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 story in more depth, please sign up for The Sexual Attachment Conference on May 4th. We want to help you understand and transform some of the unique sexual difficulties you may be experiencing either individually or as a couple. 

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).  

Pastor and counselor Mike Boland shares a story from when he was 15 years old. It?s a story about the interplay of longing for connection and, at the same time, dreading what will be required of him in return. We talk about grooming, and the war of ambivalence that rages in one?s body in the midst of abuse. You can find out more about Mike?s work at therestinitiative.org.

The opposite of trauma is not "no trauma;" the opposite of trauma is connection. To be human is to be wounded. However, wounds heal naturally when the environment is right? and the right environment for healing is the empathic presence of another person. God made our brains and nervous systems to need one another. This is particularly true when it comes to engaging your story. You cannot engage your story alone. Sitting in your favorite chair with a journal, a Bible, a cup of coffee, and a good view out your window is not sufficient to heal your wounds. But the attuned presence of another human being can change your brain. 

Today I focus on two important ways that your body tells you things. The first is through your affect. Whenever your affect becomes dysregulated, your body is letting you know valuable information about your present environment? and about your past story. Dysregulation makes implicit memory known. And the second way that your body communicates with you is through impulses. Your body has impulses? impulses that it would like you to take more seriously than you probably do.

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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?and engaging?the experiences in your growing up years, you can better understand why your brain has been shaped in the way that it has. These are the topics that Dan, Cathy, and I explore in today?s episode. If you want to experience more of the healing power of understanding your own story, join the three of us in Atlanta, GA, on Saturday February 3, 2024, for the StoryWork Conference. The conference will be live streamed if you can?t make it to Atlanta. You can register by going to adamyoungcounseling.com. CEU?s are available for therapists. 

Your body knows things that your enskulled brain does not. Moreover, if you listen, your body will tell you important things?things that will help you heal. Your body is a truth teller. It is the trustworthy prophet from within. In today?s episode, I explain why it?s so important to listen to your body? and how to do it. 

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Friend and fellow therapist Matthias Roberts joins me today to share a very vulnerable story involving triangulation with his mother. How does an adolescent boy answer his Mom?s questions about his homosexuality when Mom is disgusted by it? This is a story about Matthias? deep love for God? and the torment he felt as a result. We talk about Matthias? immense hope that God would ?heal? his sexuality and how he came to feel God?s blessing rather than shame.

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Therapist and fellow podcaster Vanessa Sadler shares a story from when she was 11 years old. As children, all of us needed to belong?to feel ?a part of.? If we did not receive sufficient attunement from our primary caregivers, we likely experienced high levels of loneliness. The dilemma is that it may not have felt like loneliness because it was such a normal part of your life. Vanessa talks candidly about her loneliness growing up, as well as how she came to experience significant healing from that loneliness. You can follow Vanessa on Instagram @abidinginstory.

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I am joined today by therapist Jenny McGrath who is passionate about helping people heal from the damage of purity culture. One byproduct of purity culture is a disconnection from your body and a distrust of your body. If you feel shame about your body, or especially shame about your sexuality, this episode will hopefully help you. For those who want to dive deeper into these things, please consider signing up for Jenny?s Embodied Sexuality course. You can use coupon code ?PLACEWEFIND? to save $60 off the cost of the course. 

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Matthias Roberts joins me today to talk about his book Holy Runaways: Rediscovering Faith After Being Burned By Religion. Topics covered include: why belonging is so crucial for each of us, how to trust when you?ve been betrayed by others so many times before, and why it?s hard to open ourselves to actually receive care when it is available. 

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We pick up with Curt sharing about Cora?s experience in a story group. Specifically, we talk about about why Cora?s intense bouts of panic were her body?s way of saying ?something is wrong and needs care and attention.? We also talk about a woman named Cheyney who experiences deep healing as a result of taking in the acceptance and embrace of other group members in the precise moment when she is feeling intense shame. This is how neural networks get rewired. This is how healing happens. We need other people.

