I breathed myself to life, and so can you. My own recovery from the trauma of sexual repression drew me towards the healing medicine of yoga. I am a psychotherapist and a yoga teacher. My passion, obsession, and saving grace is embodiment鈥攖he experience of inhabiting the home of your body. Social forces and generational/personal trauma split the psyche into compartmentalization and dissociation, which inhibit us from fully inhabiting our own skin. I came into this work by following the golden thread of aliveness that vibrated inside of me whenever I stepped towards an act of embodiment.

My journey towards my profession and passion began by confronting my own pain of living in a deadened body.

鈥淢y journey towards my profession and passion began by confronting my own pain of living in a deadened body.鈥�

As a girl I was steeped in an evangelical church that was emotionally and sexually repressed. I was taught to dissociate from my emotion and sexuality. Eager to perform for my community, I was one of the 鈥榞ood鈥� ones. My dissociative abilities grew stronger as they were reinforced and praised. I swallowed my emotions and wore my pledge of virginity until marriage like a badge of honor. I committed to these ideas with resolve, to the point of receiving a purity tattoo鈥攁 dove on my hip that I wouldn鈥檛 allow anyone to see until my wedding night.

As a child I was tirelessly praised for my goodness, my ability to follow all of the rules set before me. The only price I had to pay for this endless stream of praise was my unwavering compliance with the group norms of emotional and sexual repression. As long as I agreed that the impulses of my body were wrong and should be ignored at all costs, I was given power, respect, and trust from a group of people I deeply respected.

As a 3 on the Enneagram, 鈥渢he performer,鈥� my disposition lends me towards being preoccupied with how others see me. 鈥楪ood鈥� became my identity, and my value was centered around how well I could perform to the expectations of those in authority around me. My obsession with blamelessness made me feel afraid to consider my own right to connection and desire.

It is painful to realize I was brainwashed out of connecting to my own sensuality. Over and over again I kissed my college boyfriend (who is now my incredible, gracious husband) while willing myself outside of my body and interrupting our connection if we got 鈥榯oo close.鈥� For years. For five years. That is too many years of not surrendering to the wisdom of our bodies. Our super power, being deeply present with each other, was shadowed by shame and secrecy. By the time we decided we had waited long enough to have sex, I had retreated so far from the felt experience of my body that I didn鈥檛 know how to enjoy it.

Dissociation is the psychological process of blocking out what an individual considers to be harmful. What is defined as 鈥榟armful鈥� within an individual is often the parts of self that may inhibit a sense of belonging to a particular community. I was taught that my body was bad and not to be trusted, so I spent the vast majority of my life ignoring what it was saying to me out of an ethical duty to be 鈥榞ood.鈥� I鈥檓 not the only one. The bodies of countless people growing up within Evangelical communities have been affected by the shameful rhetoric of purity culture.

The trauma of neglecting and shaming my body during vital years of sexual development caused a severe split between my mind and my body. We don鈥檛 learn how to be in our bodies unless we are taught how to follow sensation. In order to keep my purity pledge, I did everything in my power to sever myself from sensation, and in the process inadvertently sent the message to my brain that connection to my body was not to be trusted. My evil body tempted me into sexual sin鈥攁n age-old fable more concerned with power than with sex.

Yoga was the first place I learned how to inhabit my body intimately, in a way that wasn鈥檛 overtly sexual. Yoga was a neutral environment I could enter to learn how to de-thaw my body, without having to hold the emotional complexity of sexual shame that would often come up during sex. It has been through my own yoga practice that I鈥檝e learned that there is ancient medicine in using breath and movement in order to bring bodies back to life. What has historically been my biggest weakness is turning into my biggest strength because my pain forced me to look so closely at my body.

鈥淭here is ancient medicine in using breath and movement in order to bring bodies back to life.鈥�

While I was still dry humping Ben in church parking lots (#wheatonlyfe) in 2006, I attended a 鈥榮tretching and breathing鈥� class (yoga, in disguise) that changed my life. My body, which I had spent so much time trying to separate from and control, was now being gently paid attention to. I learned how to use movement as prayer, and for the first time I began to see how being with my body was a worshipful experience. It made my heart burst wide open to pay attention to myself in this way. Each time I laid in savasana, the final resting pose at the end of a yoga class, I came into direct contact with the weirdness and goodness of my body, the pure delight of feeling my own aliveness. These magical experiences in my body drew me to enroll in a yoga teacher training the summer before I started class at 天美视频. Immersed in the world of body wisdom I began, piece by piece, to land into a body I wasn鈥檛 fully aware I had disowned.

After I graduated, I spent four years working at , a local eating disorder clinic that was my therapeutic boot camp. Working with clients with eating disorders is a minefield of body hatred and dissociation, and I needed to learn quickly how to help my clients tolerate being in bodies that felt deeply unsafe to inhabit. I voraciously read books on embodiment and somatic healing from trauma, and I realized as I read that I needed to heal myself. The deeper I dove into healing my relationship with my body, the more I could teach my students how to find islands of safety within their own skin.

Dissociation is a form of trauma that leaves the body frozen, numb, and unresponsive. When trauma and neglect happen, we need to vacate. It is a sweet gift that the body doesn鈥檛 allow us to come into full contact with the enormity of our pain when we aren鈥檛 safe enough to feel it. I see the body as a manifestation of the unconscious mind, and when we work explicitly with the physical body, we grow awareness to the most hidden parts of our psyche. Yoga is a way to slowly reintroduce ourselves to the disowned parts of ourselves. Using the tools of breath and focused awareness, we can gradually thaw the frozen, clenched parts of our bodies. Now in my private practice, I鈥檓 teaching my clients and yoga students how to reclaim the uncharted waters of their own bodies using meditation, yoga, and breathing practices.

