's how I then approach my own kids.

‍

Yes, it absolutely is then. Oh, I get it now. Oh, that's what you want in this moment.

‍

Exactly. Yeah. And it's and it's basically this recognition that comes across.

‍

We can you can tell you can tell how someone attends to you,

‍

whether they think that you're really inside there. That there's really something inside you that

‍

they're connecting with. That comes across, you know, in a crowded room.

‍

You meet the eyes of someone who can do that, who can recognize the realness inside you.

‍

And you instantly feel like you want to gravitate toward that because you know it's going to be

‍

kind. You know it's going to take you seriously. You know that you have the feeling that you could

‍

tell this person anything and they would just be curious. you know, about you. They wouldn't judge

‍

you or reject you. It's a very particular kind of energy. But what I think is so cool,

‍

because it's amazing it works this way, it's so cool that when we show curiosity toward ourselves

‍

and our own development, how we got to be the way we are, that's going to translate. to our

‍

relationships, and also to our parenting with our child. It's to your point at the beginning, it

‍

really is, the more we try to be better parents, we are going to become better people.

‍

And it's very beautiful. You talk about this concept that I love from Winnicott.

‍

I think it's from Winnicott, the good enough parent. I kind of want to bring that in because we

‍

also... I think part of that balance and that paradox is we make mistakes.

‍

We have bad days. We miss things, you know. So tell me how you encourage parents through that in

‍

this book because you really are. It's not a quick fix how-to. It's more of a who you are.

‍

So what's this idea of a good enough parent and how do we think about it in our own process?

‍

Yeah.

‍

Well, in a way, it's sort of the counterbalance to the implicit message in some books,

‍

which is, let me tell you how to be a more perfect parent, or let me help you perfect yourself.

‍

Or step down from that is, let me show you how to do the skills.

‍

Let me show you the steps for how you do this. But this is really about,

‍

and I think Winnicott was getting at this too, it's an orientation. It's a way of seeing the world

‍

or this other person where you are sensitive enough,

‍

you're attuned enough, you're interested enough in the experience of that little baby,

‍

that toddler, that middle schooler. where you will turn toward them with interest and curiosity and

‍

maybe concern when you sense that there is something going on inside them that is not being

‍

expressed, that maybe needs to be expressed or is in the process of trying to form into something

‍

that can be communicated. So the good enough parent is the person who knows their child has an

‍

inner world and they're sensitive and responsive to that at an emotional level.

‍

It's that, I think you called it the withness, you know,

‍

being with the person. And that kind of attentiveness it turns out,

‍

does not have to be done 100% of the time every day. There you go.

‍

This is the big relief.

‍

Load off your mind. And the infancy researcher, Ed Tronick,

‍

actually set out and did the experiment to find out, okay,

‍

let's operationalize this. How much time do you have to be perfectly attuned to your child in order

‍

to be a good enough parent? I need some parameters here. Don't just tell me to be good enough.

‍

And he found that approximately a third of the time, maybe I think his actual number was 30%.

‍

If you are attuned to and attending to your child at a emotional level of being present with them

‍

and sensitive to them yeah if you're doing that about a third of the time now this we're talking

‍

interspersed yeah right you're not with your child presumably all day long so the third of the time

‍

you're with them yeah yes because he you know he recorded wow you know when at whenever the parent

‍

tuned in to the child and made that resonant right brain to right brain kind of connection with the

‍

child. And he found that that's really all it took for the child to apparently feel safe,

‍

soothed, and kind of ready to meet the day again.

‍

It was not necessary to try to be perfectly attuned and always there.

‍

That gets us into helicopter parent territory. But that we can have peaceful coexistence with our

‍

child, except when they begin to show us that they need more engagement,

‍

which they will reliably do by fussing or crying or trying to get attention. They'll always tell us

‍

what we need to do. That's so good. I noticed as your kids get older,

‍

too. when you've learned when you know when you've been present or not present as they get older

‍

because they know you can name it you know I will say to my daughter I am so distracted I'm just

‍

not here you know or I'll circle back and say I'm present now I'm sorry I wasn't earlier right

‍

which is that yeah you build that trust they don't expect perfection because that's not real life

‍

but you build that trust over time as you kind of Learn. It's not to beat yourself up.

‍

Oh, man, I'm not present right now. It's I noticed that I'm not. Oh, wow. What a win.

‍

You know that I know the difference. It's self-reflection. Yeah. Awareness.

‍

Yeah. Yes. So when we can go back in and reconnect like that deliberately and also.

‍

to confirm your child's experience to validate their experience by saying i wasn't present earlier

‍

or i was distracted or i couldn't listen that you know at that point um it it confirms to them oh

‍

i'm not crazy uh this really did happen right and that goes into their model of life in interacting

‍

with other people i mean they They then understand and they're not,

‍

you know, thrown by someone who is distracted at times.

‍

They now know that's a thing that happens between people. They don't need perfect attention all the

‍

time because they've learned that from you. And they also have more trust in the world because,

‍

like, who would you trust more? The friend who...

‍

never ever ever uh had any and created any problems between you or the friend who when there was a

‍

problem they noticed they circled back like you said they say hey you know i really missed the boat

‍

on that one i don't think i'd listen to you very well could we talk about that again at some point

‍

because i was really distracted you have Better trust for that person because you know they're

‍

watching, they're monitoring themselves in the relationship. And I can count on them to feel

‍

something, feel off about the interaction too. They're going to feel it too.

‍

And if they come back to me, I'm going to trust them more than if we had never had a breach.

‍

That's a good point. It actually feels, in any kind of relationship, that's such a beautiful

‍

feeling when you realize we both got that we disconnected. Yes. And we can repair it. That's

‍

powerful. Yeah, and that idea about that actually strengthening trust and hope,

‍

that's from Ed Tronick and Claudia Gold in their book, The Power of Discord, which just turns

‍

upside down this idea that we have to be perfect all the time. Yeah, perfection is not the goal,

‍

actually. That's so good. So what, Lindsay, so we're kind of doing this work ourselves.

‍

What does emotional maturity look like in a child? Yeah.

‍

Right? Because when you were describing the emotionally immature parent as a four or five-year

‍

-old or whatever age, I thought to myself, I was thinking, right, a four-year-old or a five-year

‍

-old can show these moments of empathy. And it's really cool. And you're so excited about it. But

‍

it's not stable. So what are some, you know,

‍

signs of real inner development, real inner emotional maturity that we can look for in our kids?

‍

Yes, and the way you just said that was beautiful because it really is signs of a becoming.

‍

You know, it's not something that has already happened,

‍

of course, because there are only, you know, three or six or, you know. whatever we're not going to

‍

see emotional maturity in the way we mean it for an adult but what we what we really mean is that

‍

according to what they need to be doing at different stages of life this is why i i went from birth

‍

to young adulthood in the book because i wanted people to know what these developmental challenges

‍

are for each age And they're all different. We're working on different things.

‍

So if we're meeting the developmental challenge of our age, like for the two-year-old,

‍

it's autonomy versus shame and self-doubt. If they're learning how to be autonomous and they're

‍

learning to do that in a way that shows confidence and yet connection with other people,

‍

then they are showing their maturation that's appropriate at that age.

‍

Same thing with a teenager who is looking for their identity. The ways that they try to find their

‍

identity may be through artists or music idols or maybe the upperclassmen of the sports character.

‍

They're looking for their identity. So we would say, Right on track. That child is maturing into

‍

it. Also with teenagers, of course, if they're giving us a hard time, if they're not telling us

‍

everything, if they're needing time alone, we might say, right on track.

‍

They're developing their autonomous and their independent identity.

‍

What is going to be the sign of maturation is going to depend on their developmental challenge of

‍

the moment. But in general, if you're looking for, is my child emotionally maturing okay?

‍

You're basically wanting to look at, is my child in a state of emotional connection with me and the

‍

other important people in their life? Interesting. yeah because are they are they turning to me and

‍

i i say me but it could be no are they turning to dad are they turning to their grandparent when

‍

they have something that they are excited about do they come and show um do they ask look at me do

‍

they engage like that or are they do they make eye contact are they showing that desire to be close

‍

with another person that's that's a hallmark and then you know once in a while are they showing

‍

some signs of empathy you know you know in a two-year-old it's going to be pretty brief but are

‍

they are they able to you know momentarily even sort of think about the other person or the

‍

situation in a way that shows some kind of beginning wisdom.

‍

We want to see that. And then are they trying to communicate what it is that they want and who it

‍

is that they are, which includes saying no. Yeah. a sign of emotional maturation in a two-year

‍

-old may very well be a tantrum. That doesn't look very mature, but if it's them beginning to

‍

exercise their independence and their ability to be their own person,

‍

that's a step on. road to emotional maturity it's so good it's again so paradoxical in a way and i

‍

think as as parents right it's that that nuance of right i don't love the tantrums but the tantrums

‍

are actually my child um showing us a cue and again it always i always take it back to the the

‍

inner work similarly if i do something i don't love it is a part of me giving me a signal that I

‍

need to pay attention to you know same same with with our kiddos you know there's something there

‍

that that we want to we don't want to squash that because this is part of their becoming not that

‍

we're saying have tantrums every day but that we're saying okay I oh to use your words I'm learning

‍

something about your inner world here yes I'm learning something about you Yes.

‍

I've got to help shepherd you through that so that you can function in society, but you're telling

‍

me something about you. That's important. It is important, and it's also you telling the child,

‍

I understand that you're overwhelmed. Yeah. I know what this is like. I've been there.

‍

Maybe I was there yesterday. I know what this feels like. I'm here for you.

‍

You're having a moment where you're telling me how bad it is for you inside right now and I'm right

‍

here and I'm going to be here and we're going to sit this out or we're going to go through this and

‍

I will be there on the other side. That's kind of the message that you're communicating to them

‍

through your attitude of interest. you know essentially forbearance you're you're living through it

‍

with them and you're able to give them that feeling that i'm being understood i'm not being judged

‍

my parent is not in a panic because i'm having a tantrum and that's a really bad sign my parent has

‍

a wide enough perspective that they're putting this in context about me and it's okay yeah there's

‍

safety at this point this is okay and that feels selfish that creates self-acceptance yeah okay so

‍

that when they feel overwhelmed as an adult you know 20 30 years down the road they're not going to

‍

launch into deep shame over the fact that they lost it or that they you know they became

‍

incapacitated by some feeling of failure or whatever it is they kind of remember that This is part

‍

of the process of life. And we get through these things. But the parent is who shows them that in

‍

the first place. Yeah. This is so good. One last kind of deeper topic I want to touch on.

‍

You touch on in the book this idea of kind of letting our kids have their own unique individual

‍

selves. Kind of this, we talk on the podcast sometimes, enmeshment. Versus differentiation.

‍

And when you were describing these hallmarks, I was thinking, as a parent, it feels wonderful when

‍

your child, especially as they get older, come to you with things.

‍

I'm very aware there's a difference between feeling excited about that because I'm the center of

‍

their universe, right? In that sort of coercive way. And you kind of, I can tell you were kind of

‍

like, it's not about that. It's more. what you the the healthy thing is oh my gosh I I have become

‍

safe for them and they are now able to use deploy that skill of asking for help asking for support

‍

right it's it's always that dance right because we are human and we want that closeness and also

‍

we're always holding that with that dance of autonomy of mostly what's really you know of course

‍

the human part of me is like you know and even sometimes with my husband I'll be like oh she came

‍

to me that feels so good and And then I also am aware with the other side of me, this is mostly

‍

good for her because she's now got this skill that she can deploy when she's hurting to ask for

‍

help, right? It's such a dance. And you talk about it in the book of the importance of honoring

‍

their autonomy and just that human pull. I think we want our kids to...

‍

We want our advice, you know, or want our opinions. We want our kids, and you talk about this,

‍

sometimes we're delighted if it turns out that they actually like some of the things we do.

‍

That's okay. It's not that that's not, but we always have to be kind of monitoring that mostly this

‍

needs to be about their autonomy. Can you tease that out for us a little bit?

