Episode #129: What gets in the way of healing?

 These posts were written beginning in the fall of 2024. However, I am posting them years back so that they are not at the top of my Blog, and if you want to read them, you need to go "find them" :)

The following notes have been taken from this podcast: The Place We Find Ourselves: What Gets in the Way of Healing? 

God designed us to heal. We heal if the conditions for healing are right. So why don't we heal? You can block the natural healing process of trauma by doing any of the following things. There are four main reasons: 

1. Minimizing Your Story: Everyone minimizes their story -- no one comes into a counseling office saying, "this is the worst story you've ever heard!" We all minimize our wounds. You don't believe that your story from when you are a child is affecting you today. In Jeremiah 6 & 8, God says something fascinating. He gets angry because the leader of his people are minimizing the wounds of Israel. "They dress the wounds of my people as though it were not serious. 'Peace, peace' they say, when there is no peace." Most of us do the same thing with regard to our own wounds. We minimize our wounds, "peace, peace, everything is fine," when in fact there is no peace in our bodies. How many times have you said, "I shouldn't complain because _____ has had it so much harder than me." The point is, she shouldn't focus on her own pain. Why do we feel the need to compare our pain and story to another person? Anytime you compare your story, you are minimizing your story and dressing the wounds of yourself as a boy or girl as though it was not serious. You do not want your story to affect yourself as much as you did. You will feel the grief and suffering rising up, and your first thought is, "Okay, wait, but they had a bad story." It may be true that someone else had a worse story, but all you are trying to do is escape your own story and having to look it in the face. Why do you contempt for the younger you? Why do you want to dress the wounds of that younger child as if they do not matter? 

Here is another important thing to keep in mind. If you are asked to come up with positive memories and you do not have them, that is a big deal. If you have no memories, it means that the memories were devoid of goodness. Lack of memories indicates that there is tragedy. It is very hard to give weight to the absence of something. If there was an immense void of goodness, it can be hard to give weight to it because you are acknowledging the absence of something.

2. Spiritualizing the bad things that have happened to you. (This is a big one for people who have spent time in a church community!) This means that you have theology or the Bible to avoid engaging with what you have endured. You use these things to avoid feeling your feelings. This is another way of minimizing your story. The vast majority of churches are very skilled at creating environments at which the harsh realities of living in a sinful world are spiritualized away. We all have a way of not looking at how painful life can be and has been. Here's an example. You are talking about your parent's divorce. And when your friend presses in and says, "Man, that must have been hard," you respond with, "Yeah, it was hard, but I see how God used that in my life to shape my character and grow me as a person." You are spiritualizing away the big feelings that you would have felt if you had stayed with the reality of the heartache of the story. You are using spirituality to avoid feeling your feelings. You are appealing to God's goodness to avoid sitting with that eight-year-old girl when her parents got divorced. You are abating the dicomsfort of your own story by saying, "Well, I know God is using all things for His glory."

Please understand. I don't disagree that God does use all things for good. But why do you have to bring that up right when your friend was giving weight to your pain and empathizing with you and really being with you in it? This misguided optimism has nothing to do with the gospel of Jesus. Misguided optimism wants to say, "There was no crucifixtion. There was only resurrection.

3. Self-contempt: Flashback. You are an overweight teenager and when you go to sit on a small chair while helping younger kids, another boy says to his friend, "I hope she doesn't break that chair because she is so fat." Instead of sitting in the shame which is intolerable, you join them in their contempt of you by thinking, "You are so fat. Why are you always snacking. Why can't you have more self-control? You are so lazy." And you stab yourself with darts a dozen more times. Did your classmate hurt you? Oh yes. But your self-contempt by the end of the day has done far more damage. From that day forward, how many times do you look in the mirror and berate yourself for your weight. This is the goal of evil. To seduce you to inflict violence on yourself. It is violence from you, to you. It is designed to protect you from feeling your big feelings which in this case, it would be SHAME. 

What is your posture toward the younger you? Look back at yourself as a middle schooler. How do you feel toward that little boy or girl? More often than not, our posture isn't very kind. It's this posture of, "He was so needy" or "She was so stupid to think her grandfather actually cared for her" or just "I can't stand her." Do you hear the violence in those accusations? When you are awash in self-contempt, you can't feel your feelings. When you are hating yourself, you can't access those big feelings! The anecdote for this is kindness! Can you soften your heart just a little bit? There has to be a growing kindness to yourself in order to heal

4. The Pace of Your Life: This is actually the fourth excuse that gets in the way of healing. Our frantic pace of life prohibits us from actually being present for ourselves! How much time do you spend noticing your inner life of thoughts and longings? Of just noticing your thoughts, feelings, and longings? Rather than attending to the tasks of your day? You must spend more time with yourself, with your heart, with all the swirl of activity in your mind. The thing that stops most of us from spending time with ourselves is actually fear of what might be lurking in there. It can be very scary to get connected to your true thoughts and feelings. The pace of your life may be driven by a fear of slowing down and just being with your own heart. This makes sense. 

You must create space for grief to emerge. You must stop to grieve. In The Poisonwood Bible: "As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer's long hair in water. I knew the weight was there, but it didn't touch me. Only when I stopped, did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat 'till I began to drown. So I just didn't stop." We are truly afraid that our grief will pull us under and we will never make it back up. But what if going down into the depths of grief is required for your body to experience the naturalness of healing.

12X12: JANUARY #1: Introduction to the Neurobiology of the Brain

 

ADAM YOUNG W/ CURT THOMPSON

I will be attending one of these seminars the first weekend of each month for eight hours each session. There were SEVEN sessions, and I plan to to break them each down more for myself than for anyone else!

Trauma changes the brain. And Adam wants us to have compassion in regards to why we do what we do. Just like falling down the stairs hurts your knee, trauma hurts your brain. And this session will teach us why our brain responds like it does. 

Kindness to yourself will take you farther than you can imagine! So don't get overwhelmed if this all feels too much. I always struggled with what it meant to be kind to myself. What does that mean? It means that we have compassion on ourselves for hard all of this is for us. 

Remember: we don't know very much about the brain. We understand about the brain, what dentists understood about dentistry in the 1800's. 