It wasn鈥檛 until I began connecting to my body that I realized how deeply disconnected I had been my entire life. Even now, after spending the last decade working to integrate the experiences of my body, I鈥檓 more aware than ever about how much I still don鈥檛 know about this earth suit of mine. It is endlessly mysterious and mystical to discover the maps of intelligence that are encoded into our bodies. I鈥檒l never arrive at a perfectly embodied or integrated place, but I have breathed myself into a new body. A more fluid, open, welcoming, and grounded body. A body that knows how to lean into care because of all those times she leaned into the earth in savasana and felt held.

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鈥溾�nd by his wounds we are healed.鈥� (Isaiah 53:5)

Earlier this spring, my family and I came across a(n) (un)welcome surprise: We had joined forces with a tree that hid our home from others, but also from ourselves. What鈥檚 more, like this hiding tree, we realized we had each been hiding from each other, and also from the world around us. And it was by the wounds of this (tree) friend that we were healed. Let me explain.

My wife had been suggesting that we cut the tree down for any number of years, but I hadn鈥檛 been open to the idea. She knew she鈥檇 need to keep peppering me with this suggestion, until one day I would bend. I did, and welcome to our relationship.

It turns out the real estate agent who sold us our house back in 2009 had made a similar suggestion fairly immediately upon seeing our house for the first time. You see, our house was depressed when we bought it. It had held the energies of what sounded like a pretty brutal divorce, and it came onto the market mid-depressive episode. It would take lots of cans of paint, new carpet, and a series of house blessings from a team of pastors to clear the air in our home. Those dark, depressive energies seemed to be fairly deeply rooted, not unlike our hiding tree.

Our hiding tree was a Japanese maple, and alongside of the tree that stood beside it, this tree had kept our house from being fully seen from top to bottom. We live in a split-level home, which is fairly boxy, and this hiding tree contributed to the apparent plainness of our home鈥檚 curb appeal. So these suggestions to take down the tree had everything to do with aesthetics: Our house would be more visible and would appear less overgrown if we allowed it to be better seen. The beauty of this hiding tree had become a source of its contribution to the concealment of (or in) our home.

My wife and I are both therapists, and when we got together, we had a lot of learning to do in terms of the art and skill of vulnerable living. I came to our relationship loaded with theories that could cover insecurities, vulnerabilities, and frailties. My ability to theorize is actually a thing of beauty and something that contributes to my calling(s) in life, both as teacher and as a healer, but my ability to theorize is also a beauty I鈥檝e hidden behind, often concealing the life that twists and turns within me.

鈥淢y ability to theorize is also a beauty I鈥檝e hidden behind, often concealing the life that twists and turns within me.鈥�

But back to the felling of this tree: It was a Sunday morning, and our family had chosen to stay home and get some housework done, rather than going to church. What we didn鈥檛 know was that 鈥渃hurch鈥� would be coming to us that morning. I started to cut some of the smaller branches of the tree: the ones that were fairly high up but also within reach from the ground. The cut limbs began to weep. The water that had coursed through their veins now poured out onto the ground with surprising haste. I began to feel the pain I imagined this tree was experiencing, as I cut and as it was cut. My own body started to ache as I pressed on in my work, soon realizing that this tree and me were in a deeply spiritual contact with one another.

Soon I called my wife and our three boys over to the area where the tree had once stood, and I spoke with resonance to the life and pending death of this tree, and to how it had clearly served as a vestige of pain and hiding: a legacy of the house that was our house before it became our home. Maybe the irony of this service was that, by all appearances, the tree in and of itself was beautiful.

Ever since, I鈥檝e been working with this experience turned memory. That spring Sunday in March our family, to a person, each spoke to the ways we felt freer as a result of the ritual we spontaneously created as we brought the hiding tree down. We each confessed to each other, and to the more-than-human world around us, how we had joined with the tree in our respective hidings: We were each able to articulate ways we used 鈥渢hings,鈥� maybe even things that looked good (e.g. for me, a busy schedule), to keep us from more stark exposure to each other, and to the world that awaits and calls us by name.

Typing these words I鈥檓 quickly reminded of what I learned when I came to 天美视频 (then Mars Hill Graduate School) as a Master of Divinity student in 2002: I had used the beauty of a strong intellect (remember that theorizing my wife referenced?) and my intensity as an 鈥�8鈥� on the Enneagram (too much is just about enough for me) to become quite technically proficient at practicing and teaching the life and work of a therapist, all the while hiding myself from myself and also from the world around me.

I鈥檓 currently listening to a book on tape entitled , by psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb. The book follows multiple therapy patients, including the life that Gottlieb has lived as a patient herself. In talking about what separates more senior clinicians from those that are proverbially greener, Gottlieb notes that one has to be willing to be the same person, the same 鈥渟elf,鈥� both inside and outside of the therapy office, in order to set oneself apart as more senior or advanced in the work. In other words, if I put on the garb of therapist and I use such a costume to distance myself and my clients from my own human experiences and vulnerabilities, then the work of therapy (and probably best said the therapeutic relationship) will not progress in the same way it would if I felt freer to be me across time, space, and frame.

In my listening, as I move back and forth between my use of the word 鈥渃lient鈥� and Gottlieb鈥檚 use of the word 鈥減atient,鈥� I am reminded that the Latin root of the latter is the word patiens, which means 鈥渢o suffer.鈥� So a therapist treats 鈥渙ne who suffers.鈥� But a therapist being true to all of who they are means that they are patiens, ones who suffer, as well. The version of me that came to seminary was acquainted with grief and suffering, but of the ilk of serving others who were supposedly experiencing it differently (more profoundly) than I. It was only in being cracked open by my practicum (Listening Lab), personal counseling, and other extra-curricular experiences that I came to believe that being a co-traveler (ala Irvin Yalom) would be the only path to shared healing.