‍

I think you do a really great job of that in the book. Yeah, well, all you have to do is think

‍

about your adult relationships or think about yourself in an adult relationship.

‍

If somebody respects your autonomy and they respect that you know more about your inner experience

‍

than they do, and they are cognizant that you are...

‍

an adult who is going to make her own decisions, you know, with input, but you are your own person,

‍

if they have that attitude toward you, won't that make you feel like going toward them the next

‍

time you have an issue or a problem or you need some help, right? Totally.

‍

I mean, children and adults are so similar at an emotional level.

‍

not intellectually, not experientially, not in terms of wisdom, but they are so identical in the

‍

way that things affect them. So if we are to go toward our children with a kind of...

‍

um let me tell you what i think about that or let me uh let me make that all better for you i'm i'm

‍

the center of your feel good feelings come to mommy come to daddy and there's that kind of push for

‍

enmeshment the the child automatically backs up from that fascinating yeah to to protect their hard

‍

-won autonomy, their sense of self that has begun to develop as an individual,

‍

that differentiation from the parent or from the family,

‍

you know, sort of the family, one person called it the family ego mass, the conglomeration of

‍

people, not individuals interacting. Yeah, so when you are doing that,

‍

dance of I'm respecting you as an individual person.

‍

I love it when you come to me. When you need me,

‍

I love to be needed. I mean, that's one of the great benefits of parenthood as far as I'm concerned

‍

is when your child needs you, they really need you. And there's no flattery or fakery about it.

‍

You are essential. As they say in Pinocchio, you are crucial to them being able to get re

‍

-regulated and feel better. into a sense of balance.

‍

So that feels wonderful and we enjoy it when it occurs. And then we feel the pang and the little

‍

bit of hurt and the distance when they move out from us and go about there. business like they

‍

never, you know, gave us a second thought. That is, you know, that is the gift that we give them.

‍

Yes, it's lovely to be needed, but I as a parent don't mind having the pangs when you have to go

‍

out and do things on your own or, you know, make up your own mind. I, as a parent,

‍

am learning to live with that. That then takes us back to our own self-discovery,

‍

doesn't it? Because where do those pangs come from? It comes from our childhood and whatever

‍

experiences we had about being left behind or feeling suddenly not as important as we were a moment

‍

before. It's so good. It's such a back and forth, such a dance of...

‍

I always think about it like the dances in the old...

‍

old like Pride and Prejudice, you know, where the dance wasn't clinging to each other in a slow

‍

dance. They're moving in and out, right? I never thought about that before.

‍

That's really true. And sometimes even in those dances, they're with other people.

‍

And, you know, again, that's a romantic picture, which I think is a good one for romance too.

‍

It's dance, you know. It's a great visual. It really is. And yet,

‍

like you say, our romantic ideal is two people clinging together like kittens on a raft.

‍

Exactly. And that's our ideal of romantic love. Yeah.

‍

And it lacks that rhythm. Yes. that felt rhythm of the back and forth and the separating and the

‍

coming back together. That's something that, I mean, gosh,

‍

the whole world operates on that kind of rhythm. Yeah, yeah. I really appreciate that.

‍

What, just kind of as we're winding down, for the parent who's listening, we're going into summer.

‍

It's a great time for this. What are a couple of, you know, just... So practical shifts that,

‍

you know, the book is both deep and practical. I love that about what you do. What are just some

‍

practical shifts kind of, because again, some of what we're talking about, even thinking about that

‍

dance, there's got to be some inner stability, you know, especially heading into the chaos of

‍

summer. What are some practical things we can do that to just implement a little more of this kind

‍

of into our day to day? Yeah, well, because we usually have more time with our children in the

‍

summer and things feel a little less hectic, at least because you've had the school schedule taken

‍

out. There is much more of an opportunity for you to do that stepping back and sort of just

‍

noticing. And having that feeling that your child is a separate individual with their own inner

‍

world that is unique and special to them. And that they have these needs that are going to be

‍

coming up. And your job as a parent is to give a little bit of reflection or thought to what is it

‍

that they need most from me at this moment. And that can be,

‍

you know, do they need to be protected? Do they need nurturing? Do they need some guidance?

‍

Or do I need to just put a limit down here? I mean, to be aware of those four parental functions as

‍

creating the container for the growth of this little special,

‍

unique individual that you have created.

‍

And you are now nurturing into becoming a fully complex person who can think beyond black and white

‍

and who doesn't oversimplify life, but is able to greet difficult situations with some thought and

‍

some forethought, who doesn't indulge their impulses so as to make things worse instead of better

‍

with their next move. But I think the most important and probably the easiest thing to do for the

‍

summer is to, from time to time, step back and just sort of behold the fact that your child is real

‍

inside.

‍

And if you do that, you're going to find yourself taking them seriously, even if it seems like a

‍

silly little fear or, you know, why are they so excited about that or, you know.

‍

But when you really experience them as real inside,

‍

you move into the position of being able to be a parent who actualizes who it is that they're

‍

becoming. And that's one of the greatest rides of all in parenting, even if they're not turning to

‍

you specifically or needing you. You're not getting that.

‍

that kind of that sugar high hit from that attention from your child.

‍

But you will feel yourself part of this larger mission,

‍

this more meaningful endeavor that you're engaged with in being kind of the neuro architect of your

‍

child's emotional development. And that all starts with that view of,

‍

I see you. You're really there inside. I got you.

‍

I love that. That is beautiful. That behold, you are real inside.

‍

And that's really profound. That's a profound statement of the value of that human soul.

‍

And just as you said that, again, it's that profound understanding of each of our souls is that

‍

worthy of that beholding and the beauty. Yes, and if you take the time,

‍

if you step out of your goal-driven left brain for half a second,

‍

it's there. It's ready. It's ready to go. It's ready to engage.

‍

And we can be pulled into it by any kind of emotional distress or maybe an urgent situation.

‍

We can return to that presence and that awareness of the other person. hey,

‍

this summer, let's try to do that on purpose and see how it begins to change how we approach our

‍

child and then how we feel about the child within ourselves, how we're regarding ourselves as well.

‍

That's so good. That's so good. Well, the book is out. When is it out,

‍

Lindsay? It came out on Tuesday. Oh, it's out this week. How to Raise an Emotionally.

‍

mature child. It's so good. You're just such a gift.

‍

I feel like you've somehow taken your own wisdom and not only parented,

‍

and I use that word in quotes, but just a generation of us, you know,

‍

just out of your own. the beauty of your own spirit and really,

‍

really grateful just for your time and for your wisdom. I know a lot goes into it and internally,

‍

right? I'm sure a lot has gone into your own inner workings to be able to spill forth what you

‍

have. And I'm just so grateful. Oh, well, thank you so much for having me. I'm just so delighted to

‍

have the opportunity to talk to you and your people because This is at the heart of everything that

‍

matters most to us. So thanks for giving me the opportunity to be with you. Thank you for joining

‍

me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you take a moment to

‍

subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to or watch podcasts and

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click the plus or follow button. That'll ensure you don't miss an episode and it helps get the word

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out to others. While you're there, I'd love it if you leave a five-star review. Join us each

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weekday for the best of you every day, a brief daily reflection to help you start your mornings

‍

with a steady dose of wisdom. Remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God,

‍

you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.

‍

What if getting “triggered” isn’t the problem… but a signal?

We all have moments where our body reacts fast—your heart races, your defenses go up, and suddenly you’re not responding from your wisest self.

In this episode, Dr. Alison sits down with Dr. Kelly Flanagan to explore what’s really happening in those moments—and how to respond with more clarity, connection, and intention.

Together, they unpack what’s happening behind reactivity and what it looks like to interrupt that cycle in real time.

You’ll learn:

• Why being triggered is a normal nervous system response
• How to notice your reactions before they take over
• The difference between protection mode and connection mode
• How to set boundaries without escalating conflict
• Why an open heart leads to wiser—not weaker—boundaries

If you’ve ever felt stuck in reactive patterns in your relationships, this conversation offers a grounded, compassionate way forward.

‍

More Resources:

Order Dr. Kelly Flanagan’s new book, The Road Less Triggered.

‍

You can preorder Dr. Alison’s newest book, The Secure Soul, and immediately receive the first 3 chapters as well as early access to the companion guide!

‍

Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram

‍

Curious what Family Role may have shaped you? Take the Family Role Quiz to learn how you may be showing up in your relationships with others.

‍

Want to hear more like this? Start here:

Episode 203: Staying Close When Connection Feels Hard: The Relationship Skills No One Has Taught You

Episode 180: When People Push Your Buttons — The Power of Curiosity Over Control

📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here

‍

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‍

TRANSCRIPT

‍

The first step is that our nervous system activates. That's the physical response. The second step

‍

is that our heart closes to what's happening. We enter a state of resistance and defensiveness

‍

about what's going on. And then the third stage of being triggered is that we choose to let that

‍

happen. And usually when that happens, we actually escalate the entire cycle, the entire pattern,

‍

and the entire response. The practice of open-heartedness was changing the people around me even

‍

when they didn't know I was practicing it. What I say now is that you don't have any power over

‍

your people, but you have tremendous... around your people.

‍

Hey, everyone, and welcome back to this week's deep dive episode of the best of you. I'm Dr.

‍

Allison, and I'm so glad you're here with me today. This conversation is such a good one.

‍

I thought about it for days after we recorded. We both stumbled on a couple of just wise truths

‍

that really will stick with you. We're talking about what happens in those moments when something

‍

in you gets activated fast. We all know what it feels like when your nervous system takes over,

‍

your heart starts to raise, and suddenly you're not responding from your wisest self anymore,

‍

right? You're reacting, you're defending, you're shutting down, you're over-explaining. Maybe you

‍

start to rage clean. Maybe you start to rage bike, as you'll hear in this episode as my guest

‍

shares it didn't go so well for him. And this is why I love today's conversation,

‍

because it takes a word that gets used a lot, we see it all the time, the word triggered,

‍

and brings it back into a grounded, clinically wise, deeply human conversation.

‍

Because yes, we all get triggered at times. There are triggers that are rooted in deep trauma.

‍

And also there are just those everyday moments when our nervous system interprets something

‍

relational as danger. Maybe your spouse makes a comment. Maybe your teenager rolls their eyes.

‍

Maybe a friend asks for one thing. more. And suddenly you find that your body is on high alert.

‍

So the question we're dealing with today isn't how do I become a person who never reacts because

‍

it's not realistic. And I love that about today's guest. The question for all of us is how do I

‍

begin to notice what's happening inside of me sooner so that I give myself a better chance of

‍

responding with more wisdom, more clarity, and more love. and by the way several of you had emailed

‍

me asking for an episode on what to do when you're triggered especially in the context of marriage

‍

so this episode is for you if you find it helpful i hope you'll share it with a friend or with

‍

other people because this is the kind of information that the more we all understand it the better

‍

we'll be in our families and our friend groups in our communities when we give each other a little

‍

grace as we're working through these very normal moments of reactivity today Today's guest is Dr.

‍

Kelly Flanagan. Kelly is a clinical psychologist, author, speaker, and a thoughtful guide at the

‍

intersection of emotional health, relationships, and spiritual growth. He's the author of several

‍

books, including his brand new book. It's called The Road Less Triggered. I love that title.

‍

It explores how to move from protection mode back into connection mode in the moments that matter

‍

most. Kelly also hosts an online community. It's called The Less Triggered tribe and he'll share

‍

with us at the end of the episode if you want to join that community how to be a member of that

‍

where you practice these principles in real life what i appreciated so much about kelly is that he

‍

doesn't just speak as someone kind of with his own expertise he brings his own life to the story he

‍

shares with us some of his own moments of being triggered, right? And what happens inside the body.

‍

He uses his own self, his own nervous system as a case study for us to kind of walk through this

‍

three-step process that happens so fast inside all of us when we get triggered.

‍

And the framework alone that he lays out is so helpful. But we also got into some deeper questions

‍

that so many of us wrestle with. I kept asking him the same kinds of questions over and over. How

‍

do I stay? open-hearted, which is a big thing Kelly talks about without becoming a doormat?

