Pints With Aquinas - 203: Anxiety, Trauma and Addiction

Episode Date: April 30, 2020

In this episode of Pints with Aquinas, I interview Dr. Gerry Crete, a marriage and family therapist and licensed counselor. Gerry is one of the most brilliant people I know, and you're going to love this episode! In the interview, we talk about: • Psychology and philosophy • Freud, Jung and psychoanalysis • Anxiety, trauma and addiction • Why you shouldn't be embarrassed to go to a therapist • and more! GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd MY BOOKS Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx  CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform Website - mattfradd.com Facebook - facebook.com/mattfradd/ Twitter - twitter.com/mattfradd

I think it would be kind of fun, Jerry, if I asked you like a bit of your bio and you just shouted stuff at me. Is that okay? So it'd be more like that. G'day and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd. And yes, this is the fourth set that Pints with Aquinas has had. We had those other two, the black one, the wall that said the Matt Fradd Show. Then we were upstairs in my kitchen. Well, my wife, while I was gone in Chicago recently, decorated my office and I feel desperately happy about it. I think it's beautiful. I think she's done a great job. And I'm really pumped that we have these like crane microphone stands so that we can just sit

back and relax and chat. In fact, today before 9 p.m., I'm going to be getting a cigar air filter, which is supposed to be like the Mac Daddy. So in the next episode, provided that my guest is cool, there's a chance that they won't be, right? But we will sit back and have a cigar here. I'm pumped about that. We should go check in case. Anyway, look, the thing is, the interview's already over.

That's why you'll find out towards the end we start drinking whiskey. I'm not advertising old Dominic's. They're not paying me, though they should because it's one of my favorite bourbons. Anyway, today I'm interviewing Dr. Jerry Crete, who is a marriage and family therapist and who. More. And a professional counselor. And a professional counselor who runs the apostolate. Souls and Hearts.

Souls and Hearts, which is a free podcast. Called Be With The Word. Oh, is it called Be With The Word? Why isn't it called Souls and Hearts, if that's your thing? Because we have a number of podcasts. Oh it he has a number of podcasts be with the word fly on the wall yes more to come courses and blogs what the heck are you waiting for what's it called the url url what's the url www.soulsandhearts.com soulsandhearts.com. It's below, so click the link. Jerry is one of my most favorite people, and I'm not just saying that because he's sitting over there.

He is the dungeon master in our Dungeons and Dragons games that we play once a month. He goes to my Byzantine church. He used to be my therapist. He's an incredibly brilliant guy and has had a lot of very important things to say. In this episode, we talk about dealing with anxiety, what anxiety is. We talk about trauma, what that is, processing it. We talk about, what else do we talk about? Healthy attachments. Addictions. What? Addictions. We talk about porn addiction. This is going to be a tremendously helpful episode to you, like you personally. You, like me, are broken. There's stuff in your life that you're working through, trying to find healing in. And I think this

episode is going to help tremendously. So please stick through for the whole show. You're going to really love it. And if you haven't yet, click that subscribe button and the bell, and that way YouTube will be forced to let you know every time we put out a new video. All right, here is the episode with Dr. Jerry Crete. Jerry Crete, how are you? Doing well, Matt. Good to be here. I'm so glad that you could be on the show. For those who aren't aware of you, tell us about yourself, your new podcast, all the good work you're doing. Oh, yes.

We have a new program called Souls and Hearts, which is an online mental health education resource. We have podcasts. We have Be With The Word, where a fellow of mine, a friend of mine, Dr. Peter Malinowski, who's a clinical psychologist at Indiana, and I reflect on the Sunday readings. And we look at them from a psychological perspective as well as a spiritual perspective. And we've been doing that now for a couple months. Yes, I love it. I'm actually growing in my faith doing it and really forcing me to really look at the readings. I look forward to talking about that a bit later. But as far as your official role, what are you?

I mean, I know you. They don't know you, so how about you? I am a licensed marriage and family therapist and professional counselor. And I'm also an EMDR therapist. I do a lot of work with trauma survivors, do a lot of marriage counseling, do a lot of addiction work, depression and anxiety, of course, as well. I can't wait to get into all of this. I'm really excited to learn. But before we do, I really want to know kind of how you got here. You know, like, how did you get into this?

And how did you get into like marriage and therapy counseling specifically? At what point in your life did you decide to go into this field? Right. Well, I had a journey. I didn't have the normal route. I'm from Canada originally. And I actually, you know, studied history, studied English and was actually worked as a teacher for a number of years. Then I gradually moved into school counseling by doing a master's in counseling. And then I did a PhD in counseling psychology and education. And so, you know, I was just called into working with couples. I had a wonderful mentor who was a marriage and family therapist who really taught me about systems thinking and how you can really make a lot of change by working with the system. Yes, and working one-on-one with the individual is good.

But working with a couple, working with the family, it's actually a way more Catholic approach. So you were working as a school therapist, said before you did your phd yes school counselor okay so a school counselor i guess you didn't need any kind of credentials to oh yes you did oh yeah i had a master's degree and you had to be uh certified in the state as a as a school counselor okay and then okay so just for my benefit and for those out there and i think i've asked you this before but i forgot What's the difference between a psychologist, psychiatrist, counselor, but they also are trained to do assessments. So they do a lot of evaluations and so on. Whereas marriage and family therapists, counselors, clinical social workers tend to focus on doing clinical work.

Okay. So were you a kid when you decided you wanted to start helping people one-on-one like that? No, I wasn't. I mean, I think as a kid i can remember actually um doing some eighth grade test you know it's called the dat okay and it gave me three options at the end of it it said you should be a lawyer a psychologist or a teacher huh so i did two out of three those seem like very flattering options i wonder what other people got right right you right. You know, truck driver. But no, I actually had really shockingly low scores in mechanical reasoning. So I kind of knew I was never meant to be an engineer or anything like that. I think I'm like that too. Yeah, yeah.

So I was new. What's funny is when I was in grad school, or not grad school, undergrad, I took psychology courses. I actually hated them initially. So I didn't think I was going to go into that area at all. Actually. I loved history. I love theology. I loved philosophy, English literature. I loved all those things. I thought I would like psychology, but I didn't at the time. So it was actually an evolution for me. Tell us about the kind of the, give us a bit of a history lesson with regards to psychology. Because I know that Aristotle and Aquinas talk about the soul.

I think Aquinas, when he talks about the soul, he puts it more in positive terms, like how the human being ought to function, how it ought to be, how it ought to act in order to be healthy. When I think about psychology today, though, I think about like things that have gone wrong with a human and how to fix them. But just because I know nothing about this, how has psychology progressed? Well, really, psychology as a modern science really began, I would say, in the late 19th century. But I would argue that psychology goes back, you know, all the way into philosophy because really what is philosophy? goes back you know all the way into philosophy because really what is philosophy um uh but you know an understanding of the mind and understanding of the human person yeah understanding of our place in it and actually psychology looks at that as well yeah um the modern science is focused um on or originally you know focused on developmental stages and finding out when that, you know,

when there are changes or what happens when those stages are frustrated, right? And therefore what problems occur when they are frustrated and, you know, how you can correct that or work on that. But there are multiple fields within psychology. There are multiple disciplines and many people don't always realize that. Everyone sort of assumes, you know, Freud and the whole sitting on the couch thing. I mean, that's classic psychoanalytic psychology is really not practiced very much today. Tell us what that is. What is that kind of method of psychology that Freud's known for?

Well, in general terms, you know, you are looking at the subconscious and you're understanding what are the drives that are going on in the subconscious mind that are influencing the conscious mind. And you're working with that person to, you know, uncover those and, you know, work through past issues and understanding your defenses and why we have those kind of defenses. why we have those kind of defenses. But most counseling today tends to come at it from a behavioral cognitive viewpoint, which is really about figuring out what are the beliefs that you have

that are informing your thoughts, that are informing your feelings. And those beliefs may be subconscious, but maybe not. So whereas Freud, it sounds like a lot of the things, the reasons we act the way that we do are based on subconscious. Right.

A lot of it had to do with sex too, right? Yeah, Freud in particular looked at sexual development. Other early psychodynamic theorists were looking at other, you know, you've got Erickson looking at different developmental stages in childhood that weren't just focused on sex um you've got young who is looking at the the collective unconscious you know trying to understand how we all um relate to um we all have archetypes yeah and we all relate to this sort of like overall consciousness just kind of interesting yeah yeah it's fascinating stuff but um the idea that we should be focused on human behavior and changing human behavior was a branch away from that psychodynamic. And the cognitive behavioral model is actually the more dominant practice currently. So, why wasn't Freud into, I mean,

presumably he was into changing certain types of behavior. That's why he did therapy. Right, right. So, how did this branch away and how is it different well it's different because that you know truly and i'm not a freudian and i'm not a psychoanalytic theorist okay theorist uh so i'm not the best person to answer that question probably but it takes a long time in his model i mean you would have to be in his model. I mean, you would have to be in his model, you were doing therapy, you know, multiple days a week for possibly a year or more. So it's an extremely in-depth exploration of the subconscious. The behavioralists branched away from that and they said, no, we can, we don't have to go into the subconscious. There's all kinds of scientific studies to

understand behavior. You know, think about things you might know, like Pavlov's dog, right? You understand, you know, you might know that one where you ring the bell, give the, give the dog, you know, some steak, ring the bell, steak, and he salivates, right? Yes. And so the idea is that you don't give him the steak, but you ring the bell and he's still going to salivate. Yeah. So there, the whole behavioral model was about changing behavior.

There's no issue of going into the subconscious to explore that. It's just human behavior can be controlled, if you will, and modified. Do you think it came from a point of view that we need to help these people now, as opposed to we don't have months to sit around and speculate about the subconscious? I think it came from that, in my opinion. I mean, I think there was a lot of criticism of Freud and the psychodynamic method, even some criticism of, is there really a subconscious? It was even a question that was asked. Yeah, interesting.

And so it actually did open up certain, or had certain spiritual questions came up as a result of even having subconscious. Actually, let me ask you that. Like, what is the subconscious then? What do we mean by that? All right, I want to take a pause from our conversation and say thank you to one of our sponsors, Covenant Eyes.

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is the subconscious then? What do we mean by that? Well, the subconscious, I mean, yeah, it's a big question. So it would be the almost background. I just think of things happening below the surface. Yeah, that we have a conscious mind. So the way I look at it is a little bit, you know, the left brain of the left brain, so to speak, is cognitive, linear processing, everyday functions. you know possibly even uh dreams access the subconscious but it also is our creative aspects um our non-linear kind of um having to solve deeper life issues maybe even gosh you know yeah um the way i look at it i would even say uh at a core our memories yeah uh are accessed probably to some extent through the subconscious. Yep. Okay.

And that's not really practiced so much today. You said at least the way Freud did it. Definitely not. No, the model right now is cognitive behavioral, which I was saying. And so the idea behind that is that if you challenge your beliefs, then it will change your thoughts and therefore your emotions will follow. So it's useful. And I actually use cognitive behavioral techniques often in the work I do.

Yeah. However, the kind of work I tend to do now actually is integrating the body and possibly the subconscious, right? At least I call it the right side of the brain, which is the emotional center, the creative center, the place where memories are kind of stored in a nonlinear manner. And the idea that the, well, the cognitive side, as well as this emotional center, as well as the body are all connected. know really have good healing you kind of have to address all three and it isn't just a question in my view of challenging negative beliefs which is what cognitive behavioral therapy is getting at it is really about helping a person access in a safe way there may be that material that is stored in that right side of the brain if you will will, possibly the subconscious, and accessing in a way where a person could actually start to make changes and adapt in new ways. And that's actually where I fall and where I believe real change could happen. I can't wait to explore that. I want to ask you

questions about addiction and how we turn to things to try to make ourselves feel better, but we end up feeling worse and our lives can start spinning out of control because we're trying to cope in this negative way. But before we get to that, I want to kind of just maybe address a couple of sort of objections that people might have to therapy. Nothing, you know, I don't hear people kind of articulating arguments against therapy, but I think people tend to have maybe a prejudice view of therapy, like that there's a stigma around it, like there's something seriously wrong with me and I should be able to get this together on my own. And then I also think people would say things like, why would I pay somebody just to go and talk to them? I can do that with my friend. What are some other things that you encounter when people come to therapy for the first time and they're questioning whether or not they should be there? Absolutely. What a great question. I think the history, right, of psychology, we were talking about Freud and ones that follow, is around people with serious pathologies. So if you have people, you know, they say with neuroses or people with schizophrenia or people with serious mental conditions would go to one of these psychiatrists or psychologists to be kind of worked on and fixed.

And so, you know, even the idea of a shrink, you know, I'm going to see a shrink. And that has a really negative connotation in my mind. I'm a marriage and family therapist, and I actually don't typically work with pathology. In other words, I don't work with serious mental illnesses. I mean, obviously, I know about them and I can work with them to some extent, but if they need medication, I send them to a psychiatrist. If they need further evaluation or if they're not really, their issue is not in my scope, I send them to someone else. What I love, the area that I love working in is working with couples, for example, because

they're not, it's not talking about pathology normally. I mean, if I identified one, then we would have to zoom in on that and get extra help. But in general, couples, you're really helping a marriage improve. You're helping people live a better life, right? And so everybody, even if your marriage is good, most people can have some improvement they could have better communication they could have better connection with each other deeper kind of you know happiness in the relationship so here it might be another objection then okay so today maybe when

a lot of people go to therapy they're not necessarily going because they have these severe pathologies right so someone might say well it doesn't this just amount to navel gazing I'm gonna go and talk about myself and how I feel and what's going on with me. I could see someone, and I'm not sympathetic to this view necessarily, but I could see someone saying, yeah, this is kind of part of your problem. Like you need to get out of yourself, be with other people, think about someone else for a change instead of like paying someone money to sit down and talk all about you. It's very sort of egotistical maybe. Right, right. Wow. Well, I have a sort of egotistical maybe right right wow well i

have a number of responses to that right one is that actually different people come to counseling with therapy for different reasons and one thing is if you think about our society and a lot of people are never listened to so we go around we we're taking in information, whether it's television, media, we're constantly being talked to, or if we're talking to somebody else, it's all functional. There are so many people, nobody truly listens. And so for some people coming to counseling and therapy allows them to be listened to, to be heard, to be affirmed, to be valued. And it's a powerful experience. That's a really interesting point. I had never thought of that. You know, I even think like in my marriage, like a lot of the conversations are just that they're functional. Like, I need you to

do this and can you do that? And it's so important that we sit down to like, where are you at? How are you? And I think that's even like probably a good thing in a marriage that may not be as common as we would hope it is in marriages. I'm sure it's not nearly as common. But yeah, that's a really interesting point, hey? I have this idea that this is why people like going to coffee shops. They want to go somewhere where somebody knows them. They want to go somewhere, you know, like they don't want to be anonymous. They want someone to be like, hey, Jerry, John, or whoever. And that's one level. But what I'm talking about in terms of really listening, I don't think you're going to get at a coffee shop typically, right? It's about really going deep. And sometimes it's sharing things that are shameful, sharing things that

are painful, sharing things that are just hard, allowing somebody to really hear what's going on in an environment where you aren't going to be judged. The person is bound to confidentiality, right? They can't share it with anybody else. And their whole job is to support and help you. Sounds great. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So for some people that's just worth its weight in gold, right? Yeah, even just, sorry to keep dwelling on this point, but you've really brought up something that I'm just beginning to think more about. Like even children, how often children, we don't listen to them. We just, you know, we tell them to stop being a nuisance and we redirect them and we put a screen in front of their face.

And so, for many of us, we're not really listened to. Do you think that this generation is doing a poorer job at listening to each other than in the past? And if so, why? How? Well, I think this generation is actually communicating more than ever before, but not listening well. Yes. I heard somebody say, we're actually reading more today than we did 20 years ago. But what we're reading are tweets and instructions and things like that. Right. It's a lot of people expressing their frustration, their anger, their pithy remarks, but not nobody's really listening to the other person.

