Episode #159: "Revisiting the Big Six: What You Needed from Your Parents"

 

I am taking notes on Episode #159 from the Podcast THE PLACE WE FIND OURSELVES.This episode is entitled "Revisiting the Big Six: What You Needed from Your Parents." Adam had originally spoken about this in Episode #2 of his Podcast, and he had returned and talked it many more times since that original "debut" of the concept. I encourage you to visit Adam's Resource Page for a handout of THE BIG SIX.

Today, Adam is going to summarize the six things that every child needed/needs from their parents. He was also present vignettes that will hopefully illustrate this. Understanding these are super important for understanding your own story but also in how you are parenting your own children. 

Kids need these six things to form a secure attachment, to have a healthy brain, and to develop well. These include:

#1: ATTUNEMENT: Attunement efers to your parents' desire and ability to read your emotional state -- your insides. Did your mother read you well when you were a third grader? Did she have some idea of what you were feeling on the inside? Was your father attuned to your emotional states when you were in middle school? Were your parents paying specific attention to you so that they knew something of what was happening to you on the inside? Inside your body? Inside your heart? When Dad and/or Mom are distracted by their own needs and personal trauma, they often fail to attune to the child. 

When you are on the receiving end of attunement, you, as a child, feel felt. Nothing is better, nothing makes a child feel safer, nothing helps their brain develop better than parental attunement. When you feel felt, you have a sense that your mother really gets what is happening inside of you and that she is there for you. You know that your mother or father knows what you are feeling and as a result, you feel joined by them. This is the first thing that you needed from your parents. She not only "got" you but she "wanted" to get to you. 

A lot of times, the worst part of disappointment is actually that your parent didn't even know what you wanted or how you felt. Adam shares a story about a time when he was growing up. His dad had told him that "sometime this summer, we can borrow my co-worker's pool and we can go swimming." Adam was so excited by this idea! On one particular day his Dad said, "I wish I would have known you were so bored today. Jerry had asked if you wanted to swim today, but I told him you probably didn't." What broke Adam's heart was not missing out on the swimming. It was the fact that his Dad wasn't attuned to Adam. 

Think back on your growing years. Did you feel felt by your parents. When you were a sophomore in high school did you feel that your mom wanted to know how you felt? Or that your dad really cared?

A quick note: most of us will have the feeling that ONE of our parents was better at this than the other parent. That's natural. However, suppose your father was emotionally absent. He was rarely attuned to you. As an adult, thinking back on your growing up years, you may feel that your mom was attuned to you because she was way more attuned to you than your father.  However, this doesn't mean your mother was attuned to you. It simply means that relative to your father, you felt more attunement from your mother. When a child is starving, crumbs can feel like a substantial meal when in fact it was just crumbs and not a meal.

#2: RESPONSIVENESS: If attunement refers to "reading your face" at the dinner table, then this is what your parents did with the sad face they saw at the dinner table. Did your mother respond to you when you were sad, mad, or afraid. Did Dad respond to you in a meaningful way? Did he offer some measure of comfort, care, or kindness?

You have to understand. Your Dad knew you were upset after your soccer game. Did he sit on the edge of your bed that night and ask you about your disappointment? When you had a hard day at school, what was it like for you to come home and see your mother? Your parents saw your face when you had a terrible day. Did they respond to what they saw?   

When something bad happened to you and you told your mom, did she respond to you in a helpful way? Now, some of you are thinking "I never would have told my mother ..." Okay. This is indicative of a bigger problem. Then ... why did you not tell your mother? If you never would have told your mom, it is likely that you learned from a very young age that it wouldn't matter. Nothing good or helpful would come for reaching for help and telling her the bad thing that would happen. You knew that she would not have responded to you by bringing comfort and care to your heart. Children instinctively run to their parent when they are hurt. If they stop doing that at some point, there is a reason. Every child needs their parent to be responsive to them when they are feeling big feelings like anger, sadness, or fear. 

Adam share a story from middle school. He didn't have hair on his legs in middle school and a rumor began that he shaved his legs. Fellow students began mocking him for that. He lived in a state of fear and vigilance and he felt completely powerless. He hated himself for not sticking up for himself. But he felt paralyzed. This made him an anxious wreck. His parents knew this. They saw his face each day. He needed his parents to respond to his fear, anxiety, and humiliation. They needed to talk with him and help him to decide how to handle this situation. 

Another pause: Some of you out there have stopped thinking about whether you received these and instead you are obsessively thinking about whether you are giving these to your children. However, the tendency to focus on our parenting failures rather than focusing on the way we were failed by our parents, allows us to avoid the feelings of sadness in our own story. In addition, the greatest gift you can give your own children is to make sense of your own developmental story. If you want to improve your parenting, the #1 thing you can do has nothing to do with interacting differently with your children. The #1 thing is to engage your family of origin story and make sense of your life experience. A good book on this is called: Parenting from the Inside Out. "The best predictor of how are children will become attached to us is how well we have come to make sense of our lives." As you are listening, try to resist the urge to think about your parenting failures. 

#3: ENGAGEMENT: This means that your Mom and Dad wanted to know you. Like the real you and that they sought to know you and that they sought to draw you out. They had a genuine desire to know your inner emotional world and that they pursued you. Did your father have a genuine desire to know your heart? Was he willing to engage with you on a heart level? Did you feel pursued by your mother? It is not enough to have attunement or responsiveness. You have to have a drawing out of your fears and desires. "When each one of us comes into this world, we enter it looking for someone looking for us." And we need this person to always be there for us and truly know us and delight in us. You may have grown up with plenty of sports, food, and clothing, but those weren't the most important things. Consider these words, "We can grow up homes in which the food finds the table, the money finds the college funds, and the family even finds the church each Sunday, but somehow, our hearts remain undiscovered by the two people we most need to know us: our parents." Was your heart discovered by your parents? 

In Adam's case, if his dad wasn't working, he was outside with his plants. He was absolutely desperate for his father's presence. He would even go outside into the yard where all the plants were. He is looking for his father. And if his dad was planting a new plant, he would simply stand there next to him. He would get as close to him as he would allow and make multiple bids for connection. Maybe a question about work or Vietnam. These were desperate attempts to hear his father's voice. What he was doing was working his butt off to create the right environment for his dad to open up to him and then to ultimately pursue Adam. He was trying to make it as easy as possible for his dad to father him. 

Each of us is born with a question deep inside our guts. "Does my mother/father delight in me?" You need to know that they delighted in you. "You are a beloved daughter. I enjoy you being with you. I like who you are." It's the sense that Mom just loves being with me or Dad teaches me to ride a bike, and he loves doing it because he loves being with you. If the deepest part of you never got this message, you carry a wound inside your heart. 

Did your heart remain undiscovered by your parents? If it did, that had a big impact on the development of your brain and a big impact on your attachment style. 

#4: AFFECT REGULATION: (This has been explained in other podcasts. If this concept is new to you, please go back and listen to Episode #20.) As an infant and a young child, you became dysregulated many times a day. You had no ability to regulate yourself. You couldn't calm your body when it got anxious or stimulate it back alive when it became listless. Young children are completely dependent on their parent to regulate their affect for them. 

What if your mother was too preoccupied by her own trauma or her big feelings that she couldn't do this? Or what if your father was too checked out to do this? 

In this case, it is very difficult for you to develop the brain structures necessary for self-regulation because the way a child's brain develops the neurobiological structures to self-regulate is by having their affect interactively regulated by parents who are attuned responsive, and engaged. 