In April, Meg Wheatley, renowned organizational psychologist and author of , came to campus and put a call out for 鈥渉uman human beings鈥� who could serve as 鈥渋slands of sanity鈥� for each other in an age that calls for 鈥渨arriors of the human spirit.鈥� Meg spoke to how the ever-present need for belonging can twist and turn its way into lots of unhealthy human behaviors and interactions.

One way such a downgrading happens is when a person decides to take on a role as a way of limiting their exposure to the interconnectedness of all things. Gregory Bateson, a systems-thinker and major player in the establishment of the field of cybernetics, called roles a 鈥渉alf-assed relationship,鈥� in that surrendering one鈥檚 interconnectedness to the discreteness of a role allows and results in half-assed living for the role-bearer. This is often the way of it for many who find themselves in helping roles, healing capacities, and/or positions of spiritual authority: Their roles become their identities, their identities become half-assed, and they function as other/less than human humans (a nod to social identity theory).

If this month鈥檚 blog posts are about nurturing and formation, it wouldn鈥檛 take a far reach to claim that positions of leadership (including the pastorate, helping, and healing professions) often stifle those very things (nurturance and formation) in the people who serve in such posts. Rather than being permitted the messiness of having needs and of fraying at the edges like formation so often requires, such leaders are invited to be anything but human as they are charged to constrict and/or to restrict themselves to that which appears shiny and clean.

鈥淟eaders are invited to be anything but human as they are charged to constrict and/or to restrict themselves to that which appears shiny and clean.鈥�

Like our family鈥檚 home, helpers and healers are often subtly charged to hide behind beautiful things. It鈥檚 a beautiful thing to be called into ministry. It鈥檚 a beautiful thing to be in a position to see and to name on behalf of another. It鈥檚 a beautiful thing to walk the road of healer, having tasted some of the trials and tribulations that have brought people to one鈥檚 door asking, seeking, and knocking (Matthew 7:7). Our society desperately needs healing professionals and spiritual leaders willing to heed the call of caring for others. In a land rife with derision, we need to become 鈥渋slands of sanity鈥� for each other (thanks again, Meg Wheatley!).

That said, one can hide out on an island, just like one can hide out behind a beautiful Japanese maple. For me, the call to hide long preceded me. I come from a long line of men who hide behind positions of power and influence, or behind an absence of words or authentic encounter with another. A mix of Methodist good works (appearances) and Presbyterian rigidities (male privileging) coupled with war-time trauma, sickness, and a modern-era milieu populated with a toxic male code (see David & Brannon, 1976) contribute(d) to my ongoing tendency to use beauty (my intellect, my speed of processing, my use of words, and other performance-related variables) to hide.

But it is by the wounds of the suffering servant that we are healed (Isaiah 53:5). The felling of our hiding tree offered us a taste of that very reality. Our family was able to trade one beauty (hiding) for another (warmth and connection), in the form of a repurposed engagement with our hiding tree. Branches are now neatly stacked and ready to be used for summer backyard bonfires, and a seedling that had started to randomly grow on its own has since been replanted in our front yard, showing good signs of vim and vigor but also standing at least 10 yards from our house.

Beauty requires deliberation (see the work of Elaine Scarry), and beauty renders us impotent (and also the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar). Beauty calls, and the recipient responds. Beauty can and will draw us face-to-face with our need to receive, and with our need for divine encounter. But beautiful things can also be used to limit, if not conceal, other forms of goodness longing to be exposed to the light. Rooms on both levels of our home now beam with light in ways they never had before, and that light calls each person in our family to do and be the same.

So maybe an invitation for any of us who serve in helping or healing capacities, or who are called into one or more positions of spiritual authority: Where do you allow what was planted before you to keep root in a form that hides the fullness of who you are? Where do we take what we鈥檝e been given, bidden and unbidden, replete with beauty but also defense, and repurpose such into opportunities for warmth and connection?

Chances are it was our wounds that got us into our work, whatever it may be, in the first place. Wounds heal not only on or in bodies, but also in souls as well. Roles protect humans from the inevitable wounding of their humanity, and beautiful things can be used to hide deeper goodness. Islands can isolate, or islands can protect. And always we begin again.

Feeling called or compelled to emerge in some way? If so, please don鈥檛 be bashful in sharing with others: Our own nurturance, formation, and sanity awaits.

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This month on the Intersections blog, we are exploring the art of nurturing our identity and formation in a way that allows us to continue growing in wisdom, empathy, and clarity of calling. It is a challenge to open ourselves to the care and sustenance needed to sustain deep, meaningful service in the places of deep need all around us. And in order to open ourselves to care, we must also be able to identify the places of our identities that are still impacted and influenced by our histories of harm and internalized messages of shame.

In that vital, difficult work, we were deeply inspired by the research and insights offered by Gabes Torres, MA in Counseling Psychology student, MA in Theology & Culture alumna, and Program Assistant for The Allender Center, as she presented her Integrative Project in 2018. Gabes鈥檚 project, 鈥�Ang Mga Sugatang Kamay na Naghain sa Lamesa (The Scarred Hands that Set the Table)鈥擳he Violation of Hospitality: Consequences from Centuries of Colonization in the Philippines,鈥� wrestles with the painful scars that grow out of colonialism.

For this project, Gabes interviewed a Filipino woman who works in hospitality industries in the United States. Gabes describes the woman鈥檚 impulse toward subservience鈥攁 fear of saying no, challenging authority, or naming experiences of harm鈥攖hat is common among Filipino workers. Gabes argues that that subservience is a reflection of the manipulation and corrupt power dynamics at the heart of colonialism and imperialism.