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN INFORMATION COMES INTO OUR BRAIN: 

Information from the outside world, arrives through the sense organs. When a difficult situation occurs, you are seeing a person's facial expressions and hearing what their voice sounds like. The THALAMUS takes information and passes it on in TWO separate directions: 

1. AMYGDALA PATH: This information travels here from the thalamus in 1/12 of a second!!
2. HIPPOCAMPUS & PREFRONTAL CORTEX: The information arrives at the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex in 1/2 a second.

You may think that one-twelfth vs. one-half isn't a very big deal. But that means it moves through the amygdala (I call that "Boss Amy") 4x as fast!! It's like traveling through town through rush hour vs. trying to do it at midnight.   

What this means is: by the time information has reached your prefrontal cortex and you have the ability to make a choice and consciously reflect on what you are experiencing, Bossy Amy has already evaluated what is happening to you and decided how you should react. 

You react to an experience before you think about it!

This is why, if you see a black wire on the floor and KNOW it is electrical tape, Bossy Amy may have already reacted and you felt scared before you could even TELL YOURSELF it was black electrical tape (and not a snake!) "Hey, Amy, snakes aren't usually found in a building. This is probably not a snake!" The Hippo calms Amy by providing context. 

Hippo dampens the fear response of Bossy Amy.

So in actually:

You react before you've had time to think about it.

Your Amygdalia bases its evaluations on ONE criteria: SURVIVAL. It generalizes threats. The Hippo provides context. Bossy Amy's job is to evaluate what is presently happening to us and assure we stay alive. It remembers all your bad experiences. It is a part of the social brain.

Bossy Amy is super important. She keeps us alive. If we see a bear in the woods, we don't want to take time to think about what to do. We want our body to respond immediately and instinctively. 

However, in order for Amy to work super fast, she has to make very quick generalizations. When the visual information about the curvy black electrical cord arrives at the hippocampus, the hippocampus does it's job. It's job is to provide you with with additional context, which dampens the fear response of the AMYgdalia.

While AMY is screaming, "SNAKE!!!!", your HIPPOcampus is slowly getting the information and will provide additional information to help you calm down. But Amy may very well have already started the process of a panic attack. 

But what if your Hippocampus is damaged?

Trauma damages the hippocampus!

This is where the biggest issue occurs. Physical abuse or sexual abuse or PTSD means that hippocampus can actually shrink (by as much as 12-20%!) So HIPPO (and the prefrontal cortex) steps in to try and calm Amy, but he finds he really isn't as able to do it as he used to because he isn't as strong as he used to be. But ...

The hippocampus can heal!

Here's the cool part! HIPPO is healable. But trauma affects the physical parts of your brain just like spraining your ankle affects your body. But in the meantime, Hippo and the prefrontal cortex struggle to down-regulate Amy. How does Amy learn how to down-regulate? Well, she has depended on her early caregivers to teach her how to regulate herself. And if Hippo is broken, he can't help us down-regulate. Bossy Amy takes over much more. And so, fear, anxiety, and panic seeps in.  

Your brain doesn't have the same ability to calm down the reactivity of the Amgdalia. This stuff MATTERS. This isn't about a snake. But you interact with people everyday. And Amy will see danger in every single relationship with any other person. Whenever things get tense, or when things feel off between you and another person whom you care about, Amy's job is to tell you that you are in danger and you need to protect yourself. 

There are nerual connections between Amy and Hippo. And the proper balance allows you to stay close to the other person and stay calm and engaged during difficult interactions.

The parent/child relationships set the stage for people to regulate their emotions. 

The pre-frontal cortex is another portion of your brain that is connected to your precious Amy and therefore also has the ability to calm and soothe Amy. Affect regulation is monumentally important in having a good relationship with other human beings. Babies cannot soothe themselves. Baby Jane can't regulate her own Amgydalia. You do not have the necessary brain structures to regulate your body. You are extremely dependent on your primary caretaker/s to regulate your Amydalia and to soothe you when you are afraid. 

If you had caregivers who were attuned to you and responsive to you, then you developed a secure attachment.

What secure attachment means neurobiologically, you developed descending fibers from your prefrontal cortex down to the amygdalia. If your caregivers were attuned to you, they made lots of neural connections. Deep connectivity. These descending fibers allow you to regulate your amydalia. 

What the parent-child relationship does is set the stage for people to regulate their emotions. 

Children have to learn how to regulate their own fear and anxiety. And this makes it easier to have relationships in life, particularly when they get stressful. The development of your prefrontal cortex was profoundly influenced by your early relationship with your primary caregiver/s. These relationships have a larger influence than later relationship. But the early experiences is vital. 

This is why attachment matters so much. Secure attachment means thick connectivity. 

"In trauma, the critical balance between the amgdalia and the prefrontal cortex breaks down, which makes it much harder to control emotions and impulses." Bessel van der Kolk

If this is you: HAVE COMPASSION ON YOURSELF! You don't have as robust an ability to control Bossy Amy. It is harder for you to control your emotions and your impulses. 

But remember ...

The brain can experience healing!

The reason we are learning about this is because we can get better! We can get whole, integrated, and see healing and improvement.

What the resurrection of Jesus in neurobiological terms is that your neurons can reconnect! 

Integration! Connectivity! Shalom! 

Shalom refers to WHOLENESS. You and others. You and God. You and You. You and the land and Earth.

Society's word: Integration is the Christian's word: Shalom.  

An integrated brain means that your left hemisphere has thick neural connections with your right hemisphere. That means what Shalom means when we are talking about a brain. It also means that your cortical brain (top part) has thick neural connections with your subcortical (the part that is down and in) ... what is called your limbic system. 

Connectedness is another way of saying healing. 

Integration = healing/wholeness/Shalom

How does this happen? Through LOVE.  

"The best way to experience healing from trauma is to go find a bunch of securely attached people and get into relationship with them."

There are four pillars of the therapy relationship (doesn't have to be a relationship with a trained therapist that has alphabet soup after their name.) But these enhance the integration of neural networks. Those four pillars are as follows:  

1. The establishment of a safe and trusting relationship. SAFETY! Emotional safety is monumentally important for a brain to heal. The foundation of safety is attunement. Safety doesn't mean a listening ear or a nice listening friend. It is much more about attunement and kindness than it is about niceness. If you won't tell me the truth about how you experience me, then I can't fully trust you and feel safe.