When the primary caregivers are unable or unwilling to regulate the child, the child's brain fails to develop the necessary neural networks for self-regulation. And that is a VERY big deal for adult living in the world, particularly in the area of relationships. 

Amelia came to see Adam because she had lost control of emotions ever since her second child had arrived, and as we explored her story growing up, Amelia told him about failing to make the gymnastics team her junior year of high school. On the last day of tryouts she began to make mistakes. None of these mistakes would have kept her off the team, but she started to panic inside and the panic resulted in bigger mistakes. And those bigger mistakes were the end of her gymnastics career. She became very dysregulated during the final day of try-out. She was furious at herself for not being able to calm her body. She felt shame at falling apart at the tryout. 

She recalled meeting her mom in the parking lot at the end of the day. She burst into tears and began yelling and screaming about how mad she was at herself for falling apart. What did she need at this point? She needed her mother to provide containment and care. When you are dysregulated and feeling very big feelings, your brain needs a container for those big feelings. The container is the regulated presence of another person who is there for you and kind to you. The emotional presence of another person provides a psychological container so that you can feel your big feelings and express your big feelings. Through this, children learn how to express their emotions and they learn how to manage their dysregulated bodies. 

However, Amelia's role in her family was to regulate her mother. Their roles were reversed. Amelia provide significantly more affect regulation for her mother than her mother provided for her. In the car that day, Amelia's mother became just as dysregulated as Amelia. As a result, Amelia was left utterly alone with her emotions and with no one to help or. 

What about you? Did your mother help regulate you when you were distressed? When you were afraid? Sorrowful? Distressed? Ashamed? When you were in middle school, did your father help calm you down and bring regulation to your body? Or were you left alone more often than not when you were in need of regulation and soothing?

#5 ABILITY TO REGULATE YOUR AROUSAL: You needed your parents to bring containment to your anger, your fear, and your sadness. You needed the freedom to express these negative emotions. You needed to be able to cry, rage, and fall silent, knowing that you would be responded to in a loving and meaningful way.  Were your emotions welcome in your home? Were you allowed to be sad and cry as a kid? Were you allowed to rage and get angry? Or did they communicate, verbally or non-verbally, that your big emotions were somehow bad and off-limits? 

You needed the freedom to say to your mother, "I hate you" or "you don't love me" without hearing back from them "Go to your room" or "How could you say that?" or "Don't you know that hurts Mommy's feelings?" Could you look at your mother without her getting a look on her face of "How could you say that to me?"

You needed to know that deep down, your emotions were accepted, welcome, and allowed. "Perhaps your family was too fragile to bear the weight of your unedited soul." 

After a hard day in middle school, you tell your mom how bad your day at school went. And instead of being able to handle your big emotions, your mom looks at you and says, "Maybe you are too sensitive." At that moment, your twelve-year-old heart is deeply wounded. When you most needed care, you were met by your mother with reproach. With a curse. The message is clear. "Your feelings are out of proportion sweetheart and maybe the problem is you."

You do not recover from that with TIME. 

Rachel came to Adam as a sophomore in college with terrible anxiety. When she went home and shared this with her dad, her father came in, paced around the room, and sat down on her bed. They began to talk a little bit. He asked her if she knew what she was so anxious about. She tells her dad, "My anger is caused by years of stuffed anger involving you." The Dad started yelling at her. "Listen, everyone in the house has been blaming me. Ever since you started seeing the counselor this has been a thing. Maybe I should just leave."

Rachel took the risk of expressing a very small portion of her big feelings and her dad couldn't handle them. His shame immediately turned into contempt for Rachel. And instead of feeling seen and comforted by her dad, she felt guilty for making her dad want to leave the family. 

You needed your parents to be capable of handling your big emotions. 

#6: WILLINGNESS TO REPAIR: It is impossible to overstate the importance of repair when it comes to the healthy development of a child's brain. Brains develop best in an environment of trust and safety. Trust and safety do not require perfect attunement and responsiveness. "Trust and safety are not built on the absence of failure. They are built on the willingness of the parent to own and rectify failures when they inevitably do occur." No parent gets this right 100% of the time! The parent/child connection ruptures all the time. This is not a big deal. 

What mattered to you as a child was not whether or not your parent got it right all the time. What mattered is if they recognized when they hurt you or missed you and they responded to your sorrowful face. What mattered to you as a child was when you parent recognized when rupture occurred, they would work to repair the failure. 

Without this repair, the child will feel crazy. The child simultaneously knows she didn't deserve to be hit or screamed at, but she can't make sense of the situation any other way. It isn't her fault. And yet it MUST be her fault. A war rages inside making a child feel very, very confused. One way a child deals with this is to conclude that they must be the problem. They must be the bad one. If they would have just listened, not talked back, etc., then they wouldn't have gotten the beating.

If a mother hits a child and doesn't come back and acknowledge the wrong-doing, the child will either feel crazy or assume they did something wrong. "There must be something really wrong with me." Children are meaning-making creatures. A child needs a coherent narrative to make sense of their world. 

When your parents hurt you: did they own their failure? When was the last time, "I was wrong to do such and such." 

If you think back on your growing up years and you can't remember telling your parents how hurt you were by them ... if you can't remember sharing that hurt with them, there is a reason. You learned that telling them about this would not go well. So why bother doing it? 

lf you risk expressing disappointment in your mother and she flips it and says, "You have no idea how hard you are for me ..." you will end up knowing you can't go there. You will take your pain and flip it and feel your mother's pain instead. You become so scared of losing your parent. You have immense sadness and guilt that you are causing your parent pain. You push down your sadness to tend to your parents' sadness and end up comforting them. 

This type of experience is very common when one of your parents cannot bear the fact that they harmed you. As a child, you needed your parent to initiate conversations of repair when there was relational rupture. We actually still need that as adults. 

MARCH 12X12 #4: "Exploring Your Posture Toward Your Body"

This is part 4 of a Saturday-long Conference I attended with Adam Young and a guest speaker for the month of MARCH. This one was entitled: "Exploring Your Posture Toward Your Body." I will be breaking this down in parts. I am attending one of these on the first Saturday of each month for a year and taking notes for my own references. This talk was by Adam Young.

There are two ways that your body communicates with you: 

1) The first is through your affect.

2) The second is through impulses. 

Let's first talk about: AFFECT

One important way that our body communicates to us is through affect. Affect is the felt sense of what is happening in our body. It is our moment to moment awareness of our internal bodily sensations. I've discussed this before, but here is a reminder. There is a spectrum. 

• 1 to 3 is hypoarousal (numbness, feeling shut down, checked out, detatched, disconnected and correlates with emotions of shame, hopelessness, despair.) DYSREGULATION! These people often appear calm and present, but they are JUST as dysregulated as those in 7-10. It just looks different on the outside. Avoidantly attached people are more likely to be in this category.
  
• 4-6 is in your sweet spot. REGULATION! When you are here, your affect is regulated. You feel present and alert with just a slight feeling of excitement. 
• 7-10 is hyperarousal (racing heart, faster breathing, tightening in the chest or stomach, jitteryness, amped up inside and correlates with panic, terror, and/or rage.) DYSREGULATION! Ambivalently attached/anxiously attached people are more likely to be in this category. 

All of this above is affect. You can check in on your affect at any time and see where you are on the scale of 1 to 10. During these lectures, I actually found myself dysregulated during one point in the talk. When I started worrying about what people felt about me because Hilary seemed a little on the "non-Christian" side, I started to float away and go into hypoarousal. However, my awareness of this has begun to really change! I was aware that I got dysregulated. I could feel it.

