Soul Boom - Dr. Thema Bryant: Can Religious Trauma be Healed?

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

Dr. Thema Bryant (therapist, minister, and spoken word artist) and Rainn Wilson give their unique perspective on the duality of faith as both a lifeline and a source of deep trauma for different people. With her background as the former president of the American Psychological Association and her deep involvement in the arts, she explores how her diverse roles enhance her work in mental health and healing. The podcast uncovers Dr. Bryant’s journey to integrating her various talents but also addresses broader issues such as the impact of spirituality on psychological growth and the therapeutic potential of justice and acknowledgment in societal contexts. Thank you to our sponsors! Waking Up app (1st month free!): https://wakingup.com/soulboom Fetzer Institute: https://fetzer.org/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For some people, religion and spirituality has been their lifeline, their resource. It's the reason why they have survived. And then for other people, it has been the source of their greatest trauma. And both things are true. Wow. Right? And usually, depending on your life experience, it's hard to acknowledge the other. So people who, like, love their faith and love their church are like, how dare people

talk about it? And then those who have been harmed in those spaces are like, how could anything good come from it? It's all shame and blame and, like, all of it is true. Hey there, it's me, Rain Wilson, and I want to dig into the human experience. I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast. Dr. Bryant, Dima, I'm so thrilled to have you on the show.

Oh, thank you for inviting me. I'm excited for the conversation. Me too, me too. And first and foremost, the main reason I'm excited for this conversation is, as I got to know you and your work in researching this conversation, understanding what this means that you are a therapist. You were the president of the American Psychologicalists Association. Psychological, yeah. Something. You're a therapist and you're a minister.

and you're an artist, really. You call yourself a sacred artist, but spoken word, dance, singing movement. There's no one else like you here. And I love that those three parts of who you are come together in the field of mental health and healing. So I have to know, how did you get to that point

where you were therapist, minister, artist all rolled into one. Yeah. How does that work? So I have to give a shout out to my mom. She really encouraged the permission to not have to choose. And I remember one day I was a graduate student at Duke University and the medical center found out I was a poet.

And they invited me to come over to the medical school and do poetry. but they started reading my academic bio first. So they read that, and then I get up and do spoken word, and I had a doctor literally come up to me after the presentation and say, when you lay your head down at night, which one are you? And it was such a bizarre question. So when I get out in the parking lot, I call my mom, I'm like, oh, I had this great, you know, performance,

but check out this question this guy asked. And she said, and she's a particular way of speaking, so I'll kind of be her in the moment. Tema, single gifted people will rarely understand multi-gifted people. To them, you will always look scattered. Just continue to be everything you are. And that was it. How did she get to have that kind of perspective and wisdom? Yes, it was her eldest sister who introduced her to the public library.

And so she's a lover of books and writing and literature, which just opens up your world beyond, you know, when she was growing up, she said to just think she'd go sit in the closet. And so, right? That's a lot going on. It's a lot of action. It's better than sitting on the toilet. That's right. There we go. Nine brothers and sisters.

That's where you got to go. You got to go. And so I think in some ways by necessity, she cultivated an imagination. And when you're free to imagine, then you're not easily deterred by like other people's limitations of Kant, which, you know, showed up even when I was running for president of the American Psychological Association,

people said, you know. You had to run for president? Yeah, it's a whole campaign. You had like yard signs? Yeah. Well, the gift, let me tell you, the beauty of the year I was running, we were still dealing with the pandemic. So all I had to do is say, send me the link.

The prior presidents had to, prior candidates had to, like, fly across the country to these different state psychological associations and, you know, pitch why they should be, yeah. So I did it, but I did it from the comfort of my home. Okay. And, yeah, so that. So what were your mom's various skills? My mother is a writer. So she's also a minister.