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Curt Thompson returns to the podcast to talk about how we heal from trauma. In short, trauma and emotional pain begin to heal when our stories are witnessed by an empathetic other. Curt shares a story from his newest book about a woman named Cora, who is disconnected from her emotions and finds it very hard to receive care from Curt. Curt?s newest book about suffering and healing is called The Deepest Place. 

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Jimmy McGee and Rebecca Wheeler Walston join me to talk about how they came to understand the importance of trauma and story engagement. If you want to engage your story in more depth, the Impact Movement is hosting an online event called Hope and Anchor Story Weekend. This zoom event will take place Sept 30 to Oct 1. You can find out more here.

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I am joined today by my friend Rebekah, who shares a story from when she was six years old. Topics covered include: feeling like there is something wrong with you but not knowing what it is, self-doubt about how you see reality, difficulty trusting your gut, learning to listen to your body and to trust the information that it is giving you.

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Fellow therapist Mary Ellen Owen joins me today to share her journey with sorrow. Like many people with trauma, it took Mary Ellen years to find her tears, years to befriend her sorrow. Although she cognitively knew that grief was necessary for healing, something within her said ?hell no? to feeling the unfelt sorrow. In this final episode in a series on grief and sorrow, Mary Ellen shares how she came to befriend her sorrow. In the words of Fredrick Buechner, ?Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are but, more often than not, God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next.?

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I am joined today by Heather Stringer, who has lots of experience creating rituals that heal. Heather begins by describing two rituals: one focused on recovering from sexual assault and the second focused on preparing for a double mastectomy surgery. Heather and I talk about why ritual is so unfamiliar to many of us, and the healing that occurs when we begin to move our bodies in particular ways, especially when others are present to bear witness to the ritual. 

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I am joined by Cathy Loerzel to talk about how to engage another person?s story. Effective story engagement is not a magical skill that some people have and some people don?t. It can be learned. Today we give a preview of some of the principles and tactics of effective story engagement. If you want to learn more, consider joining us on Saturday, May 13, for a zoom conference on How to Engage Another Person?s Story. You can sign up here.

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Jay Stringer joins me to talk about the relationship between our current sexual difficulties and our story in our family of origin. Sexual struggles are rooted in our stories?and, very often, our stories of attachment to our primary caretakers. As Jay puts it, ?When it comes to sexual struggles, there are always two story lines at play: there is the story line of your present sexual struggles, and then there is the story line of your growing up experiences which set you up for those present sexual struggles.? If you want to explore your sexual story in more depth, please sign up for the Sexual Attachment Conference on May 5-6. You can sign up here. 

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In order to heal from sorrow, we need to move our bodies as we participate in rituals of honoring and releasing our sorrow. A ritual is a sequence of bodily movements and symbolic actions performed with emotion and intention for the purpose of healing and transformation. By the end of this episode, I hope you have a good understanding of what a ritual is and why rituals work. And I hope you begin to develop an imagination for how to do rituals, what it actually might look like for you. You can perform a ritual by yourself. However, rituals are more powerful?and more healing for the community?when others are involved as witnesses to your pain.

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This is part 2 in a series of episodes on how to engage our sorrow and grief in a way that brings healing. The focus today is on the four conditions needed to allow us to work with sorrow and grief. First, we need to own that our sorrows and griefs matter and should be taken seriously. Second, we need to gradually move from a posture of contempt toward our sorrow and grief to a posture of compassion and kindness and welcome. Third, we need to find a few people who can be the village for us? this will allow us to risk sharing our sorrow and grief with other people. And, fourth, we need to move our bodies in a way that allows for the integration and release of our sorrow and grief. 