Your nervous system is always in flux. Your affect shifts throughout the day. Why is it important to know when your body is dysregulated? Because your body is letting you know helpful information about your present environment and your past story!

When you become dysregulated, it is your body's way of giving you information about the present AND the past (i.e. your story!)

There is a reason you feel dysregulated. EVERY SINGLE TIME you get dysregulated, there is a reason for it. Memory is being evoked! When you become dysregulated is telling you things about your story.

1. What are the kinds of things that dysregulate you?

2. Are you aware of the kinds of things that dysregulate you?  

Take a moment to jot down the types of things that move your body into dysregulation.

There is a reason your body does what it does, and that truth is rooted in your story. 

1. Notice when you get dysregulated. A few years ago, it took me days to realize I was dysregulated. But as you become aware that your body is dysregulated.

2. Identify whether you are hypo-aroused or hyper-aroused. Once you become aware, you can identify whether you are hyper or hypo-aroused. We often usually trend toward one of those and not both. I, personally, trend toward hyper- but I can often go hypo- as well.

3. Be curious about what present circumstance/experience/event prompted the dysregulation, and what your dysregulation is revealing about your past story. Lean into it. Wonder. Think. Ponder. And what might this be revealing about your past story. 

Adam shares a story about a young boy who keeps falling apart and losing it. Lawrence gets dysregulated because his son is able to do what he was not allowed to do as a boy. Lawrence must address the heartache from his story before he can tolerate his own son's crying. It isn't the crying persay that is triggering Lawrence. He doesn't get dysregulated when his daughter cries. It is the crying of his son that causes the dysregulation.

The word "trigger" is overused today. A trigger is an event which catalyzes your body to enter a physiological state of stress. A trigger dysregulates your affect. A situation triggers you because you are remembering something.  

Your brain is recalling something from your past. But it is activating implicit memory instead of explicit memory so you don't have a sensation of recall. He is remembering back to his childhood but he doesn't have the sensation of recall. Because you don't have a sensation of remembering something, it feels present. 

Significant shifts in your affect tell you precious information about what is happening in the present or what has happened to you in the past, or, most likely, both. 

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Now let's first talk about: IMPULSES

What movements does your body want to make? Do you pay attention to inclinations toward movements? If you have a history of trauma, it is likely that you have at least partially ignored or dismissed your body's inclinations to move in particular ways. 

One way to do this is to use your imagination. Think about visiting your parents' house for a holiday gathering. As you imagine sitting at the dinner table, what does your body want to do? You may have the bodily impulse to stay there forever because its such a joyful experience. Or you may have the bodily impulse to throw a plate across the room. You may have the impulse to push your chair five feet back from the table because you don't want to be associated with these people. Why do you want to throw a glass of water in your step-father's face? It's an impulse to movement. You may have the bodily impulse to get smaller so that no one notices you or engages you. The scenarios are endless. 

There is no suggestion to act on your bodily impulses. Pay attention to them and let them teach you about your story and your nervous system. Your bodily impulses are enstoried. It is not genetic and it is not random. Bodily impulses can cause changes in body posture. You can watch people try to be smaller than they really are. Watch the way people hold themselves. 

What is your posture toward your body? 

What part of your body are you the most fond of? And what part are you the least fond of? Whatever your answer to these questions are, there is a good reason for that and that reason is rooted in your stories. When did you stop being fond of that part of your body? You didn't come out of the womb hating that part of your good and precious body. As you are pondering these questions, notice what emotions come up for you inside. You may feel sorrow, shame, anger. It's all welcome. Just, notice it. 

But if you write down that you have hated your thighs since high school, well, there is a reason for that. You didn't come out of the womb hating your body. Most of us have experienced "the cursing" of one or more parts of your body. If you have heard things from parents or other people about your nose size or your weight, you will often just join in on the negativity because it's the only way you can deal with it. 

Self-contempt can become a compass for you. It can take you to the places in your story where you have been shamed. Where you have self-contempt, can you become aware of it? You will then become aware of stories you are telling yourself.

Adam shares about the fact that he looked like he shaved his legs because he didn't have much hair on his legs while the rest of the boys in his class did. Students started making comments about this. He had immense shame and self-contempt because he hadn't developed as quickly as the other boys. There was a shame that he felt about his body.

Take some time to reflect on your posture toward your body.

Can you make some space for some kindness toward yourself? What would it look like if you changed the narrative and welcome the possibility that you access more kindness toward your good and precious body? 

Summary

The wounds are the pathway to the healing. They tell us where the injury is. Can you spend some time noticing ...

• What the trigger is.
  
• What is causing the dysregulation. 
• Why you feel the contempt. 

Each of these are the way IN to healing and the way to GET to the other side of our story. 

Being a parent is such an incredible way of recognizing our triggers. If you aren't a parent, maybe there is a different relationship where you can really notice your triggers? Who are the people in your life that matter to you and that you experience some manner of dysregulation in your relationship with them?

The nature of relationships is that there is sometimes a bit of dysregulation. When "Joe" did that thing and I had big feelings in my body, I can allow that to bring up questions and thoughts about my own story without being afraid.

Normally, when we have an emotion, we turn toward the person and say "You made me feel that way!" But it isn't about them. It is about us. We flip the script in our head. We blame. The speed picks up. 

Can you say instead: "This is about me. This is for me. This is connected to something of mine." And if it doesn't have something to do with us, it might be that we are recognizing that this is a person that has repeatedly hurt us, and we don't want to put ourself in that path any longer. 

Adam discusses "The Gap." When Hilary harms Adam, there is always a GAP between the severity of the transgression and the level that he feels it in his body. So she might offend at a level 3, but he feels it at level 8 or 9. Hilary can own the 3. But she can't own the 9. Adam needs to let his dysregulated body reaction prompt curiosity about: "What else is being stirred up in my heart/mind/body based on this interaction with Hilary?" He has to figure out why, what should have been a 3, is actually registering at a 9.

Our experiences become clues and gifts to the deeper part of our stories. Try: "How is this familiar?" or "What does this remind me of?"

Let's look at our body. What do you feel right now? Let your body tell you about all the times it has felt this before. Your body is saying, "This matters." If Adam can get control of things, he can start reacting like it's a 3 instead of a 9. That's a start. 

MARCH 12X12 #3: "Trauma and the Story of Your Body"

This is part 3 of a Saturday-long Conference I attended with Adam Young and a guest speaker for the month of MARCH. This one was entitled: "Trauma and the Story of Your Body." I will be breaking this down in parts. I am attending one of these on the first Saturday of each month for a year and taking notes for my own references. This talk was by Hilary, the guest speaker.

Hilary begins by discussing getting a piece of glass in her finger that she could not get out. She had to find ways to do many different things without using her middle finger. As months went on, the wound on her finger healed, and you'd never know there was a wound even though inside of her finger was indeed a piece of glass. She could feel there was something not right even though nothing was visible. Things that felt very normal for other people (shaking hands or typing on a keyboard) was really bothering her. And, months later, a few months later, a small mound began forming on her finger below the spot where the glass went in. And, months after it first slid in, out popped a piece of glass. This excited her because: (1) it was out and (2) it was indeed real!

This story is such a metaphor for trauma. How we develop a whole way of coping and working around the trauma. This is what living with trauma is like. What it is like living inside of us. What it is like adapting around us. What it is like to avoid touching the thing that hurts. And it is a reminder, that there are reminders in our body constantly and that those reminders know that there is unfinished business inside of our bodies. We all have ways of adapting around what hurts. And sometimes we have done this for so long, we forget that it was ever any different. We move through the world trying to do the best we can. And things that don't even phase other people, affect us greatly.  