And she leads up kind of women's initiatives. So she created a Women's Center in Baltimore, Maryland, which is where I primarily grew up. She conducts and facilitates women's spiritual retreats. So very focused on. And what's her name? Reverend Cecilia, Williams Bryant. Oh, I love it. Yeah, my dad, too, like, he was so hard to sum up. And people

like, what was your dad? It's like, well, he spent most of his life working as a sewer man. But he's the only sewer man I know that went home from work and painted abstract oil paintings while listening to the opera music. And on weekends, writing science fiction novels. and being very involved in our Baha'i faith. I'm a Baha'i. But then he also wrote a book on manufacturing and he taught in schools and he was fluent in Spanish. He taught himself classical music on the piano.

He would play Chopin and Beethoven, totally self-taught. Wow. Wow. So he was a real polyglot. Yeah. So that probably freed you. Yeah, it did. And for me, I always just, wanted to be an actor, so I put kind of all of my attention in that. But then the last, you know, 15 or 20 years, it's been great because I've had that acting career and I'll still do it,

but I can write books and I can have podcasts and start businesses and do all kinds of other things. I love it. Infinite unlimited possibility. When did the poetry start? That was early on. and this will again circle back to my mom. I have one brother, so he's two years older. And very early elementary school age, she bought us journals and would just encourage us to write. And it's one of those things, too, when people believe you have solutions or wisdom,

you believe them. So she would like literally say to me things like, Tama, what do you think it would take to make the world better? And she would ask me that when I was like, eight and look at me for an answer. So then I felt like I must know some answers. And that, yeah, built the confidence. So I'm going to go all Oprah on you.

Yeah. What was your answer when you were eight? And what's your answer now? Right. So here's the funny thing that goes before eight but connects to where we are now. I'm going to say probably nursery school when they ask you what you want to be when you grow up. I said, I want to be a house for the homeless. And they told me you can't.

And I said, why not? This is the preschool teacher. People can't grow up to be houses. And now at the age of 50, I have the book Homecoming, which I'm a house. You're a metaphorical house for the homeless. Yeah. People looking for homes. Right.

So what does the world need? Safety, justice, love. There you have it. Thanks, everybody. Good night, everyone. So in my therapeutic journey, I had a therapist once, and he was good for where I was at at the time, but he was pretty poo-poohy about religion and faith. And I imagine for a lot of, like, secular, liberal, urban therapists that God's spirituality, religion

is not so much part of the vocabulary. You're president of the American Psychological Association, congratulations on your one-year run. Did you get pushback for being a minister and for your ideas? Because there's so many skeptics in that world. One hundred percent pushback, and I'm going to say understandably so. People's experience with Christians, especially in this day and time, has often been very problematic. And I would say, you know, in part it can be people's lack of exposure or assumptions, but a part of that is built on the actions of people who are so visibly invocal Christian. So the fear from some when I was elected is that I was going to try to force them to take on my religion,

which has been one of the distinctions where some other faith traditions like don't believe in evangelism. but it's one of the things that Christians do, and sometimes it's something that has been done with force and with violence and abuse of power. And so there's a poem by a Native American poet, and right now I'm going to blank on his name, but it's called Letter to God. And it says, Dear God, I never heard of you before. I've heard of Mother Earth, and I've heard of Father Sky, but I never heard of you. I was willing to give you a chance until I met your representatives.

That great? That's awesome. It's so like I share that in churches, right? I'm like, what is the representation? If people meet you and you are it. So I think what has happened, our training programs have really done those who are entering the field

a disservice because it is not usually talked about, but we have been stretching people's ideas around cultural awareness to not only be like gender or race, but also religion and spirituality. And it is interesting that women and people of color endorse higher rates of religiosity. So when that automatically gets ignored or pathologized, who's being disserved? Right? Yeah. So it's like putting your worldview on people. And so what I tell psychologists and psychology students is you have to be able to hold the spectrum, which is for some people, religion and spirituality has been their lifeline, their resource. It's the reason why they have survived. And then for other people, it has been the source of their greatest trauma. And both