2. Mild to moderate levels of stress. THE BRAIN NEEDS SOME LEVEL OF STRESS TO HEAL! When you share a painful story, and you have them, and an attuned listener listens, you will experience some sort of uncomfortable emotions. You will experience the stress of sorrow or anger or fear depending on what happened to you in the story. What helps neural networks heal when you are feeling big feelings is containment. The listener's regulated nervous system, helps to regulate your nervous system interactively. 

"During our first few years, we have repeated experiences of going from a comfortable, regulated state to a state of dysregulation. We become frightened, cold, wet, and hungry, and show our displeasure with facial expressions, bodily postures, vocalization, and crying. In the presence of good-enough parenting, our signals are attended to, the source of our displeasure diagnosed, and we are helped back into a regulated state. Across thousands of these temporal-emotional experiences, we go from regulation to dysregulation to reregulation. These experiences shape secure attachment ." -- Louis Cozolino

3. Activating both emotion and cognition. BOTH FEELING AND THINKING IS WELCOME IN THE RELATIONSHIP! This is how your right and left hemispheres get linked. Cognition (Thinking) is a left hemisphere and feeling your feels is right hemisphere function. Trauma leads to a fragmentation of left brain thinking from right brain feeling. This is why you may share a horrific story of abuse and have very few feelings while you are telling the story. That's because your brain is fragmented. There are not sufficient connections between your thoughts of that abuse and your feelings of that abuse. When you can put words to those feelings, the activation of your Amydalia decreases.

4. The co-construction of new personal narratives. YOUR STORY! STORY WORK! When a story-teller and a story-listener work together to achieve a more truthful telling of your story, that's when things really start to happen.

"Stories are powerful tools for high-level neural network integration (Rossi, 1993). The combination of a linear story line and visual imagery woven together with verbal and nonverbal expressions of emotion activates and utilizes dedicated circuitry of both left and right hemispheres, cortical and subcortical networks, the various regions of the frontal lobes, and the hippocampus and the amygdala. The cooperative and interactive activation involved in stories may be precisely what is required for sculpting and maintaining neural network integration." -- Louis Cozolino

When you tell stories, lots of regions in your brain get connected.When you tell stories, neural networking can begin! When you can feel a big thing and put words to it, the activation of Amy decreases!

Healing occurs when we tell our stories to each other!

* * * * *

Kurt stepped in to discuss some of what Adam shared during the above talk. Some things to think about: 

We live in a culture that has trained us to think we can change our world through sheer force. So much of our life is beyond our pure ability. We behave non-consciously. We are trained to believe we can change the world based on how we think about things. Without recognizing that so much of our life is being formed by our non-conscious brain. Those areas can run the show. And we need to have compassion for that. Sometimes we can't rethink ourselves into good behavior immediately. 

There has been something happening in our mind that cause us to behave in some non-conscious ways. How much more practice we have being afraid than we have being thoughtfully attuned. 

When left to its own accord, the brain behaves like an adolescent's bedroom.When we have a pattern of responding to something a certain way, it can be very challenging to change those patterns. This notion that we have these thickened practice neural pathways whose job it is to protect us, and we are trying to push against the Earth. 

We must take that pause serious enough. This may take time. We are having to enter back into places where trauma has happened and where my fear will be reignited, in the hopes that a different story will be the outcome. This requires patience! Courage! 

We need to commit ourselves to securely attached relationships. The very thing that we most long for, is also our source of greatest terror. When it comes to the healing of trauma, we must first acknowledge that we are up against a lot!

Genesis 3: everything tilts. Genesis 3:15: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."

TRAUMA DOESN'T GET THE LAST WORD!

Episode #19: Why It's Important to Find Kindness for the Younger You

 These posts were written beginning in the fall of 2024. However, I am posting them years back so that they are not at the top of my Blog, and if you want to read them, you need to go "find them" :)

In this episode, Jason's father had started to do his own work which then allowed Jason to feel he could look into his own story. Guest speaker, Jason, moved across the country as a young, married parent, and when he did, he found himself in a deep depression. It was his parents and wife that sat down with him and said, "Something is going on. And you can't live this way."

No one sat me down, but my body fell into such a horrible pit that I had no choice but to reach up and say, "Someone please help me!"

This is what I want everyone to know: 

If you are battling depression, there is a reason WHY. There is always a reason WHY. You don't just have depression for the heck of it. It is a signal that something needs to be looked at.

Have you ever sat with people who were willing to look into the face of their pain? Jason did that. His body was telling him there was something BIG inside of him, even though he had no idea that there was even a story to discuss. 

He went into his first session saying, "Okay. I'm here. Let's get this thing fixed TODAY!" But at his meeting, his father was actually there. His father was a leader in this church group and had been doing his own work looking into his past stories. And as he started sharing with his father, and his father said, "I don't remember this, but I believe you," the walls began to come down. 

Jason had gotten to a point that he knew if he didn't SPEAK, none of this would go away. Jason's story parallels my own a lot. The body saying, "You need to talk directly to the people in your life that love you about this," is the beginning.

Many people don't get that response from their parents. But Jason and his Dad began to let walls come down that were so intense for him. In Jason's case, as in mine, it was intense depression that forced his hand. I am not sure I would have ever had the courage to look into my pain if the depression had not forced its way out of me. 

So what if you want to look into your story (and by "story" I mean your "past), but you know your parents can't and won't be able to look into this with you? 

Jason told his group leader after his first 9 week session that he felt more screwed up then that he did when he started. I want everyone to know this! You will feel more screwed up when you start working on this! I wanted so badly to put the emotional sludge back into the box. But I couldn't. It was out! I didn't want to feel this way anymore. 

His leader said, "It sounds like you came to this group with the ground so hard and now there is a crack there in the ground!" 

Yes! That's what it feels like. 

But even if your parent or friend or person who hurt you can't listen, the act of actually speaking it out and have someone bear witness to it, is so healing! You've probably done a ton of work to pretend you don't have this pain. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. 

Once we are grown-ups, we have to start working on having a lot of compassion on the younger version of ourselves. We have to look at them kindly. 