The shard of glass still lives in our body.

Our body communicates through sensation. Sometimes it is hard to know whether it is about right now or back then. But, if it hurts at all, it is worth listening to. 

When we say trauma, we mean so many different things! Trauma can be ...

• The bad thing that happened.
• The thing that is living inside of me as a result of the thing that happened.
• The thing that shouldn't have happened but did. 
  
• The thing that never happened at all and now we are feeling the impact of it.  
• And even now, people use the word trauma to refer to the things that are just disappointing or unpleasant or difficult. It is so traumatizing. (Those of us who have faced trauma know that this does not compare to the real thing.) We should learn to tell the difference between uncomfortable and actually being trauma. 

So what does the word TRAUMA actually mean?

Trauma comes from the Greek word meaning wound. A wound is something that has been pulled apart or injured or sensitized. It is an injury to a system that was otherwise intact. These traumas are usually things that overwhelm our ability to cope. Too much, too fast, too soon. 

And what does this trauma do to us?

When something is overwhelming, confusing, and leaves us feeling powerless ... when it is too much for us ... the nervous system's response is designed to protect us and so it does something it doesn't normally do. There is a separating or shattering or fragmentation that helps us. Neurobiologically, this is called cortical phylamic uncoupling. This coupling occurs. This is a mouthful which actually says that the part of our brain that is in charge of story and sense-making and time-sequencing stops talking to the part of our brain that does the feeling, emoting, and reacting. 

The brain honestly splits in half in how it is speaking to itself. Our feeling brain stop talking to the part of our brain that encodes and make sense of threat and memory systems. When this happens, it becomes incredibly hard to rationalize and think our way out of what is happening to us. When we are so overwhelmed that our brain wants to change the way we are storing memory. Fragmentation thus occurs. The brain says: I want to move all of my resources toward keeping you alive. Sometimes that means shutting things off. It means shutting down awareness of sensations. It stops feeling certain parts of our body at all. We omit parts of our feeling and narrative and identity to get away from things that have happened. It can be very hard to feel the body at this point.

Trauma results in a loss of connection

Trauma, however, is not just happening at the level of the individual because we, as bodies, are never truly fragmented from the community around us. When it is hard to be in touch with our feelings or the wisdom inside or we feel stuck in the reality that this is still going on in our bodies, it becomes very hard to connect and be related to other people. The fragmentation not only happened because those injuries that occurred to us become something we are carrying around and it is then very difficult to feel safe and trust other people. 

"Trauma is about a loss of connection to ourselves, to our bodies, to our families, to others, and to the world around us."

This loss of connection is often hard to recognize because it doesn't happen all at once. And we adapt to these subtle changes without even noticing them.

Think about Hilary's subtle adaptations to the glass in her hand over time. She developed different ways of coping and doing things she had always done over time. Can you think about that happening to those of us carrying these big wounds around inside of ourselves? That was just her finger! Patterns of avoidance. Fear. Changing our daily normals!

"If my body is a house, than the house is haunted." Inside the body we are left with the legacy of the terror of the overwhelm as if it is still in there and still happening.

She asks us at this point to stop and notice our bodies. Do you feel scared, overwhelmed, wanting to check out? Your body is communicating about this right now. And it might tell us something by listening. Something that feels hard to be with? Because it is possible to talk about trauma in a way that is actually retraumatizing.  

Animals know how to release trauma

The thing that happened to us early in our life got "stuck" inside of ourselves. Imagine, in the middle of the night, hearing something crash. You run out of your room and turn on the lights and really wake yourself up. Trauma is like that has happened, but the light doesn't get shut off. The lights never get shut off. The body never goes back to sleep. That activation lives inside of us and shows itself in many different ways. 

The energy of wanting to protect us, comes in the shape of a wave. The energy that wants to protect us, pauses. The wave is paused. If someone you loved was walking in front of a car, you'd have all this energy mobilized to grab the person and pull them back onto the sidewalk. What would happen if your arm got stuck and didn't get to reach out? If the process got stopped midway inside of you? 

Trauma is wave forms that never complete. The body isn't doing anything wrong by that happening. In fact, usually why the wave doesn't get to complete is because we were alone and it was too overwhelming and we were never taught how to trust it. Our body had to shut everything down just to keep us alive. 

 

Check this out. This is an example of "mammalian stress response." You can see how it de-regulates stress after his fight or flight response. Every mammal owns this way of de-stressing the nervous system. The thing is, we de-learned it because of our social group behavior. We do not express ourselves when we want to. Result? Repression of emotions and trauma's that get stuck in the body. Animals do not have these human filters. What needs to get out, goes out. It's depression VS expression. He is actually RELEASING TRAUMA.

 

The body isn't doing anything wrong by shutting off! It is how we have evolved to make sure we don't face any more threat. This might seem easier to think about with an impala or polar bear. 

Numbing out or blanking out helps us not retain memory. Many of us may remember being in a conversation that feels very emotional and we all of a sudden we start to feel tired or sleepy. That is a smaller version of this mechanism. Our body is saying, "This is too much. Go away."

People who struggle with depression may have an issue with the nervous system. "Being with myself is too much so I am going to shut everything off." 

Trauma is lingering! It is reminding you to pay attention!

Lingering cases of effects of trauma are the reminders and the activation that says, "I am overwhelmed. This is too much, I am not safe." It may be a sensation reminder or a story reminder that reflects back to how we felt before. This is the body's way of sending a reminder notice about unfinished business. It's like a parking ticket reminder. "Hey, this isn't finished yet."

Out body gives us sensory messages that tells us that there is some unfinished business. We might take this as proof that our body is bad. Why am I scared? Why can I not remember something? This is proof that my body is bad. 

Ahhhh, but this is actually the body's healing tendency that says, "We need you to look at this!" This is our body's way of saying, "I want to get to the other side. I will never be complicit in forgetting about this. I will not ignore." Our body almost knows better than our mind about what we need to do to heal. 

If your body is handing it to you, it is meaningful. 

Community in the event, may stop the lingering effects!

Why do things get stuck? Why does the wave form come up? 

Some people face traumatic events and they can move through seemlessly. But other people cannot. Why? Well, there is one specific variable that separates the two. What is the difference? Two people go through the same kind of event. Some develop stuck responses and some of them don't? Let's assume that the two people are coming into the event with the exact same history of trauma. 

RELATIONSHIP! SOCIAL RESPONSE! How people listen to us and value what has happened. You must have relationship and someone to process these events with. Because if we believe we are safe and seen in that moment, our body gets the signal that "the trauma is over!" We are saying, "You can turn the switch off. The threat is over." And the proof that is over? I am here. And I believe you. Relationship is that important for our nervous system response. We can't know we are safe if we are alone. Many of us have needed to feel in the moments when our bodies were overwhelmed that the fragmentation is not happening at the level of the relationships around us. 

If no one ever said that to you -- even in the little moments, the ones that seemed invisible, I am so sorry that no one was there. You deserved to have connection in that moment. You deserved to have someone stay with you in that moment. 

The Homeostatic Self-Correcting Mechanism is a neurological principle that says our body knows how to move us to stability. Our body can move us into balance innately. Think about the last time you were thirsty. Your body sent a signal to you that told you, I need some hydration. Our body sweats because it knows it needs to. We all know that on some level in our day to day. You don't have a thirst sensation and think I need to suppress this right away and take a medication to make it go away. We know how to listen to our body telling us it needs to go to the bathroom. 