And I don't think you can quite get that remotely. I mean, I'm sitting here with you right now and, you know, I'm able to really look at your, into your eyes. I'm able to see your human person. You're right here. I can connect with you but you know i can't do that on a tweet or you know facebook even like a even like a chat what do you call them as chat rooms and things that yeah definitely not a chat room i mean you can with

maybe video conferencing you can definitely get there more so but it but it comes back to this idea of deep connection and as human beings, we are wired for connection. We need connection to survive. All right. I want to say pause to our second and final sponsor. That is Halo. H-A-L-L-O-W. Halo.

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and create your account online before downloading the app. We'll put a link below in the show notes. Check it out. I think this is a good response then to the objection that this is just sort of narcissistic and navel-gazing. Right. But is there ever a point where you have someone come and you're like, okay, you're far too focused inward or is that not even a legitimate objection in your mind?

Well, you know, honestly, I think that if a person is coming in and that's what their goal is in counseling is really to bare their soul and open up and be listened to, then I'm not going to judge that. I'm not likely to say, I think good enough. You're kind of narcissistic. Stop focusing on yourself. I let that person decide because I just feel like it's a basic human need. If they're coming for that purpose, then it's their decision. It's their need they're expressing. And if what you're doing is legitimately helping, which I know that it is, then if somebody comes to you with this kind of navel-gazing attitude, you hearing them is only going to help them. Right.

Yeah. Right. And it might be that there's the possibility that if in their regular life, if I discern or if I'm kind of getting the sense that they are also never listening to others at all. I mean, that could be something I bring up. I find a way to bring up to explore with them and maybe to challenge them to listen to others as well. And maybe I could do that by saying, Hey, what was it like this session to just have me here with you and listen to what's

going on for you and, and have them express that. And then I might, in that case say, I wonder if you can do that with someone else. I wonder if you're able to be, to do what I'm doing with you. I wonder if you're able to do that with your friends or your spouse or your parent or whoever it is in your life. And then they kind of get a challenge. I want to get into things like attachment theory, as I say, trauma, addiction, boundaries.

But how long have you been doing, I just want to get to know you a bit more, right? I want our audience to know, what's it like being a therapist sitting down for eight hours a day? You've got your own crap you're probably trying to process at different times what's that like right right well i can honestly say i love my job i mean sometimes i work too much and i get

tired uh and sometimes the burdens can be a little heavy and i have to like do a good job of kind of processing that but i honestly love my job like I'd never have the situation where I wake up in the morning and go, I don't wanna go, right? I've had that sometimes even in jobs I've liked before, I've felt that way, but I actually don't feel that way because the times when I'm working with people, I consider to be precious. I don't know if other therapists would say that,

but I actually do, I come at it with a Catholic perspective and I really see the person I'm sitting with as a person created in the image of God and a valuable, beautiful person. And so the privilege of being able to sit with that person to help them work through things. And sometimes it's not always just listening. I mean, we might have implied that before. But sometimes they're coming in and they actually want to solve and work on some issue or problem in their life. And so the therapy is a little bit more directive than just me sitting there listening the whole time and nodding. Right?

So, but to get back to what you were saying, how did I get here? Well, yeah. Well, how you got there? But like, yeah, what's it like being a therapist in general? I mean, eight hours a day you're listening to people. I would imagine that if you weren't seeing concrete signs of success or advancement, progression in the people that you were working with, it would be a very dispiriting and depressing job. Because you have people presumably who are not coming in to tell you how great their life is, or if they are, it's only because they're covering something awful um which you need to get to um but i imagine you know it's going to be difficult so that must be a beautifully rewarding thing to see people actually begin to advance and

find healing right right yeah i mean specific things i work with you know are things like trauma and so people are having panic attacks or high levels of anxiety or they're in deep depression. So if I see that improvement, right, if somebody is coming in saying, I'm not having panic attacks anymore, that's extraordinarily rewarding. A lot of times I don't always know, you know, because somebody will go to counseling for a while and then they just stop or whatever. And I might hear later, you know, how much it meant to them. But I don't necessarily know at the time. So I do have to, to a great extent, trust the process and just trust that what I'm doing is important and just do what I can and not focus on the outcome. I want to get to anxiety before I do. And we talked about this in a previous episode that we've done, but we've got to address it again.

Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae has five remedies for sorrow. Right. And I find that often when people read spiritual authors, maybe they're afraid that they're going to be too stoic, too difficult. Teresa of Avila, sometimes I read her, I'm like, oh, man, alive. I'm not allowed to enjoy anything. And I'm sure that's not what she means, but sometimes I get that impression. Whereas Aquinas talks about five remedies for sorrow and if I let's see if I can remember them the first is pleasure just generally because

he says that just like the body rests you know in sleep which which helps with weariness so the soul rests in pleasure to deal with kind of internal weariness i'm probably not going to get these in order but he says like talking to a friend and one of the things he says is because it helps when you can share a burden if you share a burden that it's easier to carry and also to see in them their concern for you will alleviate sorrow which just got to the point we talked about a moment ago. It's really beautiful. Crying, he says, because something is better when it's let out and not shut up.

And he said, and we all feel better if we can act in a way that is in tune with what's going on inside. Like no one likes to have to go to a party if they've just had a fight with their spouse and you're going to put on this fake kind of face or maybe not fake, but you know, pretend to be something you're not. So I love that. He says contemplating the truth because he says we're not mere beasts who can be happy with sex and food and whatever. It is interesting when animals, I don't know how true this is of all animals, but when animals have all their needs met, they go to sleep. When, when humans have their needs met,

we ask questions, which is why philosophy kind of was able to arise only in a time of prosperity in ancient Greece. Can I, can I comment on at least two of those? So, so the one about the truth is about accessing the cognitive side. Tell me why,

what does that mean? Because you're asking those questions and you're looking at truth and you're processing that. But on some level, if you're looking at truth, you're also reflecting and analyzing at a deeper level. So I think you are actually crossing over into that right side as well. But the crying is the emotional center. So having some kind of catharsis, to use a more Freudian type language,

is also to have that release, emotional release, which we tend to bottle things up. So in those two examples, you've actually touched on cognitive and emotional centers of the brain. This is what I meant when I said, like Aquinas addresses psychology, but not in psychological terms we use today.

And then finally, and I want you to comment on this, the final one, which is my favorite, is sleep in baths. Right. He said, if you're sad, having a good night's sleep, having a hot bath will help you because it'll help the body. And this gets back to what you said a moment ago. So feel free to kind of comment on that. So really, that's beautiful.

I'm so excited. The Tom Sequinas really supports the theory that I work from, which is emotional center, cognitive center, and the body, and that you really want to address all three. When you ignore one, you really are, you know, missing a lot. And I think that Thomas Aquinas, I'm sure would agree with me here, that the other side is care of the soul, right? Like on some level, spiritual growth, right? And so I'm so privileged as well, being a Catholic therapist that I'm allowed, you know, when the client is okay with it, to bring in spiritual aspects. So, I feel like we are working on the mind,

the body, and the soul in that process. And what's interesting is today I feel like Catholics are on the verge of demonizing this talk of self-care because they worry that it sounds a little weak, a little narcissistic, all about you. But understood correctly, that is kind of what Aquinas just spoke about. You know, like if he's saying, oh, you have sleep in baths, he's kind of saying, though maybe not the way we would today, like have some you time, like relax so that you can then be better to do what God's called you to do or whatever. I think it's amazing that people would criticize it that way because it's a wrong diagnosis of the problem in our society. That's how I see it.

What's a wrong diagnosis? The idea that having self-care is narcissistic or some kind of problem. I really think our society lacks self-care. our society lacks self-care. We overindulge in certain ways, but even the ways in which we overindulge often aren't really self-care. Give us some examples. Well, examples I would say would be of things we think are relaxing. Maybe would be like, you know, busy being on the internet, going on Twitter and Facebook and all these different social media things, like as if that actually relaxes us or even video, like I'm not against these things, by the way, even video games, I'm not opposed overall to video games, but it's not relaxing.

Right. It isn't to play most video games anyway. Even television can take on an aspect of, you know, like you've got a binge, you're binge watching something, it can just lead you into numbness, but it can also almost be anxiety inducing. All these things are high stimulus things that are keeping us, our minds busy, busy, busy. So everything we do, like all day long, our minds are busy, busy thinking, planning, organizing, getting from here to there, where our jobs, even our drives to work, it's just a lot of input coming in and busy, busy minds. And a lot of the time we don't realize how stressed we actually are chronically throughout the day. So to say we don't do self-care, well, some of the

things may look like you're relaxing or you're indulging in leisure but you're really maintaining a stressful body state so would you say in some ways that like this generation needs legitimate more self-care perhaps than when you and i were kids totally i do believe that and is that because of technology primarily or it's a big one it's a it's a big one because i don't know you like i can remember as a kid just you know being kind of thrown outside and go play and you just have long leisurely days yes you're just sort of hanging out maybe you meet some friends you just play outside sometimes you just sit i haven't just even sitting on a tree you know like i just i loved it i actually when i came in today your daughter was up in a tree wasn't she? Isn't that beautiful, right? She's not busy doing something.

She's just being a kid. And I think that kids don't get to do that very often, right? And so, yeah, yeah. This is all really fascinating. I keep talking about this because I keep trying to understand it, and I feel I'm an external processor, I think. And so as I talk about this more more i'm trying to get at it um this is one of the reasons i wanted to do a tech fast for lent is precisely that and i want to get you to flesh this thought out for me because i think it's true but i haven't really plumbed it at all um and that's this idea that the cause of our um pacifying or regulating is also the cause of our agitation. So as you say, you turn to the phone,

you're reading things on Twitter. A lot of it's like hyperbolic and loud and angry. You listen to a podcast. It might be a political podcast, or it might be about what's wrong in the church, continually agitating yourself. And it's almost like, and I want you to correct me if I'm wrong here, because I'm not sure, but it would seem to me that we turn to this thing to soothe the agitation. And it's just this vicious cycle where it agitates us more and we feel the need to go back to it more. And we're just caught in this thing. What do you think about that? No, I would definitely agree with that. I would say we are, again, just, yeah, constantly stimulating ourselves. And and so we're not

you know getting in touch with nature we're not having time to really pray right we're not having time to uh reflect ourselves to even go inward and know ourselves we're yeah we're just like you're saying constantly taking information in and. I was just gonna say real quickly I think what's ironic about this of course is that people are watching this on YouTube and I like So, what do you do with that? I mean obviously information can be helpful I yeah again, I'm not honest to to technology and I'm not saying we should just destroy all technology I think that it just needs to be measured. It needs to be in balance with the rest of your life. I often like, we'll look at my, I use this thing called a monk manual. It's sort of

just like a day planner. And you say the top three things you're going to get that done that day and like how you can serve that day and things like that. And I sometimes will look at my day. I'm like, I don't have much to do. And yet I feel like it's's it's filling up with things or not that i feel that it's filling up with things but as i go throughout the day i realize i'm always busy but at the start of the day i realized i'd actually today i don't have much to do and it it gets to that point i don't know if you ever heard this analogy of the sand pebbles and rocks priest told me this once you know if you have a vase uh the rocks represent the important things in your life the meaningful things pebbles

might be somewhat important busy work and the sand is just wasting your time and he said what we often do is we don't you know if you fill up the vase with rocks then you can fit the pebbles in then you can fit the sand in but what we often do is fill up that vase with sand meaningless busy work and then there's no room for anything meaningful. And I feel what I'm talking about is that. Like, I'm like, I had a busy day today, but I did nothing that meaningful. I've just been.

Yeah, and I don't know that everyone has even the luxury of that, right? Don't a lot of people have situations where like they have to be at a job at a certain time and then they have responsibilities, say maybe with kids. And then they they've signed themselves up to a bunch of different things or activities or they're running their kids around or whatever it is. You know, they've they have a life that doesn't have time in it for that downtime and for that connection with others.

And by that, I mean true, real connection with others, right? Or time for self-recollection. So that's not built into their day. So if you were making your calendar, right? Like you might have more flexibility because you're a creative type and you're working on all these things. You could do it later or earlier. Not everybody has that, but either case, do you sit down and say, as I'm looking at my week, I'm going to prioritize the time that I sit down in prayer. I'm going to put that into the calendar first. I'm going to prioritize the specific ways where I'm going to have connection with, whether it's a spouse, whether it's a friend, whether, and I'm going to actually build that into my day.

And I'm going to, and then the other stuff comes in after. Now that's hard. That can be hard for some people to do if their lives are already overloaded. Let's talk about anxiety. I had this thought, and I think what you just said partly gets to the answer to this. But sometimes I feel like we're all talking about being anxious, but we've had it in the United States. Many of us, perhaps most of us, have had it very well. If we lived 100 years ago, we'd be perhaps making a lot less money. many of us, perhaps most of us, have had it very well. If we lived 100 years ago, we'd be perhaps making a lot less money. We'd have serious issues that we don't have to deal with today.

So isn't it just kind of like a pampered, spoiled kind of kid who's complaining about being anxious when he's never really seen it hard? I think this is what some people talk about. We had these young men going off to war, and they weren't whining about their anxiety flaring up or something. Whereas today, like what are we doing? And we're sitting around feeling anxious. Right, right. Well, I actually do think that we do have higher rates of anxiety now for specific reasons. And if you compare people that were growing up, say, in the 1930s or something, they didn't have high

levels of anxiety. They had slower days, less responsibilities. In fact, the young guys wanting to go to war were bored, probably, to some extent, right? They were looking for some excitement. They were looking for something meaningful and heroic to do in their lives. Maybe they, you know, if they were on the farm or whatnot, I mean, it's a beautiful life, you could say, but it's a hard life, say, working on a farm, right? Or, you know, they had a lot of time for self-recollection. They had a lot of time for connection with others in those days. So this is getting back to what we're talking about here.

It is. The predominant reason that we're feeling anxious today is this increase in technology use. I would say so. And it completely yeah but it's not just the technology what else is it it's that okay think we live in north atlanta right well north atlanta is a very busy metropolitan metropolitan city probably like a lot of other ones right um and people get in their cars and they in the morning to go to work often driving like an hour yeah and in traffic then they go to work and it's you know our workforce it's very much driven by productivity so it's depending on the kind of work you're doing it might be a lot of meetings a lot of conflict a lot of you know stress and pressure. And then what do they do

after that? They get into their cars and they drive another hour or so to get home. Then they come home and they've got busyness in their house, right? Whether it's, okay, now get one kid over here, get one kid over there. I mean, not everybody has kids, but even if you're, even if not, like the pressures, the time pressures on people are pretty extreme. I mean, even if you're, even if not, like the pressures, the time pressures on people are pretty extreme. I mean, even if you compare a desk, like sometimes I like watching some old movie, right? Oh, yeah. Even if it's not that old, like 1980, like, you know, what was that one with nine to five, right? And it had the three women and they were, okay, anyway, and they were protesting their boss who treated them in horrible ways.