Let me give you an example from my own life so that this makes more sense. About five years ago, I started having arguments with my husband that were on a level I had never experienced before. He and I fought, but rarely, and not usually very intensely. But suddenly we are having these really BIG arguments. 

As my boys became teenagers, the arguments seemed to show up in conversations with them as well. What was this in me?

I realized that the arguments always have to do with me feeling stupid. Always. That's why as my boys were becoming men and they were starting to question me as a mother and a person, the anger was coming out at THEM. They think I am dumb! They think I don't know what I am talking about! Why are they treating me like this? 

For years this argument went on with John and then, as the boys got older, I started seeing it emerging with my boys as well. And I didn't understand it. 

It wasn't until I got into therapy due to the terrible depression and anxiety, that I started seeing those arguments in a different light. I learned about intrinsic memories. Something was causing my body to respond this way? What was it? 

Do you know I still am not sure what causes me to feel that way? I don't feel my parents ever looked at me as if I was stupid. I don't think my teachers did. And in fact, in college, I was the scholar athlete my senior year for my University. Why, deep inside, did I feel stupid? Where does this come from? 

I actually don't know. But now, when that feeling comes up, I try to look at it with curiosity. Instead of not knowing where the feeling of complete rage I am feeling is coming from, I try to look at myself with compassion and curiosity. What is causing that? Why is it happening? What would I say to me if I was my best friend? How would I come alongside Wendi and encourage her? I also try to let my husband help me walk through this? 

Here's the thing. When that feeling emerges in me, almost always in conversation with my husband and sons, my brain will then spiral into ANTs (Automatic Negative Thoughts). I never saw this before, but now I do. I can see them. I can feel them. The thoughts tell me all kind of horrible things about how horrible a person I am, what a failure I am, how messed up my kids will be because of me, and how much better my husband would be without me. Those thoughts have always been there, but now, because of my willingness to look into my own story, I can see what is happening and look at them with a different viewpoint! How powerful!

When these feelings occur, ask yourself, "How old do you feel right now?" And allow people in your life to speak TRUTH in you. "You are not dumb. You know things. You are strong." I can listen to my husband say, "Wendi, you don't have to prove to the boys or to me you aren't dumb." These people are incredibly important in our lives. 

I encourage you to listen to this podcast if you find yourself having rage or frustration or anger come out of you for no reason at all, it is for a reason! Listen to it. Pay attention to it. Jason always say himself as an angry person. Angry. Tough. Strong. But people started speaking into his life saying, "You are also tender, Jason. This can be true also. Both can be true at the same time." 

Our glory will leak out. And then other people see it. And there are some courageous people that will actually name it. And that blesses us and invites us into owning it more fully. We think it doesn't show. But we are image bearers. Thank God we leak it and thank God that people will call us out on it. 

Episode #82: How Your Story is Affecting Your Relationship with Your Children

 These posts were written beginning in December of 2024. However, I am posting them years back so that they are not at the top of my Blog, and if you want to read them, you need to go "find them!" :)

What follows are my notes from this podcast: 82. How Your Story is Affecting Your Relationship with Your Children

What do you do with the moment that you begin to look into your own story and you suddenly realize "Oh Crap. I am hurting my own children." 

This can actually distract you from looking into your own story. You shift and want to work on relationship with them instead of your own wounds. 

This guilt is holy. Some things do need to be addressed. You want to make it right. Your broken heart is evidence of your deep desire to love your children better. 

"The past isn't dead. It's not even past."

Your past experiences in your life are profoundly affecting how you are interacting with your children. 

But have we thought about, neurologically, why we are losing it with our children? Most parenting failures are caused by dis-regulation in the parent.

(Go back and listen to Episode 20 on "Affect regulation" if you want to learn more about dis-regulation.) Who doesn't know the experience of feeling triggered by your child? Yes, even a five-year-old can trigger us. Your child does something and your body goes into a different physiological state. We suddenly aren't being the parent we long to be. But why? 

Because issues from your past are being activated. In other words, you are remembering something from your past. But you don't have the sensation of recall. That's called implicit memory. (Check out Podcast 11 for more on that.)

Suppose when you were a boy or girl, you were not allowed to cry. It was off-limits. And now you have a seven-year-old son who cries often. When ever it drags on longer than you think it should, something in your body begins to change. You get dis-regulated. 

Why? 

Perhaps the fact that you were not allowed to cry when you were a child is playing a role. It's this sense of, "Look, I held it together as a kid. I never cried."

Have you named your own reality? Have you grieved about the particular losses that are bound up within that reality? Without that space for grief, it is very likely that your inability to cry as a child is contributing significantly to your diminished tolerance for your son's crying. 

You must address this part of your story to "fix" this. His crying is connecting you to part of a story that has not become engaged. So you become hyper-aroused. And now, you've taught him that he is not allowed to cry. And so, the process of generational wounding continues. 

What is driving your upset feelings toward your son? You are yelling at your son because you are trying to get your dis-regulation to stop! When we are dis-regulated, we will do whatever it takes to get regulated again. You want to be more comfortable in your own body. 

Your parenting failures are often bound up in your story. That means you must engage your story in order to improve in your own parenting of your children -- whatever age that they are. 

Is there a linkage in your parental failures and unaddressed part of your story? Be curious about that. 

It can be very hard to see the way your parents harmed you AND the way you are harming your children at the same time. It's like you are being squeezed from both sides. It can therefore become easy to get distracted by your own story work to deal with how you are treating your kids. 

So .... how do you respond when you realize you are hurting your children?

The single most important thing you can do is ADDRESS YOUR OWN STORY in your family of origin growing up. (This is actually data not opinion!)

"The best predictor of how our children will become attached to us, that is how emotionally healthy they are, is how well we as parents have come to make sense of our lives. How well we tell a coherent story of our early life experiences." -- Dan Siegel

A great book about this is Parenting from the Inside Out by Dan Siegel.

If you want to be a better parent, there are two things to do: 

1. Focus on yourself as a CHILD. Do the reflective work to make sense of your own story when you were growing up and when you were a child. In some ways, you need to parent yourself as a child in order to be a better parent to your child -- even if they are an adult now!