But in the big emotions, we have encoded in us we say, "I won't survive this. I didn't survive it then and I won't survive it now. If I go toward it, it will never end." The emotions become really scary territory. Most of us have had to do a big feelings alone. They become very hard to process through. We need connection to stay with the hard. Emotion is part of the mechanism. It is part of the way our body regulates us toward balance. If we can't feel it all the way through, it is hard to get back to the place where our body can function properly. 

If every time we felt the need to drink, we cut that off, there would be a consequence to our body. And we are inhibiting what our body is telling us all the time. Trauma makes it hard for us to stay with us because the emotion is very big and very young. 

"It's about unwilled and unwanted aloneness in the face of overwhelming emotion." Somewhere inside of us we felt something so big and no one would stay with us so we developed all kinds of strategies to get away from it." Our body wants us to move toward flourishing and get to the unfinished business. 

Research indicates that bout 70-90% of the things that bring a person to their family physician are usually unfinished trauma. 

Disassociation

Disassociation is when our body completely shuts off to get us away from the trauma. It is the body's goodness to us to help protect us. The body feels blank. The blankness is also a message! The body is saying something through the blankness. Disassociation is an invisibility cloak that our body wraps around us when it is so, so, so much. Our body, even in the nothingness is doing our best to talk to us about it. 

So what do we need around this? We need to feel things all the way to the other side. This is nearly impossible to do this on our own. We need someone to hold our hand or guide us toward the sensation. You are not alone. I here with you and I will stay with you until the other side. 

Trauma is not proof our body is bad. It is proof that bad things happened and our bodies are doing very good things to help us survive. 

Hilary concludes this lecture by sharing a story about how she only remembered through EMDR that someone came and sat alongside her when Hilary was in a terrible accident. The woman climbed into the car with her and promised to stay with her until the ambulance got there. Her name was Page. She even told the EMT to be more kind when he was being too rough. She was with her in that accident. Don't be afraid to call into the bigness. It makes all the difference to undo someone's aloneness!

I needed a Page.  

Don't we all need a Page?

The presence of another caring person with some measure of a regulated nervous system is imperative for healing. We need regulation for our overwhelmed body in a moment of intensity. 

In an Unspoken Voice by Peter Levine is another book that will tell you more about this.

 

MARCH 12X12 #2: "Understanding What Your Body is Telling You"

This is part 2 of a Saturday-long Conference I attended with Adam Young and a guest speaker for the month of MARCH. This one was entitled: "Understanding What Your Body is Telling You." I will be breaking this down in parts. I am attending one of these on the first Saturday of each month for a year and taking notes for my own references.

1. Your body is speaking to you. The Wisdom your body holds is incredibly important in healing from trauma and growing into who you are. It speaks to you through physical sensations. Throughout the day, your body is experiencing different physical sensations. That is what it means to be an embodied human being. You may not be aware of those sensations. Or, there will be other times, you are all too aware that your body is experiencing those sensations. If you are afraid of snakes, your body will probably start exhibiting physical sensations when you see a snake. Fear is an emotion. But it is first a particular combinations of different bodily sensations. Every emotion (sorrow, fear, anger) is first a combination of bodily sensations. Sadness is a unique combination of physical sensations that lets you know it is sad. 

Bodily sensations examples might include: 

• lump in your throat
• racing heart
• trembling
• fluttering in your chest
• knot in your back
  
• butterflies in your stomach
• tightness
• constricting in your throat
• heaviness 

Some people experience anger with a tightening in jaw and a rising heart rate. Another person might experience this with tightening fists. 

All of these sensations tell the truth of your present experience. Your body is a truth-teller! It's a trustworthy prophet from within! 

Most of us have been trained to think our body is separate from us. But if you are listening, it will tell you! Do you listen to the sensations of your body? Are you getting the memo? I know I speak from my personal self when I say that part of my Christian upbringing, taught me that my body was sin and that I needed to rebuke any thought or feeling that didn't feel "right."

Caveat: this does not mean that your body always proceeds the world accurately. If you have a history of trauma, you might perceive fear when you shouldn't be afraid. But the body isn't lying! It is telling you the truth about your story instead of the truth about the present situation. It is telling you: I am afraid of this due to a previous trauma. Pay attention to that! 

It seems weird to turn toward a sensation in your body and say: "What do you want me to know?" If you welcome the sensation, it will speak to you. Are you trying to power-through? There are parts of us that we are neglecting and ignoring. It probably is a part of you that needs curiosity, care, and tending. 

"What are you feeling in your body right now?" is one of the greatest questions Adam asks in his therapy practice. Scan your body and notice any sensations that you are currently experiencing. Notice that. 

NOTICE THAT!

If you feel a tightness in your chest, can you take a minute and just be with it. Notice it! Notice that is an invitation to listen to the story that your body is speaking. Anytime you are exploring your story -- whether in counseling, in group work, or with a friend or a spouse -- the smartest and wisest entity in the room is your physical body. And he isn't even talking about the brain. Your physical body!

Attune to the physical sensations in your body and just notice what it is like to really FEEL that tightness in your chest or rock sensation pressing down in your chest. Can you welcome it like a guest at the dinner table? The sensation will often reveal more truth. The sensation will speak!

"If that sensation could talk, what would it say?" As you let the sensations in your body speak, they will uncover the truth of your story. Here are some examples:

• "Stop silencing me, Mom!"
• "I can't bear this any longer."
• "I can't breathe deeply."
• "It would just scream for hours." 

He gives an example of  Tiffany, who anytime she had a conflict with her mother, her mother would say, "You are the most ungrateful kid I have ever met." As she conflicted with her mother, she would find her voice would be lost and she couldn't speak. Tiffany expresses disappointment and Mom blames and accuses. As Tiffany recounts this story, she actually feels a constriction in her throat. He invites her to feel into that constriction in her throat. If that constricted feeling could talk, what would it say? "It wouldn't say anything. It would just scream stop blaming me for everything, Mom." Adam and Tiffany could have talked for hours and not gotten to where they got so quickly by listening to her body. All the talking, wouldn't have revealed what Tiffany's body revealed so quickly. So here's what you can do:

• What are you feeling in your body right now?
• Notice that! 
• If that sensation could talk, what would it say?

Your body knows things that your brain has difficulty accessing. 

• "Listen to your heart"
• "Trust your gut"

These phrases are getting at understanding that the places that your heart and your gut are places of knowing. Just like your brain is a place of knowing. 

"Our heart and our gut offer insight, intuition, and wisdom that the third brain, the enskulled brain, can act on."

Begin listening more attentively and frequently to your KNOWER. 

What is making you reluctant to listen to your knower? In my case, I know what it is! It is subtle teaching growing up that said that my body isn't trustworthy and that I just need to rebuke the things I don't like because they must be from Satan. 

Many of us were taught to have a great suspicion of the human body. Our body is secondary to the soul. Our body is just a physical body for our spirit and soul and mind. That's the idea. Many of us who have grown up in a church context have received the message that our gut/heart/body are untrustworthy. We shouldn't let our feelings to guide you. We really have been taught "If I trust my feelings, my life will be a mess."

This was a common illustration from churches decades ago. Feelings can't be the caboose! If you want your life to go well, you need to put your faith in the facts of scripture rather than letting your feelings guide you. This was telling us not to trust our feelings. We were taught that our feelings were not a reliable guide. But the bigger message that we received that it's dangerous to rely on the wisdom of our bodies. Your body needs to get in-line with something else. 

Various Bible verses were used to tell us not to trust our body. Proverbs 3:5 "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your understanding." That was quoted to get us to distrust our own knower. We were taught that a real Christian ignores their intuition when it seems to conflict with the body seems to say something different. If you group up in these cultures, you may have a distrust of your heart-sense or your knower. But what this is telling you is actually to not fully rely on your own self. To also seek Christ. It doesn't say you should never listen to your body. It doesn't say that you won't know anything. It means to trust God! He may show you things through what your body is telling you.