‍

How do I set boundaries? We have a great conversation about boundaries without turning them into

‍

battles, right? And what if someone else really is behaving badly? What do I do then?

‍

Is it still my job to work on my own response? One of my favorite lines from Kelly in this episode

‍

is this. He says, an open heart doesn't make your boundaries weaker. It makes your boundaries

‍

wiser. I love that because so many of us were taught to think in these binaries,

‍

right? Either I stay quiet and keep the peace or I speak up and risk disconnection.

‍

Either I'm loving or I have limits. Either I'm compassionate or I'm strong. But what Kelly helps us

‍

see is that true emotional and spiritual maturity holds these things together.

‍

Such a great conversation. I am thrilled to bring you my conversation with Dr.

‍

Kelly Flanagan.

‍

Kelly, I'm super excited to have this conversation with you. We have so many overlaps in our work.

‍

I want to start with your own journey through working through triggers.

‍

You share quite personally. in this new book about your own experiences of being triggered.

‍

I think it's really interesting that you are a clinical psychologist and you are married to a

‍

clinical psychologist. And it does not make one immune from this work.

‍

So share with us a little bit about how your own journey has unfolded through this work.

‍

Yeah, absolutely. It is amazing that no matter how much information you have,

‍

And no matter how many tools you have, we still can get hijacked in that moment in relationships

‍

and in life, right? That moment where the nervous system takes over, we switch from connection mode

‍

into protection mode. And now we're on the defense rather than really sort of drawing upon our best

‍

tools to be together. And certainly was the case for me.

‍

I mean, I started off that year not on a good footing. I was in a difficult business partnership

‍

with my best friend, did not handle it well, was getting triggered, blew up that business

‍

partnership and blew up the friendship in the process. So I was sort of like... coming into COVID

‍

with the landing gear up already. And then the kids are schooling from home and becoming zombies,

‍

as I like to say. And I was just getting triggered left and right. And for me, it sort of

‍

culminated on a Sunday afternoon that morning. My wife had convinced me to go ahead and put in an

‍

above ground pool. Like, you know, all the pools in the area are going to be closed. So we got to

‍

get that above ground pool finally. All right, let's do it. So she goes out on a Sunday morning and

‍

hangs the hose over the side of the pool, the garden hose, to fill it up, and she puts a rock there

‍

to anchor it. But the rock wasn't heavy enough, and we didn't go back for five hours to check it.

‍

And when I went out in the afternoon, the pool was bone dry, and the backyard was just a muddy

‍

lake. And I recognized that moment, right? Like, I'm triggered, right?

‍

And I'm going to say and do things that sets my relationship back. tremendously and so i was like i

‍

got to get out of here and blow off the steam and so i need to take a bike ride today so i hopped

‍

on my bike not the wisest thing to do to cycle at 35 miles per hour on asphalt when you're not

‍

really paying attention because you're frustrated and i went over the handlebars and i broke my

‍

collarbone in two places on the asphalt road. And the bones did not heal stronger in the broken

‍

places. I wound up with a couple hinges in that collarbone. They're called fibrous tissue non

‍

-union fractures made for a really long and painful recovery for the rest of that first COVID year.

‍

And I got to New Year's Eve going into 2021. And I was literally looking for fitness resolutions

‍

for the new year. And I came across this incredible quote by Michael Singer. Don't let anything in

‍

your life be important enough that you're willing to close your heart over it. And that quote sort

‍

of hit me harder than the asphalt road had. It was like, wait a second. It really isn't the

‍

situations in my life that are creating my suffering. It's my reaction to the situations in my

‍

life. Despite all my training, despite all my knowledge, something's taking over in that moment.

‍

And it's creating a lot of suffering for me. And so I set a New Year's resolution going into 2021

‍

that moment to moment, I'm going to notice my heart closing and try to open it back up.

‍

And that was easier said than done. And it launched me on a bit of a journey, both personally and

‍

professionally, to learn what happens in that moment to us and how do we learn to keep our hearts

‍

open so that we have access to all of our best communication skills and all of our best connective

‍

capacities. And that ultimately culminated in this book I've written. Wow.

‍

What a story, right? There are consequences to how we behave when we're triggered,

‍

as you learned in a very profound way, right? Help me understand this,

‍

Kelly. Is it normal? And I kind of know these answers clinically, but to this day,

‍

I still find myself in these positions. I know my listeners find ourselves in these positions. Is

‍

it normal to have that immediate reaction, right? You see the flooded yard. To me,

‍

that's a normal, like, of course there's a feeling in that moment. So walk us through that.

‍

Give me some examples. Before we hit record,

‍

you started talking about different examples of this. It's not just marriage. It's with our kids.

‍

It's with our friends. These are normal, everyday moments. First of all, give us some examples.

‍

Does everybody have these moments of... we call triggered,

‍

you know, that moment. And then let's get into how can we begin to change that so we're not rage

‍

biking and hurting ourselves. Rage biking. That's such a great term. I love that.

‍

I'm going to steal that. That was great. I sometimes rage clean, you know, I might be cleaning the

‍

dishes, but really I'm, you know. Yes. Rage biking was one of the unwisest things I've ever done.

‍

Yeah. Yeah, it's a great question. And what I've discovered is that when you put the word triggered

‍

on the cover of a book, it's triggering to people because the word triggered has a lot of baggage

‍

attached to it. And one of the things I address in the book is that from a clinical perspective, as

‍

you and I know, triggered is something we associate with a serious psychological disorder called

‍

PTSD in which people have a very specific traumatic experience and certain present day experiences

‍

trigger them to feel like they're back in that. that past experience so in that sense it's a sort

‍

of a rare phenomenon that happens to a very specific set of people but on the other side of it you

‍

know it's sort of that's a word that's been sort of taken over by popular culture and you can you

‍

get like a tiktok influencer who gets the wrong kind of cold foam at starbucks and suddenly they're

‍

telling you know a million online followers that they're triggered and in that sense it doesn't

‍

really mean like much of anything so i think it is important to be clear about what i mean by that

‍

yeah And I think of being triggered as essentially like a three-stage process. And the first step

‍

of the process is that our nervous system activates. If your nervous system doesn't activate,

‍

you're probably not triggered. You're probably just having a response. But the first step is that

‍

our nervous system activates. That's the physical response. And you really can't do a whole lot

‍

about that. The nervous system is designed to activate. We wouldn't be here if it didn't activate

‍

voluntarily. If you are walking through a dark parking garage in the middle of the night and you

‍

hear footsteps coming up behind you, you want your nervous system to activate. If your child steps

‍

out in front of traffic, you want your nervous system to activate.

‍

But if you tell your teenager to please do the dishes... And they look at you like you've just made

‍

the most unreasonable request in the world and roll their eyes at you and your nervous system

‍

activates. It's a different story, right? Your nervous system is specifically designed to activate

‍

when you're in mortal danger. And so something about this moment with your teenager just made your

‍

nervous system interpret it as mortal danger. So we need to start to slow down around that moment a

‍

little more. So the first step is that nervous system activates. The second step is that our heart

‍

closes to what's happening in that moment. We enter a state of resistance and defensiveness about

‍

what's going on. My nervous system is telling me this is dangerous. I don't want to participate in

‍

it anymore, and now I'm in a state of resistance against it. And then the third stage of being

‍

triggered is that we choose to let that happen. We choose to let our heart closed. We choose to let

‍

ourselves stay in a state of resistance against this. And usually when that happens, we actually...

‍

escalate the entire cycle the entire pattern and the entire response so what we want to do is we

‍

want to help people not not somehow like surgically remove their nervous system they're never going

‍

to do that they're also never going to be able to eliminate their heart closing because god has

‍

given us a heart that can close if we've got more than we can handle in the moment that can kind of

‍

go nope i don't want to participate in this but we do want to restore people's sense of choice and

‍

empower them to be able to open their heart back up and participate with what's going on in the

‍

wisest way possible, right? Which doesn't mean necessarily being passive. It doesn't mean being

‍

weak, so to speak. I often say an open heart doesn't make your boundaries weaker. It makes your

‍

boundaries wiser. With an open heart, you're sort of able to show up to the moment with all of the

‍

things you've been gifted with. So we want to restore people's ability to do that. And when you

‍

really start to pay attention to your heart closing, you realize, yeah, it definitely happens a lot

‍

oftentimes in the marital relationship because there are things you're expecting from that

‍

attachment that you're not expecting in other attachments in your life, and so that one can become

‍

a really triggering one. It happens all the time with your kids.

‍

Bedtime's a classic. You think you're finally to the finish line of your day, and you're going to

‍

get a little bit of time for yourself, and then they keep pushing that bedtime later, super

‍

triggering for a lot of parents. Teenagers are particularly triggering. I think it's their job.

‍

But our family of origin relationships with siblings, with our parents,

‍

with bosses, these are all situations in which we can sense that our heart is starting to close to

‍

what's happening. And if we can be empowered to keep our heart open, we'll engage it in the wisest

‍

way possible. Wow. That's a really helpful overview.

‍

And I love how you're painting that picture of it's not quite what we see on TikTok. It's also not

‍

always in this category of PTSD. But somewhere in the middle,

‍

we do have these nervous system responses. And especially I love how that list of relationships

‍

makes a lot of sense, where there's some hot button. wiring that's going to inevitably go on.

‍

That's right. And how we, I love what you said. I want you to repeat it, that it's not that we

‍

don't have boundaries in those moments, especially when you give the example of the teen, right?

‍

It's not that we're, it's not, and again, that would be a flight response or a fawn response. It's

‍

not. what we're after, we're after a wiser response. I love that. You know,

‍

parents ask me all the time, for instance, like, so when my teen's acting out, do I have empathy

‍

for them or do I set boundaries with them? And it reveals that we sort of assume those two things

‍

can't go together, that we can't have an open heart and boundaries at the same time. And my answer

‍

is, oh, you have to do both all the time. You know, like that if you try to set boundaries without

‍

empathy, you'll set those boundaries aggressively and in a controlling way usually that will just

‍

sort of set the relationship up for a battle. But if you think that having an open heart doesn't

‍

mean that you can't have, that it means you can't have limits, you can't have expectations, you

‍

can't have boundaries, you can't have things you want, then you essentially become a doormat. And

‍

what we're aiming for here is the capacity to be able to regularly express your boundaries,

‍

your wants, and your needs with an open heart rather than shutting down. That's so good. So this

‍

leads me to my next question. You make this distinction between connection mode and protection

‍

mode. And what you're saying there reminds me of this because that flip of the switch happens

‍

quick.

‍

Usually, it's not like we're consciously, it's just the flip switches. And in that moment,

‍

in that quickness of that moment, we want to reach for connection mode, not protection mode.

‍

Once that reaction becomes more obvious, like, okay, I am triggered or I am having a moment.

‍

I don't want to flip into protective mode. I want to flip into connection mode. How do we bridge

‍

that? Yeah. One of the first things I address and that what I realized early on was that if my

‍

nervous system was dysregulated, I couldn't switch back into protection or to connection mode.

‍

Right. Like your nervous system will override your higher mind. which will go,

‍

oh, wait a second, I don't need to be protecting here. Everything's okay. You actually have to

‍

train your nervous system to know it's okay again before you can make that switch back into

‍

connection mode. And so one of the first things I recommend in the book is,

‍

number one, is really starting to tap into what's really a superpower.

‍

It's your sixth sense. It's called interoception. It's the sixth of the senses.