鈥淭he irony here is in the fact that these events are taking place within the context of hospitality industries, and these reports violate the very meaning of hospitality,鈥� says Gabes. 鈥淏ecause the true practice of hospitality exists in the mutuality of responsibility and roles between host and guest, where there is a shared power, there is an equal value, acceptance, protection, service, and respect towards one another.鈥�

鈥淭he true practice of hospitality exists in the mutuality of responsibility and roles between host and guest.鈥�

To unpack the ongoing effects of colonization in Filipino culture, tradition, and even sense of self, Gabes says it is important to take a look at history and follow the narrative threads that are still very much at play today. But Gabes advises caution in doing so, since most of the dominant historical narratives propagate the belief that explorers and colonizers helped advance a 鈥減rimitive鈥� culture, rather than exposing the violence and irreversible harm brought by colonization. To meaningfully reflect on where we are today, we must be willing to tell the full, honest stories of where we have been.

鈥淣ot only do the artifacts of Spanish colonization and American imperialism spread out in language, in architecture, in our very names, but also in the ideas of the Filipinos, their ideas about themselves, and others, and their relationship to others,鈥� says Gabes. 鈥淚t is also very disturbing to realize that we do not need to be in North America to see the impact and pervasiveness of American exceptionalism and white supremacy.鈥�

Gabes argues that the end result of colonialism is an erasure of the self. Colonized people are taught to welcome and accommodate others at the expense of welcoming themselves as they are, and in the process the self is compromised and rejected. In response to this reality, Gabes ends her presentation with a letter that she wrote to her ancestors鈥攁 stunning, insightful work of art, and a profound assertion and celebration of self in the face of systemic harm.

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I haven鈥檛 been sleeping well lately. I can鈥檛 seem to make it through the night without some strange dream clawing at my psyche.

I climb out of bed and try to settle myself again with a book or an hour of scrolling through Instagram. I know that it doesn鈥檛 really help, but it comforts me.

Sometimes I can hear my daughter shifting in her room, a sleepy momma slipping from beneath her door. She can sense me, my little werewolf, I joke to myself. Her favorite book to pull from my shelf is . I haven鈥檛 read it yet; I bought it years ago because someone said it reminded them of me. Maybe she and the Universe are conspiring to get me to pick it up.

Maybe I will; I do a lot of things because she wills me to somehow.

From day to day, parenting is painfully mundane. It鈥檚 a lot of routine and repetition; the same games, the same books, the same lessons. My iPhone has become my constant companion, ready to entertain me at any moment my daughter might happen to look away. Despite reading multiple articles on the subject, I recently decided to give up checking my phone while I鈥檓 with her based on her behavior鈥攏ot outbursts or tantrums, only her own growing desire to whittle away her hours in front of a screen.

It鈥檚 been a difficult sacrifice to make, putting my phone away while I鈥檓 with her, and I have yet to make it through a day successfully. My social media accounts do more than keep my boredom at bay; they help me to feel involved in the outside world, keep me from getting too lonely. They also overwhelm me, distracting me with their content long after I鈥檝e put my phone down. And, I鈥檝e realized, they keep me from facing the darkest parts of myself.

I don鈥檛 have very nice things to say, or rather think. I didn鈥檛 grow up in a home dripping with affection鈥攆or anyone, really. My family taught me how to protect and defend myself; my step-father would quiz me daily about what I noticed on my walk home from elementary school.

You always, always have to be aware of your surroundings,聽his voice echoes when I find myself getting too familiar with my environment.

My mother isn鈥檛 an unkind woman, but one for whom things, people, are rarely good or good enough. Her nature comes easily to me鈥攎y inheritance, maybe.

When I鈥檓 online, it鈥檚 easy for me to direct my hatred at unseen others: strangers who add antagonizing comments to the posts of friends, old high school classmates gleefully announcing their Go Fund Me donations toward Trump鈥檚 wall. I project my doubts onto other artists who are just starting out, and worst of all, I pour out my bitterness over the artists who are succeeding and who I deem lesser than me. I count these amongst my ugliest thoughts.

Without my digital scapegoats, my vitriol has the clearest path to its true target: me. The first thought that popped into my head the day that I started my screen-free experiment was, Boy, you鈥檙e a shitty mom. It was closely followed by its sibling thoughts about my appearance, my work ethic, my abilities, the invalidity of my dreams. There was no real reason for these thoughts, nothing in the moment to motivate them to come. They don鈥檛 really need a reason, they live with me, are a part of me. They鈥檝e just been waiting for a quiet moment to speak.

鈥淲ithout my digital scapegoats, my vitriol has the clearest path to its true target: me.鈥�

If my time at 天美视频 taught me anything, it鈥檚 that all of us feel this way. Some more than others, but all of us still. It鈥檚 part of what it means to be human in this world. We all have shortcomings, doubts, and fears, and they are ready to contend with us. Some have merit and some don鈥檛, but we will never be able to distinguish what鈥檚 true from what isn鈥檛 unless we face the parts of ourselves that bring us the most shame. There鈥檚 no healing, no transformation without reflection. It can be painful and we may not be ready at any given point; it could take years, a lifetime even. But we have to be aware that our self-contempt paints an incomplete picture of who we are.

I pride myself on being a woman with a keen sense of clarity about who I am, but I鈥檝e lived most of my life unable to see my own goodness. I鈥檝e needed to hear about it from other people. Even then, I found a way to disseminate their words, convincing myself that their view of me was obscured. But it鈥檚 time to take off my own blinders, to seek out the goodness others have been telling me is there on my own.

Those negative thoughts are less intimidating when I鈥檓 able to see myself more clearly. When partnered with a more benevolent self-perspective, they can lead me into compassion and empathy, instead of shame and self-hatred.

This too is part of what it means to be human in this world: the amalgamation of the darkness and the light inside of us. They don鈥檛 have to be at war with one another, they can live symbiotically.

I used to think that living a good life meant following this rigid moral code that God had prescribed for us, one in which there was no place for darkness鈥攐ften considered 鈥渋mpurity鈥� or 鈥渟in.鈥� But I鈥檝e come to believe that living a good life means becoming more human, softer, more given to making mistakes. More able to learn from them, too.