Are you feeling RED FLAGS popping up everywhere saying, "Let's be careful here!"

You may believe that external authority (wisdom of others) is a more trustworthy guide than internal authority (your body). Part of being created in the image of God is that you have an inner knower. Internal authority is about trusting your inner knower. But both of these can be ways of knowing. 

But many of us were taught that external authority is to be trusted over internal authority. Before you can listen to the truths that your body is trying to tell you, you may need to RESTORE trust in your body. We must balance our reliance on God with our own knowledge.

What sensations does even thinking about this evoking in your body?  

Jeremiah 17:9 "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" Does this mean distrust your own feelings? And never to listen to yourself. No. This verse was written to a particularly idolatrous people in a specific time. Jeremiah had exhorted them repeatedly about the tendency of their hearts to prefer other gods to the Lord. 

This doesn't mean that we are exempt from the warning in this passage. God's people were led by their hearts away from God before, and the same can (and does!) happen to us. We must watch our desires, our trust, and our security. But this verse does not teach us that we must be suspicious of our every thought or emotion. Context matters!

One of the primary points of the book of Jeremiah is that your heart is actually trustworthy. Jeremiah 31:33 says: "'This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,'” declares the LORD. 'I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.'"

Jeremiah's argument is that his heart is good. He is not saying he is sinless. There was no notion of sinless in the Hebrew imagination. He says: "Yet you know me O Lord. You see me and test my thoughts about you." His heart is not deceitful above all things. But we need to take what he says as a warning. Here are a few Psalms that tell us that we are not wicked to the core! 

• Psalm 7:8 "The LORD judges the peoples; judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me." This is not a claim to perfection or sinlessness.
  
• Psalm 18:20 "The Lord has dealt with me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands he has rewarded me." 
• Psalm 26:1 "Vindicate me O Lord for I have led a blameless life, I have trusted in the Lord without wavering."

The whole book of Job is on the premise that Job is good and has a heart for the Lord! 

None of these verses are claims of sinlessness. No one is saying they are without sin. They are saying "My heart is good and trustworthy even though I do of course, sin!"

None of these Biblical writers believed that their heart was deceitful above all things and without cure. When a Bible verse (or any language!) is used to convince yourself  not to trust yourself or not trust your body, you are in the realm of spiritual abuse. 

One of the central themes of the New Testament is that your body has become the dwelling place of God. 1 Cor 6 says "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you, who you have received from God?"

In ancient Israel, the temple was where heaven and Earth intersected. God's presence dwells there. Absolutely astonishing that Paul claims that the human body has become a temple.  

OUR BODIES ARE NOT BAD! 

OUR FEELINGS ARE NOT BAD! 

WE NEED TO LEAN INTO THESE THOUGHTS AND HAVE CURIOSITY ABOUT THEM! 

AND BE CURIOUS ABOUT THEM! 

AND COUPLE THEM WITH WHAT JESUS IS TELLING US!

Your body is speaking to you. It is communicating to you. The things that your body are telling you are incredibly important and valuable when it comes to healing and growth. 

Ask yourself this question: "I notice that my body may need ____."

MARCH 12X12: "Introduction to Your Body and Its Wisdom"

This is part 1 of a Saturday-long Conference I attended with Adam Young and a guest speaker for the month of MARCH. This one was entitled: "Trauma and Your Body: Exploring the Story that Your Body is Telling You." I will be breaking this down in parts. I am attending one of these on the first Saturday of each month for a year and taking notes for my own references.

I love when Adam starts these conferences with "Kindness to yourself will take you further on the healing journey than you can imagine." If this feels overwhelming, don't be hard on yourself. Have kindness to yourself! Your posture toward your body matters ... immensely.

Your body holds so much wisdom. Your body will communicate to you through pain. In my case, I struggled with chronic migraines for years. I am now convinced that those migraines were a result of all the things I had stored up in my body. When John is in the ER, he will often see patients come in with chronic pain. When he sees people with fibromyalgia, he almost always sees accompanying sexual abuse in their past. The body does keep the score! 

Many Christians have been taught that we can't trust our body. Yes, we need to trust Jesus! But we can also trust in the body he gave us to help us know what we need. People will tell us that the body is exceedingly wicked. But remember, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. When you are have tightening in your chest, or in your jaw, why is that happening? Your body is trying to speak to you! You can argue that it is the Holy Spirit communicating to you or that it is the way God created your body to tell you things. Honestly, I'm not trying to figure out the nuances of it anymore. 

What I have learned in this mental health journey is that my body is actually able to communicate with me. It has a headache. Why?! You feel exhausted while trying to be in a being social gathering after a hard week. Do you just push that away or do you listen to what your body is saying? Are you living in your body? Or are you living on the front lawn while your body does whatever it wants to do. 

I believed that if I listened to my body, I might actually cause myself harm. I needed to rebuke Satan and anything "speaking" to me. If I wasn't happy and healthy, than I was letting Satan tell me what was what. Our bodies are the place where death occurs. Where pleasure happens. Where we experience intimacy and closeness. 

Have you ever had a moment of sadness and then someone puts their hand on your shoulder and you come alive? That is for a reason! This body is not just a shell that will one day decay. God could have not given us bodies. But he did! And He has a purpose for those bodies. 

My trauma in 2024 forced me to listen to what my body was telling me instead of just pushing it away. I used to just say, "Here is what I need to do," instead of saying, "I need to take a break." My breakdown changed the way I viewed everything. God gave me this body!

Our culture gives us shaming messages. Our trauma gives us shaming messages. Embodiment is the experience of being connected to your body and making sense of what your body is telling you.  Our culture will even tell us that some bodies are good and some are bad. Generally we see that handicapped bodies are bad. Overweight bodies are bad. 

Plato, as a philosopher, toted this idea that the MIND and BODY and SPIRIT are separate from each other. But John, in the hospital, has repeatedly seen how we cannot be just one of these things. They are all connected. René Descartes came along and went further, telling us the body was deplorable. We were being taught to separate from the body. 

Our society has put an emphasis on "GO, GO, GO!" But what about those of us who are listening to our body and we cannot GO anymore. Those who have more energy or more ability end up being more successful. 

It was that scary.

It was that bad.

You had to disconnect.

That is truth for some of us. Our bodies turned off and wouldn't let us look at the trauma of our past because we wouldn't be able to handle that trauma until it was time to see it. There are many messages that we have received. 

• Women are taught that their body is only good if it is young and fertile. Getting older is not looked upon as kindly.
• We often use the word "pleasure" as something bad. We even say "Guilty pleasure." But God designed pleasure!
• We are told we are not our body. That we are our spirit. That is true, but God gave us our bodies!!
• We are told appearance is everything. We know this is not true. But it is hard to remember.
  
• We are taught that certain bodies are better than others. Oh yes!
• We are told that changing our body might make us feel better. Surgery might help us. But what about who God made us to be?
• We are taught that others can decide what is best for our bodies. 
• We are taught that little girls should like girl things. But some are tomboys! And that's okay. Allowing kids to be who they are. I was always allowed to do this when I grew up as a tomboy but some little girls or boys were not.
  
• We are taught that bodies get in the way of what really matters. That spirituality and intellect are way more important. And of course, this is true. Our body will die. But it still is part of us while we are here. 
• It would be so hard to jump into intimacy with something (our body) that we were taught wasn't safe.
  

