Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - Why You're Still Anxious (Even When Life Is Going Well) | Dr. Curt Thompson

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

Come meet us on tour & pre-order our book here! https://thecouragetocommit.com/ Psychiatrist, author, and speaker Curt Thompson joins us for a powerful conversation about anxiety, shame, healing, relationships, and what it means to be truly known. Drawing from neuroscience, attachment theory, and decades of clinical experience, Curt explains why so many people feel disconnected, why shame is often hiding beneath our struggles, and how real transformation happens through connection- not isolation. We also discuss suffering, hope, mental health, community, and the stories we tell ourselves. Whether you're navigating anxiety, feeling stuck, working through past wounds, or simply trying to build deeper relationships, this conversation offers practical wisdom and hope. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did! Find out more about Dr. Curt Thompson here! https://curtthompsonmd.com/ https://www.instagram.com/curtthompsonmd/?hl=en Love you guys, Shawn & Andrew Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up, everybody. Welcome back to a couple things, interviews. With Sean and Andrew. Today we have the one and only Kurt Thompson. I think it's Dr. Kurt Thompson. Dr. Kurt Thompson. That's right. And Dr. Thompson has written several books, one of which is called The Soul of Shame, which I think is an important book for all of us to read. I feel like we live in a culture that shares a lot of shame and has a lot of shame,

and people feel a lot of shame, and you don't know what to do with that. So he shares his perspective on that. We're grateful to know him, grateful that he gave us his time. And if you want to find out more about him and his books, we'll link his information down below. Without further ado. Dr. Kurt Thompson. Dr. Kurt Thompson. It is a pleasure to have you here.

Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. It's, you know, 10 years ago, I wouldn't have predicted I would be having this conversation with you all. And it's just really lovely to be, of course, maybe 10 years ago, you might not have either because like 10 years ago you didn't have a six, a four and a two-year-old. Correct. Correct. And you're in the thick of it. And so it's really a privilege to be with you.

Yeah. Thanks for doing, thanks for being willing to do the hard work. Oh, it, uh, being, being parents. It's a journey. I wanted to ask you, as you say hard work, though. We've had this show where we talked about couples and marriage and the, the hard work of it for seven years now. And I think the most shocking thing to me that I hear over and over and over again from

young parents and people in the dating world and people new to marriage is nobody believes that it is hard work or that hard work should be a part of it. Is that a societal flaw or is that just something that people are being, you know, raised to believe is not part of parenting and marriage and relationships anymore? Well, you know, there are some things I would say that are in some respects, there'll be lots of things that are particular to our age, right, 20, 25. And there are things that are particular to being human, which have been around since Genesis chapters 1, 2, and 3. And so in some respects, we would say that from the beginning, like, it's always easier to just pick the fruit off the tree and to take things than it is for us to wait

for the wisdom of God and do the extra hard work that you have to do in order to be receptive to that kind of thing. It's always easier to short circuit your workouts than it is for you to do

the hard work of all the work you have to do, right? You have your performance, you have game day. Somebody wants to, you know, talk about, oh, tell us about your performance. Tell us about the game. Nobody's coming and saying,

Hey, could you walk us through that one week of training camp? Nobody asked these questions. You know, because, but that's where the games are won or lost. This, you know, it's all the hours and hours and hours of training where the event in gymnastics is won or lost, right? And the same thing is true. Just about being human. It's always easier to just simply take. And so we have that.

And we have our own particular moment in which, there, you know, there, there has become an accelerated rate of our addiction to convenience. And so, you know, with the advent of the smartphone, and this, this is not, I'm not a Luddite, this is not about, you know, all technology is bad and so forth. But there's no question that we are being trained to be easily distracted. We are being trained to be, we are being trained to be disabled from holding our attention with things over a long period of time. It's hard to do. And so it's easy for us to romantically want to tell stories in advance of all kinds of things in life, whether we're talking about, you know, getting through school, obtaining a job, the kind of job I have, you know, marriage, parenting, every, All the sensory input that we have in 99% of our encounters in the world are forming us to believe that life should be easy.

And life is not easy. Life is extraordinarily difficult. If you're a serious human being, you recognize that to be a serious human being, you have to put your work boots on every day. and that joy is a byproduct of hard work. It's not a guarantee. Joy is not just something that I just get to have just because I'm alive. You get to have ears of sweet corn in August in Ohio, where I grew up with our acre and a half garden. You get to have ears of sweet corn because you put in four months of hard work.

and you eat it in 30 minutes and it's done. I have a couple of follow-up questions. The first is why is it like that? Why does it have to be like that? Because inherently, depending on what the process is to grow the fruit and pull the fruit, there's a bit of like, dare I say, suffering or pain or discomfort. And it's like, you know, you come from the Christian perspective, we believe in a good God. and it's like, why is it, why is it designed like this?

Well, so we'll do what I commonly do, which is to Andrew ask you the question, how would knowing the answer to that question be helpful? I think, you know, the quote of what comes to mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you. I think a lot of people get hung up on, this is inconvenient. Some people might say this hurts. And so if I'm trying to believe in God and that's a part of it,

then maybe my first inclination is not to think while God is so good, you know? Right, right. So here's something that I tell people on a routine basis. We talk to patients about this when I'm training clinicians when we're talking to audiences. Look, life is very simple and it is excruciatingly difficult. But it is not difficult because it's complicated. It's difficult because we humans swim in and build our watercraft in an ocean of grief that is mostly built out of our fear of our shame.