This paradigm shift is right on time. I can never teach my little werewolf how to be fully human until I learn how to be one myself.

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鈥淭here is no one I am more inclined to speak with and learn from about marriage than Steve. His wisdom is astute, and his integrity is as true as his fly line is straight,鈥� writes Dr. Dan Allender, Professor of Counseling Psychology, in the book鈥檚 foreword. 鈥淚f I were to invite someone to read just one marriage book, including my own, I would recommend this volume.鈥�

Today we鈥檙e honored to share a conversation with Steve about what led him to write Reconnect, why disconnection in marriage is so common and so difficult, and his hopes for people who read the book. You can also listen to on The Allender Center Podcast, about the book and the fundamental components of recovering and sustaining connection where it has been lost.

Can you give us an overview of what Reconnect is all about?

This book really is about helping couples become more aware of the various issues that contribute to intermittent and sustained disconnection in their marriage. Reconnect was written to help couples develop new understanding, insight, and strategies to promote deeper connection and healing interaction in their marriage.

Why do you think disconnection is such a common experience in marriage?

Well, I think we each have different desires, hopes, wants, and needs鈥攕o of course this will create and lead to moments of disconnection in marriage. What鈥檚 missing for most marriages, though, is the process of reconnection when disconnection occurs. For most couples, disconnection is a familiar experience that occurs when we feel hurt. And, most often it occurs in the midst of conflict. When we feel hurt, we often withdraw, shut down, isolate ourselves, distract ourselves as a way to cope. Hurt essentially is the foundation of disconnection. And a failure to understand one another in the midst of the hurt is what perpetuates disconnection. Yet when we become aware of the hurt and move toward our spouse鈥檚 hurt without blame or judgement, understanding is cultivated鈥攚hich is the foundation for reconnection.

鈥淲hen we feel hurt, we often withdraw, shut down, isolate ourselves, distract ourselves as a way to cope. Hurt essentially is the foundation of disconnection.鈥�

How did Reconnect grow out of your experience鈥攁s a therapist, a professor, and a husband?

Over the years in my professional work with couples, I was noticing recurrent and common themes and patterns between couples鈥攁nd the central theme was a sense of feeling disconnected. And often, what was missing was how to recover, and essentially pursue reconnection. Most couples, including my marriage with Lisa, are often unaware of the dynamics that disrupt connection and unaware of the destructive effects of hurt, shame, and blame. Couples that are experiencing a sense of disconnection crave to experience reconnection but are often needing a roadmap of sorts to be able to return to one another in a way that facilitates reconnection.

What was the writing process like for you?

The hardest part of the writing process was simply taking the time to write. Writing is a terrifying experience. Writing this book has been one of the most vulnerable and transparent endeavors I have ever pursued. Mainly because I have written stories and reflections from my marriage with Lisa to help illustrate some of the common patterns within disconnection. Writing leaves us open to judgement and evaluation from readers, which is why it took me so long to finally write!

What kept you inspired as you worked through these ideas?

My good friend, colleague, and fly-fishing partner Dan Allender was such an influential and inspiring advocate to write. His persistent and consistent encouragement to put into writing my thoughts, ideas, experiences was absolutely essential in being able to finally write this book. And of course, my wife Lisa. She is such a wise, thoughtful, and insightful woman and has really helped shape and craft much of the understanding and clarity within the book.

What are your hopes for people who read this?

My hope is that couples will learn how to stay connected, especially in moments of conflict; that they will discover how shame is such a force in disconnection; that intimacy will be cultivated through their play with one another; and that they will discover insights, tools, and techniques that will help couples navigate the hopeful path toward reconnection.

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This month we鈥檝e wrestled with how we talk about addiction and how we relate to our bodies鈥攅specially this time of year, when the weight of expectations and the frustration of living as people-in-process can feel so prevalent. And if we are honestly engaging addiction and our bodies, the conversation will inevitably turn to sexual behavior. How do we honor the complexity of sexuality, especially in regards to behavior that is problematic or unfulfilling, without turning to old patterns of shame or empty indulgence?

In this video from his Symposia 2018 presentation, 鈥淲hat Our Sexual Fantasies (Might) Say About Us: Research from 3,800 People,鈥� Jay Stringer (MA in Counseling Psychology, 鈥�09) argues that opposing extremes of this conversation鈥攍ike the predominant Christian narrative of accountability and 鈥渏ust say no鈥� to lust, or a more sex-positive approach that ignores the possibility of harm and fails to find meaning in unwanted sexual behavior鈥攐nly serve to deepen the sense of shame for people who desire to change certain patterns.

鈥淚f we are willing to listen, our sexual life will have so much to teach us.鈥�

Jay, a licensed mental health therapist and ordained minister, proposes a new paradigm instead: listening to your lust. That鈥檚 at the core of Jay鈥檚 book, , which invites women and men to find meaning in the behaviors they pursue and to explore the stories that have shaped those behaviors. Jay argues that, whether we make lust the 鈥渂ad object鈥� or insist that sexual stigma is the primary enemy, we will fail to see meaningful change until we approach our behaviors with curiosity and enter our unaddressed stories.

Unwanted details the research that Jay conducted with 3,800 men and women, which draws connections between formative stories and enduring, present-day behaviors. Through the lens of two case studies, Jay shares some of the insights from that research鈥攍ike the possible connection between strict fathers and fantasies of dominance, and the ways that childhood humiliation might play out in secretive behaviors as adults. 鈥淲hat I can tell you from the data is that unwanted sexual behavior鈥攖he use of pornography, infidelity, and buying sex鈥攊s not random at all,鈥� says Jay. 鈥淚t is a direct reflection of the parts of our story that remain unaddressed.鈥�

Jay challenges us to stop pretending that unwanted behaviors don鈥檛 exist, and to stop believing that we can just silence them and make them go away. Instead, Jay invites us to listen to and study our behaviors, allowing them to serve as a 鈥渞oadmap to healing.鈥� If we allow them, our 鈥渟ymptoms鈥� may even prove to be prophetic鈥攄aring to say that which we could not otherwise say.