But you looked at his, you know, just a glance at the guy's office. His office had a desk with a phone. That's fantastic. Maybe a piece of paper. Yeah. And, you know, somebody else did the typing for him. Yeah. Right. And you're just kind of going, wow, imagine going to work and that's your desk. You answer the phone, you have somebody type, you know, letters and memos and things,

and you call meetings, that's their world. It was simpler. So the more technology we have, we've actually made our lives way more complicated. Plus you add maybe a day like the one I was describing a moment ago. When does that person have downtime? Their bodies and minds and everything are in a chronic state of, I would say, fight or flight, right? We weren't designed for our bodies to constantly be staving off threats, because that's what anxiety is. It's the perception of some kind of a threat to the system. And so the mind, but also the body, your heart rate goes up, your blood pressure goes up,

you might even perspire, you have adrenaline're you're actually getting ready to do some action some you know like you're getting ready to run or you're getting ready to deal with the threat to deal with the threat but driving your car on the highway isn't meant to be an hour-long stress fest where your body's in a state of anxiety even the guys who went to war the traditional old-fashioned war like we go way back is you know a lot of waiting and you've got the two sides two cavalries or whatever and the two and then they just like go at it until everybody's dead and it's over so it's an event right yeah yeah and uh what changed in world war uh one was for example was trench warfare where they're sitting there constantly in a state of anxiety staring at each other for hours and hours and hours. And it's a different level of stress.

That's really, really fascinating. But again, this does get back to technology because, of course, cars are a product of technology. Right. And it was because of the automobile that we're able to now drive long distances, don't need to live where we work. Right. Man, I want to become Amish like tomorrow. Yeah. I have said this before that when I grew up,

and it's probably similar for you in Canada, I think in Australia we were like five, 10 years behind technology in America. But when I grew up, if you wanted to get a hold of me or my parents, there were only three ways. You could write them a letter in the mail. You could call the phone that was bolted to my kitchen wall, or you could come and find me.

And if I wasn't home, you could go up to the shops and see if you really needed to find me. Right. That's literally it. Can you think of another way? Right, right. No. I think that's it. That's it.

Or you shout it. Yeah. In the neighborhood. Yeah. Your mom did. You could shout, which would kind of fit into that's it. That's it. Or you shout it in the neighborhood. Yeah. Your mom did. You could shout, which would kind of fit into that third category of coming to find me. But like today, like let's just think about the ways in which we're contactable. I'm actually wanting to do this.

This is a kind of experiment. Right. You have text message. Right. You have phone calls. You have voicemail. You have apps like Marco Polo. You have direct message on all of your social medias like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook.

Can they contact you over Snapchat? Is that a thing? I'm too cool to be into Snapchat. I think they can. Email. What else? I mean, it's like you've got a – people are speaking at you from a thousand different angles through a thousand different means and as technology has advanced we're less patient if i text you you feel the need to text me back right away people text like i'm speaking to you in the same room hey jerry what's up and

if you don't reply right away i'm like whoa didn't reply my text message and so we're walking around like with all these different apps having to respond to all these people. Right. So that gets back to what I was saying earlier, like we're over communicate, but we have less connection. Right. Real connection. So let's talk about anxiety then, because I really do agree with you. And I think that this is spot on, that this has got to be one of the primary reasons we're experiencing a lot more anxiety today.

Is it where I'm on constant like high alert. And as you say, it's anxiety is what you said, a response to a perceived threat or a real threat. Yeah. And we don't always know the difference. Yeah. Right. Because if our body is responding to a perceived threat as if it's real, then we're going to have all the same symptoms. Exactly.

Yeah. So we go into fight or flight all day long, often without even realizing it. It might not be extreme, but it's almost this chronic low level anxiety that's going on all the time. And that's why I really do believe that we have an epidemic of anxiety and depression because at some point your body is so tired from that, that you can slip into the opposite, right? Anxiety is being a high alert and depression is being under that's right well so tell us when we've spent a little bit

talking about anxiety and i want to continue doing that but what is depression just real quick well it's a complicated phenomenon right but it is also like the sense of loss of motivation almost the sense of kind of malaise you feel sort of stuck it's kind of the body almost uh coming down if you will so is this almost the inevitable result of prolonged anxiety yes right right because your body is over as it can be it's not always it's one way and and your body is overstressed over time and eventually your body basically because it's not designed to be in constant fight or flight. Our bodies are meant to be temporarily in that state. And so it causes so much stress on the body and the different hormones

and the different chemicals and things that are going on in your body are just overwhelmed that one sinks into a depression, so to speak. So I would be interested to hear how you help people with anxiety because it would seem like if our diagnosis is accurate and that technology is in large part due to the anxiety we're experiencing, not always, of course, human relationships, relationships with family members and things like that, of course, can play into it. But I would imagine that there would be two basic approaches. One would be to kind of help you live the same life you're living right now, but live it better. You know, be more responsible as to when you check your email, what media you take in and so forth. But sometimes I wonder if we're just, we should be a little more bolder than that and be like, yeah, you need to just.

Maybe we should be taking a more radical approach and just get off social media. That's not always practical, depending, you know, in some cases it is. So to me, I have two different approaches. One is structural and systemic. So it is taking a look at your life and what are the changes that you can make in your life to live a better life. Maybe that means a job change if you're driving for an hour there and back. That's not always possible for some people. Maybe it is specifically adding things into your life and removing other things.

Right. So there could be like social media or whatnot or putting serious limits. So those are all structural and systemic changes. and becoming more and more present throughout the day and recognizing the perceived threats and then having some tools to be able to kind of deregulate or kind of come down from the stress in natural ways so that you can have that ride. Maybe that drive for an hour, maybe you can't help it. You've got to feed your kids.

It's the only job, whatever. But maybe that hour drive can actually be a time of to some extent relaxation and restoration uh you know within limits in a car yeah but rather than listen to talk radio you listen to gregorian chant or something more definitely and but i think it begins with the body i kind of have this formula and i say you know it starts with the body then go to emotions and then go to cognitions so the very first thing one has to do is to recognize what is going on in the body in the present moment so like right now for example i'm talking to you and we're doing a show right so immediately as an introvert i could be stressed by that.

The first thing I have to do is sort of, okay, what's going on in my body, right? And what does that mean? So am I tense? Okay. To start with, like, am I, you know, are my muscles kind of clenching? And where am I doing that? You know, is that in my pelvic floor? Is that in my shoulders? Is that in my hands, my jaw, wherever it might be? And then just stop for a moment and go, hey, I'm having that physical reaction.

And yet nothing really bad is happening. I'm just sitting here with Matt. So I could just kind of like go, all right, invite my body to relax and go, you know what? Matt's a nice guy. I'm doing something I think is important. It's going to be okay. And then also adding to that, maybe taking a breath, which probably I should have done before now, right? And just sort of take a breath and just

allow oxygen to kind of come in. And then I'm telling my brain, my body is literally sending messages up my spine, basically to my amygdala, that core, that part of the brain, that primitive part of the brain that manages fear and stuff like that initially. And it's literally sending the message, Jerry, you are safe right now. You know, it's funny. This is me being a little vulnerable, but last night I was quite stressed out. The kitchen was a mess. Everything felt like it was chaotic. My children were kind of playing up a lot and I was trying to get them to do things and they weren't doing them and ended up sending them to bed. And I just felt angry and tight, but I don't think I would have realized I felt tight had it not been for your help

back in the day. Anyway, Cameron, my wife, came upstairs and we talked for a little bit. She said, go for a walk. And so I went for a walk and I started praying the Jesus prayer, breathing from my diaphragm, not just short, shallow breaths, which is what you tend to do when you're upset. Right.

And I actually, you tell me what you think about this. It's a little embarrassing to say, maybe on air, but I actually said to myself, like, it's okay. Like, you're safe. You're safe. And I realized that that anger was a response to a threat. And maybe that threat was, I don't know, like not being respected the way I think I should. Maybe chaos, you know, around me was seeming like it was encroaching on me. But just it was actually more of a prayer experience.

I was in the context of prayer. It was almost like my heavenly father saying to me, like, all is well. Yeah. All is well. And then all of the anxieties that I'd be like, yeah, but like the way I reacted to one of my children today. Like, that's terrible. I couldn't, I shouldn't have done that. Like, all is well.

Yeah. And not in sort of a sort of fatalist way. I mean, there's things I should perhaps need to change, but it gets exactly to what you were talking about. And I realized I was all hunched up and I'm like, okay, like, it's okay. So back to the body. No, you did exactly the right thing. That's fantastic. You started, you noticed your body.

This is so much cheaper than paying you for therapy. These cameras aren't even rolling. This is just a therapy session. That's a joke. Sorry. Yes, yes. Well, yeah, you did it. You started with the body and you recognized you were tense and you did something about it.

You did some breathing. You did some muscle relaxation. You actually did an awesome thing. You went to the emotional center. You invited God into that space, which I think is beautiful and wonderful and really powerful. You allowed God to actually sue the emotional part that was distressed. Then you actually went to the cognitions and you started to, you were able at that point to go, Hey, you know what? It's no big

deal. I don't know exactly you said this, but it's no big deal. My house is messy. You're able to like, I can manage that or whatever. You're able to actually resolve that part cognitively, but you wouldn't have been able to probably get there or not as well if you had skipped the body and skipped the emotional center and did what most of us do is go right to the cognitions. But what happens there is that when you haven't had your body soothed or your emotional center soothed, then you're going to have a lot more critical thinking. Like, well, why are you so stressed? What's wrong with you?

What's your problem? And it leads to more anxiety and makes the cycle actually worse. So you said that anxiety, we tend to respond to a perceived or real threat through fight or flight. And you said that we're experiencing anxiety in higher degrees today than perhaps we did in the past. So would it follow then that we're also dealing with anger since I imagine that is often what fight looks like in a way that we didn't in the past or not necessarily? Wow. Good question. It's interesting. Anger is a really interesting emotion for one thing, because it can be what I call primary emotion. So our primary emotions are, you know, kind of,

So our primary emotions are, you know, kind of, they're not good or bad. Yeah. They're just what we feel. Yeah. Shame, guilt, joy, sadness, hurt, all these different emotions are kind of the primary emotions. And anger can be when it's something where you have a righteous kind of reaction to something that's just wrong. Yeah. You want to remedy something. So anger is the emotion that one feels in that situation.

What you do with that anger is, could be a number of things that are actually sinful or not. It can also be clouding though, can't it? It's not just, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. It's not just what we do with it.

It seems like there's a type of anger that almost clouds our reason. So the good anger would propel us to remedy something that is in need of remedy. Correct, or motivates us. Yeah. Whereas, now I call anger sometimes can be a secondary emotion. It's the only one that I kind of see that way. And that's when it's covering up another emotion. Okay.

So if you hurt my feelings and I feel that just a little bit and I don't like that. So I quickly go to anger, then I'm like cursing at you. Yes. Right. That's then anger. That's anger as a secondary emotion. Yeah. This is what was happening to me last night. I think like, and when I say angry, like I wasn't shouting or hitting anything or, you know, like kicking the cat or the dog, not that I do that, but I wasn't doing like that it was just uh i was feeling angry and i realized that it was a way of like protecting this fearful this fear that things are out of my control and not well yeah but see you named it their fear yeah so fear is another i didn't mention it but fear is another primary emotion nobody wants to feel fear so you go from fear quickly to anger yes you know men do it more than women,

I think, because we're almost trained that it's okay. Like anger is one of those, you know, you shouldn't cry, but if you're angry, you know, that's, you're a guy. Yeah. It's okay. Yeah. On some level. Okay. Now, earlier we were talking about how you might help somebody who's experiencing anxiety and you began by talking about like experiencing their body and things like that. So why don't we just use a real life example that might be helpful for people, all right? Let's suppose there's a lady, just choose a lady and she goes online and maybe she's just posted this video that she's very proud of and she has like several remarks in the comment section that are saying like, you know, she doesn't know what she's talking about,

she's an idiot, she's fat, she looks stupid or something like that which believe me is what people get on youtube what do you say to her like how how is she to encounter that let's say she's not in a position where she can shut down youtube as part of her job right how would you kind of counsel her to deal with those and negative comments coming at her right well in a lot of different ways one could approach that i mean just following what we were just talking about yeah first of all what did she feel because i would imagine that perhaps i mean unless she's just so used to it that it nothing bothers her uh anymore i would imagine that her feelings were hurt i would imagine maybe she even felt some shame, right? So she has some hurt feelings, some shame feelings. Maybe she's a bit fearful too. Maybe she feels like her livelihood or what she's doing, whatever is threatened. I don't know. So those are really difficult emotions. So she allow her to feel those things is honoring her and honoring that she's allowed to have those emotions.

Right. And and that's a really helpful thing for her to do. What she might have done in response. Right. Because nobody wants to have shame, fear or hurt feelings. What she might have done is to get really angry. Maybe she snaps back and types in something nasty back, right? That's an expression of her anger. And in a way to help her understand that's why she did that, right? So not really judging it, but just like helping her see, okay, you had hurt feelings, you didn't feel them, you went to anger, right? So now let's go back and look at, well, what did you really feel? And then to allow some process of her to be able to have some care and understanding to who she is as a person, right? And once she gets

that, it's kind of maybe soothing or understanding. And I even go into other areas when I'm doing therapy and looking at kind of what part of her was particularly hurt by it. So in other words, she might have a part of her that was, you know, kind of tough and stands up and says, you know, I don't care what you think, right? But usually behind that, that's covering up probably another part that was wounded in the past. You know, maybe, hey, maybe it was being bullied as a kid or maybe it was her dad saying she's stupid or she's fat or something like that.

And that wound from way back, which has been very well, you know, buried and is finding a way out, is now fueling her reaction. Right. And so she's not really realizing it. It might be in her subconscious or that right side of the brain. She just knows she feels stronger than she really realizing it. It might be in her subconscious or that right side of the brain. She just knows she feels stronger than she really wants to. So if that's going on, spending some time with that part of her,

recognizing where it comes from, maybe doing some therapeutic work with that, kind of, if you want to say inner child or that wounded part, and to help give that part what it really needs. Because if you're nine and your dad says, you're stupid, you're fat, you're ugly or something like that, what does that nine-year-old really need that they didn't get? Right?

They need affirmation. Gentleness, love. Yeah, yeah. And so when you speak in the present, that part is still present in her. So when you're in the present, take care of that part. And she's affirmed in terms of who she really is. You are beautiful. You are wonderfully made by God. You are brilliant. You've done amazing things in your life. It's not just coddling. It's not just having her do an ego trip. It's speaking truth. And when that is experienced, guess what happens

to that stupid comment? It's like, that's just somebody's pettiness. That's just somebody, some broken person who is venting their woundedness out online. See, this is why you're the therapist and I'm not, because I think I would have went, you know, when I was saying like, what should she do? Right. I'm looking for a prescription. Like you do this, this, and this, but I love what you did there. You were giving this person space to feel that way. That's really impressive. And that only happens in connection.

What does that mean? That means she could be brilliant and have some divine moment and go in prayer and have all that take place somehow. Hey, God does do that, I believe. But going to a therapist to work that through, you're having a connection with a therapist. It has to be someone you trust. They're not going to BS you or just coddle you or whatever, but they are speaking truth to allow that to unfold, right? And so that she can get to that place that we were just describing.

Now, you use the example there of a father who speaks to her or someone when they're nine and how are they going to respond? What about prior to our memories? You know, like I can think back to about five, maybe four, and then it gets really fuzzy. I'm getting into attachment theory here. So how important are those first few years? So how important are those first few years? You know, maybe I'm, is it possible? And I imagine the answer is yes, that I might be acting out of a wounded place that I'm not even conscious of.

Definitely. Definitely. Those first few years are crucial. They're essential. They taught in attachments theory. They talk a lot about the maternal gaze. Can we just pause? What is attachment theory?

Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a, it's a theory that was pretty much developed by different psychologists, Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, and various theorists, I want to say in the 60s, I believe, and into the 70s and onwards. And it really is looking at how humans attach to each other and how connections are formed and what makes up good attachment. And when there isn't good connection and attachment and how it creates insecurities

and then therefore how even a child responds to that insecurity. So the very early studies were done primarily with infants, children and infants. And as time progressed, they realized, wow, how it informs the person's whole life. Interesting. So you were talking about the maternal gaze. What's this? Yeah. So think about the mother and child. And I love the icon. We have one right here, the Theotokos. I don't know if you can zoom into that or want to pull it out. But if you look at that icon, I can see it.