And it's extraordinarily painful. but it's not painful because it's complicated. It's painful because it's really difficult for me to pay attention to myself and to the shame that I carry and the fear that I carry about my shame. And so my suffering when it comes, and if you're a human, it's going to come. When that comes, the worst part about the suffering is not that it happens. It's that it happens in isolation. My suffering is heightened because I am in it, whatever it happens to be. I am in it by myself.

And it harkens to that most harrowing line in the second chapter of Genesis. It's not good for the man or the woman to be alone. It's not good. And this is the line that then speaks to the rest of the Bible. Because everything about what evil is about, all of the disintegration, all of the shame, all of the, every time I lose my temper, all the everything is about some version of me finding myself feeling like you're leaving. There's some version of me that feels like if I don't do this right, I'm going to be in

trouble and you're going to find out about it and you're going to go. This is C.S. Lewis's work in the Great Divorce in the opening chapter where he says, hell is a place where people build their homes farther and farther and farther apart from each other. in your profession and practice we live in a culture and time where people are embracing that concept more and more to a sense of to that concept of I'm thinking of like cancel culture people have no grace or forgiveness in society and I don't want to say no there are there is none because there is still goodness in the world, and I believe in that. And I believe that there are believers who are trying to make that a popular, you know,

culture again. But I do think there is this rampant, you know, epidemic of people who want to cancel anybody for any reason for having anything wrong or making one messed up. Like purposely excommunicate people? Yes. We live in that culture right now, especially with online and social media. that people are looking for any mistake to cancel someone and say, you should live in shame. And how dare you?

And I actually never want to see your face or your name or your image or anything. And people are living in such a way of fear. How do you convince someone otherwise in today's world to actually embrace their shame and not live in isolation and voice what they're feeling? because it's, to a certain extent, terrifying in today's world to say, to admit there's any wrongdoing or imperfection that you have. So I would say, I have, say, two reflections. I can't guarantee how helpful these will be. Two, two reflections. And the first reflection, I think, is just, it's important for us to recognize that, you know, we can talk about things. We talk about

things, even here we talk about cancel culture. And the reality is, I mean, so here's something that's important to know about technology. I'm not a technological, I'm not a technology expert, but there are some things that you don't have to be an expert in in order to know about technology. And one is this, is that all technology from the wheel forward, one of the things that it does is that it makes life more convenient. That's its design. Its intention is to make life more convenient. People can now have access to a conversation with Sean and Andrew that they could never have if we don't have the internet. They could never, they would never have the benefit of like, oh my goodness, like there are other

couples who are wrestling with these things that we're wrestling with. It's so good to know that I'm not by myself in this, in this space. This is a beautiful thing. The second thing that technology always creates as a possibility. It doesn't guarantee it, but it creates the possibility. It always creates the opportunity for us to move further and further apart from one another. And so one of the things it's important to recognize is that the whole notion of cancel culture wouldn't be possible were it not for the Internet. Now, the thing is, for those people who have grown, who have been born into a world in which the Internet has always been here, they would have no idea what I'm talking about because they don't have any other world to compare it to. But it's important to recognize that cancel culture would not be possible were it not for the Internet. because the internet itself, as convenient as it makes life more to be, also is the thing that has made life much more easy for me to create distance between you and me.

Not just in terms of like, oh, I can look at somebody who's in Africa. But I have all kinds of ways of talking about you in public on the internet and do so in a way that. that I would never do if I were in a room full of people looking you in the eye. And so it makes me not only less connected to other people. Again, this is not like internet is not the problem. Human beings are the problem. Not only does it make easier for me to do that, but it makes me less connected to myself.

And so that's one response. One response is important to recognize that the world that we occupy itself is part of the experience that we're having. This is, it's a function of this. And it's really difficult to rewind that tape and go back to a place where we would then do the following, which is, it's really important for us to know that we are having real embodied encounters with others who are not like us, with whom we can work out what it means to be in the room and create beauty in goodness, even with those with whom we have difference. What does it mean for us to do that? Well, that's a beautiful benefit of technology, too, because the antithesis can also be said about technology where even though it makes it easier to remove yourself, and also, you know, the wheel and the invention of that makes it easier for me to go be with someone else. So I guess what...