‍

And interoception is the capacity to tune into your body and to notice your body sensations. So

‍

everyone who's listening has already done that dozens of times today when they thought, I'm hungry,

‍

or I have to go to the bathroom, or man, I'm really more tired today than usual, or I could use

‍

another cup of coffee. You're tuning into your bodily sensations and making sense of them. But we

‍

do it unconsciously. And we don't slow down to actually go, wait a second, I could use that

‍

superpower to start to notice when I'm getting triggered. Because the reality is, we think of

‍

triggers as happening instantaneously and dramatically. When you really start to tune into the

‍

subtleties of your body, you realize that your nervous system functions a little bit more like a

‍

furnace, where the pilot light kicks on. Right. And then you start to hear the starts to rumble a

‍

little bit as it heats up. And then eventually the furnace kicks on on full blast. So one of the

‍

first things we encourage people to do is actually start to tune into your body first. That's going

‍

to give you an 80 percent, according to the data, an 80 percent earlier warning that your heart's

‍

about to close and you're going to shift into defense mode. So if you can notice it sooner.

‍

You might actually be able to make a choice of like, I don't want to do the defensive thing. Can I

‍

give you an example from this morning? Oh, my goodness. My wife and I, I will admit,

‍

I'm neurotic about my first cup of coffee in the morning. I like to pour the first cup out of the

‍

pot. I've got it all set up. There's no question I'm neurotic about it. Well, this morning I see my

‍

wife grab a mug from the counter, and I immediately hop up and I go pour my cup of coffee.

‍

And she says to me, you always got to be in control and have it your way, don't you? I could feel

‍

the tightening in my chest, right? Now, I know that that tightening is a sign that I'm about to

‍

close my heart and go into defense mode. About a cup of coffee here, let's remember. And so the

‍

temptation in that moment is just to allow it and to allow it to happen and to switch into defense

‍

mode. But because I've noticed my body tighten, I've got... little bit more warning to go, do I

‍

really want to start to act offensively? Because if I start to act offensively, what I'm about to

‍

do is I'm about to list all of the things that I do for her and my family that I don't want to do

‍

and try to make the case that I'm not quite as selfish as she just suggested.

‍

And escalate something that isn't worth an escalation. No,

‍

over a cup of coffee. And so... But what I've got to do in that moment,

‍

if I'm not going to close my heart and shift into defense mode, is I've got to get that body

‍

regulated. I've got to get the nervous system regulated and go, okay, you're in your kitchen. This

‍

is just a cup of coffee, and you're not being chased by a tiger on the Serengeti. You're good. You

‍

do a little bit of breathing. And then I have a choice about whether or not I want to get

‍

defensive. And the temptation will be to jump into defense mode. And so one of the challenges is

‍

just to sort of watch the thoughts and the urges starting to come up, you know, rather than acting

‍

on them. We say watch them instead of wielding them. And so I watched all those urges to defend

‍

myself come up. And I asked myself in that moment, what would it look like instead to set an open

‍

-hearted boundary in this moment? Like, what would that look like to not just shut down and

‍

disconnect? And the answer was to say, I don't think that's totally true about me.

‍

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‍

some sacrifice. In other words, instead of defending myself, invite her into sort of joining me in

‍

seeing me as a more whole person than I was just characterized as. And she was willing to sort of

‍

step into that. And so really just looking.

‍

For the bodily sign, you're about to close, you're about to get defensive, telling the body that

‍

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‍

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this episode.

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That is such a great example. It leads me because I wanted to go right into a question that I got

‍

from a reader that I thought would be perfect to ask you because of the topic of your book. But

‍

that's such a great example. If you did speak up for yourself, you weren't a doormat,

‍

but it was from a different place. And I think that's the... that we go into these binaries.

‍

It's either I don't say anything and then I'm a doormat or I defend myself and it doesn't really

‍

help. And that's such a beautiful, you noticed, which allowed you to make a wiser response.

‍

And I'll notice for myself, over the years,

‍

my husband and I will find kind of almost humorous ways. But again, shows the regulation.

‍

So I'll say something like, you know, once I'm able to, and it's not coming out sideways and it's

‍

not, it's genuinely coming from a more regulated place. I'll say, oh, you know,

‍

just, just sort of a, oh, you know, and then, which is a cue for him to go, oh, I, I didn't, or,

‍

you know, or he'll, he'll do it to me. Like, and it, it just is that cue of, um,

‍

I'm not defending myself, but I'm letting you know. Right. that didn't feel fair,

‍

you know, just those normal everyday moments. I, but I love that where you said,

‍

I don't think that's completely true, you know, and then inviting it's inviting connection.

‍

Yeah. Yeah. What all that's a great example. I like, I'll often say to people, you may,

‍

you'll be less reactive, but you won't be less responsive. Yeah. Right. So you may pause for a

‍

little bit. Yes. But that pause you eventually hit play on and then you show up with a more open

‍

hearted, wiser way of addressing it like you did. Like, ouch, like you're basically instead of,

‍

you know, instead of responding with your protections, you're being vulnerable about your pain.

‍

Yeah. Right. That's a wiser, more open hearted way to respond. I think of a time like I was driving

‍

my middle guy. He's 18 now. So this was probably a few years ago and he was he was 15 at the time

‍

because I was driving him around. He was just. he was hitting me with both teenage barrels, you

‍

know, and sometimes I'll say to my kids, like, all right, it's enough teenager for now. And that's,

‍

you know, that's enough for today. But in this case, I remember I said to him, I go,

‍

dude, I love you unconditionally, but I don't drive you unconditionally.

‍

And I'm going to give you a choice. Like if you want to start to treat me differently, like we

‍

could be good, but if you don't, I think you're walking the rest of the way, you know? And I think

‍

there was no doubt in his mind that I do love him and that I was just simply setting a boundary on

‍

how I'm going to allow myself to be treated. And so we're trying to find that sweet spot where

‍

those two things can go together. That's so good. And there's power in that. And I think that even

‍

when we think like scripturally, right, it's not about being a doormat. It's about that there's

‍

more strength that especially our teenagers, but anybody kind of picks up on from that.

‍

Like, oh, they mean it. They're not. There's a grounded response to my button pushing that,

‍

oh, even if they don't change instantly, they sense that, the people around us.

‍

It's powerful. And true strength feels safe to people, right?

‍

I think in that moment there was a boundary, but my son didn't. feel unsafe in the midst of that

‍

boundary. There was clear structure to it. You have a choice. Here's your options. And so what we

‍

discover is that when we can show up openheartedly in those triggered moments, we actually create a

‍

greater sense of safety. Even as we show up fully, we're creating a greater sense of safety for our

‍

people, which actually, the thing that causes you to close your heart is that you feel unsafe.

‍

So as we're showing up in that way and creating a sense of safety for our people, we're actually

‍

inviting them to open up as well. So I want to read this reader question because it gets at that.

‍

I love how you said we're inviting them to open up. There's more of an invitation.

‍

Here's the question that one of my listeners wrote in.

‍

When I'm the one who gets triggered, especially with a spouse, is the right move always to work on

‍

my own response? Or should my partner also be working on not triggering me in the first place?

‍

In other words, whose work is this? And your example is a good example of that, right?

‍

So I thought that was kind of an interesting question. It's a great question.

‍

It's on all of our minds. Right? Like, you shouldn't trigger me. You know this is a trigger,

‍

you know? So how do we navigate that? You know, one of the things I like to say is that in a

‍

situation like that, Yes, you have actually 100% ownership of how you respond to that triggering

‍

moment. And they have 100% ownership of how they showed up that triggered you.

‍

And that sort of undoes the whole process of who should be working on themselves more in this

‍

moment. That the only thing we can ultimately control is ourselves.

‍

And so we might as well invest our time and energy in working on that. And I'll say a couple things

‍

about that.

‍

The reason I feel so strongly about that is the example I often give.

‍

Last summer we were here in the upper Midwest, heat wave, humid. I was sitting here in this very

‍

chair one afternoon, and I could feel the heat rising in my office. I'm like, what's going on? Air

‍

conditioning's not kicking on. I went into the furnace room, and it was sort of rapid cycling,

‍

going on and off real quickly, so it wasn't working. And so what I did for the rest of the week is

‍

instead of calling the HVAC guy, I just brainstormed ways to cool it down outside instead of

‍

cooling it down here in the house. It's just a joke, of course. I would never do that. But that's

‍

actually where we spend a lot of space in relationships. How do I get the weather to change? How do

‍

I get the weather to change versus going to the control board? dealing with what's going on there

‍

in the control board, calling the HVAC guy, calling the therapist or the coach or your pastor,

‍

whoever you need to help you kind of deal with that control board. We spend a lot of time trying to

‍

control the weather, the behaviors, the thoughts, and the feelings of our people, which is entirely

‍

out of our control. So that, to me, is just an example, a metaphor that helps us realize that that

‍

energy we put in trying to get the other person to change is wasted energy, and we can redirect it

‍

at ourselves. Having said that, one of the most powerful learnings for me in this whole process

‍

happened actually a year to the day after I made that original New Year's resolution.

‍

We had just returned from a Christmas vacation in Mexico as a family. It was the second COVID

‍

Christmas, and we're like, I don't know if we'll be able to get together with families. Let's just

‍

get out of Dodge and do something different.

‍

triggered travel I don't I don't travel well I don't I don't mind the whole flying and potentially

‍

crashing like for some reason it's getting to the airport late and then finding my way to the hotel

‍

you know it just all stresses me out and I get triggered but I was almost a year into the practice

‍

of open-heartedness and and my my only sort of intention going into that trip was no matter what

‍

happens I'm gonna gonna keep my heart open to what's going on And so we get back from Mexico,

‍

and we're sitting around the dining room table, and we're setting our intentions for the next year

‍

as a family. And my wife says, hey, why don't you tell the kids what you've been practicing for the

‍

last year, this open-heartedness thing? And so I shared with them a little bit of what we're

‍

talking about today. And my daughter, who was 12 at the time, she looked at me, and she said,

‍

that must be why every time something went wrong on the way to Mexico, I looked at you and I felt

‍

calm.

‍

The practice of open-heartedness was changing. people around me even when they didn't know i was

‍

practicing it right what i say now is that you don't have any power over your people but you have

‍

tremendous power around your people right that you can become the soothed nervous system that

‍

soothes nervous system the calm soul that calms souls and the open heart that opens hearts and that

‍

this is really the power that we wield is the way that we show up especially if we can show up calm

‍

and open-hearted We are creating, now we're the weather, right?

‍

That's powerful. Now we're the weather, right? That can influence the temperature inside of someone

‍

else's house, so to speak. And so that's my encouragement to folks is that when you choose to fully

‍

invest in owning your response to those triggered moments, not just to sort of like white knuckle

‍

it and get through them, but to genuinely transform the way that you show up to those moments.

‍

You are a powerful force for change in the system. You and I know this, right? Systems theory says

‍

that when one component in the system changes, the rest of the system is forced to change to adapt

‍

to it, right? So as you transform, you will be transforming the relationships that you're in. And

‍

sometimes, and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this, whether it's marriage or even with

‍

parents, especially those, you know, or siblings.

‍

And sometimes when we begin to change ourselves, other people in the system don't like it and can

‍

get worse or come after us more to try to push those buttons.

‍

Because there's something in that pattern that felt, you know,

‍

wasn't healthy, but felt comfortable to that other person. What would you say to folks?

‍

How do you deal with that in your practice and with folks where that? is the result, where you're

‍

doing your own work, and maybe it reveals more toxicity or even more pathology than maybe you were

‍

even aware of as you're pulling out of that unhealthy dynamic. Yeah, oh, absolutely.

‍

And we also know from systems theory that... first the rest of the system tries to maintain what's

‍

called homeostasis, right? It doesn't like the fact that that one part of the system is changing.

‍

So it tries to tug it back, back into place. Um, and one of the things that you discover in the

‍

process is that, um, you sort of, you resolve to yourself here,

‍

you know, this is, this is my personal growth. I'm going to learn how to navigate these triggered

‍

moments with a more open heart, show up more open heartedly. And that's going to be enough for me.

‍

And then you do it and nobody changes or they get worse. And now you're frustrated and your heart's

‍

closing. And you start to realize that your open heart was just a closed heart and subtle disguise.

‍

You were hoping that you could have some control over them. by opening up,

‍

showing up differently. And I think a lot of your listeners will notice that a lot of what looks

‍

like personal growth is secretly just a hope that our change will change our people in the

‍

direction that we want them to change. And so what you're really starting to surrender to here is

‍

the reality that you don't ultimately have control over the most valuable things in your life.

