The Place We Find Ourselves

John Eldredge returns to the podcast to talk about his newest book titled, “Experience Jesus. Really.” Topics covered include: how to live as an ordinary mystic (someone who experiences the sweet presence of God on a regular basis), why you don’t need to understand something to experience it and benefit from it, the importance of turning toward Jesus with the parts of our hearts that are not doing well, and how the presence of Jesu...

I am joined today by my friend Gail Stucker who is a trauma-informed story coach. Gail generously shares a story about herself as an 8th grader. Topics we cover: taking your story seriously when you don’t believe you have any “capital T” trauma, longing for the delight of your parents, blessing your desire for delight as a good thing even though the unmet longing is agonizing, blessing anger at those who have harmed us, listening t...

You have a story and that story matters. Your story in your family of origin significantly affects the way you think, feel, and act in the world today. This is why Dan Allender says, “It is time to listen to your story.” What if healing begins by listening to your story? By reflecting on the experiences in your growing up years, you can better understand why your brain has been shaped in the way that it has. If you want to experien...

I am joined today by Dr. Dan Allender and Dr. Steve Call to talk about the complexities of marriage relationships. Dan and Steve recently co-authored a book titled, “The Deep-Rooted Marriage: Cultivating Intimacy, Healing, and Delight.” If you are committed to the growth of yourself and your spouse, marriage will be hard. Today, Dan and Steve talk about how the look and feel of our present marriages are tied to each partner’s past ...

I dive into a detailed explanation of avoidant and ambivalent attachment. I explain why and how a child develops each of these insecure attachment styles. I then outline how you are supposed to know in adulthood if you have an avoidant or ambivalent attachment style. Your attachment style (secure, avoidant, or ambivalent) profoundly affects how you experience relationships and how you express yourself in relationship. And your atta...

The fundamental premise of story work is that your past story is affecting your present life. This is just as true for your collective story as it is for your individual story. Your present day to day life is deeply affected by the past story of the collective to which you belong. The story of America bears great glory and great sin, just like the story of Mexico, Poland, and Thailand. Every culture contains deep goodness and every...

Memory is the way in which a past experience affects how the mind will function in the present. There are two layers of memory: explicit and implicit. There are two key attributes of implicit memory that are critical to understand. First, implicit memories are created whether you are paying attention or not. In other words, when you were a child, you recorded tons of information about your environment without trying to. It just hap...

Triangulation occurs when a parent requires a child to function as an emotional adult by meeting the parent’s adult needs and wants. Were you required to give, give, give to your parent, or was your parent continually giving, giving, giving emotionally to you? In a healthy parent-child relationship, there is plenty of connection—but the parent never imposes their emotional needs on the child. Triangulation results in two deadly dyn...

Sexuality is an emotionally charged topic. Period. But when you are talking about sexuality for people with a history of trauma, you are stepping into terrain where angels fear to tread. However, if God intends for you to experience overflowing sexual pleasure and lavish sexual freedom, then exploring your sexual story is more than worth it. Human beings are aroused by particular things in the present because of our experiences of ...

I am joined today by therapist and friend Reid Zeller who shares a story about egging cars when he was 16. Behind every story is a backstory. The backstory includes the nature of the environment we grew up in. When religious or spiritual expectations are placed on the shoulders of a child, pressure builds within that child. And when that pressure inevitably leads to a bursting, what results is always a mixture of dignity and deprav...

When you were a child, you were deeply dependent on your primary caretakers. This means that the development of your brain was contingent upon the level of care and kindness in your family environment. Today I identify the six things you needed from your parents, and give examples of each. The “Big Six” things you needed from your parents include (1) attunement, (2) responsiveness, (3) engagement, (4) ability to regulate your affec...

If you have difficulty regulating your emotion, there is a reason for that! No one comes out of the womb with the ability to regulate their affect. The way you develop the neurobiological structures to regulate your own emotions is by having your affect interactively regulated by another. This is the main gift that a primary caregiver gives to a child. Another name for this gift is “secure attachment.” The essence of secure attachm...

This episode is for people who experience emotional pain but feel like “nothing that bad happened to me growing up. I had a pretty good childhood.” As it says in Jeremiah 6, it is very common to dress our wounds as though they are not serious. One way we tend to minimize our wounds is by comparing our story to someone else who “had it worse.” Another way we minimize our wounds is by spiritualizing away the harmful experiences we en...

My invitation to you today is simple: to take your story seriously. Engaging your story is the single most important thing you can do to experience healing. When I say "your story," I'm talking more about the individual scenes than the overarching narrative of your life. Your stories—particularly your stories of heartache or harm—have shaped your brain more than anything else. Which means that your past stories are shaping your pre...

In “As Long As You Need,” author J.S. Park writes that “Grief is not about letting go, but about letting in.” Letting in sorrow, letting in anger, and especially letting in other people who can be WITH us in our pain. This episode is about all kinds of grief—not merely the grief of losing a loved one. One of Joon Park’s main points is that we often experience loneliness in the midst of our sorrow and pain. He says, “It is possible ...

I am joined today by author Jay Stringer to talk about sexual stuckness/difficulties/pain. Healthy sexuality is deeply tied to the degree to which we have made sense of our story in our family of origin. Sadly, so few of us have ever been asked to connect the dots between our past life story and the sexual difficulties we face in the present. Today, Jay and I try to connect some of those dots. If you want to understand your sexual ...

I am joined today by Dr. Hillary McBride to discuss excerpts from her new book titled, “Practices for Embodied Living.” Topics covered include: how to feel your feelings, being alive in your body (eroticism), and the story of your relationship to your sensuality and sexuality. Finally, I ask Hillary about her beautiful claim that we often find the Holy precisely in the places we were told not to look (including in our bodies).