Right. That's what we're talking about when I said, like, all technology is intended to make life more convenient. That's the first thing. It always, it always does. I'm simply saying that the potential for, there being more difference, more distance is all, yes, the wheel lets me plow my ground in ways I can have more crops, and I can also move five miles away from you. And if you don't have a wheel, you can't get to me. And so I'm just recognizing that like, we're just acknowledging that the material world itself, evil will do whatever it can to use every good thing in order to make life more difficult. So when we talk about cancel culture, it's not like, oh, there's a lot. There's this abstract thing out there called cancel culture. There is this way in which we operate within the world, including the way we use technology, that enables us to do this thing called canceling other people in a way that's much more easy to do, which means I'm going to have to work that much more diligently to make sure that I am having and practicing having embodied encounters with people by whom I can be seen and who I can see

that will enable me to be known in ways that I otherwise can't be known. And often when I'm with people with whom I have difference, there will be things about me that they can see that I just simply can't see because of our differences. I mean, this is where the Genesis account of creation is so important. Like, if the man and his wife were naked and unashamed, look, you know, since we're talking about couples,

I've been married for 39 years. And I don't deserve my life. And my wife is like, you know, like number one on the list of the things I don't deserve in my world. And but you know how it is. Like you get, I get married. And I think like, oh my gosh, I want to marry Phyllis. And then what, six weeks, six months, you're like, as it turns out like, no, I didn't want to marry Phyllis. I wanted to marry me.

I wanted to marry me. I wanted me to look like Phyllis. But I wanted someone who would really be just like me. And as it turns out, God in his wisdom said, like, yes, men and women in many respects, our brains are not that different except where they are. Our bodies are not that different except where they are. Like we all have a heart, we all have two lungs, we all kinds of ways in which we are similar. But where we are different, those differences are necessary for us to create beauty and goodness in the world,

pushing the borders of Eden into the wilderness. But this isn't just about men and women. This is a, this is a model for all kinds. This is about ethnic differences. This is about socioeconomic differences. It's about all kinds of ways in which the kingdom of God is being created. Family is not the least with those of us who are different. Like, you have three kids. And my guess is, I don't, obviously, I don't know your three children, but my guess is that by now you're sensing that they have different temperaments. Well, yeah. And as we like to say, no sibling, no two siblings ever grow up in the same house. Because like my, you know, my brothers were different from me. And like it means I grew up in a different house than my brothers did

in lots of different ways. And so the whole notion about cancel culture as a whole is going to be a function of, well, what do we do with the parts of ourselves that we don't want? What do we do with the other members in my immediate family that I don't want? What do I do with the members of my send it to me that I don't want. What do I do with the people in my church that I don't want? Well, if I go to a big enough church, I can just avoid them. Like, we're going to get to heaven. We know this. We're going to get to heaven. We're like, how did George get here? Like, how in the world did he make it in? You know. Yeah. So, go ahead. Your book does, wait, did you have a follow up for it? I want to ask. Well, the word shame was used

and, you know, you have a book, The Soul of Shame. I think this overlaps here with cancel culture. And like, I'm curious, how do you view shame having thought about the topic for quite some time? And is it a tool? Is it something that should be avoided at all costs? Is it something that is an unfortunate consequence that comes in the wake of human sin? Or what is it? Because, well, I guess part of where I'm coming from is like, I don't know if you heard this story. I think it was Argentina that used shes.

shame is like a traffic control, uh, device where instead of, instead of like giving tickets, they would just have someone stand, you know, on the, on the side of the curb. And if someone ran a red light, they'd just like do like a thumbs down or like whatever. And they actually found that shame was like really effective in, and in getting people to to stand in line. So anyway, let's let's talk about shame if you don't mind. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one thing to say is that, um, uh, it's important for us to be reminded that shame is built into the fabric of the creation. It's built in as a signal. In fact, if shame were to leave the face of the earth, there would be all kinds of behaviors that we

would continue to commit that would be problematic. And for instance, so we don't say that there are certain actions that we take for which shame would absolutely be the proper response. It should be the proper response for certain. We are not nearly as ashamed of certain actions that we take for which we should be. The question is not, is it good or bad? The question is, what do we do in response to it when the signal comes? And how do we wield it and use it? My guess is that in Argentina, yes, I want to avoid shame, so I will, you know, I won't, you know, speed and so forth and so on. But if you were to ask those same drivers, how do you feel like you're a better driver now that you've had a series of thumbs down? People are not going to say, gosh, I can't wait to go out and drive and get more thumbs down.

This is what I'm really hoping for. And so it's important to recognize that God uses shame as a signal. The question is, what do we do in response to it, what we did in the garden when evil starts to wield shame long before any fruit gets eaten. When you read the conversation between the snake and the woman, shame is already making its way into that conversation, such that even the taking of the fruit becomes a response to in a coping strategy to contain my shame. And then it just further disintegrates the process as the process goes on down the line. It's also important to know that shame is first and foremost, a neurophysiologic event that can begin to emerge in human beings as early as 15 to 18 months of age, which means our children are experiencing it long before they have language to understand what's going on. So I don't necessarily sense shame because I know that somebody said something to me. I experience shame in my chest and in my face, in my torso, my hands.