things are true. Wow. Right. And usually depending on your life experience, it's hard to acknowledge the other. So people who like love their faith and love their church are like, how dare people talk about it? And then those who have been harmed in those spaces are like, how could anything good come from it? It's all shame and blame and, and like all of it is true. So just perfectly said, how does the absence of spirituality, let's put religion aside, but the idea that we are souls, we're on a journey, there's a creative, force and energy in the universe. This is guiding us toward love, towards mutuality and common service, you know, these aspects of say non-denominational spirituality. How does absence of spirituality

impede one's psychological growth and maturity? Yeah. A lack of spirituality feeds the illusion of control. If there is nothing greater than me, then it's just all up to me. And that is unfortunately not true. And in social psychology, there's this idea called belief in a just world, which is why some people engage in victim blaming, because they think, like, if something bad happened to you, you must have caused it. And the truth is there are some things that are in our control, and there are some things that are not. And not only does it deal with people's desire for control, but also I think the lack of spirituality helps to protect people from disappointment because they will believe if it's not all up to me that it's all random.

Right? So if it's all random, you know, like there's nothing to be said or not, done about it. There's no meaning in it. And so maybe that can buffer the search for meaning. Yeah, in the in the in the high faith, a very wise man named Abdul Baháh has some quotes. I don't, I don't have them on the tip of my tongue, but they essentially are talking about the hopelessness that is created if you believe that our journey ends with death. And there's essentially an existential despair, no matter how much you pretend to say, hey, it's one moment at a time, I'm in the moment, one breath at a time, I'm going to really enjoy every day, which is all well and true and good. But ultimately, if you really believe that there is random purposelessness,

and at the end of your 87 or 93 or 102 years on this planet, that's it, lights out, there there can't help but be a certain kind of despair sewn into that do you think that's that's part of it i think for some people it depends on the life they're living for some people it could be a relief okay all right they're like yeah i did i did my time i did my time and i'm done uh so i think for some it's i can't wrap my head around that me personally i can't wrap my head around that because I would just, because I tried to be an atheist for a while and that's, and I tried to really sit with that.

Okay, there's no, all random molecules. Here we are. We're in these flesh suits for 90 years. And then at the end, that's it. Consciousness goes out like a light switch. And I just tried to really get with that. Okay, so that means maximize every day, maximize every choice.

Okay, good. But I just kind of just got depressed. It was like, really? there's no meaning. There's no higher meaning. It's just a randomness of a Pachinko ball going down a, you know, going down a little game. I think to have it and give it up is harder than for people who never had it. You know, because then they don't feel like they lost anything. It's the way they have always understood the world. That's good. That's a good point. Do you give sermons? In therapy? No.

In church? Yes, definitely. Yes, I do. What are your sermons about? And is there, are there some psychological seeds that you spread in your sermons? Oh, 100%. Well, give me a handful. Yes.

What do you like to talk? What do you like to address? So I often focus on healing stories. And there are so many, unfortunately, narratives of trauma as you go through the Old and New Testament. And so then I point out ways that we can have psychological and spiritual healing. So one of the models that I have that I've shared in churches is using the crucifixion as a trauma. And everyone can agree it is a trauma. And then...

Especially as Mel Gibson described. Oh, my gosh. So, so traumatic. So traumatic. So traumatic. Yeah. So then pointing out the different things. things that Jesus did after the cross mirror a lot of the science we have of what is helpful

in the aftermath of trauma. That's fantastic. I never thought about that. Yeah. So you're talking about when he's up on the? No, I mean, so the after that. It starts with tune time. Okay.

Right? Being still. So there are three days. And often those of us who are trying to prove we're fine, just try to keep going. You know, it's like after surgery, we don't even want to take the time that they said to take. Or, you know, a dear friend who went through a health crisis but, like, felt she had to, like, prove her faith by getting up immediately afterwards and pretending nothing is wrong. It's like, when we're like, I'm blessed, I'm blessed, I'm blessed. And it's take your tomb time.

You can. Take your tomb time. All right. You can be still. It's a little dark, a little macabre. I get with that. There's life after the tomb, right? So that's what makes it, it's more your rest and your care.