Become curious about when you get dis-regulated with your children. Rather than being furious at yourself for losing it with your kids or grandkids, be curious WHY DO I GET DIS-REGULATED WHEN MY GRANDKID DOES ______." Your dis-regulation is about YOUR STORY not their behavior. (Even if their behavior is atrocious!)

2. The second thing you need to do is make sure your children feels FELT. When your child has big emotions, they need you to join them in those feelings. They need to know that you are attuned to what they are feeling on the inside. You join with them through the sharing of non-verbal communication!

When you realize your child is feeling sad because he wanted to play with his older brother and his older brother didn't play with him, your mind has the ability to feel that sadness and disappointment inside YOUR body. That is empathy. You can put yourself in your child's shoes. Let your mind attune to your child's facial expressions and tone of voice. Your son will know that you are feeling something of what he is feeling. He will feel joined by you and feel felt. This is REGULATION for your child and the main ingredient in SECURE ATTACHMENT. 

"Moments of joining, enable a child to feel felt. To feel that he or she exists within the mind of the parent. When children experience an attuned connection from a responsive, empathetic adult, they feel good about themselves because their emotions have been given resonance and reflection." -- Dan Siegel

Your child MOST needs emotional connection to you. 

Your child was created in the image of a triune God. A "we" and not an "I". Therefore, your child's deepest need is connection -- feeling joined -- feeling felt. 

And if you are listening to this and you feel like you do not emotionally connect with your child, START NOW. All harm can be repaired! 

Integration: means linking of separating parts is what brings healing.This brings Shalom. 

"The key to staying in connection with your child during times of discipline is to align yourself with your child's emotional state" -- Dan Siegel

Your child is throwing a fit wanting ice cream before dinner. You don't have to give them the ice cream in order to let her feel felt. You can empathize with your child's want to have ice cream without giving them the ice cream. Once you feel something of those feelings inside your own body, you might find yourself saying, "Oh! I know you want ice cream right now and that would be yummy, but you can't have any right now. Maybe later."

The magic of that statement is in the non-verbal communication. Your facial expression and your tone of voice let the child know you are feeling something of their disappointment and unmet longing.

Adam's son told his dad he didn't think his dad was noticing that he was working hard to learn to calm himself down. You can say to your child, "I am so sorry I have not noticed you when you are trying to behave correctly." They will feel loved when they hear you just say, "I am heartbroken I have not noticed you trying to calm yourself down." Notice that this story starts with Adam's failure as a parent and ends with the son feeling loved. 

Every parenting failure can become the opportunity for a parenting success if you are willing to do the work of repair. 

The second part of this two-parter will be entirely focused on how to repair!

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The Place We Find Ourselves: Hearing from God

To listen to this episode in its entirety click here. 

 "People are meant to live in an ongoing conversation with God, speaking and being spoken to." -- Dallas Willard

Think about Enoch! God in the garden with Adam and Eve! Moses! These are examples of the normal human life God intended for us. These moments are not meant to be exceptional. They are meant to be normal! Mannnnn, haven't we all thought that those were for exceptional people only? 

But let's look at what God actually did:

1. God created words. God created ears. 

2. God created the idea of a relationship and you talk to a friend and your friend talks back and you grow in intimacy with each other.  

3. We somehow think that the God who created words, ears, and relationships, would speak to us on a regular basis. 

The whole point of the resurrection is UNION!

 "Union with God consists chiefly in a conversational relationship with God, while we are consistently and deeply engaged as his friend and co-laborer in the affairs of the kingdoms of the heavens. God has created us for intimate friendship with himself." -- Dallas Willard

We need conversation! Our memories of our earthly father isn't memories of lectures. We need conversation. We need relationship. We need connection. 

OBSTACLES IN HEARING FROM GOD INCLUDE: 

1. One of the reasons that hearing from God is so fraught for many of us, is it because when we make movement toward listening, it connects us immediately to our longing to hear from our father or to hear from our mother when we were growing up. Have you come to terms with how deeply you longed to hear one or both of your parents to speak into your heart -- good and strong words. If we let ourselves hear our longing to hear God's voice, we will feel the longing we had to hear that connection with our parent. 

2. "The problem is not that Jesus isn't speaking or even that you aren't hearing, it's that you don't believe you are hearing." We don't believe that we are hearing from God. We immediately dismiss the words as our own voice. Are you thinking that if you hear from God you will automatically know it is HIS voice? Hearing from God is something that you learn, over time, by experience. Just like anything else in life. Being uncertain doesn't mean you haven't heard. 

3. Some of us don't feel the freedom to be in his presence. If you didn't develop a secure attachment to your parents, it can be hard for you to feel securely attached to your God.

4. We are not attuned to the gentle stillness of God's voice. In 1 Kings 19, God's voice is heard. It says that God was not in the earthquake or fire but he was in the still, small voice. The translation might just as well read, a gentle whispering. Messages from God are actually supposed to subtle. 

SO WHAT DO YOU DO IF IT IS HARD TO HEAR FROM GOD? 

1. Be curious as to why that is. Give yourself grace. 

2. Take seriously Jesus' words that you are in HIM and his spirit is IN you.

3. Start small. Ask simple questions. And wait and see what wells up in your heart in the next few minutes.

4. Be patient as you learn.

I am a HUGE fan of this podcast. If what I am writing is ministering to you, I encourage you to support THE PLACE WE FIND OURSELVES. He does NOT do advertising. He simply has people support the podcast.

Episode #11: Implicit Memory: The Thing That is Running Your Life

 

I am going to be taking notes on and sharing about a podcast that is simply transforming my life. It is called The Place We Find Ourselves. 

I have done this previously, but I am going to start compiling all of these similar posts. You will be able to find these posts at this link: My Blog: Mental Health. The screen shot above shows WHERE this is on my Blog. Anytime you want, you can click there and see the most recent Podcast I took notes on.

I strongly encourage you to listen to the episodes I link to. However, if you don't, my notes can help guide you. 

Also, I will try to note when a particular episode talks about something that might be hard to hear. (Sexual abuse for example.) Today's episode has NOTHING in it that should cause you discomfort and it is entitled:  Implicit Memory: The Thing That is Running Your Life

Daniel Siegel (neuroscientist) says: "The brain is an anticipation machine that shapes ongoing perception by what it automatically expects based on prior experience." The brain's job is to anticipate whatever is going to come next.