when I sense the tone, not just the words that are spoken, when I sense the glance, when I hear the gas, all these kinds of things that come at me as a physiological experience. And then the question becomes, well, what do I do in response to that? And do I have others who can come for me and meet me in my shame? You know, children don't then have to be. You know, children don't then have to taught to feel this. They'll sense this in terms of what they sense regarding our intentions with them, with our tone of voice and so forth. And then the question becomes, how do we want to respond as parents? Well, we will respond as parents according to how we have learned how to live with shame in terms of how it was wielded with us. Have we known what it means to be able to name

the things that I'm ashamed of and have the experience of people coming for me in that process. One of the things that you notice in the course of the Ark of Scripture is the frequency with which shame and sin in Hebrew and then in Greek and Aramaic shame and sin are so tightly tied to one another. When you look at crucifixion, look, the Romans had a lot of ways to kill people. But one of the primary reasons that they crucified people was not just to cause suffering for victim, but it was to humiliate the culture in addition to humiliating the victim. And so when Paul writes about it, Paul knows that what he's getting at is not just about

the crucifixion of our sin. It is that God is coming for our shame as well, because the healing of shame is not something that takes place because somebody simply tells you, well, Andrew, you don't need to be ashamed about that, like as if that's effective. you know something happens in a game something happens with parenting and you say well you don't need to be ashamed about that like how easy is it they're like oh yeah okay fine i won't be ashamed of this this lives with us and it lives with us neurobiologically it takes less than three seconds for the experience shame to be something that i i experience and i encode it neurologically such that it will be easy for me to recall it if i want to encode to encode it neurobiolically if i want to encode

and explicitly remember an event that is joyful in all of its fullness, I have to pay attention and recall it for 60 to 90 seconds. Shame, less than three. Joy, 60 to, now this doesn't mean like, oh, I can have a vague memory like I had a great time of that concert last night. But if six weeks from now, you had to remember it, you'd have to work some, yeah, I remember somewhat about that. But like, the event that happened six weeks ago that you were ashamed of,

it takes nothing for you to remember that. It's that easy for us. And so you figure, what are we doing with all of this? And how does the biblical narrative point out that what God is doing in coming to us and for us to rescue us with Jesus? He's not just rescuing us by doing this thing that we call saving us in some abstract version. He's coming to be with us in our shame in order to have us pay. more attention to him than we are paying attention to our shame as he pulls us through eventually death into new life, into resurrection life. All it takes is be, I mean, I'm sure your kids by now,

right, they've had some experience of being ashamed about something. And we'd love to just tell them, well, you don't need to be ashamed about that. It's not easy for them to take that in and just like magically make it happen. It's going to be. require your saying, tell me more about that. Of course, I don't want to tell you about this, because they're ashamed of this. But if you invite them to be with you and you with them, you discover that your very presence, your eye contact, your tone of voice, your loving kindness in that posture, that becomes the very thing that is the essence of the healing that takes place. It's not just the content of the words you tell them. It's not just the information that

you give them. It's your very presence that becomes how their shame is healed. And this is what happens with us in the gospel when the king comes for us. One is just so cool. You know, you mentioned the pain of the process and of growing and harvesting fruit. Yet that is redeemed by God and, you know, or designed by God, I guess depends on, I don't know what the right way to phrase that is. But like, uses it for good, which is beautiful. And also shame, too, which feels like a bad thing and that you want less of. It's also redeemed by God or designed by God. Sorry, I don't know which is right there. I'm sorry. My question is, as I think about parenting or my marriage, is it my role then to just be with them? Like, because I think about my temptation to almost be like a hype man

for my kids, is it tone depth, deaf, or doing them a disservice by being like one of those parents who shows up at school when my kid does something bad? And the teacher says, you can't do that anymore and be like, well, no, don't tell them that's bad. Like, you know, always, always pushing them towards like self-actualization or like, hey, no, you keep doing you. Just follow your truth. You know what I'm saying? Like, what's the balance there of not avoid. shame yet not doubling down on it, you know? Right.

Well, again, I think it's important for us to keep in mind that shame is built into the creation. Yeah. We all walk around with the potential for it, and there are places and moments and ways in which shame is the proper response. There will be times when your kids will do something for which the proper response of their behavior is that they should be ashamed. And you're saying thank goodness for that.

Right. Imagine all the... Think of the things that we humans could do, but don't do. Because we know that shame is coming. Like, okay, it is, it is fair to say that we're, you know, Argentina or wherever it is, it is fair to say that you cannot create sustainable, sustainable behavioral shame by wielding shame. Sustainable behavioral changes by wielding shame. You can wield shame for short-term behavioral changes in the short run.

you can't use shame as a long-term carrot and stick. It won't work. People eventually will be too crushed under the weight of it. So if somebody, if a coach is trying to get their gymnastic, you know, competitors or their football players to do things, and shame is the primary weapon that they are wielding. The eventual outcome of this will be the disintegration of the player and the team. If that's the primary thing, that that's the primary methodology that you,

You can't do that for a long period of time. The neurobiological system of a human being won't tolerate that. I don't need, look, if you made a bad snap, do you need your coach? Let me ask. Like, do you need your coach to make you feel bad that that happened? No, but what should he do? Like, well, he would be fired. Well, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.

