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.

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...

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. 

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.

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...

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...

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…...

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...

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...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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.

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...

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. 

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?”

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...

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...

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...

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.

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...

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.

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.”

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.