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For most modern people, the place we find ourselves is in a land where grief and sorrow are unwelcome. Most of us do not feel like the people around us can bear the depth of our sorrow and grief. And since we don?t want to risk our sense of belonging?our sense of acceptance?we hide our sorrow and grief. But sorrow and grief are real. In today?s episode, I identify some of the types of sorrow and grief that we all carry. Then I discuss the immense cost of denying our sorrow/grief and invite you to consider what it would look like to welcome your sorrow and grief and bring it into the light.

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This episode is a joint release of The Allender Center podcast and The Place We Find Ourselves.

We have all experienced hurt, abandonment, or disappointment at the hands of our parents or caretakers, whether it was intentional or not. So much of our beauty and brokenness ? so much of what makes us human ? is tied to our family of origin. In today?s episode, Dan Allender and I discuss what it means to begin engaging the harm that we endured during our growing up years. Are we dishonoring our father and mother if we name the hurt we experienced growing up? Should we just ?let it go?? If you want to learn more about how to engage your story in your family of origin, please join Dan and I for a 2 hour webinar on February 23, 2023. You can register here.

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I?m joined today by theologian and author Pete Enns, who also co-hosts a podcast called The Bible for Normal People. Although we talk about quantum physics at the end, the focus of our conversation is ?What do you do when you experience something that calls into question your understanding of who God is and what God is doing in the world?? Pete calls these experiences curveballs, and he suggests that these experiences are good things that cause us to grow and mature in our faith. If you want to hear more about this topic, you can check out his recently published book Curveball.

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God created our hearts, minds, and bodies to heal. When the conditions are right, healing will occur. Therefore, it?s important to clear away the things that block the right conditions for healing. Today I discuss four of the most common obstacles to healing: minimizing your story, spiritualizing the bad things that have happened to you, self-contempt, and the frenetic pace of your life.

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Last year I saw an Instagram post asking people to share stories of Bible verses that had been used against them. The comments section was devastating. I read story after story of how the Bible had been used to do immense harm. The verse that was most frequently mentioned? Jeremiah 17:9, which says, ?the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.? In today?s episode I take a close look at what Jeremiah 17:9 is really saying. I also make some comments about what the Bible teaches concerning whether or not your heart can be trusted. 

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Connections between brain regions lead to a healthy and stable brain (and a healthy and stable life). Trauma prevents these brain connections. This is known as fragmentation. In today?s episode, I explain how trauma leads to fragmentation in the brain and why fragmentation makes you feel unstable in your day to day life. I then suggest that when we feel unstable, we are drawn toward theologies and worldviews that offer certainty. The fragmentation in your brain resulting from trauma can make you a very dogmatic person. Why? Because, as Dan Allender says, ?The more certain you become, the less fragmented you feel.?

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Pascale Wright joins me today to share a very vulnerable story from her childhood. The temptation is to view her story as one of neglect? but it?s not. We cover a lot of ground today, including: Pascale?s ambivalence about longing for care from her therapist and being afraid of his care at the same time, how our family of origin story plays out in the client-therapist relationship, how our family of origin story affects our relationship with God, and the mysteriousness of self-harm.

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Today?s episode looks more deeply at the spiritual abuse KJ Ramsey suffered at the hands of Christian leaders. We begin by talking about the relationship that many Christians have with their emotions. Drawing from her story of spiritual abuse, KJ talks about the pull to silence parts of ourselves in the name of belonging. We each have a deep desire to belong? and the fear of exclusion sometimes keeps us bound to abusive people and harmful churches. KJ explains that when we are wounded by spiritual leaders, we often lose our ability to trust ourselves. If you want to hear more of KJ's story, check out her recently published book titled The Lord Is My Courage. 

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I am joined by KJ Ramsey to talk through her new book, ?The Lord Is My Courage.? KJ explains why it?s so important to be honest and clear about the ways we have been harmed, and how our bodies often reveal truths about our trauma that our minds are afraid to speak out loud. Gabor Mate says that ?Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.? KJ and I both love that sentence and share our thoughts about it. 