No, I don't. I don't. Let me just ask this. You make a bad snap. Do you feel bad? I feel bad. Of course you do. Like I don't need you, I don't need to like help you feel bad. But what I will want to do if you're, if I'm your coach, I'm going to say like, yeah, so tell me about that. What happened? Like I'm not, I'm not easing up on your shame. I'm not trying to get, I'm not trying to like tell you you, you shouldn't be ashamed. You shouldn't have that feeling. I want to know what do you want to do with it. And I want to be with you in that. What do you want to? Well, I just, I feel bad. Okay. I get that. I'm not trying to say like, you shouldn't feel bad. I'm not going to tell you that. I am going to ask. you, how can we help you get better? Like your shame is a signal. Your shame is a signal like I did

this. I didn't pay enough attention to that. I didn't. There's something that it's a signal to me. And I want to be with you in it in order for us to then ask the question, how do we want to use this to take you where you want to go? When my son does something wrong at school and he feels ashamed, I don't need to necessarily pile on to that when he comes home just to pile on. Is it somehow I'm afraid that he didn't get enough shame at school? But I'm not going to substitute shame with something else until shame has done its work. But the work that it needs to do is not making a kid feel bad for the sake of feeling bad. It's trying to get our attention about our behavior.

All right. I'm not trying to be difficult here. But is there a difference in like I find that easier to do as a parent than if I'm, a part of an organization that has expectations for, like, productivity. And I'm thinking there's, there is the act that causes shame. But then there's also this added second layer of like, okay, you are in charge of this. I'm the head coach. And if I, if I am employing that coach and I don't see this guy, uh, push into that in

some capacity, then it comes off as two laissez-faire, like, hey, this guy's, he's two hands off. And there's like this weird expectation of how shame should be dealt with from higher ups in the organization. Am I making this too complicated? I think a little bit only because I think if someone truly believes what you're saying, which is it's built in to the foundation of a human being, if someone that high up doesn't believe that, then I could see there being a systemic issue of like a higher up coach doesn't feel like you're pressing in too much, but that's on them to not understand that

it's built it. You have to figure out how to foster it. Am I reading that correctly? Well, I mean, you think, you know, you think about it in this way. There's no human system. Football teams, gymnastic teams, the Federal Reserve, colleges, universities, schools, churches. There's no human system that does not in some way, shape, or form model the family. The family is the primary social model for every institution. And that means that there are going to be people who are in charge, parental figures, and then there are going to be downstream figures that are part of this family. There will be firstborns.

There will be secondborns. There will be thirdborns. There will be first cousins. There will be all. And we can't escape it. This is how we operate. And if I've grown up in a system in which shame has been properly incorporated and responded to because of how it is built into the fabric of the creation, then I'm not going to be

afraid of it. But I'm also not going to wield it unreasonably. I'm not going to use it. Typically, if I'm using shame as a way to correct people, if I'm using it actively, what I'm really doing is I'm having in those moments, I am coping with my own shame by sharing it with somebody else. When parents have run out of their own sense of knowing what to do when they discipline their children, when they run out of their own internal sense of adequacy as a parent, that's when they use shame as a way to, like, correct their kids. And where does that look like? I mean, there are an infinite number of examples, I would guess, of what parents do to shame their children. Like, why can't you get it together?

I think about the story of the 10. There's a story that I tell of a 10-year-old boy. He's, like, working really hard at math and gets his first 92%. It's the best he's ever done. He brings the test to his dad. His dad says, man, that's great. Where's the other 8%? Now, if you ask the dad, the dad will say, what?

What? I'm trying to, like, I'm trying to, like, I'm trying to, like, you know, like, yeah, you did 19, let's go, let's go. I'm like, okay, I understand that that's your intent. How aware are you of what it is that you actually did? And so this will become a kid who when he's a senior in high school is a five-star athlete and he's a straight-A student and who still is looking for the 8% and this will be a kid who will believe that no matter how much he reads in the text or hears from the pulpit that God loves him, he'll say, yep, he loves me up to 92%. But I still got to come up with the other 8%. And this is how he's going to live his life. And so this is how we would use shame very, very subtly, because we as parents have run out of ways of knowing how to be present with our kids in the middle of what is really difficult. When your kids do things that are hard, when they, when they, when they disobey, when they make mistakes and so forth, they, you know, and different kids are

going to have with different temperaments, and you have three of them, different temperaments are going to mean different kids are going to have different levels of shame. Some kids are going to like try something, do something they're going to be, and they're like, they don't, they don't think a thing of it. Other kids are going to be like, their temperament is going to be such like, they just feel so awful. But I know that I know that I did something I wasn't supposed to do. do and they like the amount of shame that they walk around with is going to be different. And as parents, it's going to require a great deal from us to gauge and judge, well, how am I going to bring this child into a place in which we are together talking about

what needs to be done differently here, just like you would with the players. I'm guessing with different gymnasts, different players on a team. A coach is not, they're not dealing with cutout, cardboard cutouts, so everybody's the same. Coaches are going to respond, they're going to approach different. players and different gymnastries athletes in different ways because every system is modeled after the family. And so it really, it is so it really comes down to the question of like, to what degree is the coach, to what degree is the owner aware of how shame plays a role in their own personal lives? It's really important to know.

And remember, in the third chapter Genesis, the snake gets all the best lines. and there are very few. The snake has no interest in notoriety. He has no interest in fame. He has interest in destruction. He has interest in devouring. All he needs is a couple lines, and then the snake goes completely into the woodwork.

There's no need for him to be discovered. It doesn't want to make a big deal out of shame, which is why shame is so powerful because it is often so subtle, not because it's bad in and of itself, but because of the way that we often wield it first and first, in the privacy of our own minds about ourselves. And then when we've had enough of that, we share our largesse with the people around us, beginning with our children and the people that we coach and the people that we are in charge of in our business and so forth and so on.