So you should take three days after your surgery. However many days were prescribed by your doctor is what I will support. All right. And then after that, the first people Jesus appeared to were the women. Now, during that time, women didn't have status, but they were the ones who were faithful when he was up on the cross. they were standing there, his official disciples were hiding and running and afraid, right? And so it's that piece of when I'm going through, go toward the ones who show up for me

because some people can't handle you in your bloody state. You know, some people disappear. If there's a celebration, they're there. Good news they're there. But you pay attention to who has the capacity and the will. to be present when you're not shining. Yeah. Yeah.

So that's, and in our research, that's about social support and community support. So one of the big predictors of how we deal, how we recover from trauma is the reactions we get to our initial disclosures. When you first share it with someone, is their judgment or shame? Is there belief in support or condemnation? And so we want to be intentional about our supports instead of trying to win over people who don't have compassion. Yeah. So I could keep going.

I don't know if you want to hear. Go one more. All right. Yes. One more fun fact about Jesus healing trauma. Yes. So this one, I'll share this one since it's a little controversial, which is great for the podcast.

Well, we're not about that here, but sure, go for it. Yes, is that I help people unpack the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation because while Jesus was on the cross, he said, Father forgive them, right? Talking about the people who were taking his life. But after he rose in all of the books of the Bible, there is no narration of him going back to hang out with the people who killed him. And one of the things that holds us up in our healing is trying to remain connected to people who aren't sorry.

So I can forgive you for not being sorry. But reconciliation requires what we would call repentance, a change of mind so that you're not going to keep trying to do those things. Okay, I get where you're going. That's great. So, you know, if people haven't shifted, they'll just try, they'll hurt you again. And then some people feel this religious obligation of like, I must forgive, I must forgive. But then let's look like what is forgiveness and forgiveness does not have to mean that we

pretend it didn't happen and reconcile. You can forgive and release. Right. Yeah. Right. I love what you say. That's so beautiful. The difference between forgiveness and justice too. You hear time and time again, and I've spoken to some folks that have had horrific things happen to them, and they've forgiven their persecutors or their family's persecutors. Like in their heart, they have come around to love. But that doesn't mean they don't want that person to go to jail, and that person needs to from, you know, things need to balance out and be rectified, you know,

from a social standpoint. And forgiveness does not mean no justice. No justice. Right. Right. And that is, I'm glad you raised that because that often gets presented as the same, right? That if you forgave them, like, things should just be able to move on. And, you know, amends, reparative work, restitution, reparation, justice is an important part of healing. This reminds me so much of, like, reparations for slavery. because why can't we as a society on several levels? Because reparations isn't just about cash.

It's about on several levels, take responsibility, right? What do you do when you've harmed someone? You take responsibility, yes, I did that. Then you apologize. I'm sorry that I did that. And then you say, what can I do to make that right? Because you suffered from what I did. So that's just on its most basic level.

So, you know, no one in reparations is just talking about like backing up the Brinks truck. And it's about shifting a cultural perspective around like, you know, we did something heinous. Here's all the millions of people that affected for generations. Not just at that time. They're like, well, that was all in the 1860s. And it's like, yeah, but you look at redlining and you're, you look at redlining and you, you look at how prejudice impacted folks and impacted their pocketbooks and their bank accounts.

And how do we fix that? I imagine, you're right. I'm sorry to be white man explaining reparations, but I'm just trying to, but I'm just giving my perspective from how outraged I get when that argument just becomes so simplistic about it. How would you address that? I absolutely agree that people have to understand intergenerations. trauma and to recognize things did not, and justice didn't end with the emancipation

proclamation. Yeah. Right. So this idea of like this was so long ago that it persists and it's documented the ways in which racial injustice shows up in our criminal quote unquote justice system can have all the same facts and just change the race of the defendant and you change the likelihood of being found guilty. you change the sentence that they receive. We see it in banking with all of these scams around home loans and refusal to support businesses.