Would this be possible in this moment that you throw up an icon, Neil, so that we can look at it on the screen yeah that'd be great great great if you look at this icon look at jesus's lips and look at mary's lips very close together yeah they're attached they're almost yeah creating one face it's almost like her mouth goes down where her yeah yeah it's beautiful and the beauty of the mother and child connection right right, is that it's nonverbal. There are no words. No, I don't know how old this Jesus is in this picture. They tend to make them look a little older, but when it's a baby, there are no words.

So everything that is communicated is done with the body, with making that connection with the eyes, and the physical embrace and the physical connection and care so all what that child feels is security the child is completely vulnerable the child's needs are the child's able to express all of its needs and the mother provides it or whoever the caretaker is right the mother provides whatever is needed, right? And there's a responsiveness to need, right? If a child cries, the mother is there to figure out, does he or she need more food? Does the diaper need to be changed? Do you just need to be held, right? So that is really the core of secure attachment. And what happens in time, right, is as the child starts to grow, they have

a sense of confidence because they've experienced good, healthy, secure attachment. And so, in some of the studies, they look at, you know, how does a child respond to a stranger just showing up, respond to a stranger just showing up right um does the child fearfully run to the mother does the child you know just go off with the stranger randomly right and and all these different responses indicates a different level of uh insecure attachment or some kind of problem in attachment so to talk a little bit more about the science, because I imagine this is a difficult thing to prove. You don't want to say to 10 mothers, don't attach with your children, don't smile at them, we'll see how they fare.

And then you mothers be super involved with your kids and we'll see how they fare. And then we can look at this group and this group. That would obviously be unethical. So how is this working? Yeah, I mean, these are studies that go back, and i'd have to pull them out from my old you know goes back you know they literally did the stranger danger studies uh you know and they had mothers sitting in a room with a child and then a stranger literally walked in and they just observed how the

child reacted interesting um in those studies and then they did so many of those, they were able to, you know, come up with their theories and, and understanding. And so insecure attachment, right. Means there's some insecurity and most of us develop insecure attachments in life because we don't spend our time, our whole childhoods and adult life, you know, bonded with our mothers and like, like the mother and child there. So we have wounds, we have hurts, we have things that take place that, that cause insecurity, but the ways that we typically respond negatively to insecurity. So when the world doesn't feel safe or when we realize I can't trust someone, maybe I can't trust my parent. Maybe, you know, there's something so frightening in the environment. It causes me to lose a sense of trust and safety.

Then we typically have two responses. There's many more, but two bigger category responses. One is to be withdrawn. We avoid. So if things aren't safe, we hide. Like we just separate ourselves in some way. The other response is to become anxious. So we're reactive.

So anything that happens, we're especially nervous or we read a lot into it and we become, you know, super, you know, fearful. Right. And so and sometimes we switch between those. Right. And some people are more dominant in one or the other. Controlling? would that be? I'm thinking if one side is to retreat, would the other side be more to control? Yes.

You have to always, because your environment in some way at some time was not safe, I have to control my environment at all times, right? So, and if you think about relationships. So, and if you think about relationships, so if my primary relationships from childhood or whatnot were not safe, and I didn't feel like I could trust others, then I'm going to spend my time, like as a married person, I'm going to spend my time trying to control and manage that other person in order to feel safe. Right? And so in some cases, that looks like a pursuer, sometimes they say, like an emotionally focused couples therapy, which is a type of therapy I've been trained in and love to use. We teach couples to recognize when they're being the pursuer, which is that kind of more anxious style, or when they're withdrawing, which is that avoidance style. And so we train them to recognize that pattern as it's happening. So because obviously if the person, let's say it's the wife, because it often is, is pursuing and controlling and reactive,

and what is the guy going to do? He's going to avoid, withdraw. He might tolerate some of it or placate or whatnot, but mostly he avoids. So as he's avoiding, what does she do? She gets more anxious, right? And the more anxious she becomes more. So it just perpetuates a negative cycle.

Yeah, that is very interesting because when you often think of a father who feels like he's failing at his job, it's because of one of two things, right? He's either blowing up at everybody, he's got an anger problem he can't seem to control. Or he becomes passive and sits and watches football all weekend, doesn't engage. Right. I would argue that the blowing up, the anger problem is still part of the withdrawn aspect. Because even though, let's say it's a guy, because it can be a woman. But let's say it's the guy and he is withdrawing and avoiding.

He's still experiencing a lot of emotion. because it can be a woman but let's say it's the guy and he is um withdrawing and avoiding he's still experiencing a lot of emotion he's just keeping it suppressed yes so even though she's yelling at him maybe and he's acting like it's he's not faced he is there is a high emotional reaction internally being suppressed and at some point. So retreating looks like the person doesn't care. Right. If he didn't care, he wouldn't be retreating is what you're saying maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's really interesting.

Okay, so I mean there might be people listening today and they think, well, crikey, you know, I've had a terrible – crikey if they're Australian. You know, I've had a terrible childhood maybe or that I didn't know my mother or father. Right. Things like that. Like am I doomed to this life where I'm – Right. No, no, maybe. Or that I didn't know my mother or father. Right. Things like that. Like, am I doomed to this life where I'm... Right. No, no, no. So, it's beautiful.

I believe God has designed us for connection. I mean, it's hardwired, you know, from the point of birth and so on. But he's also... Our brains are amazing in the way they can adapt. And as human beings, we can adapt. So, the goal is to find corrective emotional experiences and new forms of attaching that are healthier. So I've never had a couple come in for marriage counseling and they're just like perfectly securely attached. It just doesn't happen. I don't know that there

are couples who are perfectly securely attached out there very often, right? So once they recognize their insecurities and that's where it's coming from, it's not just the other person is trying to make their lives miserable. Right. And they start to recognize the pattern and they're they're starting to say, OK, together we have to do something different. And the different thing we can aim for, the therapist should be helping them get to is secure attachment. So this can be learned even in adulthood. So you can learn how to be more vulnerable. You can learn how to have more empathy. You can learn how to respond differently to your spouse. And if together the goal is the secure attachment, then you've got something to fight for and something to work toward.

Right? And my experience is actually that when couples come in for counseling, often they're coming in with the same issues. We have poor communication, issues with our kids, issues with money, and issues with sex. So those are the biggies that people are coming in for. biggies that people are coming in for. And if you can imagine if the relationship is fraught with a lot of insecurity, avoidance, and anxiety, and that cycle, all of those problems are very difficult to manage, right? Because you're freaking out over all these issues, or you are just tuning out one or the other, but it's not going away. But when you have a relationship that is secure, where you feel like the other person's a safe haven, that they are just, you go to them with your heart and they're not going to crush it. You go to them with what is deeper going on inside of

you, the painful things going on inside of you. You're able to sit with those emotions I was talking to before, the hurt, the pain, the shame, the guilt, the sadness, all those fear even. And you're able to go to your partner and you're able to actually share those emotions, knowing your partner cares and is going to treasure that, right? They're not going to act insecurely to it. Like they're not going to avoid it and just like dismiss you and who cares about your stupid emotions. They're not going to avoid it and just like dismiss you and who cares about your stupid emotions. They're not going to overreact in fear.

Oh, what does this mean? Are we getting a divorce? Like they're going to, no, no, no. They're going to sit with it. They're going to love you in that space. They're maybe even going to open up about their fears and hurts and pains and so on. And in that space, there's a connection. Let me ask you then, how do you suggest for those listening who aren't necessarily going to couples therapy, though it might be a good idea, how would you recommend that an argument take place?

Because no doubt we have many husbands and wives who are watching this and there's just that thing. It's being brought up in their mind as you're speaking about something I said earlier, something she said earlier that we probably have to resolve. about something I said earlier, something she said earlier that we probably have to resolve, but whenever we try to resolve it, it always blows up. What would your recommendation be as to begin kind of addressing this issue, how it's best done? Right, right. Well, it's a pretty big question, so I might need a specific example. Okay. Yeah. All right. I see what you mean, because it's going to depend on the people, the personalities, the harm that was done. Right.

Yeah. It might be difficult to give a specific example. I suppose, well, let's try and think. Suppose a man and a woman go to a party. I'm just thinking on the spot here. And, you know, he says something rude to her and it offends her. And she looks at him in such a way that only he knows she's offended. Right.

And they go on the rest of the night, you know. Right. And he avoids it. Maybe she avoids it. And maybe she avoids bringing it up because she just knows how it will end. It won't end well. He'll react this way. Right.

And maybe she tries a few times. Okay. I got you. No, no, no. I'm still going. Oh, okay. Her name is Barbara. No, I'm just joking. my name is Barbara yeah yeah well okay so he said

something of that offended her in some way at a public party right is that what I the way this is not an example from my life I've never offended my wife you are sorry yeah and so she had a hurt feeling then right what I would be saying okay what her, even if she didn't feel it for long, what happened to her? Did she feel hurt? She maybe even felt shame, like her husband is publicly embarrassing her. Yeah, right. So my point, though, and what I want to get to, I want to get something real practical. Sorry to be such a man about it, but is that the man might want to ask her that, right?

I imagine the argument is not always about what the argument's about. Right. But here, but I'm going to get to it because she felt something bad, right? She immediately went to her reaction was giving him a look, right? When he got the look, right, he felt some things. Like he felt probably, uh-oh, shame and fear. Like fear, like, oh oh my gosh my wife's gonna kill me you know in some way shame like i don't know it might have been i'm a bad husband

i'm like not successful or whatever but then what does he do what did he do right after that in this scenario yeah nothing maybe he just sort of resented her for it which again might be that secondary emotion right whereas like if i feel like i'm a bad husband, but I don't want to go there, then it's your fault. So he expressed some kind of resentment. Now she avoided as well because she decided not to talk about it later. So what are they actually seeing of each other? They are seeing one is seeing, you know, he makes some kind of comment and then he avoids me. you know, he makes some kind of comment and then he avoids me. She's seeing, you know,

she or he's seeing like she is mad at me and she's avoiding me. Right. That's on the surface what they're experiencing of each other. They're not communicating underneath that. He's not sharing his shame and fear. she's not communicating her hurt feelings and her shame because the in a secure attachment if she was to do that if she was to pull him aside and just say sweetheart when you said that you hurt my feelings and that was just so embarrassing for me in front of people and if she said it in a non-accusatory way like that. Then he's called to that. She's being vulnerable. He's called to look at her and say, I'm so sorry, honey. I will not do that again.

I did not intend to. I was just trying to be funny and I was just stupid. And I didn't mean that. You are amazing. And then she would have said, thank you. And it would have been over. Right? Yes.

But instead, all this other stuff happens. We react. Yeah. Right. And that's how resentment builds. And that, all this other stuff happens. We react. Yeah. Right? And that's how resentment builds. And that's how all this negativity happens. What would your advice be regarding this attachment theory with our children? Oh, yeah.

Well, it's perfect, right? This is a great point, I think, to kind of go over some key elements that the research has shown that what comprises the essentials of attachment, of secure attachment. And these are the things you really need to foster with your children. And sometimes it's helpful to have these practical points. The first one is safety. I mean, there has to be safety, whether it's physical safety or emotional safety. So if there isn't that, if you're threatening physically your child or you're emotionally threatening, there isn't safety. All right.

The next one is to really be seen and known. So if you think about it, this comes into the listening we were talking about much earlier. But when the child is seen, you know, like children come up to you. Daddy, look at this picture that I made. Yeah, look at this. Look at me in the tree, right, this and you're and they're seen and they're saying yeah you're awesome yeah that's beautiful acknowledge me yeah i love this and they look at it you know so they're known you know they're known they feel known all right so being seen and

known so let's just pause there when a child comes up and says hey dad watch me do this hey look at this what are they actually saying see me see me know me they want they're looking for affirm my goodness yeah yeah i'm important i'm important enough to be looked at i'm important enough to be cared for uh and so on yeah okay the next one is the ability to be comforted so are soothed so when that's present a child knows that if they hurt themselves they can go to their parent and the parent's going to take care of them and they're going to do it in a comforting safe way right and it's amazing that sometimes doesn't happen right if we don't go up to somebody. I mean, I screwed this up the other day. My son was on a longboard coming down the road and he fell off and he hit his head. And I have told him about the importance of wearing a helmet, right?

So when I'm driving, I see him on the side of the road crying. I got angry with him. I didn't stop. I didn't soothe him. I didn't even, I just was like, Liam, I've told you to wear. And meanwhile, this poor kid's crying. I didn't stop. I didn't soothe him. I didn't even, I just was like, Liam, I've told you to wear. And meanwhile, this poor kid's crying. I take him home. I drop him off. Right. And that's how the story ended. We were driving out and my daughter, Chiara said, she's so sweet. She's like, dad, I just think it would have been better if you had have first said,

I'm so sorry. And then told him about the helmet. I'm like, you are 100%- She's going to become a counselor someday. sorry and then told him about the helmet i'm like you are 100 becoming counselor she's brilliant and i felt and then i felt shame right um and so i went and i i bought him something i came home i apologized i said i shouldn't have done that i i am concerned for you and i'm sorry that that happened right and i didn't take that as another point to jump on the butt you should wear your helmet thing i felt that point had already been made but see in that example right we can always retroactively fit things and it's beautiful that you did go back and recognize it that's just important you're human we're all human and and and we know we have to know how to recover and repair which is what you were doing uh but yeah in that moment if the first reaction was hey buddy are you

all right are you safe let me see what's going on with your head whatever it is soothing caring right? Are you safe? Let me see what's going on with your head, whatever it is, soothing, caring, then he would have felt that soothing and comfort. And then, right, just like your daughter said, you could be able to say, I am it and actually go more to your feelings. Not so much. I told you not to do that. I told you to wear your helmet. Uh, it would be more powerful and effective. and to stay in that secure attachment place to say, when I see you on the road without your helmet on or when I see you making a left turn across the road where a car might be coming. How do you know about this? I don't know. Do you see him do that?

Yes. We'd be telling him not to do that as well. Right. I'll get angry about it. I am fearful. Yeah. I care get angry about it. I am fearful. Yeah. I care about you. Your life is important to me.

So not only is that more helpful in the sense that it's received better, but you actually probably get the outcome. Well, yeah. When you're just mad emotionally, then what is it teaching him? It's teaching him that he's powerful. he's powerful his behaviors have the power to make you have be completely emotionally

dysregulated and off the wire right but when you say I am fearful I love you you are precious to me if you are hurt

and God forbid killed I will be crushed and I need you to wear your helmet. That sends a completely different message. And it's not always that he's going to obey just because you say it that perfectly, but I think it has a better chance of success. Plus it teaches him a healthy way of recognizing other people's feelings and emotions. Yeah.

Okay. So we've had soothing. That was the third one. Being seen, I believe was the emotions. Yeah. Okay. So we've had soothing. That was the third one. Being seen, I believe, was the second. Yeah. Safety, being seen. Safety, seen, known, and then comforted. Yeah.

Another one is that I think is just amazing is to be delighted in or to be valued. Right. in or to be valued. Right? And so when you just look at your child and you say, I just think you are the bomb. And it doesn't matter

what they have done. So it's not tied to behavior. It's not accomplishment based. It's just you as a person are delightful to me. And when I see you doing things, yeah, I'm gonna recognize the doing that's there, but it's more about I recognize your being. And that is something you sometimes is absent

even in families that provide everything else, right? And so you can be a good provider. Safe. Yeah. Yeah, it's a safe place. You can be generally comforting, like they're not gonna kick you to the curb if you crack your head, right? And all those things, but they don't feel that level of connection. That delight.