‍

You don't have control over it, right? You have control over how you show up to those things and

‍

you're learning how to live through because a lot of, Michael Singer also says,

‍

if you want to know why you do what you do, don't do it and then watch what happens inside of you,

‍

right? And so what happens is we try to take control of the people in our life in subtle and not so

‍

subtle ways in order to calm it down inside here. If we can be in control of this situation or get

‍

them to change in this way or get this reaction from them, it'll be calm in here. But we develop a

‍

tremendous amount of resilience and power when we can endure that unpleasant feeling in here,

‍

get through it without having to assert control. We're actually much more powerful at that point

‍

than if we were trying to control them. Yeah, go ahead.

‍

This is, I think, where our spiritual grounding can help because I want to know you're not saying,

‍

and this was actually my next question, don't set boundaries. No. Because what's so nuanced about

‍

what you're saying is someone could hear this as...

‍

Just let it go. Let somebody mistreat you. Let somebody walk all over you.

‍

And I know that, right, but what I- I thank you for naming that, yeah. Yeah, so keep, so right,

‍

it's, and you've kind of already, let's drill back down on it. It's, I cannot, and that's,

‍

there's a grief in that. I cannot. And actually, there are millions of ways every single day we're

‍

actually trying to control the people around us, our kids, our spouse. And when we start to really

‍

let go of that, it is a spiritual journey of like, wow. And it doesn't mean we are at other

‍

people's mercy either. So keep going with this. This is incredibly profound.

‍

Yeah, I love the way that you're digging into this. To me, this is fundamental.

‍

We have to break through this. dilemma in order to get into really healthy territory and

‍

relationships. And so one of the ways of breaking through it is to recognize that oftentimes when

‍

we don't set a boundary with our people, that's our way of trying to control them. We're not

‍

setting a boundary because we don't want them to get upset. So we're trying to keep them calm. We

‍

don't set a boundary because we're afraid they won't like it. And they'll distance from us or they

‍

might even threaten the relationship. So that's our way of staying sort of stable in the

‍

relationship, right? Someone asked me recently, like, what's the hardest boundary to set in

‍

relationship? And my answer was the one that you think will cost you the relationship. The one that

‍

you think will create more separation if you said it, right? We're always afraid of that

‍

abandonment and loneliness and rejection. And so the hardest boundary is always the one that you

‍

don't think someone will like and will cause them to distance from you. And so it's really powerful

‍

to recognize that when I'm staying quiet and not expressing myself and not setting a boundary,

‍

that's actually, I say, I'm not a control freak, but I'm a control sneak. I'm a terrible control

‍

sneak. And that's a control sneak. It's a way of maintaining. some steadiness and stability in the

‍

relationship by staying quiet. So ironically, this is wild. Like when you show up open-heartedly

‍

with a boundary, and by the way, in the book, I talk about how boundaries are the third stage of a

‍

process. The first stage is actually just saying what you want. And when you open-heartedly

‍

express what you want, you'll be surprised how often people help you get it. If they don't,

‍

you can decide to escalate it to a need. And once they realize, oh, it's that important to you,

‍

they will also be more likely to help you get what you need. But then if that doesn't happen, then

‍

you express it as an open-hearted boundary.

‍

That's actually a step into surrender and not controlling,

‍

ironically, when you set a boundary. Because as soon as you put yourself out there and you express

‍

yourself, they're free to respond however they want, right? And how they want could hurt. And now

‍

we have to learn how to stay open-hearted through the lack of support, right?

‍

I often say that the one thing we're always trying to avoid in relationships is the experience of

‍

loneliness. And loneliness has three pillars, feeling unseen, misunderstood, and unsupported.

‍

So when you tell somebody you want something, when you set a boundary around it and they don't

‍

support you in it, that feels really lonely, right? And so it's quite the opposite of what we

‍

think, that actually you're surrendering control when you set a boundary because you're allowing

‍

them to respond however they want. And then you're saying, if you continue to respond that way,

‍

I might have to do this. Right. Um, that's a totally different, that's a totally different thing.

‍

You're not telling them what they have to do. You're letting them know, like I did with my son,

‍

what I will be doing the rest of the way. Yeah.

‍

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Yeah, I will be driving alone if you continue to. I don't want to. Yeah, it's not something you're

‍

trying to get them to do again, which is the control. So this, yes, you're right. So this is

‍

chapter seven for the listener. It's called set boundaries without. battles.

‍

It's not a power play in that traditional sense. It's actually a move of strength. What is a shift,

‍

just as we're winding down here, kind of a nugget that... a boundary boundaries i think are another

‍

one of those things i've written a lot about boundaries they're so misunderstood on the tiktok

‍

culture the therapy culture right um but they're so powerful um when you really understand them and

‍

i like how you cast it as the shift that makes a boundary feel like an act of love instead of an

‍

act of war it's really an act of and and i would say that love is All three of the loves Jesus

‍

commands, love of God, love of other, and love of self. Absolutely. It's real love. It's not

‍

pleasing love. It's the love of, there's too much truth and love here for me to,

‍

it's a grounded strength. How do we make that shift, Kelly? Help us all.

‍

That's a good question. And a lot of it has to do with the sequence of how this all tends to play

‍

out. So what often happens is that you stay quiet. trying to be loving right when really you're

‍

maybe being a little controlling ironically but you're staying quiet staying quiet but what happens

‍

is i often say a resent resentment today is a boundary you didn't set yesterday right But

‍

resentment is the emotional experience that goes along with not setting healthy boundaries. And so

‍

you stay quiet, you stay quiet, you stay quiet, but your heart's closing all the time. You're

‍

getting more and more resentful, more and more frustrated, feeling more and more mistreated. And

‍

then what happens is your heart closes all the way and then you set the boundary. So it comes out

‍

aggressively, it comes out in controlling ways. And so you've sort of set up the situation for a

‍

battle. I often say, if you wear gloves to church, a boxing match will break out.

‍

And so if you set a boundary with a closed heart, you're going to end up in a battle, not a

‍

collaboration. What we want to see you do is we want to see you not close your heart and then sort

‍

of set a reactive boundary. We want to see you set a boundary in order to keep your heart open.

‍

When you feel like you can't keep your heart open unless you set a boundary, that's the time to set

‍

it. You actually don't get to decide, ironically, where your boundaries are at.

‍

Your heart decides that for you. If I can't keep my heart open without setting a boundary, I guess

‍

I've got to set one. I'll give you an example.

‍

Back when I was doing traditional outpatient mental health and clients would no show for a session,

‍

it would mean that their insurance doesn't pay and they're going to have to pay the full. the full

‍

fee out of their pocket which is never never very pleasant so they would come into the next session

‍

and i would hand them an invoice for the full fee and almost invariably they'd look at it and

‍

they'd be like oh you must be really mad at me if you're charging me the full fee and i would say

‍

to them no i'm charging you the full fee so that i don't get mad at you right i'm setting the

‍

boundary so that my heart doesn't close to you i didn't give you that invoice Good.

‍

Right? If I didn't give you that invoice, you'd walk out of here today and I'd be resenting you a

‍

little bit. And I'd be disconnecting from you with my closed heart. This invoice is keeping me

‍

connected to you right now. Wow. Oh, okay, I get that. And then they'd happily pay it because it's

‍

a symbol of relationality rather than penalty, right? That's a great...

‍

Way to look at it. I could see that. And you really have to buy into that. But I could see that

‍

with even a friend you love. You know, I if I don't say no now or if I don't do this now,

‍

I will. Yeah, that's boy, that is nuanced. But that's a great example. A friend asks you to to do

‍

one thing and you gladly do it. Right. And then they're like, oh, yeah. And next week,

‍

can you buy a $200 ticket for our table at the fundraiser? And if you sense that your heart will

‍

close to that, that you're going to be at that fundraiser silently resenting it,

‍

you need to set a boundary now so your heart doesn't close. Actually, I can't do that one. And now

‍

we're still in open-hearted relationship.

‍

That'll preach. I want every listener to think about that for a second, right? How are we not?

‍

I mean, that hits me. And I've been talking about this stuff for years and it's because it's so

‍

hard. Those hardwired. And I love how you're naming the quiet ways.

‍

we, oh, I just don't want to have the conflict or I just don't want to make the person mad or I

‍

just don't want this to be uncomfortable. Yes. That's all about control. It's, it's, it is.

‍

Yeah. I mean, it's not, I mean, sometimes we're just being a nice person or we're tired or

‍

whatever, but, but often those patterns are every, the more we make those decisions,

‍

the more I, that's, that's when that heart suddenly will start to go. I'm just kind of done with

‍

this person or I'm kind of done with this volunteering. And that could be prevented by our own

‍

honoring of the open heart. Exactly. The irony being that what we're mostly walking around doing in

‍

relationships is trying not to end up lonely. For the human being, that's about as painful as it

‍

gets. And so we don't set boundaries.

‍

Because we fear that a boundary will leave us separate and alone. But then what happens is our

‍

heart starts to close down and now we're separating anyways. Now we're sort of trapped inside of

‍

the aloneness we create with our own heart. So we actually, boundaries are this sort of

‍

foundational, they form the foundation for the capacity to stay in connection and to not be lonely,

‍

essentially. And the people you belong to will be the people who really appreciate you setting

‍

boundaries. And those that don't, won't. Stick around. Yeah. And that's part of the discerning in

‍

real time. And it is vulnerable. I mean, this is ongoing work. I know you say in the book, this is,

‍

we're in, I feel so much in process with all this. There's so many different iterations with

‍

different seasons of life. And I'm in a new season of kind of figuring this out and I'm in a new

‍

community. And it is vulnerable, right? To sit with that. Okay,

‍

someone. may not appreciate this, even though I know, like even a client or,

‍

you know, in your situation, a client, I don't like this, but that's okay. I know, I know what's

‍

going on here. I know this is about keeping my heart open and God knows, you know, that's that

‍

spiritual piece. Like I can anchor in that and I'll be disappointed and sad if the other person

‍

doesn't respond well, but I have to let that go. I can't control that outcome.

‍

That's so powerful. And my encouragement to listeners is, as you are pointing out over and over

‍

again, it's so much easier said than done. And if that's the case,

‍

if you find yourself in a situation where this conversation leads to that awareness of,

‍

oh, this is one of those moments. My heart will close if I don't set a boundary. And you find

‍

yourself unable to do it anyways.

‍

Because... afraid that that boundary will lead to separation and disconnection and loneliness

‍

usually.

‍

My encouragement to listeners is to just sort of in that moment, there's an opportunity.

‍

Because the reality is for us adults, loneliness isn't terribly threatening. Like, you know,

‍

if friend A rejects you, you have 100, you can text or 1,000 people you can get to on Facebook.

‍

And there's just all sorts of ways to mitigate loneliness as an adult. But there wasn't when we

‍

were kids. And so if there's this part of you that is just going, I can't tolerate the threat of

‍

loneliness and rejection in this moment, probably isn't an adult part. It's probably a younger part

‍

of you that couldn't handle loneliness, that didn't have the freedom to manage it in adult ways

‍

when they were young. And so it's just an opportunity. If you can't set a boundary, if you just

‍

can't bring yourself to do it, cool. like don't don't hammer yourself for that get tender with the

‍

part of you that is feeling really threatened by the fear of separation and and show that part of

‍

you some love and help that part of you be a little bit less lonely in the moment i love that

‍

that's great because i i agree with you i yeah that's a great um a great word to just be gentle

‍

with the part be aware of it that this is a part of me But be gentle with that part of you because

‍

it's there for a reason. And it's got data from the past. And you do go into that in the book,

‍

those past strongholds. Tell my listeners where they can find you, Kelly, where they can find your

‍

book and all the things you're doing out in the world and the goodness you're providing. If you

‍

want to find out more about the book, you can go to roadlesstriggered.com. It's also just

‍

available anywhere where books are sold in paperback and digital and audio. I'm very excited to

‍

announce it hit the USA Today bestseller list recently, and we're very excited about that. It was

‍

out of stock for a while once the first print run was sold, but it's back in stock, which is very

‍

exciting. So you can get it anywhere. I also host an online community on Substack called the Less

‍

Triggered Tribe, where we're actually taking the principles from the book, and we're actually

‍

like... going through the journey together on a weekly and monthly basis. Yeah. So drkellyflanagan

‍

.substack.com is where you can find the Less Triggered Tribe and you can join for free and join us

‍

there. And then my website is drkellyflanagan.com. Okay. So we'll link to that in the show notes,

‍

but that sounds like a great resource for folks who are really trying to apply this in real time.