When we see right now the disparities with black farmers and white farmers. I don't know about that. Oh, taking of the land and refusing to give loans. So it's like giving, it's basically taking their land that's been in their families for generations in health care that, that to this day, we're in 2024, white doctors are less likely to believe the pain reports of black patients. So then, and sending them home, we saw this with COVID, you're fine, go home, and then they go home and die. The maternal mortality rates in this country, we are at increased risk, black women just for giving birth, more likely to die. And when they say like, oh, just pull yourself up from your bootstraps, we tried that with building Black Wall Street and they burned it down, right?

Try to build our own organization and there's infiltration into those systems to disrupt it. We see that also happening in Africa with the attempts to recolonize and some countries never even left while they're extracting all the resources, all the gold mines, all the diamonds. And then they want to say, oh, these people are lazy or corrupt. So what is interesting but not surprising is you don't get the same pushback when we talk about reparations for other things. So reparations for the Holocaust, reparations for internment camps, reparations for Native Americans and, you know, casinos, reparations for 9-11. So what of these things is not like the others? What makes it so upsetting and outrageous? And a part of it goes with not wanting to know history.

So banning us talking about the, and to claim you're being divisive and unpatriotic to tell the truth about what your parents and grandparents did, right? That we're the problem. And so, you know, as one person was sharing, imagine what kind of history you must have that you want to make it illegal for people to talk about. Yeah. So.

Yeah, I was playing tennis with this guy. And one of the whitest dudes I've ever known in my life. I'm pretty white. He was even whiter than me. And he was telling me, he was like, yeah, my dad was a banker in Pasadena. And when I was a kid, he would show me the maps. of where you could house black people, where you could house Hispanic people,

where you could house Asian people, and where you could house Jewish people. And it was literally redlined and like, see, here's where, here's the neighborhoods where we put them, and we don't let them get loans for over here. And I was just thinking about that. Like, what was that like being 11 years old

and just being shown? Right. Just without any. Yeah, no feeling about it. This is just how it works. Yeah. And you think about the number one, way to move forward generational wealth is through real estate, you know. And, you know, my wife and I

bought our first little house in Van Nuys and we made them. And then we moved over to another town and we moved to another town and like, and there will be generational wealth for my son from the real estate. And then if you don't, if you don't have that for 150 years, guess what? That's, that's a little bit problematic. And that's not even, that's just like data. That's just like take the emotion out of it. That's just hard fact data. Right. And that's important because I, you know, tell my- Are we going to solve racism?

We're going to solve racism. We're going to do it. Right here. Right here on this podcast. Right here on the podcast. We're going to say, justice is therapeutic. Right. We often want to focus on like the emotional coping, which is like,

and I love these things, drink tea, you know, take a bubble bath, get a manicure, pedicure and we'll say, you're like, this is self-care. And sure, those things are lovely. I love aromatherapy, the scent of lavender. It's all good. But justice is also therapeutic. Safety is therapeutic. Fairness is therapeutic. It's healing. It's healing to be on a job when you know that your work is valued and that you're not underestimated, that you're not perpetually having to prove yourself or for black and brown men, perpetually having to smile so that people feel safe and comfortable in your presence so that you're not seen as a threat, you know, this additional emotional labor. And speaking about the redlining, I saw a clip online

of a video describing how even firefighters, elderly white firefighters talked about if they went there and it was like a black family not running in to save them. It's like, who am I willing to risk my life for? So these, it shows up in all different ways and it wasn't a long time ago. I love that idea of the healing power of justice. You know, just the first example that I just popped into my head is I remember my dad got a job in a period of time, the 80s and he was really mistreated and he was promised one thing and he wasn't given it and he went to employment court and he sued him. and you know you got a couple thousand bucks or whatever but it wasn't about the couple thousand bucks it was about like hey man you promised me this i moved all the way to this other city i tried to do that work the best i could it it didn't it didn't i was shut down at every turn