You know, it's funny because when I work with clients and I tie this to God because this is where we end up. Yeah, my son in whom I'm well pleased is what immediately came to mind. Exactly, exactly. Jesus needed it. Jesus, even Jesus. And guess what? The two times that,

that God says to Jesus, um, you are my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased was his baptism before he starts his public ministry and the transfiguration before he does his passion. So he hadn't earned it yet. Wow. He was just simply delighted in.

Yeah. And that becomes, and that, so the accomplishment comes from the affirmation. Oh, that's powerful. The, the, the actions are not what the person's trying to earn love and delight. Right. It's the other way around. And so many people get this wrong, um, in the relationship with God god but i do believe god just simply delights in who we are yeah i uh i i think i've shared this with you you know my son peter will be like come and jump on the trampoline with me right and i might if i'm in the middle of a hundred things fight think of that as to be like a nuisance you know like i mean i'm doing i'm busy you know like

i'm busy cleaning up your stuff you know that you've done here or something right but if i can hear him i think to myself what does he mean by that when he says like daddy come what he's saying is it would be better if you were with me yeah and when you hear it that way like oh my gosh of course i'll come right because he's that i mean he could go and jump down there but it would be better and what a beautiful thing it is to have a son who thinks it would be better to have you with him than not because there might be a point where that's not the case well if they're constantly told get out i'm busy then they're gonna at some point they'll stop asking right and then they they're now just withdrawing so it creates that insecure attachment that we're talking about anything Anything off to delight or was that? Yeah, the other one is that you cultivate where you, an experience where you care

about what happens to that person. You want their best interest. So I want to encourage you to be the best you can be. So the parent in this case is always wanting their child to be their total best. Right? I mean, I can say my mom did that really well. Whenever I was interested in something, she went miles to cultivate that.

Right? She would buy the magazines or books to support it or encourage me to do this and that. It's because she saw something in me. She was delighted in me. But then she wants me to be my best. And think about couples. Right? All these things are true for couples. They need to be seen and known. They need to have safety. They need to be

encouraged. If you want the best for your spouse, it doesn't mean you're always going to have it right, but they know that's what your motivation is. It's powerful. That's lovely. Yeah. Okay. Here's what I want to talk about. Because very often in conversations like this, we're talking about wounds we may have received that are kind of preventing us from living a fuller, more beautiful life and how to deal with some sort of traumatic event that took place. What I don't hear us talking enough about is uh advice given to those who are producing the trauma in other people or hurting other people because i have no doubt that we have parents who are listening to this and you're going through that list and just like i did i'm thinking oh

my goodness i screwed up on that one i screwed up on this one you know and i'm not sure if saying something like well you know we're all human it doesn't really help because I know what it's like to experience pain from, say, my father or my mother. And them being like, hey, I'm just human is like, yeah, that doesn't help me. of atrocious things, like things that we would consider abhorrent, even things like sexual abuse or theft or murder even, or paying someone to kill their unborn child. What do we do with that? Right. Wow. That's a great question. And it's a difficult one, but I would say that I would look at what is the behavior that that person is doing that's so negative and ask the question. I'll start by asking the question, when was that your only answer or the only solution to a problem? Okay, hang on.

Which behavior? Whatever one. So pick one. So if somebody is doing something atrocious, like they yell and scream and slap their kid really harsh in a horrible way. Well, when was physical violence their only answer? And I would explore that. I would want to go back to when did that start? Because most people learn these negative behaviors as a way where either the mind, right, and soul are trying to solve something.

And that maybe worked and maybe was not healthy, but it kind of worked at some point. And so they learn that behavior. That becomes their new adaptation and it's negative, right? And so, and these different examples you gave are all a little bit different and you kind of have to look at them for what they are but in other words um okay let's say a bully so kid is being slapped around at home so they're being to some extent physically abused at home so why do they become a bully in the playground right we know that this is usually the case well they don't know how when you're nine you don't know how to handle the fact that your parent is physically abusive to you. That's the safety one.

The safety one is not there. That's the first one. You don't have safety. You don't have secure attachment. Right. And so this child doesn't know what to do with not feeling safe. So in some way, they have to find an outlet to get out whatever aggression they feel, whatever issue, right? And so they learn that if I have power over another person, so you pick some smaller kid or whatever on the playground and you beat them up,

that I feel better. On some level, I'm at least doing something with all my bad feelings. It's not a good thing, but that was an answer to them at that time. Gotcha. And so now they have learned and they carry it on in their life and physical aggression becomes their answer. So, yeah, so I'm thinking of a – we're probably all thinking of a particular bully from school. Maybe we that bully i i wasn't i was often picked on and i'm thinking of one person in particular i don't know whatever happened to this person but i see what you mean

so for them at that point this answered something yes like it worked it wasn't a good thing they were doing and yes it would have worked much better if they had have handled it differently they didn't know how to they They chose not to, whatever. It worked. They grow older. And this is a behavior that they're carrying. Yes. And they get to a point where it stops working.

That is to say. Well, they get arrested. They get arrested. Their life falls apart. Their wife leaves them. Yes. And then they're stuck and they don't know how to resolve it. Right.

And that's where I come in. Right. Because I have to kind of figure it out. Like, you know, go back and figure out. We have to address the nine-year-old inside of them that needed something different, that didn't ever receive it. And until that person receives that, then it's not going to change. Yeah. Right? And they might find if they're totally restrained in some way or they're prevented from doing the behavior they're going to find some other way maybe or another outlet right and it may still

be negative unless they're helped this is kind of getting us into the area of addiction which i want to talk about but before we do i suppose just kind of get back to that initial point that i raised like what do i do with my own shame for having done this or that to this or that person knowing that they have to experience their own path to healing right like i was i was pretty awful to my sister you know like i teased her a lot i made fun of her and and yeah like i think about that and i feel shame and i've repented of that and i suppose thank what do we say but thank god for the cross right we have the divine physician who could heal us and forgive us of those things. Right. And at some point you have to surrender that to the Lord. But other than, I mean, yeah, I guess if you weren't Christian, like what do you do with the fact that you've been beastly to people?

Right. Just try to get over it. I mean, honestly, I think it is hard when you're not Christian to be able to resolve those things. So let's start there though. You feel some guilt, right? You feel, I think shame I'm hearing, but actually I think you're probably experiencing more guilt, right? I did something wrong. It might go to shame, right? Where it's more like I'm just bad, but I did something wrong.

So guilt is an important emotion because it motivates us and it motivates us to change. So if you went to her and you said, I feel guilty, I did something wrong to you, I apologize, I shouldn't have. You are doing something reparative there. You're acknowledging the emotion and you're creating a space. Now, if it's your sister and she receives it,

then what's happening now? Possibly reconciliation, but you're restoring secure attachment with her. Ha ha, excellent. So you're connecting with her. So this is why it's so important that we repent. I mean, Sister Miriam James shares the story about somebody who hurt her very deeply when she was a young girl. And I don't think she'd mind me sharing this

because she said this publicly in talks, that she wrote to this person and this person completely denied it, which has got to be horrible. Very difficult. But I see what you mean. It's so important that we acknowledge our own sin, repent of it in order to, when possible, secure that attachment. Did you restore the relationship with your sister? Yeah. So it was right.

I mean, please. You can still have some maybe lingering bad feelings about it that you even did that. But that's just a sign of having a conscience. Yeah. But you did something about it. And that is healing. And you created a new connection with that person. So it's beautiful, really.

That's not always possible, right? Because sometimes we hurt people and then they, like a parent or something. Yeah. That's not always possible, right? Because sometimes we hurt people and then they, like a parent or something. Yeah. Like I've seen people who, you know, they didn't visit their mother who had Alzheimer's because for whatever reason, they just couldn't deal with it. And it just hurt them too much or something like that. And the person dies. Now you're like, okay, I should have visited my mother while she was alive. And now she's not.

Right. And so I feel all this guilt and shame around it. What do you do with that? Well, one thing, you know, it's, that is difficult.

Again, you have to acknowledge the shame and the guilt rather than suppress it. So it's bringing that up. There are techniques around that. You know, there's a classic, you call it empty chair. It's a,

it's a form where literally you have the person talk to their mother. Right. And you have them switch seats and become their mother and respond to them. And this kind of thing. It's a form where literally you have the person talk to their mother, right? And you have them switch seats and become their mother and respond to them and this kind of thing. It's a very powerful experiential thing to help them at least have the opportunity to get those feelings out. And then, of course, if we have faith, I mean, thank goodness we have faith. Because then you can go to God. You can go to the, you know, you can pray for your mother. You can, you know, pray to God for that forgiveness and so on and actually receive that from God. You can go to the, you know, you can pray for your mother. You can, you know, pray to God

for that forgiveness and so on and actually receive that from God. One of the things I found really a blessing in the spiritual life is sort of like acknowledging the forgiveness that the father has given me and surrendering it because it's not a matter of me talking myself into feeling good about the fact that yes i hurt this person or that person but i've restored it so i shouldn't be feeling that and here's why sometimes you're going to have feelings feelings come and go they fluctuate so i think sometimes it's important to say kind of regardless of my feelings not that we shouldn't acknowledge them and see what's going on there but to say say, like, I praise you, Father, that you've forgiven me and I surrender this person to you whom I've

hurt and trusting that you'll bless them. So, standing in that sonship and that forgiveness. I love that. I think that's beautiful. Another thought I had is that we do have to, to some extent, learn to tolerate our brokenness. I mean we can't just fix everything that's really not in our power we make mistakes and we have failed and on some level in time you know we can do reparative work we can make amends various things but at some level we just have to surrender the fact that i'm just not perfect and i I can strive to do better always, right? And I can work towards sanctification, but I can't live in the should have done's, would have done's, could have done's.

Jacques Philippe has that beautiful little book, Seeking for and Maintaining Peace. I highly recommend it. It's beautiful. One of the things he says is all of the reasons we give for losing our peace are always bad reasons. That is to say that therehip because only with a peaceful heart can we then see things clearly too. Right. Yeah. I want to get on to addiction because one of the things you just brought up, which I thought was excellent, was, you know, someone's a bully and it worked for them in a sense. And now it no longer works for them.

And that really did make me think of addiction. And I want to talk specifically about porn addiction because I think this is something a lot of people are experiencing, or sexual addiction. So maybe talk about that. I'd love to. And I'm going to connect it up too, to everything we talked about. Because I see porn addiction as an intimacy disorder. So I see it as a disconnection with others, ultimately with God, but with others, right? And so what is porn really, right? It's the illusion of connection. So we are, if I am a, let's pick on nine year olds,

if I'm a nine year old boy and I feel disconnected, right? Like whatever the family situation is, you know, maybe, you know, dad's always working and traveling and I never see him and mom's very distracted or something like this. And I, and I, and maybe I'm awkward. Maybe I'm, you know, struggle socially and, you know, I don't have good friendships. I live a lot of isolation, whatever. Well, and then pornography somehow is discovered, right? So let's say it's on the internet well what is the pornography saying well the pornography is saying i see you i know you

i can comfort you and the illusion of i have your good in my mind in my mind right and all those elements of secure attachment are given through pornography all but an illusion of secure attachment so the person if the person feels like you know i've never seen well the pornography always sees you in a sense it meets you where you are is that what you mean by that yeah exactly if you look at other kinds of sexual addictions i i find it helpful to like uh compare it in broad sweeps to kind of make the point um what is the guy who's a peeping tom what's he doing he wants to be let in he wants no one lets him in and so that he can he can see, right? Because the other side of being seen is seeing because the other person is receiving you seeing them, right? And so if this person has a deficiency

as never allowed in to anybody's heart, so to speak, then the peeping Tom is actually trying to get in. Then the opposite, what is the voyeur? You know, the trench coat guy. Yes. He wants to be seen. Yes. Right. Of course, these are extremely unhealthy ways to get these needs met. Yes. Right. And it is fascinating. Yeah, it is. Especially like, I think it's very easy to sympathize with

somebody who is like struggling with an addiction or a disorder that you yourself have struggled with, do struggle with. But if there's something you not at all struggle with, you can see it for what it is. Right. Like, as you said, like the voyeur, like, it's like, oh my gosh, like, and it's easy to kind of make light of, I suppose, make fun of, but these are people in pain who are. Absolutely. Those are more pathological, perhaps, like behaviors, because they're just sort of more noticed.

So those are more pathological, perhaps, like behaviors, because they're just sort of more noticed. But it's just a way of expressing what all of us have as basic needs. And most people are not going to those kind of pathologies, but they're still doing it, or maybe even just on their computer screen. Well, that's kind of what a peeping Tom is, in a sense, isn't it? Right? Like, let me in, in a sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And if there's no, like, and especially you've got masturbation, usually accompanies pornography. So there is actual pleasure being given. You talk about St. Thomas Aquinas saying pleasure is an important healing thing. Well, there's pleasures that are healthy and pleasures that are unhealthy. Right? But it's still pleasure. To the brain, it's just pleasure. And this is one actually I usually describe this little cocktail of that's very powerful that that comes together in the brain that is remembered in the brain a certain way. And the cocktail includes some kind of pleasure. Right.

Illicit or illicit. Some kind of pleasure. An answer to a problem. Right. So if I'm a gambler, let's say, right? No, let's say I'm a loser. I feel like I'm a loser. Okay. I feel like my life's no good. I'm just a big loser in life. I go into a casino, right? And I just decide to play a game, all right? I play a slot machine. I win $10,000 suddenly. What has the brain just been told? A, it's pleasurable to win lots of money. B, you're a winner. So it answers the problem that's deepest in that person's heart. The deep lie the person holds is now countered through this activity. What about the, you know, if I feel like a loner and nobody, I don't belong anywhere, if that's my problem. Well, what happens when I get asked to join a group to, you know,

smoke pot together? Suddenly we're all smoking pot together. I suddenly belong. So there could be the pleasure of the pot smoking, right? Tied with the, I now belong. That's a powerful cocktail, right? That now the brain remembers. So even though, say, let's go back to the casino guy. Even though the guy continues his night and being in the whole $3,000 by the end of the night, his brain is still going, I want that feeling again. I want that feeling again, because it combines, it answers his problem. But he's not consciously thinking this, of course, right? It's happening. not consciously thinking this of course right it's happening i guess you would say subconsciously it's happening in that part of the brain so and

it's locked together this is really fascinating um in my book the porn myth i used an analogy of gambling uh for those wives who might be believing that if they were whatever pretty enough bustier enough more adventurous then he wouldn't need porn right and the analogy i gave was here's why that's false uh suppose you know somebody who's addicted to gambling and you think oh he's addicted to gambling i'll help him i'll give him a bag of cash does he go thanks i don't need to gamble anymore no because what he was after wasn't the money in a sense it was something else and when someone goes to porn they're looking for something else or that thing in a different way right think of that i do i love

that but i think that other thing is an emotional state right so counting somebody the money might create that emotional state but it might not given that context um i mean i'd like to get a bag of money yeah but but there's also i think in gambling, there's probably a piece that's a thrill. There's a risk and a thrill that then gets answered that's different than just somebody handing you an envelope. So it's the same, like even the porn, there's probably also a component added to that cocktail, which is I'm getting away with something

and there's a little bit of an excitement and a thrill to that. So a lot of times, and that even can be fear. So it could be the emotion of fear. And so, which is interesting because I find with a lot of guys when we're doing some processing of addiction, and I actually will help try to get them in a small way into that emotional state that they experienced when the addiction started just enough to feel it and when i ask them where they feel it in their body it's often in their chest and it's often fear and so when it comes to something like pornography it's fascinating

it's not real like it's not in their groin it's not sexual exactly. It's fear. So the masturbation, pornography, and the visuals are connected with fear in some cases. And it's a high. And so they're trying to get at that. They want a return to the emotional state they had in that moment. And that is something that has to be kind of taken apart before a person can, I think, before a person can really recover. Who wrote the book Unwanted? Are you familiar with this book? Neil, do you mind just kind of giving it a look up and let me know the author because I don't want to get it wrong.