Because shame is so easy. It is so easy. Real discipline is difficult. Discipline requires time, effort, presence, difficult because it requires conversations. It requires my own self-regulation as a parent instead of just quickly and impulsively sharing my shame with my kids. And so that then raises the question of, well, who are the people as parents? This is the question that we're always asking, who are the people that in your lives as parents who are taking care of you? Who are the people to whom you go on a regular basis? You know, as a couple, as individuals, who are the people to whom you go for whom there would be nothing about you? You know, as a regular base, you know, as a couple, as individuals. You know, as a couple of people, you know, you that they don't know. And especially when it comes to those places in your own parenting

where you feel inadequate. Like to be a parent is to be like, have all the curtain pulled back on all my felt sense of inadequacy. Right. Like, oh, my children didn't come with a manual. And I'm really, because like, and it just exposes how not good at this I am. And my wife likes to say, look, if you really want to work hard at discovering your inadequacies, get married. And then if you want to work even harder, have children. And all of that unfinished business that I have in my own life that I haven't yet worked out is going to come right into the room. And so then who will be the people who are caring for you,

where your shame wants to come into the room, where you can say, this is where I feel inadequate of your room. as a parent. And as I address that, that becomes one more thing that I'm less likely to deliver to my kids. But rather, I can be more effective in my discipline, in my encouragement, in my summoning them, and my calling them forward, in my, like, challenging them to take the next step of risk and so forth, all the things that I want them to become, as they also become people who create and curate beauty and goodness in the world as Jesus followers. So I was about to ask how, you know, we're grown adults, maybe this is a

my first time approaching this subject, I have instances in my past that are riddled with shame that maybe haven't been dealt with. Is that the, what's the solution to healing that? Yeah. And yeah. Yeah, I mean, the thing, you know, we tell, we tell people, look, the single most powerful thing that any parent can do to help facilitate and enable the development of secure attachment between your child and you, the single most powerful variable is the degree to which you have made sense of your own personal story. That's the single most, now, it's not the only variable, but it's the single most, I'll give an example. I mean, so this is a story that I tell of a case of mine. So a guy named Calvin, he's 35, he's the oldest of five kids, and he's the

first in his sibling line to have a child. He and his wife have a son. Son's kind of precocious. He gets to about nine months of age. And Calvin calls his mom because Calvin's having trouble as a dad. He's wanting to some parenting advice. Your son is only nine months of age. And his mom says to him, I think you should talk to your dad. His dad is named Ed. Calvin says, why would I talk to my dad?

I never talk to my dad. I never talked to my dad about these kinds of things. And she's like, well, I think your dad would have some things to say to you. I think it would be important. And Calvin's not very happy about this because his mother is not giving him important parenting advice that he would like to have right now. And so Calvin calls his father reluctantly because even though his dad was someone who made sure that they were in mass every Sunday, went to their ecclesial, their classes as kids, went to Catholic school, all these things. Calvin did not have an emotional connection to his dad.

Calvin calls his father and Ed says, I'd like to meet for coffee and they do, which is odd because like Ed never has, these kinds of things don't happen. And Ed tells him the following story. He said, Calvin, there's some things that you don't know, first of all,

about your grandfather, my dad, and we never talked about this. But before you were born, because your grandfather died before you were born, your grandfather had been, are alcoholic. And when I was growing up in the house, things were frequently violent, physically violent. And I swore that if I ever had kids, we've had five of them, if I ever had

kids, I would never become my dad. And so whenever anything would come up in the house that would have to do with emotional volatility, emotional, like, I'd turn that over to your mom. Because I didn't to get within a country mile of becoming my dad, which I was worried I would become. I just let, I took care, put a roof over your head, make sure you got to college. I'll like, I'm going to do everything to make sure that you got exactly what you need. But when it comes to this stuff like this, like, not my jam. But then when I found out that you and your wife were pregnant, something started to happen to me, and then that boy, that boy was born. And I felt like I wanted to have a connection with him and

I didn't know what to do. And I started like it was making, it was driving me a little crazy. And so at some point your mother said, I know a guy. I think you should go talk to this guy. And so into my office walks 63-year-old Ed. And Ed, at age 63, for the first time in his life outside of his wife, starts to talk about the things that happened to him as a kid. And these were horrible things. And over time, Ed starts to become connected to things.

things that he's felt. He's working through trauma. There's all kinds of things. And another thing that starts to happen is Ed eventually becomes increasingly comfortable with talking with his wife about the things that we are talking about. Now, his wife knew about the facts about his life. She had not been in touch with any of the emotion that he carried because neither was he. There came a point where I got a call from his wife. And she says, excuse me, I'd like to know what's happening to my husband. Like, I'm not kidding. She's, look, I've been married to him for 40 years. I got used to the fact that I was married to a guy who was faithful, but who was not going to talk to me. And so I developed an entire group of friends to whom I talk. Now my husband wants to talk all

the time. I don't have time for this. And she's like, she's really like, she's concerned that like her husband is becoming something that she like she does not know this man. Now at one level, you know, it's okay. But like you can imagine living for 40 years, you've got your life pretty packed using a rap. This is who I'm married to. And now I've got this other guy who shows up. And as Ed starts to talk to Calvin, what then, now I don't, like, I don't know this is going on. I just, all I know is Ed and Ed's wife. And I know about Calvin. I know about why I didn't know these conversations we're going to start to happen.