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Many people with a history of trauma find themselves stuck. Stuck in a place of hopelessness about our own healing. It?s this sense of ?nothing significant is really going to change for me.? The present ordering of your life?the way things are?claims to be the final ordering of your life. Drawing from the book of Jeremiah, today?s episode explores the question, ?What if God is free to create a new beginning in your life that is underived from your present circumstances??

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I?m joined today by Rich Villodas, pastor of New Life Church in New York City. Rich shares a story of trauma that happened when he was 12 years old. He then explains how that traumatic experience was reenacted 30 years later. We also cover how and why Rich decided to explore his own story, as well as the importance of listening to our bodies in our day to day life. If you want to hear more from Rich, please check out his recently published book Good and Beautiful and Kind: Becoming Whole In a Fractured World.

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Cathy Loerzel joins me to talk about why it?s so important to do the work to understand your story, particularly your family of origin story. In short, the three reasons are: understanding your story will allow you to experience healing, stop reenacting your past in the present, and discover what you are meant to do in your part of the world (discover your kingdom). Near the beginning of the episode Cathy shares a personal example of how her family of origin story is presently affecting the way she shows up in her marriage. I do the same thing at the end. What fun. Cathy and I will be co-leading the ?Understanding Your Story Workshop? on Saturday, November, 19. It?s virtual, via zoom. You can register at adamyoungcounseling.com. 

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This is the final episode in a four-part series on how to engage another person?s story. We conclude by looking at the final seven tactics for effective story engagement. Tactic 6: Continually bring your dialogue with the storyteller back to the story they have shared. Tactic 7: Identify the storyteller?s feeling of complicity in their abuse. Tactic 8: This is going to sound both odd and wrong: you have to amplify the storyteller?s shame. Tactic 9: Notice when the storyteller turns on themselves? and name it. Tactic 10: Invite the storyteller to feel their grief. Tactic 11: Use data points from their story to build a case.  Tactic 12: Explore their posture toward the boy or girl in the story.

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In Part 3 of this series on how to engage someone?s story, we look at five specific tactics you can use. Tactic 1: Explore the trauma before the trauma. Tactic 2: Explore triangulation. Tactic 3: Ask (good) provocative questions. Tactic 4: Invite the storyteller to be embodied as they are engaging with you. Tactic 5: Name and address betrayal, powerlessness, and ambivalence in the story.

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This is part 2 of a series of episodes on how to engage another person?s story. Today, we look at principles 3-7 of effective story engagement. Principle 3: Use the exquisite instrument that is your body. Principle 4: Always be monitoring the storyteller?s affect. Principle 5: Your right brain matters much more than your left brain when you are engaging someone?s story. Principle 6: Remember that there is always a reason for human behavior. Principle 7: Repairing rupture is more important than engaging their story perfectly.

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Engaging another person?s story is a skill that can be learned! Over the course of the next four episodes, I will explain how to engage another person?s story well. Today, I discuss the first two principles of effective story engagement. Principle 1: Attunement is more important than engaging the story brilliantly. Principle 2: Kindness will take you further than skill.

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John Eldredge joins me today to talk about how to care for our hearts and bodies in the wake of trauma. Topics include how to navigate life when you feel deeply disappointed by God, how to access the mothering of God, and why it?s so important to get a piece of paper and write down our losses so that we might grieve them. Today?s episodes is based on John?s new book ?Resilient: Restoring Your Weary Soul In These Turbulent Times.?

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I am joined today by Christian neuroscientist Curt Thompson. In this vulnerable conversation, Curt and I talk about: why our brains change when we share our story with another human being who is attuned to us, why engaging your story is the single best way to become a better parent, and why it?s so important to pay attention to the younger parts of ourselves.