In that act of listening to our fantasies and telling our stories, Jay argues that we might be closer than ever to living into what the Apostle Paul describes as . 鈥淎nd renewing our mind is not about turning off our mind. It鈥檚 about turning to the affections and desires that God most deeply wants for us.鈥�

We are endlessly challenged, inspired, and energized by the courageous and thoughtful work of our alumni, like Jay Stringer. You can view all the Symposia 2018 presentation videos .

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Curt: 鈥淣o science ever exists independently, apart from being understood through a particular anthropology. When we understand the data that we discover through a lens of Christian anthropology, we come to recognize that the science itself is pointing to this inseparability of our spirituality and our biology.鈥�

Curt shares about his path to psychiatry, about being in medical school and becoming passionate about exploring the nature of suffering and the human response to it. He had already been asking big questions鈥擶hy do we do what we do? Why is it so difficult to change? What has that got to do with the Gospel?鈥攁nd bringing his spirituality to the field of psychiatry gave him room to wrestle with these questions in deep and meaningful ways. Now, with the growing body of insight from the field of neuroscience, Derek and Curt reflect on how that might energize our understanding of God and give us new language for what God has been up to all along.

Curt: 鈥淚n this particular time and space, neuroscience is one of the ways that God is not leaving Himself without a witness.鈥�

As Curt shares what he is learning about resilience, the conversation touches on education, parenting, and more. It鈥檚 clear that these insights into how we respond to suffering and how we foster resilience in relationship have a great deal to teach us about who we are, who God is, and how the world around us reveals the nature of both. It鈥檚 also clear that these are big ideas with significant implications, so we hope you鈥檒l join us April 20-21 as we welcome Curt Thompson back to 天美视频 to continue this conversation.

Curt: 鈥淲e have put thousands and thousands of people in fMRI scans to give us a sense of what a normal brain looks like under unstressed circumstances. But what if we got this wrong? What if a normal brain is a brain that is connected to another brain? What if that is actually the most resilient brain? […] It takes us right back to the Genesis account of creation.鈥�

Resources to Go Deeper

• by Curt Thompson
• by Curt Thompson
• by Lesslie Newbigin

About the Host

Dr. Derek McNeil is the Senior Vice President of Academics at 天美视频. He has a PhD in Counseling Psychology from Northwestern University and an MDiv from Fuller Theological Seminary, and his research, writing, and speaking have focused on issues of ethnic and racial socialization, the role of forgiveness in peacemaking, the identity development of African-American males, and marital intimacy. Learn more about Derek here.

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In Zadar, Croatia there is a thousand-year-old church that sits crumbling on the edge of the Adriatic Sea. Embedded in its foundation are countless broken artifacts, altars, and columns from the pagan temple that once stood in its place. It was only a few meters from this church where I swam in open water for the first time. There, the intersection of city and sea is mediated by an aging sea wall with stone steps that sink into the turquoise water of the Adriatic. As I descended these steps, I felt the rush and swell of open water and my own heart leaping into my throat as I slipped from the lowest step into the embrace of the sea.

Days later I returned home to Seattle, where brooding grey replaced brilliant blue and that church with its foundation of ruins receded to memory. And yet, in this season of #metoo, of marginalized voices breaking through, and of watching the Church teeter precariously between closing ranks and unfurling into the heavy work of lament, I think often of the church built on ruins and the sea that embraced me when I took a deep breath and chose to do the thing I feared: exist in my body.

For my body, descending the steps in my bathing suit on the seawall packed with rowdy young European tourists felt far riskier than swimming alone in open water: I am a fat woman. No stranger to catcalling鈥檚 weight-shaming counterpart: 鈥渇atcalling,鈥� existing in my body comes with a cost, and overt experiences of body shame remind me of what often remains unspoken. For my body, freedom costs. I spent three days in that city before deciding I was willing to pay the price.

I am grateful to be a part of a community that has challenged me to enter conversations around the areas where I am privileged. I am being trained to consider race, culture, sexual orientation, gender identity, and socioeconomic status in every professional conversation I engage. Growing competency to engage these issues with integrity is absolutely critical to dismantling individual and systemic oppression鈥攂ut my body asks: will we say we are done, there? Or will we enter the difficult work of examining our dis-ease about bodies in order to make space for diverse bodies, like mine? Will we stop and notice how thin-ideals are so internalized that privilege could permit many of us to live a lifetime without considering how they inform the ways we engage with persons who have bodies very different from our own?

For most of my life I believed the message coming at me from all directions that said that my body size was something with a moral value: bad. I believed, as stigma dictated, my body was evidence of a lack of willpower. I did not know that studies that look at the long-term effects of diets show that nearly all bodies return to their beginning weight or heavier after a diet, and that weight-cycling is shown to do more harm to bodies than living a healthy lifestyle at a higher weight. Some of the voices that have spoken harm over my body actually may have told themselves they were motivating me towards a 鈥渉ealthy change,鈥� but what experts now know is that experiences of stigma and body shame actually result in poorer mental health, increased binge eating, decreased use of healthcare services, and actually tend to increase weight gain over time. Unfortunately, weight-based stigma is embedded in our culture, fortified by a $66 billion diet industry, and is intensifying rapidly as this socially-acceptable form of discrimination has more than doubled in recent years. (Source citations available .)