But I've heard great things about this book. And one of the things I believe he says is, you know, there are many genres of pornography. And when you go to pornography, you're looking up a particular genre. If you just cease shaming yourself for a second and would just begin to ask yourself the question, like, why is it that it's this in particular? You might be able to start getting to the root of these things. No, exactly. I do think that's- I'm not sure how helpful that would be without a therapist guiding you. It might be helpful.

I'm not sure, but- Right, right. But yeah. No, I think that's dead on right. There's a reason why there's a particular need being met by a particular type of choice. I'm sorry. I don't have it. J something or other. Anyway, we'll put it below. That's what we'll do. We'll put it below. So what we'll do we'll put it below so it'll be in the show notes i i would add more to it than just the the particular thing i would look at the fantasy so whatever the entire scenario is and that fantasy could be something you play in your mind it could be something you look for in pornography or some kind of videos or whatever

to act out or even act out with other people And so it's fascinating what kind of fantasies people choose and what is the dynamic at play in the fantasy. And sometimes even really violent type fantasies, you know, they're disturbing. It's like, why would somebody choose to play that out and or go look at that kind of thing on the internet when it seems violent or it seems demeaning or whatnot and the way i look at that is that it's this will seem interesting or seem odd or paradoxical probably not given what i've written about okay but but but they're seeking safety and yes yes so if somebody was like hurt physically right or sexually in a very violent or physical way then why would they

then either put themselves in positions where they're being physically or sexually abused later in life or why would they look at porn that was very violent or very like you know awful kind of thing well why it was because the brain wants to go back to resolve that problem that happened let's say if it was a childhood sexual abuse situation the brain naturally wants to go back to resolve that problem that happened. Let's say if it was a childhood sexual abuse situation. The brain naturally wants to go back to it to resolve it, and it can't. And the way that it creates, it turns to the pornography or the behavior is to form some kind of safety in it. Because now I can control it. And you talk about people that do S&M and stuff like that and all this bondage stuff.

There's, there are some rules around it. Yes. Right. And, and, and all this. And so there is a sense of safety, even though I'm returning to something that is abusive. Right. And so they, people, that's why people reenact their traumas in various ways. What's another example other than sexual that people reenact their traumas that you can think of?

Let me think. So like other than – I'll give you an example. And if you can think of something, feel free to throw it out. But I'm thinking obviously many things are traumatic. Suppose a father leaves the family. Oh, I see. And the child is traumatized.

In that sense, does he reenact that? And what does that look like? Right, right, right. Well, it could be, it's complex, of course. In that case, he has a sense of abandonment, right? So I'd have to think about it some more, but it could be that he chooses to abandon in some way. that he chooses to abandon in some way. But I actually know more likely that he puts himself into relationships where he gets abandoned.

So it plays out over and over again in his life. And then he comes to therapy or something and it's like, why women always leave me? And we find out when he was nine, his mother left. It hasn't talked to her since. With the sexual case, you talked about these like safety, you know, so there are some rules and these things. How is there safety in this as he's reenacting this?

Is it just that he's withholding his heart from this person? Right. He, yeah, it's complex. He's choosing some, like if he had a mother who left,'s say then and then he chooses women who then who typically leave yeah so it isn't doesn't sound like safety yeah um but he's in some level that's what he knows so it's safe right because a mother who's if she were to stick around that could be that wouldn't be that now wouldn't feel safe yes because it's getting him, he's having to experience the intimacy that he desperately wanted, but he's also deeply afraid of now. So he'll pick women that are capable of that level of intimacy.

So it's safe. But then they leave and the whole thing kind of plays out again. So it would be important then, what would it look like for him to have a mother who stayed? And what would it be like for him to experience something of that and be able to tolerate that intimacy with her? Right. And so that might have to be titrated. That isn't just something you throw a person into the pool, the deep end with maybe the little levels of intimacy and safety and being able to experience that. So given this discussion about trauma, addiction, and we can speak more about trauma later, what are some bad ways that people try to overcome pornography? Bad in the sense that they just don't work or they make the problem worse?

Right. Well, I think that they white knuckle work or they make the problem worse right well i think that they white knuckle it right so what does white knuckle mean so it means i'm just going to use like the force of my will to just get over this so i am going to be tough and i'm going to be good and i'm going to just stop this behavior and it will just go away in time. Right. So, um, and then of course what happens is they haven't looked at, they haven't maybe put proper things in place for accountability, whether it's the strive app or whether it's a accountability groups or whatnot, like they, they don't have anything in place, uh, to stop the behavior itself. And they haven't gotten at all to

the underlying root of the problem, which we've been talking about, which is lack of intimacy and connection in life and some unmet need that needs to get met. So none of those things are there. They're just going to fail. And then what's worse is they're going to feel bad about it. So it's going to end up making them feel shame, further shame, further guilt, you know,

and just that then fuels the, oh, what's the point? I'm a big failure. I'm bad Catholic or whatever it is. then they they sink back into the behavior i also see and i'd love your take on this how we have tended in the past to over spiritualize the issues of our sexual dysfunction right so if you knew somebody who was uh say struggling with an eating disorder right who was gambling and their wife didn't know about it and he's eating up all the savings, you might talk about prayer, especially if

you have an intimate relationship with the father. You might get into that. Like, what is this getting at? But you would probably also say, are you seeing somebody about this? Is there some sort of group that you could attend? But it seems to me that up until recently, and maybe even still today predominantly, we don't do that when it comes to things like when you act out sexually. I mean, you do because you're a therapist. But what I think most people often do is like, we got to

pray hard, like pray the rosary, you know, go to adoration. And of course, neither of us are saying these aren't good ideas. But my problem is, I think when you over spiritualize, this is very unhelpful. I met a woman who several years ago she came up to me and said that her university-age son was still struggling with pornography, that this is something he's been struggling with for years. And she talked about how she always takes him to confession, that he's praying the rosary, and all that's great. But I looked at her and I said, what's one non-spiritual, like specifically spiritual thing that he's doing, you know, to help overcome this? And she looked at me like she didn't understand the question as if what else is there? Right. And I think there's this fear that Catholics have.

Well, that if I say something like that or if I question whether there's something else I should be doing other than praying, I'm somehow demeaning prayer, saying that God's not enough. What's your thoughts on this? Yeah. I have probably a different take. Okay. I would argue that we have parts. I've mentioned that before. We have parts of ourselves.

The way I say it, it's not split personality. There's a part of me that wants to go to the gym today. There's another part of me that wants to go. Eat tacos. And watch. Well, I was was gonna say watch Netflix for several hours. Wouldn't be tacos for me,

but it was still something like that, right? So I have these different parts. Well, the part that wants to exercise is not a bad part. Obviously he wants me to be healthy, right? Now, if I let that part of me rule me, then I'm exercising all the time and it's just insane, right?

It's just too much. If I let the part of me that wants to watch Netflix rule me or be in charge of me rule me, then I'm exercising all the time and it's just insane, right? It's just too much. If I let the part of me that wants to watch Netflix rule me or be in charge of me, then I'm doing nothing. I'm just lazy on the couch all the time. So what happens is I, me, my own self has to be in charge and I have to be aware of my different parts. When you talk about I, that's independent of the parts. Is that right? Connected, but in a way independent. So it's my true self. Okay.

And we can explore that later if you want to. But just to make the connection to what you're saying, what you were asking me for quickly here, is that we have a spiritual part sometimes. So we have a part that acts spiritual. That's the good boy sometimes, the good spiritual boy. And he may be praying the rosary and he may be doing his prayers and he may be the good boy. And if that exists, right, it's not that it's bad at all, right? But when it is dominant, then it is everything, it's every solution is spiritual rather than looking at my other parts that also manage things, important things. Like maybe that's the health part. The guy that wanted me to exercise, that part of me, exercise might actually be part of the solution. Maybe I'm, you know, I need to get out some of my exercise might actually be part of the solution maybe i'm

you know i need to get out some of my aggression i need to be healthier i need that is one part of the solution but when the spiritual part is dominant then every solution is spiritualized and and it isn't actually overly helping us necessarily connect with god at a deeper level so here's the thing we need to recognize that spiritual part, right? And say, okay, he's helpful because he does encourage me to pray the rosary and to do my prayers and to be a good boy. And there's nothing bad about that. So I recognize him.

Hey, I like you, but let me be, connect with myself, my truer self with God, which is a deeper connection because it really is with me and not a part of me that is sort of managing life. I don't know if that makes sense. It does make a lot of sense. I look forward to delving into it. So it doesn't sound like you're disagreeing with what I just said. No. Just that you have a different way of looking at it.

It's a deeper way of looking at it. Yeah. No, no, I like what you said. Yeah, no, that's really good. And I think just to kind of help flesh this out, when you're talking about, okay, spiritual self, it's good that you're doing this, I think often what we mean,

for those who might be tempted to misunderstand us here, is this is the sort of, it's a spiritual veneer. It doesn't go deep. It's a surfacy sort of thing. So it's not just, it's not about connecting with the father who loves me and me kind of sitting in that relationship. Rather, it's almost like we treat God as a vending machine. I give you a rosary, you give me a porn-free day, and that's the deal. And we become more hung up on the mechanics of a particular devotion or way of praying than we are worried or

interested in real intimacy with the Father. And I'll take it another notch here. I bet that spiritual part has a complicated relationship with God that may not always be healthy. And so often these spiritual parts believe or have some kind of burden of belief that they must be good for God to love them. So, what I feel like is powerful therapeutically is for the self, right? And it's, we can get into how do you even access our real true self, but for the self to be able to say to the spiritual part

what's true, because the self is created in God's image. And the self is how we act and that is how we actually relate to the soul and how we actually access in relationship with God, right? And so, Christ and the Holy Spirit can work through the actual self to speak to our spiritual parts and say, you don't have to work so hard. God actually loves you, loves us, the whole me here, loves you first. Let's connect that to delighting. God delights in you. You are one of his beloved sons in whom he is well pleased. And suddenly that spiritual part feels a lifting of a burden and actually becomes a much more helpful part, less rigid, less fearful that if I make a mistake, if I don't say my rosary today, then everything's gonna fall apart and God

is not gonna love me or whatever it is, whatever might be going on. Now then let's take it another level. The spiritual part is learn to be that way to protect another wound all right and here i want to just kind of step back and speak about these parts more broadly sure because no doubt there's been people listening to us like spiritual part of course we have a spiritual part but you're talking about something different yes so yeah maybe just flesh this out okay yeah so it's that idea it's a notion and you get it in. There's different psychological theories out there. One of them is internal family systems, which is one I'm operating from primarily.

Another one is, you know, ego state therapy and that. So there's these different concepts that therapists that have learned these techniques have found them to be very powerful. I have found them to be extremely useful. And it's the idea that we have managers, right? So there's parts of us that just manage things. So, you know, there's a part of me that is a really good doer, can be task oriented, get things done and all this, you know, and there's another, there's another part of me, like, you know, as much as I'm a kind of an introvert and don't really like small talk parties, there's another part of me that if, you know, I was forced to go with my wife to a work party with people I didn't know would just show up and smile and be friendly and kind of like put,

you know, be that part. And, and none of these are bad. Right. Now when, so, so we have all these kind of managers and some of these managers are protectors also. So they protect our wounded parts, right? So we were talking earlier about, you know, that inner child who's wounded, that nine-year-old who was, you know, who hurts hateful things from his or her own father, right? So those managers or protectors show up to take care of that, to take care of the wounded child, to prevent the painful emotions, the hurt, the fear, the sadness, the shame. They don't want, the system doesn't want to tolerate those emotions. So those wounded parts get protected. Okay.

And we're totally oblivious that this is typically going on. And these protector parts sometimes are really managing the whole show. And we kind of lose the self. So we don't, the self gets kind of like. Yeah. I'm thinking of an example right now about the class clown. He's not very good at school. He's embarrassed that he's not very good at school. He's embarrassed that he's not very good at school.

But he's got a quick wit. Yeah. And that takes over. Yeah, right. Because at some point, he got the message, I'm not accepted. People don't like me or something like this, right? And so this part, this class clown part,

that guy learns, oh, you have to have some natural talent in it, right. To be funny. But when I'm funny and I put it on, I'm the class clown. Suddenly everybody likes me. I'm accepted. All it is an answer to the problem that I had before. Right. So that I would see that as a manager part. So the manager is the class clown. So that's a part of him. There's a wounded part behind it which is the kid that feels like nobody likes him right so that's been protected because nobody wants to feel that level of shame right so this class clowns kind of the way i view it is is the class clown is kind of in front of the wounded part so you can't see the wounded part shield it yeah perfect

right and so what happens though when a person because the class clown all the time then they've this the true self that i was talking about is merged if you will are so blended with this class clown part that there's no longer much access to the true self right and so there time, it can create a situation, right, where you don't know who you are because your identity is now this class clown. Now, the class clown by itself is not actually a bad part, right? I mean, if he's a little separated from the self

and looked at with a better perspective and the self is able to manage him, looked at with a better perspective and the self is able to manage him, then, hey, he's funny, he's witty, he's likable, he's great, but not 24-7 and not if this wounded part is unattended to, right, in the background. And I can actually connect that. I don't know if you want me to connect to addiction let's do it yeah because i can do a whole thing with addiction because there's these parts that we get caught that are called sometimes firefighters okay if you know anything about a firefighter if your house is on fire they don't care about anything they'll like break your door down smash your window step all over your carpet and take out the fire any old way they don't care

about your furniture or anything they have one purpose right they have one purpose so when let's say the class clown is in some way like royally embarrassed like something happens i don't know his pants fall down or something or something happens or some new kid shows up who's funnier than him and makes him feel like a fool. Well, that part collapses. Guess who's revealed? What collapsed? Is this the manager we're talking about? This is a protector, manager part that is the class clown.

And he kind of collapses. Well, guess who gets exposed? The kid who doesn't believe that he is worth anything that anybody likes him that he matters that he's seen or known by anybody this wounded part is suddenly exposed so what has to show up to save the day is the firefighter yeah exactly so the firefighter shows up and like takes care of business and that could be uh i'm gonna drink myself silly or I'm going to go to some drugs or something or it could be I'm just going to lose myself in video games

or something or pornography. Could it be him reacting with anger towards this people who's exposed him and like smack him in the face? Is that part of the firefighter? That could happen. I think that's actually less likely a firefighter so much as

another part. Okay. That shows up. Okay. That, you know, kind of, yeah, we'd have to get to why that is. But. But so the firefighter, sorry, you keep going. I don't want to cut you off.

I'm trying to understand. So the firefighter deals with the problem at hand and he deals with that through. Through some, and that firefighter is an addiction. that through through some and that firefighter is an addiction and and when the firefighter takes over it's like taking it hijacks the whole system to make sure that the the hurt is not exposed and it will do anything and then so the next day whatever has happened let's say he you know hopefully he's older than nine but he goes and gets drunk and you know just totally binge drinks and blah blah blah well the next day he probably feels bad, right? Because now his house is wrecked, right? And so the class clown might be sort of

sheepish at this point, but there might be another part that is kind of going, you are such a fool. Why did you do that? Now you feel sick and now you're stupid. And it's just sort of a critical, maybe a critical maybe a critical part shows up and makes them feel worse and that critical part has a role yeah yeah we could get into yeah so i mean to get back to your one of your basic points here is we're not demonizing any of the parts you're saying that the parts have a purpose they have a role that they're playing right so the critical part could sound a lot like maybe an angry parent who's criticizing them. So why does an angry parent criticize their kids? Well, their intention, even if they're not

doing it right, is discipline and to make their kids make better decisions. Right. So the critical part, I hate calling it that, the part that is critical, can be a part that is discerning. part that is critical um is can be a part that is discerning right so when it is not overwhelmed itself right by the situation when the self is present then that part that is coming across so negative and critical could actually be used to be like hey we need to make better choices here this is unhealthy for us blah blah blah so so that it's a discernment part, not a critical part. I see, yeah. Yeah. And so getting to the true self, like acting from what?