‍

It takes practice. It's not magic. I love that you're doing that. That's beautiful. We have a

‍

group. sort of coaching community call the third Friday of every month. And literally this topic

‍

comes up every time because we just have such a bunch of gentle souls in our community, right? And

‍

they're like, they're wanting to show up more fully and they're wanting to show up with healthier

‍

boundaries and they're working through all these questions. So you'll fit right in. I love it. I

‍

love it. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us and with so many others. It was great to

‍

be here, Alison. Thank you so much. You too. Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of

‍

The Best of You. It would mean so much if you take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple,

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Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to or watch podcasts and click the plus or follow button.

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That'll ensure you don't miss an episode and it helps get the word out to others. While you're

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there, I'd love it if you leave a five-star review. Join us each weekday for the best of you every

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day, a brief daily reflection to help you start your mornings with a steady dose of wisdom.

‍

Remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true

‍

to your God-given self.

‍

Episode Show Notes

What if the dry, weary place you’re in isn’t something to escape—but a place where God is working?

So many of us know that quiet middle space: you’re not in crisis, but you’re not exactly flourishing either. You’re tired, spiritually dry, disconnected, or simply going through the motions. It’s not dramatic enough to call a breakdown, but something in you knows you’re weary.

In this episode, Dr. Alison and author/priest Tish Harrison Warren explore what grows in these weary places—and why seasons of spiritual dryness, burnout, and languishing aren’t signs that something is wrong with you.

They may be part of how God forms you.

Together, they talk about aridity, resilience, stability, and what it means to stay present to the life you actually have instead of constantly looking for a way out.

You’ll explore:

• Why spiritual dryness doesn’t mean you’re failing
• The difference between depression, burnout, and languishing
• What the desert fathers and mothers can teach us about resilience
• Why “staying in your cell” can become a path of formation
• How ordinary repair, routines, and relationships shape us over time
• What it means to let where you are do its work
• How hope changes the way we endure hard seasons

This conversation offers a counter-cultural invitation: you don’t have to rush out of the weary place. There may be something growing there.

‍

More Resources:

Order What Grows in Weary Lands - out this week!

You can preorder Dr. Alison’s newest book, The Secure Soul, and immediately receive the first 3 chapters as well as early access to the companion guide!

Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram

Curious what Family Role may have shaped you? Take the Family Role Quiz to learn how you may be showing up in your relationships with others.

‍

Want to hear more like this? Start here:

Episode 159: Spiritual Drowning, Honest Questions, and a God Who Doesn’t Let Go with Heather Thompson Day

Episode 176: Dr. Stephen Macchia on Intimacy with God in a Noisy World

‍

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Have you ever replayed a conversation over and over in your mind?

Maybe it was something your partner said. A text that felt off. A moment at work. A look on someone’s face. Suddenly your mind is looping, analyzing, judging, and trying to solve something that never seems to resolve.

Today’s conversation with science writer Donna Jackson Nakazawa is about rumination—what many of us experience as overthinking, thought spirals, or getting mentally stuck.

Donna brings together powerful neuroscience, personal story, and practical tools to help us understand why our minds loop, what those loops are trying to show us, and how we can begin to interrupt them with compassion and clarity.

We explore:

• Why rumination is not random—and what it reveals
• The difference between productive reflection and a mental loop that leaves you feeling worse
• Why social media can trigger rumination so quickly
• Donna’s MIST framework for stopping the spiral

This conversation is especially for you if you’ve ever thought, Why can’t I just let this go? or Why am I still thinking about this?

Get Donna's new book, Mind Drama ⁠here⁠

Connect with Donna ⁠here⁠

⁠Preorder my brand new book The Secure Soul⁠

‍

Want to hear more episodes like this? Start here:

⁠Episode 158⁠:  Your Pain Has a Name: The Deeper Hurt Behind Distressing Thoughts with Therapist Monica DiCristina

⁠Episode 51⁠: The 12 Common Thinking Traps, Mind Reading, Mental Filters, and How To Stop Taking Things Personally

📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode⁠ here⁠

Connect further with ⁠@dralisoncook⁠ on Instagram

Join 80,000+ soul tenders in our email  community and receive weekly wisdom ⁠here⁠. 

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*Some of the links above are Amazon affiliate links. If you choose to purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

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:

Am I replaying scenarios? Am I replaying them without a sense of finding a resolution?

Is my brain loading up the same reels over and over but without the benefit of cognitive or

emotional processing? or an action plan that offers a sense of release relief and how to move

forward according to all indicators we're ruminating more than we ever have before one third of us

have never heard the word rumination or we don't know what it means you cannot solve a problem that

you aren't being honest about that you haven't named so let's name it frame it and let's do that

interior work with a sense of tenderness for our own story, because that's where the wellspring of

well-being begins.

Hey, everyone, and welcome back to this week's Deep Dive episode of the Best of You podcast. I'm

Dr. Allison, and I have such an exciting announcement to share with you today. So over the...

Past few years, I've been working on a project on the side, really quietly. It's a book.

It's the most personal book I've ever written. It's my own journey through healing the parts of my

own soul. And it is finally finished. It's off to the printer. It's going to be printed any day

now. It's actually terrifying to me. If you've followed my work for a while, I...

to be a little bit more comfortable in the expert seat, right? And in kind of helping other people

understand themselves and in helping bring language to some of these concepts and theories and try

to make them practical for others. It's a lot harder for me to write about my own story,

write about my own experience. So I'm definitely experiencing a vulnerability hangover as we speak.

And so I'm so thrilled to share with you all today, my podcast listeners in this community, you're

the first to know if you're listening right now. I have a new book coming out. It's called The

Secure Soul, How to Find Inner Strength and Connection When Trust Doesn't Come Easy.

It's different in so many ways than my past books. It's more personal. It's more honest.

It's less scripted. It's just my own perspective on what I believe are the three most important

ingredients to healing, attachment, parts work, and spiritual formation.

And I bring these ideas together using my own story as illustration,

right? So I'm sharing with you insights into how I did this work to heal parts of my own soul,

even as I'm trying to help you and me together understand how attachment wounds,

how inner parts work, and how spiritual formation is essential for all of us to develop a secure

soul. This new book, The Secure Soul, it comes out August 18th, and I wanted to share it here first

with you, my podcast listeners. I also want to share with you just honestly,

behind the scenes, if you've ever followed an author you love, you... likely already know this, but

when you preorder a book, it makes a big difference. It really helps support the authors you like.

It's one of the main ways that publishers and distributors pay attention to kind of what's

signaling out there that this is a message people care about. So when you preorder a book,

it helps people hear about it. So if you're listening to this message today and you think you're

gonna read the book or it's a work that you wanna do, maybe you've read Boundaries for Your Soul or

one of my other books or you've engaged with this podcast and you think, I wanna go deeper in this

work. I wanna learn more about how this actually works in my day-to-day real life. I'd be so

grateful if you consider pre-ordering it now. When you do pre-order the book now, we put together

some really meaningful pre-order bonuses. For one thing, you'll get the first couple of chapters

of the book. There's also a companion guide. This is the first time I've ever done a workbook. So

there's an accompanying workbook that goes with the Secure Soul. You'll get a few chapters from

that. We've also put together some webinars and masterclasses and workshops.

For those of you who are interested in pre-ordering, you can get access to those when you pre

-order the books. So we want to make it worth your while. It's also my way. I've been wanting to

create more resources out of this work. It's again, the most powerful way I've seen to kind of

engage this work of inner healing and this intersection of healing and spiritual formation,

because this is a, when we bring God into this work, we are reshaping our souls in partnership with

God's spirit. So please head over to my website. You can find everything there. You can go to the

secure soul book. That's where you'll find all those bonuses. You can order the book anywhere books

are sold. I'm so thrilled to bring this to you. I'm grateful that you've been with me for these

past four years on the podcast. I'm grateful for the messages you send me about how this work has

helped you. I'm praying and hoping that this new offering will truly be not only a teaching tool

for you, but a... a companion for you on the journey, something that says, I'm not alone in this,

right? That was my heart with this book. And I'm so thrilled to finally be able to bring it to you

today.

Today's conversation is so good. I have been thinking about it all day and there's just so much.

practical insight and wisdom and helpful tools. I cannot wait to share it with you.

My guest is Donna Jackson Nakazawa. She's an award-winning science journalist,

and she's the author of several groundbreaking books at the intersection of neuroscience, the body,

and emotional healing. You might be familiar with her previous books, including Girls on the Brink

and Childhood Disrupted. She has spent her career translating cutting-edge brain science into

language that actually changes. how we live in our newest book. I have it right here. It's called

Mind Drama, The Science of Rumination and How to Outwit Your Inner Defeatist.

I cannot recommend it enough. Here's what drew me in. Donna opens by naming something that I think

most of us experience, but we don't always have the right words for, that spiral, right?

That loop that gets sticky, that place in our brain that just keeps going. It's the replaying of a

conversation you had three days ago. It's the middle of the night replay reel that just won't stop

no matter how hard you try. And she calls it rumination. And it turns out,

Most of us. are doing it without even really knowing there's a name for it and understanding how to

break that cycle. In today's conversation, Donna helps us understand that rumination isn't random

and it's not a flaw. It's actually a survival response that we have for a reason. It's been wired

into our nervous system. And she explains so beautifully how it's almost always rooted in our early

childhood wounds. These places in our stories where we maybe didn't feel seen or didn't feel like

we belong. or weren't sure if we mattered to the people who mattered to us, right?

These are the tender, unprocessed places from our past that tend to show up in these spirals.

Now, the spirals usually relate to different stories, but they're often linked. And how uncovering

that link can actually help us break free. And Donna actually walks me through this framework.

She calls it the mist. model in real time in today's episode. She helps me apply it to my own

ruminations. And it was really powerful. somewhere really specific and true and really helpful in a

matter of minutes. And it opened up something I hadn't quite fully been able to name for myself in

this same way before. I would encourage you to grab a journal for this one because you can do this

exercise right along with us. So if you're someone who lies awake at night running the same

scenarios on repeat, or you find yourself hijacked mid-afternoon by a worry spiral you can't shake

loose, or if you're just someone who thinks of yourself as an overthinker, this episode is for you.

And honestly, it's really for all of us. Please enjoy my conversation with Donna Jackson Nakazawa.

I want to open where you open, which is this idea that I think you say a third of Americans really

have maybe don't understand the word rumination, but absolutely are doing it and feeling it.

What do you... How do you define rumination and what do you, how do you understand it?

How do you experience it? Because you share also your own story in the book. Oh, sure. Right. I'm

not standing here in a glass house going, don't ruminate. I'm looking in the mirror and going,

what can we do to stop ruminating here? So really a very common vernacular way of thinking about

rumination is thought spiraling. You know, we are thought loops that are so sticky. We just can't

get out of them. We kind of know this isn't good. for us but we keep replaying the same

conversation or the interaction that we had maybe with our partner or teenager the night before or

a colleague or a parent a sibling you know fill in the blank and it can often in short form when

people are struggling like Is this rumination? We can ask ourselves, like, am I really judging

myself? Am I criticizing myself? Or am I caught in cycles of judging and criticizing others?

Am I replaying? scenarios? And am I replaying them without a sense of finding a resolution?