鈥淔or most of my life I believed the message coming at me from all directions that said that my body size was something with a moral value: bad.鈥�

The problem with all of this for those of us who follow Christ, as theologian Marcia Mount Shoop reminds us in her book , is that we can鈥檛 thrive as a church body when any one person鈥檚 body is excluded or distanced:

鈥淲e may unconsciously reject those who are outside the range of our comfort zones even when we believe ourselves to be hospitable to difference. [鈥 When someone intersects us who embodies the jarring truth that there is contradiction, complexity, and ambiguity in human embodied existence, we fear the chaos they may bring with them. Fear wounds us as the body of Christ. It trivializes who we are and how the future becomes.鈥�

So how do we replace stigma with embrace in our homes, communities, and churches? Our task is first to enter the difficult work of holding our own dis-ease about bodies and the insecurities large bodies might provoke within us. This is complex work that is unique to each individual, but often stigma is a way that we set ourselves apart from that which we fear that we are or might become. In a culture where thin is ideal and obese is understood to indicate a weakness of will, what might we gain through socially-normalized marginalization of large bodies?

How would Christ engage in a world in which the line between the Samaritan and the Jew was thinly veiled, a line that people moved across often and unwillingly?

I believe Christ would affirm that all bodies are good bodies; I believe that Christ would remind me that, in the countercultural words a friend texted me as I sat in my hotel room quietly working up the courage to swim, my body deserved the richness of life as much as any other body.

There are structures in our cultural and faith heritage that are crumbling, and, like the church built on ruins, we are charged to use these ruins to create something new. We are invited, in this creating, to join with God through expanding our capacity to hold diverse voices and experiences. As for me, I鈥檓 experimenting with a new way of being an embodied person as I honor the rolls and contours I鈥檇 never have chosen for myself by giving this body, in all its largeness, permission to exist, to thrive, and to adventure to far-off places and defy watching eyes by stepping out into turquoise blue seas.

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If you have been paying attention, you will notice that lately there has been a growing interest in certain circles about empathy. It has, thankfully, moved out of the privacy of the mental health consultation rooms and neuroscience research studies and into the classroom, the boardroom, and the bedroom. In fact, there really is no human interaction that will not be better because the participants are attuned to empathy and its place in the engagement.

Empathy, at its best, involves several elements. First, and how it is most broadly understood, it is the notion that one person (the listener, in this case) is able to be receptive to and feel the (usually painful) emotion of another person (the speaker), simultaneously holding that emotion in such a way so as to move thoughtfully to reduce the speaker鈥檚 suffering or distress. To experience empathy is, as Dan Siegel has put it, to feel felt. This is the first step toward moving out of painful emotion: to share it with an attuned, compassionate listener.

In real life, it amounts to the poetic cadences and language of a host of nonverbal and verbal attunements in which one person鈥檚 body language, facial expression, tone of voice, and eye contact (among other cues) align to match those of one who is afflicted and engage with his or her feeling not simply as an abstraction, but in an embodied moment in time and space. If you have had this experience, you know what I mean, and you won鈥檛 ever forget it.

Another feature of empathy is that it is a practice we necessarily must learn as human beings; we do not simply come by it naturally in the same way that we come by breathing. We learn about it by witnessing it being practiced by others or receiving it ourselves. Moreover, empathy moves us beyond compassion to kindness and human flourishing. In this sense, it is not just something that is intended to reduce pain, but also to increase hope, energizing us toward justice: we move to change our behavior on behalf of the plight of others who cannot change things themselves.

鈥淓mpathy moves us beyond compassion to kindness and human flourishing.鈥�

Hopefully, then, with empathy, we do not merely feel what someone else feels; we behave differently as a result. And most importantly, that behavior is more likely to be sustained on their behalf; it鈥檚 not just a one-off moment, but a lifetime moment. I am far more likely to make sustainable changes as a husband on behalf of my wife if I am truly in touch with what she is feeling than if I am doing what she asks mostly because I feel ashamed or guilty for not having done so before. As I like to tell patients, it is impossible for us to maintain sustainable behavioral change on behalf of another person in the absence of empathy. We can white-knuckle it for a certain period of time, but ultimately, unless we have made contact with the emotional state of another in such a way that our felt sense of mercy is mobilized, we will eventually regress to the mean of our previous behavioral norms.

All of this represents a posture in which one welcomes, says 鈥測es鈥� to the emotional state of another. So many of us have only experienced the dismissing 鈥淣o!鈥� to our afflicting emotional states, that when we encounter empathy it can feel like nothing short of a cold drink of water for a parched throat. In fact, one of our greatest problems, not least for people of faith, is our well-practiced manner of ignoring what we feel. And we鈥檙e so accomplished at this that eventually we not only are unaware of what we feel, by extension we become unable to sense what others feel. Naturally, it is virtually impossible, with this much neuroplastic reinforcement, to imagine a God who could actually feel what we feel. Don鈥檛 get me wrong. We might buy the theological idea that God can do that. But I am talking about the actual experience of feeling God feel what we feel.

The Hebrews wrote about this. They put down in words鈥攖o be kept and remembered, and to be re-experienced by those who followed鈥攖heir encounters with a God who they believed could take it. They threw everything they had at God. There is not one human emotional experience they refused to offer, be they experiences of joy or affliction. The Psalms are replete with the poetic rhythm and hum of a people who approached a God of empathy. A God who could welcome, receive, hold, and鈥攖hrough sheer force of God鈥檚 own perseverance in remaining with the deepest agonies of his people鈥攖ransform their hearts, their minds, their souls.

But many of us have never met this God. Our imaginations are paltry and afraid, atrophied as they are from so much time spent waiting for the microsecond-to-microsecond distraction of the shifting of the Internet as we peer soullessly into our screens. For our imaginations to be fired into life, we must first acquaint them with embodied experiences with other embodied people to which they can further appeal in memory and in reading the stories and poetry of the scriptures and the best literature; engage the depth and beauty of nature; receive all that art and music has to offer鈥攁nd so open the portals of our souls through which we may enter into the depths of our rawest terrain to join the God who has been awaiting us all along.