And as Ed tells Calvin these things, the end of the story is six months go by. And as it turns out, Ed and Calvin, Ed says to Calvin, I'd like to start to meet with you, talk with you. He said, because I made the mistake of not being present for you. And I want that to be different. Of course, Ed's like fumbling with this guy. He doesn't, he doesn't know how to do this, but he's practicing. He's learning how to do this. It categorically changes the trajectory of Calvin's life because Calvin now does.

And of course, Calvin has to work through some things because he's like, well, where the heck have you been for the last 35 years? It's not just like, oh, we have one conversation and it's all. fun and games from here on now. But here's the more important thing that begins to happen. As Calvin works through his own grief and forgiveness and Calvin and Ed are working through this, Calvin starts to report to Ed that he becomes increasingly comfortable with his own parenting with his son. And here's what we see that happens. Number one, it is never too late to begin to do the work on our unfinished business. Ed starts at age 63 and the work that he does is already generating change two generations away with his grandson because of how his

relationship with his son is changing. Ed does work making sense of his story, working through his unrepaired ruptures, and it categorically changes the relational element of how he interacts with his son Calvin that necessarily then spreads to how Calvin is interacting with his own newborn son. This is what we mean when we say that to the degree that we are allowing ourselves to be known. This is 1 Corinthians chapter 8, verse 2. There are those who think they know who do not know as they ought, but the person who loves God is known by God. I love God, not because I'm told to. I love God because I have an encounter with someone who has seen the worst of me and wants to still be in the room with me. I'm compelled to love who has luck. I'm known in this way. I don't

just know God. I'm known by God. If we could ask the question, who would be the three people that each of you would say to me, or talk to these three people, and if I were to talk to them, I would ask them, and there would be nothing about you that they don't know. To the degree that I can be that well-known, to the degree that Ed found himself being known by me, and then as his community expanded, because he got used to this, including his wife, to that degree, then it had downstream impact on Calvin, who also started to practice this. To that degree, they have the experience of what it means to be deeply loved. I know when I'm loved, when I show you the parts of me that I hate the most, and you stay in the room. And when that happens, I know that I have, I'm no longer going to burn

energy to try to contain all of these unrepaired ruptures. And that is energy that is then available, to me to co-create with God those works that he has prepared for me before the foundation of the world. But these things aren't going to happen because I just manufacture them on their own. It's not going to happen for Ed by himself. It's not going to happen for Calvin by himself. It's not going to happen for any of us by ourselves. It's not good for the man to be alone. It's not good for the woman to be alone. And to the degree, so one of the reasons why what you're doing here with your podcast, one of the reasons why this is so important for the listeners is that it allows people to have the felt sense that they're not by themselves, that they're not alone in what it means to be

parents, what it means to do this work of creating beauty and goodness in the world with your children. Would you say that shame has the effect of shrinking our potential impact or what God's put us here to do, like being a hurdle to that? Yeah, it's important to know that we, evil does not wield shame primarily just to make us feel bad. It, we, it wills us, yields shame to do the very thing that you're talking about. Evil, you know, what are we made? We are made as artists. This is what you're made. Like, you're artistic in your, in your athletic endeavors for instance. You were, you were artistic. Like, just ask, ask your average person to just line up and take a football and long snap it, right? Seven to eight, 10 yards behind him, like,

in a spiral, right to where it needs to be like, who can do that? Like, no, like, your average person cannot do this. And then plus when you've got like, you know, 280 pound linemen that are coming at you to the right to the left. Like, who does it? Like, you can't do this, right? Or the gymnastic work. You're like, no, your average person cannot do this. It takes all kinds, but what are you doing?

You're artistically creating something. This is exactly, this is the first page of the Bible. What are we're going to make humans in our image? And what does that mean? I'm going to be the image bearer of an artist because this is what the first page of the Bible tells us that God is doing. He's making things. And shame is a way for evil to keep us from creating beauty and

goodness in the world. That is its primary mission. You are an artist. In your child rearing, you are artistically revealing icons of beauty and goodness. Three young icons of beauty and goodness. You are Michelangelo's finding the sculpture in the blocks of marble, and evil cannot tolerate this. And so it will wield shame absolutely to shrink your imagination, to shrink your courage to cut off your connection from others, whose connection with them is what enables you to become the person that you want to become. You know you can long snap when you've got guys to your right and your left, you're going to hold the line. If you got milk toast to your right and left guard, like, it's not going to be a fun day. I don't know what milk toast is, but I like it.

I get what you're saying. Oh, milk toast. Milk toast is like, uh, it's, It's like wet paper machet. Think of it in those terms. That's funny. It's interesting because I feel like, yeah, shame is kind of a me thing. You know, it's like, okay, I can't do this or that because of whatever shame I'm dealing with. And I'm thinking about, you know, people always say it helps when you serve others. And I think, like, you know, I feel like they're correlated in the sense that I'm just thinking about me and my shame less as a result of like, hey, let me just help.

help where I can and it just kind of moves your perspective outward in a helpful way. But first of all, there's so much that you got my wheels turned about. I think that started with you saying shame can be alleviated. This is my own words, rephrasing. Shame can be alleviated when you make sense of your own story. Is that right? But know this. It's not being alleviated just because I make cognitive sense of it.