Memory is the way in which a past experience effects how the mind will function in the future. 

A memory is not a thing. There are no storage folders. There are no bins.

Implicit memory RUNS YOUR LIFE. Explicit memories are the actual events that are stored in your mind. Around 18 months of age, our body can start to store these memories. Implicit memory is operational before you come out of the womb. Here are two key takeaway notes from this episode:

1. Everything you learn in the first 18 months of life is recorded in implicit not explicit memory. You have to be paying attention to record something in explicit memory. You do not have to be paying attention for implicit memory to be stored. For example, there is a true story of a man who could not store explicit memories. But he was taught how to braid. He couldn't remember that he had learned this, but he was able to braid without realizing it because his implicit memory was fully operational. 

2. When you recall an implicit memory, you do not have a sensation that you are remembering something. So when an implicit memory pops up, it feels like the memory is happening in the present. Let's say you are walking in the park and a dog comes flying at you and you are very scared. You have no memory of being attacked by a dog when you were five. But your body remembers that attack. Implicit memory tells you how the world works and what you can expect from the world. Implicit memory is about the feel of things. 

If the only paintings you saw during your entire life were Monet and you never saw another painting, you would believe that this was what paintings looked like. You wouldn't think this is what Monet looked like. This is what happens with your understanding of relationships. Your brain summarizes all of your experiences of relating to your mother and father and instead of thinking "This is what a relationship with my MOM is like or my DAD is like", you think, "This is what relationships are like." So when we set out into the world, we carry those implicit memories with us and those memories tell us what to expect around every single corner. 

The issue is: the relationship with your parents wields a disproportionately strong influence on your implicit memories because they are the two people that have been there from the very beginning. We continue to store implicit memories throughout our life, however, experiences in adulthood have a much weaker influences on the brain. Childhood brains create the foundation of our brain because that is when the brain is growing and developing.

"What's crucial to understand about implicit memory is that implicit memory causes us to form expectations about the way the world works based on our previous experiences. Implicit memories creates something called priming in which the brain readies itself to respond in a certain way."

Do you ever feel intense emotion that you can tell that is more than the situation calls for? They seem to be overreactions or you've been told you are overreacting. But you have no sensation of recall. You are not aware that you are remembering something. In other words, it is not that you are too sensitive or you are a drama queen. You simply have a brain with a treasure-trove of implicit memories. So when you are making a mountain out of a mole hole. As far as your neurons are concerned, in your brain, it is a mountain.

The sensations in your body always tell the truth. They never lie! Pay attention to when you experience a shift in your body. That is telling you that implicit memory has just been experienced. When do you find yourself shutting down or going numb or getting panicky or fearful? Situations that evoke strong emotion responses in us, make implicit memory known!

Condemnation says, "What's wrong with me? Why did I react like that?"

Curiosity says, "Wow! That was a big reaction. I wonder what implicit memory is behind that?"

Implicit memory is the reason that you have had such a hard time TELLING YOURSELF TRUTHS that don't seem to make their way into your "heart."

How do you change implicit memories then? You change it through EXPERIENCES. 

For example, if a man is riding a bicycle that operates backward (turning left makes wheel goes right and vice versa), it took a scientist three weeks to train his brain to do it backwards. Even though the man knew what he had to do, his body was so trained that it was really impossible to do without a LOT of practice.

Episode #12: Trusting Your Gut

Why Trauma Makes It Hard to Trust Your Gut with Janet

 

Around the 41 minute mark, Janet says the following, and it really jumped out at me. Here are some of the parts that really ministered to me as I listened to this particular podcast.

To look at a relationship or a friendship, it takes more work to trust and believe that I have something of worth and value in the relationship. So I will endure suffering for the littlest bit of connection. I am finally giving myself permission to engage in friendships simply for the joy in delighting in someone else and allowing them to delight in me. I now believe that's possible. I believe that's good. To not feel this obligation to measure my worth and value in what I bring in order for them to be enough for them to consider I am worth having as a friend. We don't consciously reenact our past. But some part of us chooses that in the hopes that we will come up with a different world. Do I want to keep ignoring what I know to be true and approach relationships from a position of less than or shame or am I committed to mutual delight and trust. It feels really vulnerable.

For me, it has always been much easier to rage at myself. The inner critic in me is loud with a lot of accusation. Surely this is my fault. This is because of who I am. Any betrayal means: I shouldn't expect any better. The voice will say "So you knew the truth and yet the same thing is happening. So why are you here again? And having tremendous contempt for being here again." The self-contempt for me in those mornings protects me from seeing the horror of the betrayal.

The core dilemmas of our growing up years become re-enacted over and over again in the stories of our adult lives.  Ultimately that drama forces us to deal with God in very close quarters -- if we decide to let it. "Really, God? We are here again?!" And Jesus is saying, "Yes, we are here again. Because this is your chance for you to experience something redemptive.

God is very committed to healing and maturing us, growing us up. Making us more solid versions of ourselves. Solid. Grounded. Stable. 

Needing love is fundamental to who we are. Believing that we are worthy of that is extremely important. 

365 Days of Rest #59

There is a prerequisite to healing. You must be growing in AWARENESS if you are going to be healed. You have to choose to pay attention to what is happening in your mind or your body. Most of us don't do that very often or very well. 

I recently listened to another episode on the PODCAST: The Place We Find Ourselves. 

Why the Practice of Awareness Heals Your Brain with Terry Bohn

While I listen to these podcasts, I have begun to take notes. Honestly, these are mostly for me. But I wanted to share them on my Blog. I really think that if this is something you are interested in, you should listen to the Podcast yourself. But if you want a "quicker option", here are my notes!

INTEGRATION: is bringing all parts of ourself together. Integration leads to well-being and healing or as the Bible says: SHALOM.

Trauma impairs integrative functioning in the brain. So when we experience heartache or harm, our brain does not process that well. Our brain becomes disconnected, and we need integration for optimal health. 

AWARENESS: can be defined as: 

• attentiveness
• mindfulness
• meditative thinking (which is not anti-Christian thinking) 
• intentional thinking 
• paying attention to what is happening inside of our minds and bodies. 
• paying attention to our feelings and our thoughts and the sensations in our body. 