Like is my brain loading up the same reels over and over, but without the benefit of cognitive or

emotional processing or an action plan that offers a sense of release,

relief, and how to move forward. So technically,

in mental health circles rumination is worry about the past or projecting into the future so you

can use any of those but they're all a good way to frame the word rumination as you said one third

of us have never heard the word rumination or we don't know what it means so i'm kind of on a

mission to help us understand what it is And I have reasons for that,

which I'm sure we'll get into. And is it fair to say we all do it on some level?

It is because it's a survival response. It's built into the nuts and bolts of being alive.

It's part of our neural hardware. And it's a survival response gone wrong.

Think of it this way. Across evolutionary time. If you were sitting around the communal fire and

two or three people were elbowing each other, rolling their eyes or whatever people did a million

years ago to let you know that you were being dissed or dismissed or diminished in any way,

that was a dangerous proposition. Why? Because back across almost all of evolutionary time,

minus the past whatever hundred years, That was a sign that you and your offspring,

which we, our brains, our biological beings, we care a lot about our offspring, our gene pool,

we could be set at the edge of the tribe. And what does that mean? It means in a best case

scenario, you're not there for the good meat on the fire or you get the last little tuber that was

collected or buried. In a worse case, you're put so far outside of the realm of protection that

you're at risk of being picked off by marauding tribes or wildlife.

Wild animals, yep. Our immune systems are so sophisticated that across time,

our immune systems evolved with a sense of social threat. Social threat is clothed by the brain as

the most dangerous type of threat because it's really physical to us as beings.

And therefore, our immune systems, our stress chemicals, our stress hormones get really ramped up.

when we're ruminating because we're replaying social threat and that's a problem that's a problem

and rumination is is tied as the largest transdiagnostic factor to mental health so it's not just a

little thing that we're doing yeah it's a survival response gone rogue your brain just doesn't have

good mechanisms to stop and that's where my book comes in i'm trying to give people those yeah yeah

so if i'm and i'm hearing you correctly that it's most often we are ruminating about social threat

the threat of rejection the threat of isolation the threat of disconnection the threat of conflict

Loneliness. Not mattering. Yeah. Not belonging. The number one thing we ruminate about is whether

we matter to the people who matter to us. Yeah. In any aspect of our lives.

It could be in high school. I work a lot with high school girls. It could be.

That sense of your friend group. It could be a group chat. It could be the mom group. It could be

the neighborhood. It could be that thing your neighbor said over the fence. It could be,

again, anyone in your immediate or extended family. You're probably ruminating about one of them

right now. And I would guess social media could could trigger it.

Right. That's another era. It's a whole new thing we've introduced where suddenly, you know, I'll

notice that I'll be in a perfectly healthy. state mentally kind of thinking about the day in the

present. And then I'll see one thing and that spiral begins. It's just,

it's, you know, it's unbelievably quick and fast in that moment.

And it is. And, and that is one of the things that I work with parent and girl groups about,

especially girls, but also high schoolers and college age students. Because we see that social

media is turning on that fire hose of threat very quickly. Images do that much more quickly than

words. Videos do it more quickly than images. And most of us are using social media through video

imagery now, which means that we clock that sense of outrage or threat or loneliness or panic in a

much more visceral way. So you're absolutely right. I will add that according to all indicators,

we're ruminating more than we ever have before. And that is probably tied somewhat to social media,

to a pandemic just barely in the rearview mirror, to that just unending fire hose of rage and fear

and isolation from the news, from online life, from social media. from every corner that we turn to

is just amping it all up. So you're absolutely right. How,

in the book, you rely on your own mind as sort of your case study. One of them,

yes. One of them. What did you find that surprised you?

about your own patterns and tell us just a little bit about your own experience of realizing you

know it is to your point it's a helpful naming um and we'll get to what where there can be healthy

versions you know like i was mentioning there could be overthinking that can be healthy but but the

spiral the the negative spiral the rumination i bet you became very familiar with your own patterns

what did you notice Well, I noticed and I wrote very openly in the book that when I was very young,

my father died in a very freak overnight medical accident.

He went in for very minor surgery and he died due to a medical error.

And so it was the shock. that lives on forever. The reverberations will live on forever,

obviously. It's not something that you get up and shake off, you know,

as a kid of 12. And a lot of things changed in my family. Obviously,

my mom was widowed with four teenagers. I was the youngest and the only girl. My brothers were off

to the wind, girlfriends, colleges, what have you. And I really became my mom's emotional support

and just... everything that I could into protecting her,

taking care of her, worrying about her emotional needs. Was she okay?

Not okay. Coming out of her bedroom, not, you know, imagine being widowed overnight with four kids

and no way to support yourself. So my complete being went to that desire to care give.

as a child and make sandwiches for my brothers or whatever. So I never really processed any of that

until I began to report this book. And sure, I'd been to therapy.

I'd done all the right things. But as I was reporting this book, it really came about because one

day, and this is the opening of the book, you can read it for yourself. But I was coming out with

another book, not this book. And a researcher with whom I had shared the manuscript reached out to

me. I was at a doctor's appointment. And it was not the first time that something like this had

happened in my career where he told me he was going to borrow a bunch of it for a paper he was

writing. And he was doing me a favor because he was certainly more famous than me.

And it would come out under his name in a professional venue. And we would get it out there.

And he knew that I wanted that. And I had to leave the doctor's appointment.

I drove home. And I think most women could relate to this kind of a situation.

You know something has happened that shouldn't happen. You didn't have a voice for it. You weren't

able to speak up for yourself. And it's all trapped in your head and your body,

right? And so just talking about it, my heart still pounds a little bit.

I came home.

lawyer husband was here when I got home and he said, no, that's not okay.

You have to email your editor. I'm very close to my editor. We're very good friends. And she

immediately got the legal team on it and the whole thing disappeared. It disappeared. I didn't have

to solve it. They solved it, but it wouldn't stop replaying in my head.

And I kept saying to myself and my husband, It was three minutes of the worst phone conversation

I've ever had. But I'm not injured. Nothing happened. I can't get it out.

And that took me back to some of the patterns of voicelessness from my childhood and overdoing,

overgiving, and often in an atmosphere of male domination and male control in a big,

large... you know family so there were triggers that I had not attended to and we I'm sure can

break that down in the way in which naming the different images those movies the emotions and the

somatic sensations can help break our rumination and I have a an acronym for that writers love

acronyms called mist and i don't want to get into that now because it's based on the latest brain

science on where rumination is emanating from in our brain and how to work with that area of the

brain and we can get into that but i've already been talking for like three minutes no that i let's

get let's go there but i i just want to make sure i'm understanding you because this is there's so

much in what you're saying right as a as a I'm a therapist.

My listeners, this is why I wanted to have you on, right? We're always kind of trying to figure out

where are these triggers coming from. So I think what you're saying, let me make sure I'm hearing

you, that we ruminate for a reason, right? We're going to ruminate,

but what triggers a spiral is probably there for a reason and it's probably linked to some sort of

trauma or some sort of negative experience. from long ago. It's not unfamiliar.

It's not random. Is that, am I hearing you correctly? 100%. And to frame it through my lens,

we know that that area of the brain that gives rise to our ruminations for the nerds out there it's

called your default mode network and it's really three areas that we can work with discreetly to

unlock the brain from ruminations so we'll dive into that in a minute but first to address what

you're saying through my lens and the research that I did it's very clear that these patterns of

rumination in this area of the brain allison gets set up in response to events in childhood this

area of the brain is wired and fired in response to our early senses of mattering and belonging to

early caregivers and family members so rumination isn't random this is why it's almost always about

whether we belong or we matter to the people who matter to us but here's the tender thing beneath

all that mental noise Rumination is a signal fire from your past.

It is asking you to attend to those fearful, exiled,

angry, grieving, unseen, hurt parts of you that you have not fully attended to where emotional

processing still needs to happen. And so trauma is very much a theme through this book because

We've all had trauma. I wrote a whole book called Childhood Disrupted about the ubiquity of trauma

that we may not call trauma. Having parents who weren't present or having no one to really care

about you or think you were special or being put down or humiliated or critiqued all the time.

These are all classified by the CDC as types of childhood trauma. So our ruminations are...

encoded with information we each have a very distinct pattern of rumination we have things that can

happen to us in the world that will trigger this area of our brain to go into a kind of lockdown

that it's very difficult to get out of it's almost like an airport where airplanes are going around

on the tarmac in circles but they can't get out again Nothing flies in, nothing flies out,

and we have to be able to attend to those broken places and name them,

see them, and honor them for this area of the brain to let go again.

Gotcha. So part of, and I'm a big fan of naming, I'm going to use myself as a case study here for a

second. Good. That's okay. Yes. I think part of what you're saying is if we can find the underlying

pattern,

that's rooted in the past, it helps us access the path to release it.

So in my case, I often notice, and this is pretty new for me to notice this, but,

and this is kind of where social media comes in, especially in our polarized world. But in

childhood, I was shaped by attachment figures, all of whom I loved,

but who did not always know how to communicate with each other.

And they represented different, to use kind of your tribal, you know, different tribes, different

ideas, different ways of orienting to the world, whether religiously or spiritually or just the way

we are in the world. And I always found myself, where do I belong? I don't belong in any one group

because if I pick, I have to, and this is right in my own family,

right? I lose this person. Oh, my God. Right. So I don't want to pick this because then I lose this

person. So I have to figure out how to live coexist. So can you imagine? So that that is where

you're always under the threat of the possibility of loss of loss by any attachment.

And so it makes it nearly impossible for me to to this day.

I've had to figure out how. And so, again, I think there and this is where I want to get with you.

I've learned that there's as with anything. There's beauty in that because I've become something of

a translator, of a bridge builder. And also where I can spiral is I don't belong anywhere.

And if I choose this side, I lose this side. If I, you know, and, oh,

I don't belong in this side. That hurts. You know, it's always kind of comes back to that sense of

where do I belong? I'm just always sort of holding a lot of other people's belonging. Is that kind

of, but that's taken me a while to realize that's almost always where the. the spiral starts

because if you think about it allison underneath that fear of where do i belong is the fear of

where will i not Yes. Belonging. Where will I not matter?

Where will I be socially rejected or emotionally rejected? Yes. And again,

that is clocked by the brain as one of the most severe threats we can undergo as a human.

And it has a rapid escalation effect on your body's stress machinery.

So what you're feeling is real and getting in touch with that with real specificity.

language yeah by working with this part of the brain and what I've called the mist framework

because when we're lost in those places where we get triggered into thought spiraling rumination

self-judging other judging we're in a mist we actually can't see and what yes like on a

neurobiological level is that there are 267 areas of your brain that are super important to clear

clear thinking they're not lighting up They're not in use. They are offline.

All that's really working is this one closed circuit in your brain.

And you feel it, right? You feel it. It's like, whoa, I just keep going here.

I just keep going here. It's like Groundhog Day in your brain. And it feels terrible.

And you're actually not getting anywhere. You're not getting to any relief from the fear or the

wondering about the past or the future. So by using words,

and you like to use words, with incredible specificity,

we can actually decode our pattern of rumination in a way that...

it and puts it here in front of us maybe three feet away and that begins to make all the difference

that is the first step to emotional freedom because your brain starts to light up with awareness

other areas of your brain get engaged to go oh this isn't good I just spent the last hour making

dinner and I don't know if I added the salt to the stew or not I have no clue or I just drove here

I have no idea how I got here because I was loading the same reels over and over and over again so

we could try doing the MIST framework if you want sure okay I want it yeah that'd be great I love

it to

use your example We would start with the acronym is M-I-S-T for MIST.

And we're trying to clear the MIST by using the MIST framework. I love it. Okay, so M for you would

be using very specific words to create the sense of the story behind all the familiar reels that

you've seen a thousand times that your brain... loading up and where m is for mental imagery or

movie reels whatever works for you or montages it's that mental imagery the movies that replay a

little will come in from when you were five a little come in from yesterday and often it's like

Here's my old story or my familiar story of how people always dismiss me. Or here's my old familiar

story of how my voice doesn't matter. Here's my old familiar story of how people put me down.