Yeah, yeah. If you weren't a Christian, I mean, what's your true self? Right. You're a Catholic therapist, and so you help people see who they are before God. Well, you know what's amazing about this? help people see who they are before God? Well, you know what's amazing about this? And I'm still learning, so I, and thinking philosophically about these questions, because I find this way of helping people and looking at it extremely helpful. But the guy who actually developed internal family systems,

he actually was working with trauma survivors. And he wasn't working within, I don't believe within any kind of Christian take on that, right? And what he found was that when he did this kind of parts work, because he was the one who was kind of discovering it, what he found is when you separated them from their parts, in a sense, you got perspective on the parts, a true self always emerged.

Interesting. And the true self always had certain characteristics. And the characteristics were things like compassion, wisdom, clarity, calm, all these positive characteristics of the true self. When he found that it wasn't that way, it was a part showing up. Wow. But the true self always had those good qualities. And I believe that speaks to the universality of the fact that we're created in God's image. That as a human person created in God's image, we actually have human characteristics that separate us from animals that are in fact given to us in a divine way. So that is what connects us to God.

All the things that humans do, like, oh, creative. Like when we're in touch with our true self, we're creative and we're caring and all these kinds of things. And it's beautiful. And when we act from that place, it's just simply healthier. This sort of reminds me of Augustine

and then Aquinas' kind of commentary on what evil is, that evil isn't something in addition to being. It's a perversion of being. It's a twisting of being. So, to this person's point, he sees something, he notices it's critical. It's not the true self. It's something that's been distorted. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. right can be burdened with negative beliefs like which are essentially lies can be burdened with trying to adapt in some way but not having any not knowing any other way to do it right and so when the the self isn't connected to that isn't in charge of the whole i could say orc he's the orchestra leader right if he if if the if he's not if he's not present, then it's just the tuba player being really loud. It's not – and there's no overall direction and everything. And that true self in my belief system says God works through the true self. God isn't really so much working through a part. The parts are just doing what they know how to do and they need to be connected

with the self we've touched upon trauma several times right now i wanted to ask you what is what is meant by trauma yeah yeah so trauma isn't necessarily the big capital t things you know you know the big capital t ones would be sexual assault, war traumas. Those are really plane crashes, things like that we think of. I think of, and those are all relevant and they all relate to what we're talking about. But I think of the small T traumas. So those are all the wounds that we receive in this world because we are in a fallen world. So that could be the bully who picked on you.

That could be the parent who, you know, was unhelpful in the way that they disciplined, you know, or whatnot. It could be a number of different things. And people respond to sometimes the same trauma in various ways, right? So we're all a little bit different. And some people are able to, you know, for whatever reason, because they've been given the tools or whatever,

adapt in healthier ways to trauma. And some don't. How would you define trauma, though? Like, what is it? Oh, okay. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's a tough one, but to put it words directly, but it's a wounding. Okay. It's a, well, okay, we'll connect to everything we've been talking about. It's a disconnection. Is it primarily an event? Well, it can't, yeah.

A series of events or things. It could be some one-time event that was just very painful and difficult. So a car crash where your mother dies and you're in the car, that's a one-time major big trauma. But it could also be years of chronically being told you're stupid. So, I would even see, I see that as a form of trauma. So, it's, and ultimately the definition I'm going to work with today, there's been lots of definitions and I have to kind of go on the spot, but would say something that disconnects us and causes us to feel unsafe and unable to trust.

Right? Yeah. Because ultimately we need to be healthy. What we need to be healthy is to feel ultimately connection, safety, and trust in God. And so, I suppose this is pretty fair to say too, that someone can experience a traumatic event that is objectively worse than some other traumatic event, and yet it could be subjectively less traumatizing. Yes, absolutely.

Because I think this is what often happens, you know, a person receives something traumatic, and yet it could be subjectively less traumatizing. Yes, absolutely. Because I think this is what often happens. A person receives something traumatic and someone else, maybe something objectively is less so. Sexual assault versus being bullied as a child, depending on the level of bullying. Whereas the person who's been bullied, this may have had a more negative effect on them than the other person. And I imagine, sorry to keep cutting you off, but I imagine that has something to do with how the person has understood the event, what that says

about them and their relationship with others. Yeah. Earlier you were asking me about attachment and early attachment. So first of all, if there was a disruption to early attachment, it has a huge effect. So if, for example, there was a separation from that mother in that early attachment, or maybe there was very good secure attachment the first few years of life, but then something happened where that was disrupted in a major way, right? So now that person experiences the world as much more unsafe and unpredictable and that the people that I care about and I trusted might suddenly disappear on me. Then that means that when they later in life have another kind of traumatic event, it is fueled by the past trauma. Whereas the same thing happens to another person who did not experience that same kind of loss, isn't going to necessarily experience it the same. There may be, because like, say the loss was, okay, let's say they, now they're each person,

and we're talking about two people here, one who experienced major childhood loss, one who didn't. Well, let's say they both have, let's say it's a woman and they both have a boyfriend that they really like. Well, let's say both of their boyfriends die in a car crash. You know, maybe it's a teenage drinking, driving thing. Well, the one who has never had a childhood trauma is going to be traumatized by that event because nobody wouldn't be. trauma is going to be traumatized by that event because nobody wouldn't be. But it's not laden with the fact that people I care about always disappear on me. And here's another example of a loss, another example of how I can't trust anything in the world or anybody, right? And the world is simply an unsafe place. Whereas, you know what I mean? The one person is going to feel that

way and the other person isn't necessarily going to and we spoke earlier about the fact that perhaps we live in a day and age where people aren't heard the way they should be seen the way that they should be and we're generalizing of course and it's always tempting to look on the past with rose-colored lenses but i could that be the reason why you, objectively lesser evils traumatize a person today more than they may have in the past? If someone is in a tight family unit where they feel heard and seen and they're not constantly being distracted by technology, they have interactions, you know. You think of people like John Paul II, right? His mother died. His father died.

His brother died. He's an orphan at a somewhat young age, not a child. But, you know, you could see something like that completely taking somebody out. It didn't in his instance. And I wonder if that's because he had, I mean, we can only speculate, but greater attachments in other areas, a sense of self that one may not experience today. Yeah. So, I personally think that relates to some way he adapted. And again, I don't know what John Paul II's full experience was, but in some way he experienced trauma clearly.

In some way he was able to interpret that trauma in a way that was adaptive, right? Like I feel that way too, because I had a pretty difficult childhood in some ways and an abusive father and all of this. And one way that was adaptive for me was I experienced literally the crucifix and seeing the crucifix and hearing and having the sense that Christ understood my pain and my suffering and was with me.

So now I've just had a positive adaptation to suffering. Is this when you were a child? Yeah. You experienced the crucifix like that? Yeah, yeah, when I was like eight years old. Wow. Yeah, so it was this huge grace. And I learned in that moment, no matter what was still happening

or what I went back into, I had a sense that my suffering and pain was seen and known, that Christ was there to comfort and soothe me, and that he wanted what was good for me. So that's powerful. That was a secure attachment with God. And so more bad things could continue to happen. And I had that as a way of looking at the world lens through which to look at the world that was adaptive. And that, and that's why I, cause I look at back at it myself right now, I treat people with trauma and I sometimes go, Holy crap, how did I turn out so good? I mean, I don't mean that in an ego way. I just say, I should be way more messed up. Way more dysfunctional, yeah.

And I'm like, but how? Well, I adapted to it. What do you do with a child who goes, you know, I was abused by, I don't know, a neighbor or something for five years in horrific ways. And I prayed the Hail Mary every night and God never answered my prayer. So what happens to that person, right? They learn to despair and they learn to say, God isn't there for me. I'm alone in the universe and all other possible dysfunctions. Like I don't, other people get redeemed, but I don't. Other people get saved and I don't. And that becomes their pattern in the way that they interpret and see the world, right? So one is adaptive now and one is not right in terms of developing further resilience um yeah i'm thinking too this is something i'm encountering as i speak to parents and children

right when i was a kid if i and i did get bullied at different occasions you know in junior high and high school uh and there was times I just absolutely hated it, hated going to school, hated encountering these people. But then I would go home and there was a real separation between them and my family. It was a different life. Whereas today, back to technology, a child never leaves that abusive environment if they have a phone

and if they're in an abusive environment to begin with, you know. They can't run away from the bullying, you know. They're constantly, it's all in their apps. People are always communicating. They never get to leave it and to kind of have that sort of solid and undistracted attachment to their family. Yeah. And I wonder how much that's playing into sort of childhood trauma as it pertains to

bullying. And I actually, now that I'm sitting here, I'm wondering if this is why we're speaking in part so much about bullying today. Because we're less able to handle it. I hadn't actually thought of it that way, but I like how you put that. And I do think, yeah, there's your identity. Here's another thing. We've been talking about the self, right, and how creating God's image and all this. The we've been talking about the self, right?

And how creating God's image and all this. Well, if as a kid, myself, my identity is not actually in my mind anyway in me, but it's out there. So in other words, my identity is online, right? So who I am is my pay, my, my Instagram page or facebook or what have you and and and and it's not in me then that is constantly subject to people liking me and thinking i'm amazing and people thinking i'm useless or i'm an embarrassed i'm you know whatever and so my identity is external to me now right and that's going to cause a person to always be up and down by whatever others yeah that's really interesting because when i was a kid and the internet didn't exist i guess the way in which you would present the part of you that you wanted to be acknowledged was through your

say fashion right or through the you know you associate with a particular band and you you you show them who you are by what you dress and how you walk and how you speak that's kind of really the only way you can do it whereas as you said today it's almost like we've taken that part of ourselves that we want to project and we've totally disassociated it from us and it's this thing i manage over here right that's just kind of what you mean exactly yeah yeah because it really fits with people in general who you know sometimes the word is codependency right i don't always love that explain that yeah well the way i define codependency is your identity is outside of

yourself and so you allow others to manage your identity in some way. So in the case, say, the traditional codependent, like when codependency was first talked about, it was in terms of like the alcoholic husband and the codependent wife. We now know it's way bigger than that. But if you just look at that kind of typical situation, what is she doing? She's enabling the alcoholic, right?

Because her identity is in taking care of him. And maybe he's a broken bird, right? Of course, he's a broken bird. And her identity is saving him and managing jail and she's taking care of him. So her whole identity is in his addiction. So she no longer has any sense of who she is in relation to him. So what she has to do in order to recognize her, she has to start recognizing her own identity and who she is to protect her true self to be healthy, she has to have boundaries. Okay. So, yeah, that's really interesting. Everything's good? Yeah.

So, all right. Yeah. So, codependency, one way to define it is when you take your identity kind of in your relationship to another person. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. In some level, you're addicted to relationships, but you're addicted to managing them.

Sometimes you hear about the, say, the widow or the mother whose husband left her and she kind of treats her. Maybe this is different, but she treats her child almost like a quasi-husband. She gets her emotional needs met through him. Right. That's probably different to what we're talking about. Yeah. It's related. It's related different to what we're talking about. Yeah, it's related. It's related, but that's parentification.

So in other words, they've taken the child and made them a substitute parent. So now the child's identity, it's inappropriate, right? So if we take that to attachment theory, then the child is supposed to, even if they're 15, 16, is supposed to still know that the parent is the parent, caregiver, the person who kind of establishes safety. So now all of a sudden they're in a relationship, hey, it might feel good that mom is including me and telling me all of her pains and

sorrows and difficulties and challenges. And it might feel like, oh, I'm important and all this. So there's a level at which that might feel good, oh, I'm important and all this. So there's a level at which that might feel good, but there's a deeper level, which it feels extremely unsafe because now I'm still a child and I have to be in the role of an adult with the adult that is supposed to take care of me. So no one is really taking care of me like a child. Yeah, that's really good. Yeah. So that, but then that child learns my identity is in taking care of people that are supposed to take care of me. And that sets them up to be in relationships where they continue to do that, where their whole role is to take care of somebody

else and never have their own needs met. So what's another example then of the kind of, sorry, what was the term again? Codependency. Codependency. So you gave the example of the wife and the drunk husband. What's another thing? It's interesting because I'm always fascinated with male codependence, right? Because a lot of men are actually very codependent. Interesting. And that means they're very, you know, people pleasers, people who are very concerned about what other people think about them.

That's funny because when I hear codependence, I always think of it in an intimate relationship. But it sounds like the way you're beginning to use it doesn't have to be an intimate relationship. It's not. It's actually because the person is disconnected from their true identity. So they really can't be intimate in a deep way with somebody else. Or an important relationship is what I mean. But it sounds like you're saying someone can be codependent with people that aren't that important to them. Say somebody at the pub. Oh, I see. Somebody they work with,

somebody they see at the golf range or whatever. Absolutely. Because, I mean, it's complex and people are different. But in general terms, if I'm codependent, I may want everyone to like me at work. And so it's very important

to my sense of identity that to like me at work. And so it's very important to my sense of identity that others like me. And so I'm constantly making choices so that those other people will affirm me and positively regard me. And I am not actually acting from my true self or even understanding my own needs. it's always secondary. That's really interesting because I see that in myself in different ways, but I see that in other people too who, yeah, they're very, oh, very pleased, try to please people and then they say something totally different. You're like, what's going on there? Yeah. Well, what can happen too is to the codependent, right, is that in time, if they're not, needs are not, they're not actually getting the information they're looking for, right, or whatever, they eventually they're taking advantage of by people.

Because people learn, you know, that this person doesn't actually take care of their own needs. It's not a conscious learning. But they realize that. And so they start treating them like they can take advantage of them. They're not that important. They're always going to say yes to anything they're always if i ever need help this person's always going to just do it and they they and they after a while the codependent person feels unloved and just used and then what can happen is they can in some way get negative so

if it's a person uh like some people could get, you know, angry and resentful and take it out on people. There are codependents that might do that. It's more typically men. The other way, and I see this in more women, but men too, is passive aggressive, right? Because now they've done every, I've been everybody's friend and helped everybody out of everything nobody cares about me right so they go into a victim mode possibly and then they go into a mode of

of how can I get people to do what I want them to do I can't confront them or be direct about it because that breaks all the rules so I'm going to find ways to guilt them I'm going to find ways to guilt them i'm going to find ways to send the message punish them yeah yeah punish them but in a way that they don't know they're being exactly like i'll snub you i'll give a dismissive like i and then

i'll pretend it didn't mean anything yeah that's perfect exactly yeah exactly that yeah i may have had some experience with that if if you can't tell. This is kind of going back to what we spoke about earlier in regards to anxiety, which you said was a reaction to a real or perceived threat. And maybe we can actually fall in, you know, thinking that anxiety is always a negative thing. But obviously, coronavirus, this relatively new thing, I imagine there's appropriate ways to be anxious. Yes. Well, yeah. I mean, I think here's the thing. Anxiety is a normal process for our body. We are supposed to have these reactions to the goal is to eliminate all anxiety, right? No, no, we can't because otherwise, you know, we can't be daredevil,

the man without fear. Like we have to be, we have to have fear because it protects us. So when there's a real threat, we do need to respond. Now, the problem with something like coronavirus is that it is a real threat, I believe. It's kind of an unknown, but it's not a bear we can, we, most of us can get together and take down. Right. It's, it's. In fact, we're being told not to get together. Right, right. Exactly. And so that, that actually creates a sort of a general malaise or chronic anxiety, because there's this thing looming over us that we have no way it doesn't it might not feel like we have a way to tackle um and then we start to get fears because you know our is our government or you know this and that are they doing the right thing you know and so it creates i think a lot of real a real sense sense of anxiety that is kind of could be chronic if this goes on for weeks and weeks and months and months. And also it has another impact.