Awareness exists on a spectrum. This spectrum can have three levels. 

1. DISASSOCIATION: At the far (and one could say "unhealthy" side) is disassociation. This is if when you disconnect from life, and this is often a coping mechanism and a defense. When something is overwhelming, you might have to tuck it away because it is too much. (Children often have to do this to survive.) So in other words, awareness is important, but God has designed our brain to allow us disconnect in those times in order to protect ourselves. 
2. DISTRACTION/SELECTIVE ATTENTION: The spectrum can also include distraction/selective attention (more of the middle of the road) where you are very aware of some parts and not so much of others.
   
3. FULL AWARENESS of what is going on inside of you is the healthiest.
   

From the moment we are born, we need attachment. We are born looking for someone who is looking for us. Throughout our entire life, we look for people who are looking for us. We are looking for that safe place to be ourselves, to be authentic, present, awareness, and enjoyed. Are you aware of what is happening inside of you when someone actually likes being with you? Can you pay attention to what that feels like? On the flip side, what is it like for you when you see the feeling of contempt from another person. Are you aware in that moment of what is going on inside of you?

We have a profound ability to choose to pay attention to what we want to pay attention to. You can direct your attention consciously to whatever you want. But it takes P-R-A-C-T-I-C-E. You must be attuned to yourself. I started this journey in March. It is something I think I will be working on my whole life. But each day I feel like I understand a little bit more what is going on inside of me. 

One example is that when I get into arguments with JB now, I am much more likely to back-up and see his point. Not because I am just being nice. Because my defenses are down lower. And they are down lower because I am not triggered in the same way I was before. With the kids, I am able to look at things more and say, "Why is what they are saying upsetting me so much?" I am not, in any way, saying I figured this out. But I am saying that I am seeing things much more clearly and intentionally.

Your body is always in flux. At any given moment, are you breathing faster or slower? Are you anxious? If I say the words "let's go to a cocktail party," what goes on in your body when I say that? Do you want to go? Does it scare you? Are you okay going there alone? At any given moment, you have feelings and need to be aware of what is happening in your body when those things come up. 

And, almost more importantly, we are raising children with feelings. Can we help them navigate this? Can we teach them the things that we were never taught?

The brain cannot integrate if we are not paying attention to what happening in our bodies when someone says "Cocktail Party." When your boss comes into your office. When you see a homeless person. When your child gives you a disrespectful look. Are you paying attention to what is going on in your body? Nowhere is this more relevant than in your close relationships within your home: spouse and children if you are an adult. And if you are a child, your siblings and your parents.

Awareness is the prerequisite work to begin healing. This means that we must BE MINDFUL. There are often competing thoughts going on and because the noise in your head is so loud, you find it difficult to pay attention to any of the thoughts with much success. Awareness is the ability to actually pay attention to what you are paying attention to.

Mindfulness is paying attention in the present moment to whatever you are feeling in any given moment but without judgment. WITHOUT JUDGMENT is a huge part of this conversation. The Bible tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. But when were you taught to actually love yourself? What is the negative self-talk that you have lived with for so long actually saying? And it is truth.

Give this a try. When you feel yourself spiraling and your brain is saying all these things to yourself, try writing them down. When I get in a fight with one of my teenagers, my brain goes into some very negative self-talk. It might say things like: "You aren't a good mom." "You will mess up your kids." "Your kids don't love you." "You are a failure." Often this self-talk is so ingrained in us, we don't even realize it is happening. I have started PAYING ATTENTION to the self-talk and being AWARE of what my brain has been telling me for most of my life. 

I took the time to write this self-talk down. And then, later, I went back, and re-read these points with more clarity outside of the moment. Most of the statements were either not true or they were exaggerated greatly. For example, I might have said, "I am screwing up my kids." In fact the statement should read, "We are all sinners and making mistakes. Some of my mistakes might mess up my children, and if they do, I hope that I can be there for them to own and apologize for the sins I committed." I might also say, "I yell too much." This is actually true for me. So the statement could read, "I yell too much, and this is something I must continue to work on in my life."

Where does judgment pop up in your life toward yourself?! Most people are unaware of the dozens of moments of self-contempt in our day-to-day life TOWARDS OURSELVES!!! Most likely, your self-talk is grouped into some categories that continually emerge. My negative self-talk almost always surrounds my failure as a parent or my failure as a wife or a friend. Everyone's self-talk can be different depending on your strengths and weaknesses and past trauma and current triggers.

Let's say you get a thought about something you forgot to do and what follows is the judgment you feel toward yourself for forgetting to do that thing. Try picturing that "feeling" or "judgment" going by on a conveyor belt in a big warehouse. Watch it go completely out-of-sight. You have the ability to say, "This frustration does not need to own me in this moment." You have the ability to learn ways to actually see that thing as not being real. Or being something that you are working to be bigger than. 

When Kim is doing therapy with me, she often says Notice that. If judgment creeps in, that takes the ability to pay attention. If we can we just be Curious about what is going on inside of you, that really changes everything. That allows for a more spacious awareness of what is going on in you.

When you get really angry at your kid, can you not judge yourself but instead be curious as to why you are reacting that way. If a loved one looks away when they pick up the phone. Can we just be curious as to why they did that instead of barking at them for doing it. We can have awareness of the judgment that we are passing. Emotions are not a bad thing. They are uncomfortable. But they are data that we can use. 

I'll give you an example. I recently had an argument with one of my children. As I am working on healing and awareness, I became very aware of my behavior during the argument. I felt stupid. Instead of judging myself for feeling stupid, I started thinking about why my teenager had the ability to make me feel stupid. Where did I learn that behavior? Why did I care what their opinion of me was? I still don't quite have the answers to these questions, but being aware what was happening and that this wasn't about my child as much as it was about me, was incredibly helpful. I had never thought about things like that during arguments before. But now I am! I am not trying to solve it right then. Sometimes I tuck it away to discuss it with Kim later. For now, it is simply something I can pay attention to and see if I can figure out the triggers and reasons that I might be reacting the way I am.