This was just an introduction and some "things to think about" for this conference! Much more to come! 

12x12: February #9: "Q&A"

This is part eight of a Saturday-long Conference I attended with Adam Young and a guest speaker. This was held on February 4, 2025. The Conference was entitled: "On Fear and Failure: From "My life is an Endless Struggle" -- to -- My Life is a Compelling Story." This is the last part of the Conference: a Q & A. 

1. How do you figure out what soothes you to help you get out dysregulation? Instead of lashing out, screaming, yelling, or sinking into yourself, you need to figure out ways to help you climb out of the dysregulation pit. Some ideas presented by Rob and Adam include: 

• Other people (interactive regulation from other people) is often the top of the list. When we are alone and not doing well, reaching out for care is hard to learn but can be transformative. 
• What feels too good to be true? A favorite place you go for lunch? Can you make it work! How jacked up is the expression guilty pleasure? So if it is pleasure, you should probably feel guilty? How upside down is that? Do you have seasonal depression? Why not actually figure out a way to not live where you live in February? Try to figure out if you can actually break from the previous regime. It is not selfish. 
• Wait! You went for a hike in the middle of the day. Egads! How about we surrender productivity and watch how much gets done. Why does it have to be "too good to be true."

I have, personally, been trying to take good care of myself. I've been giving myself permission to say "no" or to take a nap or to skip something important. Why can't we give ourselves permission to take care of ourselves?

2. What if your body is screaming out but you are not really seeing any trauma in your past? The first thing is, listen to your body. Let it speak. Take notice. Your body has wisdom. Your body holds memory. And when your body is telling you something, will you bring curiosity and kindness to whatever it is screaming and shouting at you? The fact that someone asks a question, indicates that you are listening to your body. Having bodily symptoms and a voice that says, "Nothing bad ever happened to me," is very common. When you get into the story, you will probably find the answer. Continue to listen to your body. "Your heart will remember what it needs to remember in the moment." Remember, you don't want all of this at once.

3. What do you do with "default" fear. You just wake up with fear and do not know what the fear is from. Oh man, this was how my anxiety was affecting me. The fear is disproportionate to any object I can think of. You are not making it up. Human beings have neurons. These neurons are very particular cells that work in a certain way. When you feel fear, that is because neurons are firing. Be patient. It will reveal itself in time. Lean in. Be curious. It almost feels like a low-grade dread. Try narrating everything. Note it in a notebook. "I have a pervasive malaise. I walked the dog. I made breakfast." Was the year 2020 good or bad? Well, that was lots of things. That was a yard sale of things. Lots of things can sit side by side in the heart. You don't have to pick one or the other. Lots of contradictory things can sit side-by-side.

4. I am afraid of people being mad at me? I avoid them and then avoid them fear etc. Okay, yes, but what is the fear underneath the fear! What is your story with regard to people being mad at you, people when you were younger. Someone being disappointed in you? The past is present. How is that fear enstoried for you. You have neurons and that's how neurons always operate. Neurons that fire together, wire together. When you have an experience of disappointing someone in the present and you get that feeling in your gut and tightening in your chest, it is linking you to other experiences, particularly in your family of origin, when your brain was most rapidly developing. I'm curious about those stories!

And, may I say, from Wendi. EMDR has begun to free me from this horrific people-pleasing. My brain has begun to rewire and it is a beautiful thing for me. I am nearly free from what has plagued me for decades. Awareness of the pattern is the first step to breaking the pattern. 

I act a certain way because I don't want anyone to be disappointed. I act this way so that in the future that won't happen. However, that fear is not true. It's an illusion. We say we don't want to let people down, but we are letting ourselves down continually. We are betraying and violating ourselves continually. Part of the way we extend kindness to ourselves is, we decide to stop disappointing ourselves. 

If someone did act if you would love to act, "I am sorry, I don't stay out past 10p." You are rarely disappointed by that. You are mostly just like, "Oh, got it."

5. What do you do with exhaustion in healing? When this happens, you have to clear the calendar of everything in your life. You must remove all weight from you life. This is what I had to do when I collapsed in 2024. I had to stop everything and just BE. You must have a posture toward the attempts as "my attempts were good." I am really good at trying! If it comes to nothing, is that waste? Is that failure? When we are exhausted, the first thing comes in is despair. If you find yourself with a, "What is the point of anything?" that is a gauge on your dashboard that is saying, "You got to stop." Many people hate the fact that I have limits. But we do! When I collapsed, I wondered if I'd ever be able to do the things I'd loved before. I am back. But it took nearly a year of rest. And even now, I am requiring more rest than ever. 

What feeds your soul? Why have you not done the thing that feeds your soul in so long? How do we put off things that help us survive? 

6. I majorly struggle asking for help. How do I do that? Okay, there's a reason that it is hard for you to ask for help! There is nothing more instinctively hard-wired than to ask for help. If you can't do it, there is a reason! You came out of the womb reaching for help. So you should still be doing it. "It literally makes me nauseous to ask for help!" Pay attention to that. Say that to someone else. 

7. How do I not skip over the processing of the hard while simultaneously having a posture of kindness to myself! Yes! The question is indicative of maturity and honesty. You have to hold both things at the same time. 

8. Living in a world where feeling anger is stigmatized, what does healthy anger look like? Your body has impulses, and as long as they are not illegal impulses, go ahead and do with your body what your body wants to do. It might be taking a baseball bat to a garbage can or painting something.

Episode #1: What it means that YOU have a STORY

Why does the story of your life matter more than you think it does? You have a story. That story matters. The only way to experience significant shifts in your heart is be engaging your story. Your life experiences shape the very structure of your brain, and therefore profoundly influence how you are presently living your life. Your earliest relationship with your primary caretakers has had the most shaping power on your brain.

Let's start this with two main points: 

#1 You have a story and that story matters.

#2 The only way to experience real changes in your heart is by engaging your story. (Addressing it, reflecting upon it, etc.)

What does Adam mean by "story?" This was very confusing to me when I first listened to this podcast. To be honest, this is at least my fifth time listening to this very first episode. My counselor, Kim, had told me that this was the Podcast for me, and while I attempted it, I just couldn't make sense of why she was sending me this. 

But the story of our life has plot. It has setting. It has characters. Even if you think you do not remember your story, you remember enough to engage that story. And failure to think about your past or dwell on it or focus on it, means that you are pushing away the pain of your life. 

Period. 

Every single relationship and dynamic in your life becomes a trajectory that launched you into the world. Your relationship with God also has a plot line. The core story is how you have interacted with God in regard to your desires and your disappointments. What have you done with God in the midst when desires raged and were either met or unmet?

What would the timeline of your life look in regards to your relationship with God? How much would be "the good stuff" which is above the main axis line? And how much would be the "bad stuff?" How did deep disappointment affect your relationship with God?

Remember, there are also plot twists when you tell your story. All of a sudden something intrudes and disorients you. This is what happened to me in 2024. My life was going along fairly normally. Sure, my husband and I were arguing more. Okay, I was raising my voice more than how often I would like with my kids. But mostly, I thought my life was good. And fine. And okay. And mostly good.

Until my body completely SHUT DOWN. It wouldn't work. It couldn't get out of bed. It couldn't function. It was, at first, horrific anxiety. But it soon shifted into very debilitating depression. Bad, awful stuff. All of a sudden, the ground I had always stood on became very shaky. And it was in this season of disorientation that I found out what I really desired and what I was truly made of. 

My life story is actually far-more interesting than the best movie ever made (Lord of the Rings?) What if I took my life seriously. What if I looked at how God and I are co-authoring this story? 