There's a societal kind of anxiety that kind of takes hold. It's a little bit like 9-11. It's like even though it might have happened to specific people in New York City, our whole country experienced the trauma. And our whole country had anxiety about it. Even with the threat of terrorism, our whole country has that as a generalized anxiety. So you're dealing with your own, but you're also part of this bigger connection. Right. And so, yeah, so it requires a little bit of specific work and recognition that's different than just, you know, what I was describing earlier about like your drive into work and stress at work.

Yeah. So you can have a legitimate anxiety about something and an understandable. I mean, I guess anxiety can always be understandable if you if you ask enough questions. But it might be right to have a particular level of anxiety, say, about coronavirus. It might be right to have a particular level of anxiety, say, about coronavirus, but then no doubt you could fuel it in an unhealthy way. And I imagine that's what's going on as people consume media every hour. What's your sort of advice to people who do that, who are looking into a lot of political media? Right, right. Well, my advice there is to limit it because I think that we do want to stay informed. So we don't want to eliminate it.

I think it's important to stay informed. But we don't want to be taxing our system constantly with something we don't really have control over. So I have to start with the fact that there are some things I can do. Like they're telling us to wash our hands and do some social distancing. I noticed you have some hands in a bag. I do in my bag. Yeah, I'm trying to be real good about it. Good job. You should be a bit further away, but that's all right for today.

I'll look this way from now on. Well, looking away is not going to change anything. What if I cough? Yeah, yeah. So I can do some things that these are the things we're told to do, and I can do that. But I have to stop and say that's all I can do. You know what I mean mean i can't control or manage more than that i'm not a chemist in some lab working on the vaccine you know there's nothing

else i can do and i feel like there has to be a level of surrender to that that's a deep level and i feel like as a christian I have resources that help me to surrender. Taking it to the cross, for example, and just saying, God, it's in your hands. I can only do my best, and the rest I have to give to you. Yes. I know that sounds like maybe a cliche, but it's powerful. Yeah. And it has to be a deep level of surrender.

Now, I would go back to the same elements, though, that are true. Start with my body. Just us talking about the coronavirus, has that caused some tension? Do I feel a little bit in my chest? Actually, I do a little bit. Did I see my shoulders get a little tense? Just a little. But I can stop and go, okay, right now I'm still sitting with Matt.

We're sitting here. We're safe as we can be. I, okay, right now I'm still sitting with Matt. We're sitting here. We're safe as we can be. I'm not dying right now. He probably doesn't have the coronavirus. But I can't actually go to there. I can't go there because I don't know. I see. Right?

I don't actually know. It has to be pure truth. Pure truth right now is that you and I right in this moment are actually safe. We're breathing. We seem healthy. We don't have symptoms. Right now I I am fine and safe in right now. Take a deep breath. Sit with that. So, to my body, the second part I was kind of doing, which is I go to God, Jesus, I don't control this universe. You do. I'm going to bring this, my anxieties and worries about it.

I'm just going to put it at the cross. Lord, take care of me. Whatever your will is in this whole situation, let it be. So there's an emotional connection with God so that I'm getting to the emotional center. And now I can be a lot more reasonable in my thinking and go, all right, I'm okay. What do I want to do today? That's really good. Yeah, I was reading another book by Father Jacques Philippe, School of the Holy Spirit, and in it he talks about surrender to events, right? An event might be you lose your job, you get employed, or, you know, coronavirus, things you can't control. One of the good things about events and responding to them is that they're concrete, objective things outside of myself.

They're not subjective realities. And very often when we talk about God's will, we're dealing with subjective realities. Like, does the Lord want me to be a priest? Does he want me to pursue this woman? Like, what do you want, Lord? I'll be faithful to you. And I think many of us want to say that, and we should say that. I want to be faithful to you, Lord. Many of us want to say that, and we should say that.

I want to be faithful to you, Lord. But when it comes to objective events, we're not saying that all things that happen are from God's will. God doesn't will sin, but he permits sin. And if it's outside of my control, I have to accept that in the wisdom of God, this is something that he is permitting. And I don't just have to be sort of, what do you say, resigned in a sort of unhappy way, but I can say, I can praise the Lord for it. This happened to me a couple of weeks ago when somebody hacked into my Instagram account. Did I tell you about that? Yeah, you did. This was after my interview with Derry Little, who is a convert from Islam so we spoke all about Islam and then we found out that right after that someone hacked in from Iran

and they tried and they they failed and then there was another attempt and it failed and then they finally got in and it I at first we is this something personal isn't it it was they were kind of writing about me on the stories that they had so I had like 35,000 followers, Jerry, you know, on this Instagram account, which is a lot for me, for many people. But I think I was just given a grace from our Lord that I just, I was happy.

I just thought, praise you, Lord. Like take all of it if you want to take all of it. That was like a real concrete example where I had the opportunity to surrender it, not in a fatalistic sort of way. I'm doing what I can to restore it, but it's in a kind of a peaceful, restful way. Yeah. To me, that speaks to detachment. We've been talking about attachment, but then there's this idea of detachment, which means I don't have to be attached to the things of this world. I don't have to be attached to material goods. I don't have to be attached where I'm clingy. Maybe it's

more of an insecure attachment where I'm clingy and anxious about everything that goes on in the world. I love the word I like to use. I get from St. Francis to sales and St. Ignatius used it a few times which is holy indifference and holy indifference doesn't mean you don't care it means that you are dispassionate to some extent and so you are which it sounds like you were able to get

to with the Instagram hacking right we were able to go you know what I can't control this world I can't control other people I can't control this world. I can't control other people. I can't control me a lot of the time. It feels that way. Well, you know, you can control your immediate behavior, but you can't control others. And you, you know, you couldn't control this hacker in Iran, right? So you have to be able to detach. And I believe that when we do detach with holy indifference, we're more able to love. And when we can't, we go into those

anxious, insecure states and we actually become harmful to others in some way and maybe to ourselves, right? And it's not intentional necessarily, but it's just, you know, what it means, like you could have gotten into, put your, you know know had a panic attack or got into a state or become irritable and crabby with your family or you know what i mean or just said i don't care anymore i'm gonna try anymore who cares about you know the world and then you know then that would have stopped you from doing good in the world that would have stopped you from being good as a husband and a father that would have you know and also maybe damage your health to some extent yeah tell us about your work with souls and hearts

the podcast you're doing the courses you're setting up i know it's helping a lot of people yeah yeah well we're really excited we're just launching this this first course that is paid course we have a number of them that are available that are free um but the first one we're doing is called restoring your marriage after the discovery of a porn pornography issue. So we titled it. And in that course, there's actually 24 modules. And it's a step by step guide for couples to to actually address the pornography issue. Not just let's say it's the husband. It's not always, but let's say it's the husband, to actually address the addiction, but also the relationship.

And also to attempt to meet the needs of the wife, who is often labeled a codependent. But in reality, she may be, but she may also just simply be kind of traumatized or just disturbed by it. And so every module has, you know, there's sort of a little lesson. And then there's- Are these video lessons? Video lessons. Yep. Yep. And then there's- Are these video lessons? It's a video lessons. Yep. Yep.

And by my, yours truly here. And there's an activity for the husband to do, the wife to do, and for them to do together. And so they go through, and pretty much all the modules are three. And how long are the videos? They're short. Each one's like about eight minutes or so. That's a good idea. Yeah.

So you can do it- And how much is this particular course? How much is it cost? If you don't mind me asking. Yeah. like about eight minutes that's a good idea yeah so you can do it this particular course how much is it yeah we price it at 250 yeah um because it's it's a lot of time and attention it'd probably save you about four or five counseling sessions which would add up to a lot more than that because we're not doing i'm not doing counseling per se but i'm providing the education that you sometimes get from it and activities and resources so that you might still go see a counselor, but it would benefit you.

Here's what I love about that. Because when I started my 21 day detox from porn course, strive, people go get it at strive21.com. Um, I wanted it to be like a few hundred dollars and it's, it's, it's now free now free well let me tell you what happened is it was originally like 50 60 bucks because i don't i mean i created the content but there's obviously a publisher yeah but then they um sold it to covenant eyes and so covenant eyes wants it to be free right to get it out there which i'm thrilled about i mean i don't make any money from it now which you know but i'm really glad it's going to reach a lot more people but what we saw was when people invest financially they're're far more likely to recognize that this is a thing of value,

which I'll see to the end. I actually like the idea of charging more for it because I've seen that in my own life. Like if I, you know, something's free, it's like everything else on the internet that's free. I have no value to it. But it was a couple of years ago, I did this particular health challenge with a friend of mine and it was like a 12-week course it was 500 and we looked at it we assessed it and we decided to commit now that was a lot of money for me i don't usually do something like that but i actually stuck to it and it's not something i would have stuck to so i'm just saying i'm glad that you that you charge for it there's a lot in that course that will help you do some serious marital work. You know, some of the modules I was like, ah, we should, this should be a whole other course

because it really would benefit any couple, even if it's not pornography addiction, but it, because it really gets into improving your relationship and having really to have a secure attachment is the ultimate goal. Even though there's a porn issue that was discovered and it's causing this problem by the end of this course, I can't guarantee you're going to have a secure attachment is the ultimate goal. Even though there's a porn issue that was discovered and it's causing this problem by the end of this course, I can't guarantee you're going to have secure attachment with your spouse, but that is what the course is trying to get at through the exercises. Have you got any feedback from these courses yet? Or have you launched this one yet?

This one is just about to be launched. Oh, that's exciting. Um, the other courses people have taken, we have one on, uh, how to help a loved one in distress.

We've had people really, and that one's free. Oh, that's cool. You have free course. You mentioned this earlier, but say that again. You have some free courses. Yeah, one is called how to help a loved one in distress. Oh, that's really neat. So it's Dr. Peter Malinowski and me doing that one.

And so it's just like giving you practical tips and strategies. Like if you're helping somebody that's going through a really difficult time, what to do to help them what is helpful what's not helpful in this kind of thing we have another course called uh a catholic's guide to finding a therapist which is free as well great and it is completely robust with all the everything you would want to know about how being how to pick a really that's fantastic because that actually was going to be one of my questions about that yeah yeah but that's cool. Oh, that's fantastic. Because that actually was going to be one of my questions about that. Yeah, yeah. But that's cool.

So that's really great. So where can people find that? It's at soulsandhearts.com. And then you have a podcast by the same name. Yes. How's that going? Well, it's called Be With The Word. We mentioned this earlier.

Yeah. Dr. Peter and I, every single week, we reflect on the Sunday readings. Okay. So we try to bring in a psychological element. So, it's not just what you would get from the Magnificat reading or something like this. That's really cool. And when do you release them in the week? Every Tuesday.

That's great. So, people right now can go download Souls and Hearts. That's great because a lot of us are pretty poor at reading the Sunday reading ahead of time. So, they get it given to them. You do a breakdown. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I've had priests comment on it, how helpful it's been,

and to kind of go deeper with it. So a lot of people are really enjoying it. I've started to be a little more vulnerable too in the podcast. We've been improving. Good for you. Because I'm not a celebrity like you, and it's taking some time. I'm not a celebrity,

but it's always a work in progress, I mean, isn't it? Yeah. And it's always finding that level of vulnerability that's appropriate. Because you don't want to be voyeuristic. There is that tendency maybe or that temptation to share too much at the expense of your family, your loved ones. Right. Yeah, I'm kind of managing that. Yeah, me too.

There's another one, if I could mention, it's Fly on the Wall. And that one is free as well. It's kind of a podcast kind of thing, but it's a once a month thing. And it's a group of Catholic psychologists sitting around talking about different topics. Fly on the wall. Fly on the wall.

And we've had discussions on church scandals. We've had discussions about boundaries with clients. It's like you get to sit in and listen on these different Catholic psychologists discuss these issues. So if that's interesting to you. That's really great. Now you just mentioned boundaries, which reminded me that

I wanted to ask you about that since we're talking about codependency. What do we mean by boundaries? Okay. So a boundary is where we protect ourself in a healthy way, right? Or at least a healthy boundary is. So, which is different than an ultimatum, because an ultimatum is where you are trying to control and manage somebody else and their behavior, which is sort of a codependent behavior. But a healthy boundary is saying, I am, say, a child of God, I am a human being with worth, you know, I have needs of my own, I am a human being with worth. I have needs of my own and I need to protect those.

So if I'm in a relationship where somebody is being abusive, whether they're toxic in some way, it might just be a verbal kind of thing. It could be physical. It could be a number of things. What am I doing to protect myself from that behavior, right? And sometimes it's relationships that it's like with a parent or whatnot, where it's a little bit subtle or we're just so used to it that we don't notice, right? It's not always like, obviously, if somebody hits you in the face, you say, okay, I'm not coming back here anymore. That's my boundary, right?

And I'm not going to be hit again. But it can just be like, you know, a parent saying, you know, making comments, casual comments like, oh, you know, I noticed you're wearing that color today. Yeah, what's with that? Well, immediately, I mean, that's, you could say, well, that's just a comment, but, and it shouldn't bother me that much. Why is this person always making those kind of comments? Because it feels like I'm just being criticized, right? And yet it's done in a way, so that sort of passive aggressive behavior, it's done in a way that puts me off guard and makes me defensive or what have you. And so a boundary might be where you set a boundary with the person and you say, listen,

when you just made that remark, that actually hurt my feelings. You might or might not say that. It's a bit of vulnerability, but it's not okay. So, if you do that again, I'm sorry, but if you're on the phone, I'm going to get off the phone. Or if you're visiting, I'm going to leave. So, you set a boundary with the person. And in which case, then you have to actually follow through so um you know then when you follow through it's like when the person does it again you say listen i talked to you about this it's not okay to criticize me in this way i'm gonna leave now you know what's interesting is that almost sounds like in a way that we talk i mean we do this with children right we set boundary with children look if you do, you have to go sit on the stairs.

How old are you? Five? Okay, so it's going to have to be five minutes now. That's the boundary, right? And they do it and it's so important to follow through. You've set that boundary. It's a known boundary. But, of course, when you're talking with like a peer, you don't want to sort of speak down to them.

It must be difficult to try and sort through, am I being overly sensitive or is there something that they're saying that is legitimately unacceptable? How do I communicate this in a way that's respectful, not patronizing? Right, right. Well, here's the thing. One thing I try to do is recognize, and this is going to be maybe difficult language for some people, but am I in the self is one way to put it. Am I connected to me who I am? Or is it a manager just trying to, you know, part of me just trying, you know, to manage the situation? If I really am connected to my true self, then I'm more able to actually recognize what my needs really are. And I'm not just trying, you know, I'm not being codependent or just trying to manipulate. So it's a way of recognizing, am I being manipulative? I think that's a fair question. Am I oversensitive?

But I would say that if you are asking yourself, am I oversensitive? Then you're probably caught in a relationship where somebody is being codependent with you. Because if you were an insensitive person, you probably wouldn't ask yourself that. If you're being insensitive. Yeah. That's interesting. I mean, I'm generalizing, but yeah. Well, that's very good.

And it's probably a way that you've learned to disregard your own needs by criticizing your needs and saying that you're insensitive or you're a baby or what's wrong with you or get over it. Okay. Well, what we're going to do is we're going to wrap up here. We're going to take some time over on Patreon. So for our patrons,

you can go over, watch the rest of this clip and we're going to talk about some helpful conversation starters for date nights and things like that. It's gonna be fantastic. But before we wrap up here on YouTube, tell people how they can find you just one more time. Anything you'd like to say? Yeah.

I mean, find me on souls andhearts.com. We're also Be With The Word and Fly On The Wall are on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, all those things. You can also, if you're in the Atlanta area looking for counseling, I'm at transfigurationcounseling.com as well. Awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here, Jerry. This has been fantastic. Loved it.

Thank you.