When a loved one picks up their phone, can you calmly say, "I don't know why this is happening to me, but when you picked up your phone, I felt something in my body and it really bothered me." This will allow the brain to integrate. You don't have to know why it is bothering you. I actually said to my child during the argument, "You know what? I am not sure what is happening in my body, but I am triggered when you don't believe something that I know is truth. It makes me feel stupid. But I am realizing, that isn't your fault. That is simply something I am feeling. This is more about me than you, but I may need some time to work through this."

[Sidenote: Did you know that when you are in an argument with someone and your frontal lobe is engaged, if both YOU and the other person are in this position, you have a 6% chance of solving the disagreement? A way better idea is to walk away and come back later ... when you are calmer and can think more rationally. You usually need at least twenty minutes to calm down.]

How does the brain "heal" or "change"? Paying attention to your feelings and body sensations can actually create neural firing patterns in the brain that enable your brain to change. And that is called HEALING. How does this happen? There are three main ways:

1. New neurons can actually develop. This is called neurogenesis.

2. Neurons that were not previously connected or wired together, become wired together. Or, their wiring is strengthened.

3.  Building myelin! The myelin sheath overs your neurons. Not all neural circuitry transmits information at the same speed. Imagine a fight with your spouse. You get disregulated because of something they say. Imagine how the next five minutes of that fight might unfold if you can calm yourself 3,000 times faster! Myelin helps that happen. There is actually research that shows that some people have stronger/better myelin than other people. This is why some people can handle anxiety so differently from other people.

Doing this is SCARY, however. I want you to know that being vulnerable is never easy. I really suggest you find 1-5 people with whom you can completely practice this without fear that they will shut you out of their life. 

We might think: "If I let myself feel these things, I might never come back." It can be scary to open up this box!

Our mind is an emotion. And even if there are crazy waves on the surface, there is a YOU that is independent of the stuff on the surface. You can dive down and be present and look UP and decide what you want to do with the stuff on the surface. Most of us spend our day on the RIM of awareness instead of coming into the center and being able to look O-U-T. You can pay attention the stuff but you are NOT that stuff. 

You 

can 

heal.

365 Days of Rest #57

I am listening to the following podcast episode: What it looks like to actually grieve your wounds. 

I am a HUGE fan of Adam Young's Podcast: The Place We find Ourselves. I encourage you to listen to this podcast and read my notes as you go. However, if you don't have time to listen, then this will provide a great overview. 

My biggest "beef" with Christians has been their unwillingness to allow sorrow.

After the silence, after the shock of the pain, as the horror of the pain is settling in, Job opens up his mouth and speaks.

But he didn't have to! He didn't have to engage with life or with God! He didn't have to speak of his pain. He could have killed himself or numbed himself to his pain and pushed that pain down to the basement of his heart.

But Job chooses NOT to deny his pain. He speaks about his pain. He finds language to express his internal reality. 

When your world is falling apart, will you open your mouth? Will you have the courage to express to God what you are truly feeling inside? Even if you can't pray, you can journal the words that explain what is going on inside of you.

Lament is to express sorrow, sadness, grief. Lament is what comes out of you when your dreams are shattered. Job actually curses the day of his birth. He wants the day of his birth annulled because his pain is so great. The only thing that brings him comfort, is wishing he'd never been born in the first place. 

What is the Christian response to that pain? What should your attitude be when you are suffering? It is common to think, "I should ask God to increase my faith during this time." Or maybe we think, "I need to repent." Or you think, "I should be grateful for what I have."

But Job DOESN'T DO THAT! Is it ungodly to wish that you would die or wish that you would never have been born? Rebecca does it! Moses does it! Elijah prays that he might die. Jonah wants his life to be taken. Jeremiah uttered a lament quite similar to Job's.

If you are a Christian, you may need permission to feel. We think there is something wrong with sadness. Happiness needs to be on our face. We can't walk into church with sadness on our faces. And yet, Job and Lamentations and other books of the Bible tell us there is nothing ungodly about despair and permission to feel. 

You can talk CANDIDLY about your feelings. Job invites us to pray our feelings. We pre-reflectively pray our feelings before editing our words. This can help identify what is going on in your heart. You can do this before you edit your words and make them consistent with some sort of theology. When was the last time you poured out yourself to God?!

We think we are living in a well-ordered or fair world. But we are NOT.

Lament means you are: 

1. Allowed to FEEL your sorrow.

2. Allowed to EXPRESS that sorrow. 

We are reluctant to use the language of lament because it seems to be an expression of distrust of God rather than trust. "A Christian shouldn't say, why didn't I die at birth!?" 

Why not? Why can't they say that?

Saying "I wish I was dead" is okay. It takes more faith and trust to take our sorrow to God than it does to push down what we are actually feeling.

Does lamenting force us to despair? Look at Job. He was angry, but he ultimately had a conversation with God. The path of lament need not lead to despair. Despair results when we lament without hope. The resurrection of Jesus shatters all hopelessness by: 

1. The resurrection means that your reality can be changed. If Jesus rose from the dead, then there is no situation that cannot be reversed. One Biblical scholar famously said, "Barrenness is the way of human history. It is an effective metaphor for hopelessness. But the marvel of Biblical Faith is that barrenness is the arena of God's life-giving action. It is part of the destiny of our common faith, that those who believe the promise and hope against barrenness, nevertheless must live with the barrenness. Why and how does one continue to trust solely in the promise when the evidence against the promise is all around? Can the closed womb of the present be broken open to give birth to a new future?" But look at Sarah! Her situation could be reversed. It's impossible to be raised from the dead, and yet Jesus was raised from the dead. 

2. The resurrection means that even if the situation is not reversed, you have someone who will be with you in the fire. More than wanting our circumstances to change, we want to feel the presence of someone in the fire with us. 

Most of us are deeply uncomfortable with our feelings. But feelings give us a window to what is going on in the deepest parts of our hearts. Your feelings happen in a fraction of a second, much faster than you can ever control. What God calls you is not getting rid of your sadness or fear. He calls you to honesty of whatever is inside you.

DO NOT DENY SORROW!

Job's biggest frustration is God's silence. His desire is for relationship with God. He wants response from God. 

Lament is one of the most faithful responses you can make to the reality of this world and the reality of God.