Okay, if you don't like this abstract way of thinking of this? Let's switch to something very scientific. 

You have billions of neurons in your brain. And each of those neurons is connected to thousands of other neurons. And there are only TWO ways that those neurons develop: 

1. Genes

2. Life experiences (which means ... your brain!)

Your STORY means the particular ways that the neurons in your brain are wired and connected with one another.  

With the exception of the genes that you are born with, your brain is a function entirely of the experiences you have had in life. BOOM!

Change means that neurons link up differently with one another. You will not change deeply until you engage your neurons. This means, until you engage the experiences you have had in life, change won't occur.

The most influential relationships you have had in life is the relationship with your parents. This is a scientific statement. This is not designed to be an emotional comment.

1. Relationships influence the brain more than anything else. (More than exercise, drugs, meditation, religion, etc.) It influences the way your neurons are connected to each other. 

2. Your earliest life experiences/relationships have a much more significant influence on the development of your brain than later experiences due to the speed of your brain growing when you are young. 

Okay then. So you don't remember anything about the first few years of your life. You have no idea how your parents related to you when you were 18 months of life. Actually, your implicit memory remembers all of that. (And we will discuss this more in future episodes.)

But here's a fact: you know how your parents reacted with you when you were little because you see how they interact with you now and in elementary school, and high school, and college. You can infer backward. You know the dynamics of your relationships with your mother and your father. You know them. But you often have refused to look at them closely and have just accepted them as "well, that's that."

But honestly, you can infer what it might have been like for you when you were six months old in your crib. Knowing your mother, what do you think it was like for your mother when you were inconsolable in your crib? You can infer. You can deduce how it might have been for you when your brain was growing during the first few years of your life. 

Many people have objections to looking at their story. Here are some of the top ones:

1. Looking at your story is just naval-gazing (self-indulgent and selfish behavior or contemplation of oneself.)

Answer: Neural science has showed that people who know themselves, have much more empathy than others. Engaging your story is not a selfish endeavor. You cannot engage well with others and love others well and empathize well until you have addressed the wounded parts of your heart. People who are good at self-reflecting, have an increased ability to empathize with others. In other words, if you want to be other-centered, you need to practice reflecting on your own brain, heart, and story.

2. I don't want to blame my parents. 

Answer: There is a difference between blaming and naming what has been true of your relationship with them. Blaming is a posture of contempt and condemnation and just naming what has been true of your relationship. A therapist might often say to a patient: "There's nothing about your posture right now that is blaming or condemning. In fact, you couldn't be further from a posture of blame. The past 30-minutes you have worked on defending them. And now you are worried you are blaming them?" We all know the difference between blaming and naming if we really think about it. If you want to love your parents well, it is necessary for you to name what has been and is true of the nature of how you relate to your parents and how they relate to you. 

3. My parents did the best they could.

Answer: This objection most often comes from Christian clients. If people weren't Christians, it would make more sense. It is such an odd objection for Christians to make because according to the Bible, no one does the best they can. Everyone was a sinner. Our parents have harmed us. That harm has been intentional. And it doesn't make them an awful person. It just makes them a sinner. Why do we, then, tend to raise this objection? We want to say they did their best because then we don't have to look at the reality of the sin in their hearts, and we don't have to look at how deeply they hurt us. If it is the truth that sets us free, we gain nothing by closing our eyes to what has been true of our relationship with them. Have you NAMED the primary ways your father sinned against you? Your mother? The common or frequent ways that your parents harmed you? As a mother now myself, I realize that the people I harm the most and sinned against the most, are my husband and children. We are deeply affected by our parents' sin. Wouldn't it be helpful to name the particular ways that that has been true for us? 

Think back to Joseph in his Bible and the intense dysfunction in their family. Joseph had to name the harm that had been done to him by his family members. Joseph finally named the way that his brothers have sinned against him. If it is okay for him to do that, isn't it okay for us to do the same? Honesty requires that you name how life really was for you. How have you been hurt? Name it. Honestly will change your life. It will change your brain. You will never be the same. 

Naming how you have been harmed is about 70% of the battle. We are all excusing our parents. The question is: when and where are you excusing them? Some we will name. But many areas we are very reluctant to name how devastating that was to your heart.

#4 My Dad/Mom was abused as a child so that's why they hurt me.

Answer: Even when we do acknowledge their failures, we follow it up with a fervent explanation of how they really did the best they could. Are these sentences true? Yes! Abusive families have profound influences on how our parents parented us. Living through difficult economic times affects how our parents parent us. But oftentimes, we use sentences like, "My father grew up with an alcoholic mother or father" to avoid naming and sitting with the ways our father in-turn, harmed us. 

Most of us prefer explanations ... to a savior. I'd prefer to explain things away than I would to cry out to God saying, "Our family is broken, and we need a family to redeem incurable wounds!"  The promise of the scripture is that God cures incurable wounds.

#5 What's the point of dwelling on the past? 

Answer: There will be much depth to this in episodes that follow. But for now, let's quote William Faulkner, "The past isn't dead. It's not even past." What's he getting at? Neuroscience has confirmed the truthfulness of those eight words. If you think your past is in the past, you don't understand how the brain is built and how the brain functions. Whenever you have an experience in the present, the very first thing your brain does is, it filters that experience through all of your past experiences. No one experiences reality as it truly is in the present. That is fiction that doesn't understand how the brain is formed and how the brain operates throughout life. You see more of what you have already seen. 

Example: Your father abused your mother when he was drinking. And when you are in the presence of a drunk and angry man, you will think he is abusing the women around him more than he might actually be doing. Your neurons are wired from your childhood. And those neurons fire together. Your brain has been primed that the next thing that happens when an angry drunk man begins to rage, is that the woman gets hurt. God has designed the brain with neurons so that it anticipates the next thing based on past experience. This is a brilliant mechanism for surviving in a dangerous world. 

The point of engaging your past is so that you can actually live in the present. Until you engage your story, you are actually living as much in the past as you are in the present. So what is the point of dwelling on the past? It's so that you can live in the present. 

So what are the positive reasons to look at our past and engage our story?

The practice of reflecting on the story of your life, actually promotes healing in your brain.  This is because 

(1) Brain health is a function of the degree to which all parts of your brain are connected with one another 

(2) the process of reflecting on your story and sharing it with another person and hearing their reaction, that process connects neural networks that were previously separated. In other words, connecting is a key to healing. Engaging the core stories of your life, heals your brain by connecting areas of the brain that weren't previously connected. This happens by connecting: 

(a) left to right: your thoughts when experiencing harm (stored in the left brain), become disconnected from the neurons representing your feelings (which are stored in the right brain). Telling the story requires that your brain link up your thoughts about your story with your feelings about the story in your right brain. If you are able to tell your story while remaining connected, links up the neural networks and this actually helps heal. It leads to integration. Or what the Bible calls Shalom. 

(b) top to bottom: Top refers to the portion of your brain that is behind your forehead. Bottom is the limbic brain (triggers fight, flight or freeze). When you begin to reflect on the parts of your story that are very painful and tell it to another person: the other person's limbic brain regulates you and soothes and calms your brain. Their holding of your story brings containment and grounding to your limbic brain. Also, as a result of their soothing, your cortical brain forms connection between the top and bottom of your brain and leads to changes in your brain's wiring! Your brain develops new neural connections. And this is very healing as well because these pathways allow you to self-regulate when you become overwhelmed with fear, shame, or rage. 

May you find the freedom to begin to step into your story, if not for the first time, then in new ways!

Go HERE if you'd like info on how to write your own story.