I've interviewed so many people. They all come down to belonging and mattering. But what matters is

that you find your words for M, for your mental imagery, because the words that you say out loud,

that you name. Wow. Those are the words your brain will pay the most attention to.

Not the words I give you. Those words are not to be woo-woo. Those words are inside you and

they've been inside you for a really long time now. So if we were to do M, here's my old story of

how I don't belong. That would just be me spitballing, but you do it your way.

Yeah, it came as I was listening to you very clearly. They don't see me. Yes.

Yes. Okay. Let's start with that. Here's my old story of how they don't see me.

Let's move on to I. I is for the intensity of emotion, intense inner emotions.

Those could be, and they're very tied to our movie reels, right? Like you see the movie reel,

intense emotion gets going very, very quickly. It could be, which makes me feel afraid,

angry, scared, small.

So then we just go, here's my old story of how they don't see me, which makes me feel X and Y.

I mean, it's so interesting when you get specific. right? It actually makes me mad,

like angry. It makes me mad. It really does. I'm like, yes. Okay, Allison,

here's my old story of how they don't see me, how they don't see me,

which makes me feel. angry and mad and now we're going to do s for somatic sensations oh boy where

do you feel it in your body some people feel it like in the back of their head uh one person i

worked with just her headache like came on in eight seconds Some people, I feel it in my solar

plexus, like this anvil just landed on my chest. Heart might pound. Some people just,

their whole body contracts. So here's my old story of how they don't see me,

which makes me feel so mad and angry. And it makes my heart pound,

my solar plexus, whatever. Okay, so this is interesting. The minute I named it,

I felt more grounded in my body, which is interesting. But when it happens,

before I'm conscious of it, it feels like I, it's kind of what you were saying.

It's like I go down into a cave in my, it feels like kind of a cave in my brain. Like I just get

lost in a little kind of worrying energy in my brain, you know, like back here,

you know. Sure, yeah. Well, that's part of your default mode network, by the way. okay it's just

sort of like you know this buzzing sort of like worrying in in my head yeah so here's my old story

of how they don't see me which makes me angry and my head buzzes yeah so you can keep going there

and i want to say we all have multiple sentences we can say right yeah Different things are going

to emerge with different times. I had one person I worked with. She had one saying around her

husband, another around her daughter, and another around her mother. Like different things came up.

We can have multiple codes. But let me ask you this. So, so why don't you try saying the whole

thing in one sentence? Because that's where the magic is. Okay. So I want to ask you. And you can

change it. Okay. Because I want to, when you just said that, it made me realize, I think part of

what happens is, so I, they don't see me and that I feel mad.

And so there is a little bit of a, like, you know, when I say it, it's kind of in my, in my fists,

you know, in my, in my body. But I think it's actually a step after that. I go to either.

beating myself up typically. Yes. And that's what I feel in my,

it's like a loop opens up where I just start, why are you not bad? What's wrong with you,

Allison, that you haven't made them able to see you? Oh, I feel that viscerally.

Yes. Isn't this beautiful? So here's where you would be going with that. It's my fault. I'm

actually mad at myself. So here's my old story of how they don't see me. which makes me ashamed of

myself or feel like there's something wrong with me and my fists clenched.

Yeah. Like, try it again. Sorry, people, but this is important. Like,

you know, we all have to do this work. This is an important moment. So run it again.

Run it until... Yeah, and the listener, try to journal through this in your own experience. It's

powerful because I've never really been this granular about it. They don't see me. And that makes

me mad. I feel that in my fists. And then it's like I'm mad at myself.

Why can't I make them see me? So here we go.

And that is your code of rumination. And it's beautiful. And it's yours. And it's tied to your

whole story across your whole life. And probably your first caregivers who couldn't see the

position they were putting you in. Right? Yeah. Hey, Allison, you must choose.

Are you with us? Nope. Or are you with us? Grownups should be able to see the position they're

putting you in. And that had to make you really, as a child,

we code all of those situations as our fault. That's why when parents are getting divorced,

courts now order, you know, therapy for kids if there's some kind of custody battle.

Because From an early age until our brains are fully formed.

I've reported on this a lot. Kids cannot make that essential leap from there's something wrong with

me to there's something wrong with them. We cannot make that leap as children. And so we carry

things that are not ours to carry. And we carry them across a lifetime.

And what I found in doing my missed framework with people. is that they are able to drop things.

They are able to set down things that are not theirs to carry anymore. And it's the beginning of

the work. I don't want anyone to think that you do this and that's all you need to do and you won't

ruminate anymore. This is like a first step. It's the awareness that allows the other steps toward

real emotional freedom.

There's a lot in that. That's a really helpful, I think. I really appreciate your working through

it because I get what you're saying. Once you have that name for it,

you can look at it. What would you say to the listener who begins to connect those dots?

And you cover this in the book. Just as we're winding down here, Donna,

you know, how can you begin to, I love this phrase, repurpose? That energy.

Because it does feel like a lot of energy. It is a lot of wasted energy. It's a lot of dark,

wasted energy. Yeah, I love the idea of repurposing it, right? Yes. We all have things we would

rather be spending our precious mental energy on, right? We all want to be closer to that state of

flow, creativity, awareness, ideation. You have a podcast.

You see patients. You write books. you have a lot of ideation going on you want to be free and open

to that sort of importing or downloading of the good the good ideas or the next steps and not

walking around in this familiar story of rumination right so the first step is what we just did the

mist framework because what happens inside your brain is your brain kind of goes like oh you caught

me

Yeah. Steps back a little bit. Yeah. And it's happy because we want to be seen by ourselves.

Right. Like your story is about not being seen. You want to be seen by yourself.

So obviously we have to go way beyond that to do deeper work in terms of.

getting out of our ruminative habits so in the book really what I walk people through is then to

take that work somatically because what our brain is thinking oh I see that and what our body feels

they have to agree right our mind is a wonderful tool for escaping rumination but if we're still

somatically caught in the sensations of threat or social exclusion or feeling any of the D words

are a lot of diminished, dismissed, disregarded, disliked. Our body isn't coming along for the,

for the healing. Yeah. Yeah. And so I work, I walk people through a lot of very quick somatic

exercises that are based for working with the mental work that we're doing and for taking our

bodies out of that ruminative clutch as I think of it right we've got to get out of that ruminative

clutch we probably don't have time to run through them here but I do think they're pretty fun and

easy and all of them almost all of them are 60 seconds or less like you can literally excuse

yourself from a conversation go in the bathroom practice your missed framework and then do a 60

second silent exercise and come back and be like oh I see where I was here I see how I was getting

derailed and triggered in this conversation with difficult people toxic people but I'm going to

come back into it now with a refresh and and and I can't underscore this enough.

I didn't know this when I started reporting the book. You asked what surprised me. Yes.

What surprised me the most, Allison, is that this work allowed people to find their voice.

I did not know that that was going to be an outcome. But after a year of working with a lot of

people, that kept coming back over and over, that people were able to speak up.

by seeing themselves they were able to speak up to others in pretty wise and wonderful ways and

that was absolutely beautiful to witness wow and and it changed their families right one med

student changed his specialty he decided to go into a different specialty than what he had thought

he wanted One woman was able to voice herself with her husband. It was kind of like a gray-haired

teenager. And it made their marriage so much better that she had her voice and was able to speak

her truth.

From there, we can move into working more with language in our minds. We can give ourselves self

commands to get us out of rumination. Again, the language your brain generates is the language that

you're most likely to pay attention to. So we can literally come in after we've done some of this

work and just catch ourselves and be like, well, I'll give you an example. i was giving a lecture

and i am a little bit klutzy and that's okay i don't see that i'm not being self-critical here

it's just like that's how it is and i tripped on a wire going up to the to the stage right and i

caught myself i didn't go down but the ruminative me would have been like You're such a klutz.

And I would have carried that right to the podium. I would have been a little bit lost the first

couple of seconds of my talk. And I found myself going, it's okay,

Donna, you're human. Oh, this is how the work begins to show up for us.

I love that. And I go through a whole bunch of different statements that we can use in different

situations as self-commands. It's really great if you come up with your own. Yeah.

That you can load up, talk to yourself. It helps to talk to yourself in the third person.

Yeah. Use your own name. So you'd be like, Allison, that's okay. You're human or Allison.

Yeah. Because our brain associates a third person.

our own name with a sense of urgency in a way that using I does not.

Using I is associated more with anxiety and depression. Wow.

So those are some simple things right there. I love the moving into third person,

kind of speaking to yourself as if you're the moving, leaving the room and kind of,

I love, we'll link to all of the very practical.

somatic exercises, right? Because we don't always solve head problems with head. Sometimes our body

has to be part of the solution, right? Even just the movement. It's all in the book. It's just

like, just load it up with as many things as I found that can help you,

right? Like I was on a mission for myself, but also my reader. And some things,

here's a quick one. Lie on the floor. or go outside and lie on the grass,

our brain clocks the difference in perspective with a reboot.

It just gives you like literally two minutes out of rumination and if you can do the missed

framework. And you can do one or two somatic movements and you can lie on the floor.

You just gain 10 minutes of emotional freedom from which you can use all the other exercises to

reenter that state of creativity. I love that. Just simply changing, changing the scenery, changing

rooms. I mean, I will say I love also just want to what you said about voice,

because that makes sense to me. And I'm glad you. Because even like the example I gave, what I've

noticed is when I do notice that more and more, part of the shift internally more quickly,

to your point, I love that where there's just a quicker, you start to notice it's more easy for me

to go, do I want to be seen by that group? I actually love who I,

the folks, you know, and it just much more easily I can kind of let that release,

you know. And you're right, it's not. It's a whole embodied thing that just kind of happens slowly.

We talk a lot on the podcast about deeper formation, right? These are forming us.

And it's not often the quick fix hack. You know, it doesn't always happen. But there is this over

time you go. I love your example of just realizing I didn't in that moment. I just kind of released

it. And your brain somehow. learned a different way through the work that you're teaching us.

I love it. Donna, it's so helpful. It's kind of like a new language. You don't learn a new language

overnight. You don't just wake up and know how to speak, you know, Italian two days before your

trip. You have to build the brain. And I think if I could say anything about my hope for mind

drama, the book is,

I feel that I spent two years looking at every, I'm a neuroscience reporter,

looking at every single technique known to humankind for recognizing and exiting rumination and

coming up with the MIST framework, which is really just built on me putting together.

different pieces of very recent science and running them by neuroscientists because I'm not a

scientist. And I feel like I gave this everything in this book that I would want my kids to use as

an adult so that they're not ruminating. I love it. Because I don't want that for anyone that I

love. And I don't want it for the reader. I don't want it for anyone listening. It's a human

condition we don't talk about. And because we don't talk about it, we can't solve it.

You cannot solve a problem that you aren't being honest about, that you haven't named.

So let's name it, frame it, and let's do that interior work with a sense of tenderness for our own

story. Because that's where the wellspring of well-being begins, is that recognition within that

we're worth that time and effort. Yeah. And that energy, right? And repurposing that energy.

It's such a great book. It's called Mind Drama, The Science of Rumination and How to Outwit Your

Inner Defeatist. I love that. How can my listeners find you,

the book, your work, other things you're doing, Donna? Yeah. So DonnaJacksonNakazawa.com has all

of my books and it has information about how to buy Mind Drama. You can go to...

anywhere where you like to buy your books right it's on amazon it's at bookshop i love bookshop

because it's independent bookstores which we all love to use but walmart um target anywhere that

you go where you like to buy your books it's there it's it'll be on audible um well i guess it'll

be on audible by the time this comes out so they're taping it now so really pretty much anywhere

you can find it and You can find me on Substack at Donna Jackson Nakazawa,

where I'm giving exercises and ideas.

Instagram, I'm not super big on social media. I'll just tell you right now because I have reported

a lot on social media and I feel like I'm mostly protecting my brain. Good for you.

I'm not being on it very much. I do post a little bit, but all of those places. Wonderful.

Thank you. Thanks so much for your work. for sharing the benefit of your wisdom with us today.

Pleasure. Great to be with you, Allison.

Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you

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