Remember, Ed was able to make sense because for the first time, he's actually having an interaction with another relationship. It happened to be me. It could have been somebody else. But it's the relational connection that creates the opportunity for the parts of us that are ashamed to come into the light. Like somebody, you know, Ed could have, like, I could have written something. Ed could have read about it. And that's a very, just acquiring information is not enough, right? Because we are not formed primarily through information. We are formed, we first sense and then we make sense of what we says. We are not primarily formed because of what we think. It doesn't. It doesn't mean that thinking is unimportant, but we are primarily formed because of what we sense,

image, and feel. What we do to think about those things, shapes and forms, and responds to that. But this is why the most important thing that you are going to bring to your parenting with your children is going to be your awareness of your very physical presence, and how your very physical presence is present to them in all kinds of circumstances. What's your tone of voice? your eye contact. Like, like, what is, what is your physical presence going to be like? Followed by your words. But this is, the brain, the brain operates bottom to top and right to left. First we sense,

then we make sense what we sense. And they're both critical, both important, both part of the deal. But there is a certain sequence in which we live in the world. That makes me appreciate marriage so differently in the sense of like, okay, it's my physical presence that will make an impact on my kids. And I only have one perspective on that. And Sean, we had a lengthy discussion last night about how my presence can be perceived at some point. And I'm like, well, that's, what do you, what do you know? But I'm like, it's, one, it's so inspiring. And in some ways, like you said, it's, it's easy. Like, I don't have to know all of the parenting strategies or the discipline strategy. I just have to know what my embodied presence and, uh, experience will be like for, for, for, for,

for someone else. But it also is like, wow, it's so nice to have a second opinion on like, hey, you should soften up here or whatever. But yeah, and,

and we might say then a second presence. Yeah. Yeah. But it also, just that concept of understanding and making cognitive sense of your story, I'm thinking about the people that say like, oh,

it's because it's a full, like this happened because it's a full moon or I'm upset because it's a full moon or I'm a zodiac sign or, And there's a lot of different senses. So I wonder if a caveat to that statement would be, to the extent that you can make sense of your story and that story is closest to the truth,

like the closer the truth that is, the better, you know what I'm saying? Like, what's the addendum? Right. Well, when I say make sense of things, remember, again, it's important to recognize that when we talk about making sense, this is part of a whole other conversation about what it means for us to be storytellers as human beings.

Yeah. No human being makes sense of their story by themselves. There's no, in the neurobiological world, in the material world, therefore, there is no such thing as exclusive self-identification in the material universe. Like it doesn't work that way. Someone says, well, I self-identify as, so forth. Look, it doesn't mean I don't have agency. I have agency and I can say lots of things about myself, but I say things about myself because

I'm perceiving the self of mine is in communication with and in relationship with the rest of the material world, including lots of other people that have things to say to me and have things to say that I am and that I am not. So I am going to, like we are deciding who I am. I don't do this. No story is ever told as a single primary author. You have lots of co-authors. Everybody does. Some of those people are no longer alive, but they're in your head, and they're telling you things about yourself. The question then becomes not, what is the story that I am telling? It's what of the story, what is the story that we are telling? And as you're rightly saying, Andrew, to what degree is that story reflective of the faithful story of the biblical narrative? But what if I don't,

what if I don't buy into that? You know what I'm saying? Like, what if I'm just telling my own story or what, what happens? Well, well, let's be clear. Most of us do, believe that we are telling our own story. And I'm simply saying it's not true. Yeah. Interesting. I'm simply saying like, look, look, if I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a far, I'm a farmer in the middle of Tajikistan. And I have an eighth grade education. If that, like, is the world flat? They tell me no. They tell me it's round. Like, I'm like, I just see flat wheat fields for as far as I can see. Like, But like, it doesn't matter because I can believe the world is flat

because this is what I do. But if I'm going to be somebody working at NASA and I'm shooting like rockets into space that the world is flat or the world is around makes a big difference. Why is this important? It's because like, yeah, people can tell themselves all kinds of stories

as long as it's convenient to help them live their lives. This is what we do. So what's the most convenient story to tell? Well, you know, it was convenient it was convenient for Adam and Eve to tell a story that's like, oh, my gosh, the story quickly became, if I eat this fruit, it will help me cope with what I'm becoming and feeling in this moment as I'm listening

to this story that now the snake is telling about us. Sell me on the biblical story, though. Like, well, I was thinking about this. I can do that. I can, I will be happy to do that in another episode. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This was a real treat, doctor.

No, no, no, no, no. No, no. No apology. We'll do a part two because I do want to talk about stories. I think it's important. Okay. For those of you're curious, we will do a second part if you're good with the doctor. And then you also have your own podcast and books that will link down below.

But thank you for joining us. This was a real treat. And I have a lot to think on. So we'll talk next time. You're very, very, very welcome.