To whom do you run to be found? To be known? To offer your fragile, terrified self in order to have the cataracts of empathy cascade over you? If it鈥檚 not a real human, then it鈥檚 even less likely that it will be God, for we have a hard time imagining what our bone and blood do not know in real time and space. But the good news of the Gospel is that a real human has come to find each one of us, and is looking for us still. His gaze is waiting for you to see him seeing you. Hearing you. Feeling you. The One whose empathy can take it because he has already taken everything else.

At a time when our minds are becoming in many respects as disintegrated as ever, even as we swallow the illusion of greater connection through technology, as our social and political fabric feel like they are fraying apart at the seams, empathy that begins and ends with God鈥檚 good creation of our minds is just what we need.

God can hardly wait. He is already feeling how good you鈥檙e going to feel about it.

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鈥淭hen he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: 鈥淲hoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.鈥� 鈥揗ark 8:34-35

Have you ever been in a relationship with someone who was too demanding? Perhaps they wanted so much of your attention that you felt like you were slowly vanishing? This kind of codependency can be toxic. So what do we do with the demands that Jesus extends to His followers? Does He ask too much of us? Does following Jesus require us to be self-deprecating?

鈥淒oes following Jesus require us to be self-deprecating?鈥�

Consider this passage from the middle of the Gospel of Mark, the climax of the story. Jesus asks His disciples who people are saying He is and what they think about his mission. Then He asks them who they think he is. Peter answers, and his answer is right on. But as one of my Pepperdine theology professors would tell us, small theological boats should stay close to shore. Peter should have quit while he was ahead.

Jesus begins to elaborate on Peter鈥檚 answer, and Peter quickly corrects Him, earning sharp words from Jesus. But the story doesn鈥檛 end there. It ends with an invitation. You can鈥檛 follow Jesus by doing anything less than losing your life. Jesus is saying that through weakness, powerlessness, and death grow victory, strength, and life. That what might look nonsensical or like a stumbling block or scandal actually holds the key to being a follower of Jesus and being part of transforming the world we live in.

When I first presented these ideas in a course I was teaching, my students challenged this self-denial. Many of them were familiar with relationships that seemed to suck the life out of them and asked why endorse a Christian idea that simply enables unhealthy relational dynamics? And they were rightly cautious of a 鈥渄epraved鈥� view of the self that, in the name of self-denial, felt simply like self-deprecation. I am a Christian so I have to give up everything including myself. So the question is how does this spiritual call of denial not become codependency or self-deprecating?

Let me clarify. Codependency is what we call it when someone attends to the desires and needs of another person at the expense of one鈥檚 own needs, often found in relationships. Codependency is often found where addiction and violence are present.

Self-denial can often end up taking a form of self-negation that leads to a kind of passive-aggressiveness and codependency. Codependency is a system of homeostatic behavior鈥攁n attempt to keep things in balance by overlooking what is really happening鈥攖hat manifests in a broken or unhealthy family or community in order to avoid disrupting the status quo. It staves off a crisis that could lead to important change by suppressing the true desires of individuals who are in relationship with each other. But if the way of the Cross is about how self-denial exposes the powers that be for what they are, then I don鈥檛 believe that dying to self is about codependency.

鈥淐odependency is what we call it when someone attends to the desires and needs of another person at the expense of one鈥檚 own needs.鈥�

The Cross asks individuals to lose their lives in a much different way. It demands that we all enter into the vulnerable space of declaring what really is鈥攁nd there is a lot of risk in doing this鈥攔ather than clinging to how we hope things are. In a broken system, this truth-telling feels like death, but it is the only chance of gaining new or resurrected life.

The Cross is not the way of self-deprecation. It doesn鈥檛 tell us that we deserve nothing good and beat down the human heart as unlovable or unworthy. But it does ask us to be honest about where real life is found, and where artificial life has been manufactured as a coping mechanism to distract us from finding that real life.

Here鈥檚 what I think happens: We don鈥檛 really believe we deserve or understand how to find the good, so we hedge our bets and attach ourselves to the 鈥済ood enough.鈥� The Cross exposes this covert despair. It asks us to die to the safety we hold onto. When Jesus tells us to pick up our crosses, we are denying, not the self God created us to be, but the self that falls victim to visions of authority that promise us triumph. The public spectacle of Christ crucified tells the truth about the uselessness of power and invites us to live out the same truth as we take up our own crosses and follow Him.

Jesus invites all of us into a new way of being human. For some this could mean telling the truth in a co-dependent system where equilibrium is maintained through damaging self-denial. For others, the Cross could mean denying the American dream and exposing the lie of materialism, exposing systems like Rome that hoard power and oppress others. The spiritual journey of the Cross means illuminating the truth, letting go of illusions, seeing things the way they really are and being willing to forgive.

The Cross, then, is a grace to us. A bad day for being human becomes the first day of a new created order. The Cross invites us to live in the world by dying to illusions that don鈥檛 really sustain us, and to self in its most narcissistic form. Mark 8 is an invitation for us to make space in our lives, to refuse the emptiness of power and trust that the way of Jesus is the way to truth telling and real life.

But it can be a lonely place. The disciples fled from this lonely place more than once, and so do we. But we are always invited back in, to learn from Jesus how to save our lives by letting them go鈥攖o make space for others through our own death and entrance into relationship, with Jesus and the world He loves. This is where the power of God lies: letting go of our hoped-for outcomes and sitting in the space of powerlessness with ourselves and for the world.

Modeling this letting go is the only way to shake ourselves loose of the natural urgency we feel to save our own lives. This kind of vulnerable love is a crazy tightrope-walking love that must have full assurance in the one who sends us out to invite the world to come with us on the journey鈥攖o let go of the illusions of life for real life itself.

Can we choose this way of the Cross and faithfully believe that it is in death that we and others are set free? Not with our great doctrines, not with our spotless image, but by dying to the images of power that hold us captive, dying to contempt and accusation and rivalry. Risking our lives on Jesus鈥� promise that this is the only way we will find true life.

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