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This is part 2 of a discussion on the necessity of naming intentional harm. You can?t heal until your brain has constructed an accurate and coherent autobiographical narrative of your life. Today I introduce the idea of antisocial empathy, which is a very important concept from David Schnarch?s book Brain Talk. I also talk about how to heal when traumatic mind-mapping results in gaps in your memory.

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Naming intentionality matters because if you are unsure about whether or not the other person meant to hurt you, it will be very difficult for you to heal from your wounds. This is because you can?t heal until your brain has constructed an accurate and coherent autobiographical narrative of your life: the narrative has to be true and it has to make sense. Drawing from David Schnarch?s book Brain Talk, I explain two important concepts: mind-mapping and traumatic mind-mapping. Mind-mapping refers to your ability to map out the thoughts and feelings of another person. Traumatic mind-mapping is a collapse of your brain?s normal mind mapping abilities that occurs when you are mind-mapping someone and what you see is terrible.

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I am joined today by Aundi Kolber, the author of Try Softer: A Fresh Approach to Move Us out of Anxiety, Stress, and Survival Mode ? and into a Life of Connection and Joy. We discuss the importance of paying attention to what is happening inside your body, as well as having a posture of compassion and curiosity toward your internal experience. We often respond to our life experiences by ?trying harder.? Aundi invites us into the very counter-cultural practice of trying softer. 

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Bonus episode! Cathy Loerzel and I dive into why it?s crucial to take your wounds seriously, and how your wounds lead to the ?orphan experience,? ?stranger experience,? and/or ?widow experience.? We also talk about what redemption looks like for each of these three types of wounding. Jesus takes our experiences of trauma and redeems them. That is, God creates glory, meaning and calling out of the very things that were designed to hurt us. If you want to better understand what redemption can look like for you, Cathy and I will be co-leading a live Redeeming Heartache event on May 21, 2022, in Fort Collins, CO. You can sign up here.

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Jerry Sittser is the author of A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss. He is no stranger to trauma. Jerry and I cover the following topics in this episode: our tendency to try to muscle our way through pain; how adversity in our present life invites us to return to our past story; and how to keep going when facing sadness, anger, exhaustion, and longing.

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Anxiety can be so debilitating. But what exactly is it? Why do we feel anxious? And how can we address it? Anxiety is what you feel when you are avoiding important unfelt emotions. And your anxiety is almost always related to some particular part of your story. 

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I am joined today by Jay Stringer to talk about the relationship between our current sexual difficulties and our attachment histories. At some point in our lives, each of us will encounter difficulties in our sexual life. It might be the compulsive use of unwanted sexual behavior or a struggle to locate any sexual desire at all. Sexual struggles are rooted in our stories?and, very often, our stories of attachment to our primary caretakers and adverse childhood experiences. If you want to explore this material in more depth, please sign up for the Sexual Attachment Conference on Saturday, April 30. You can sign up here. 

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This is part 2 of my interview with Wendell Moss about racial trauma. Today we continue to discuss the importance of naming what has been true of the past so that we might be free from it. We also begin to talk about what the path toward healing looks like, including the role of lament in the healing process.

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I am joined today by Wendell Moss. Wendell is a therapist, an instructor at the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and part of The Allender Center teaching staff. We discuss a blog post Wendell wrote for The Allender Center called, ?Racial Trauma: The Marks We Bear.? Topics covered include the importance of naming what has been true of our collective past and what is required for healing to begin to occur.

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Complicity often haunts people with a history of trauma more than anything else. The essence of complicity is the sense that I volitionally participated in my own abuse. In today?s episode, I outline four ways in which we may feel complicit in our abuse, and then talk about how to address the feeling of complicity by blessing arousal.

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Rebecca Wheeler Walston joins me today to talk about how she came to engage her story in more depth. She also shares a story of significant harm at the hands of fellow Christians. It is a story of harm from those in a position of spiritual authority. Rebecca and I talk about how hard it is to make sense of experiences of spiritual abuse. We also ponder the role that envy may have played in her story.

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