and i needed some some vindication and it just remember how great he felt just having that simple thing rectified? Well, it is a part the acknowledgement. I was talking to a dear colleague, a psychologist, who's Jewish, and talked about how her mom received checks and reparations for the Holocaust and how they weren't financially struggling, but for her mother, it was the significance of the government saying, we wronged you, right? We wronged your family. It was the it was the acknowledgement beyond lip service of saying, yes, we were wrong. Yeah. I saw your TED talk where you talked about doing an intake on a fictitious black family,

let's say that came for a family therapy. Yeah. And using poetry, dance, music, and expression as part of that process. You were speaking specifically about decolonizing, you know, a cookie cutter approach to therapeutic intake, kind of diagnosing what's wrong and, you know, what the dysfunction is, where it lies and what people want to work on. But can you talk a little bit about that artistic element that you use? What does that do and how does it work?

Because I imagine a lot of people listening right now, like, wait, what? I'm going to go to a therapist's office and I'm going to play a drum or I'm going to sing a song or I'm and say a poem? Like, what are you talking about? Yeah. The arts allow us to speak the unspeakable. So there are some things that we don't have language for. Like even if, yeah, I'm a love of words, but sometimes like the word doesn't capture it. And especially when we talk about trauma, it is neurologically difficult to speak about traumatic memories. So the parts of the brain that retrieve the memory and then transition that to

speaking, it's difficult. Not only emotionally difficult, but we can say like biologically difficult. And so creating space for people to express the things that physically or emotionally they haven't been safe to say. Do you have any examples of that? Okay, here's a simple one with child therapy. We have an exercise. We will just say draw your family. Right. So, you know, of course, we're going to have follow-up questions based on what I see.

But some of the things that you can sometimes see when people draw their family is all the family is on one side of the paper and they're on the other side of the paper. Or the family all have mouths and they don't have a mouth. Right? Or they will draw themselves no hands, no feet. They will draw one of the family members super huge and everyone else is super tiny, right? So I don't just take that and draw my conclusion. It opens a curiosity, right? And then I can start to explore, like, you know, what that could be about.

And if I just said, tell me about your family, I wouldn't have gotten that. Right. It can be much more revealing. It's very funny you mention that because my wife got a bunch of her childhood artwork at some point 10 or 20 years ago. And there was a picture, there was an assignment like draw yourself as a tree. And she had drawn this tree. And I'm not kidding you. Like in the center of the tree, like a knot or a whorrel, you know.

It was a giant one. And it was just so clearly like a wound. Yeah. Yeah. And like right in the middle. I mean, and that. Yes. And we got it framed because it was just so.

Wow. And she hung it on the wall. Just like there I was speaking to the wound. I was speaking. Yeah. And no one and no one could see it. Right. That's right.

Absolutely. Now what about what about drumming, poetry, singing? Right. I can have a range of instruments and have people pick the one they want. So that can give you a sense of like the sound that feels congruent for them. But then I also will encourage people to get out of their comfort zone. So for example, there are people, I'll say who are very apologetic, who are people pleasers. and they are kind of shrink and hide.

So that's someone I would give the drum to, right? To practice being present. Right? Not being an echo of anyone else. It's play whatever comes for you. And it's like, well, I don't know what to play. That's a big one where people do that, I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know how to draw my idea. Right, yeah. I'm not musical. Right, right. So that freedom, I'll tell you, you know, And this is kind of from that therapeutic lens. If I'm doing visual art, then often I will go first or draw at the same time because I'm a terrible artist. So it takes the intimidation away.

And they're like, is that your picture? And I'm like, yes, this is it. So they'll give me those crayons. And they can feel like they don't have to perform. if it's poetry, I wouldn't share a poem first because then people will be like, oh, I can't write like that. Another thing that can help often with poetry and you can find them online is they're like fill in the blank templates.

For people who say I'm not a poet, then they don't have to write from scratch. They'll just fill in the words, which still will give you plenty of information. Have you ever done blackout poetry? I have. I have. I love that. Yeah. For those who don't know, it's you have found text like magazines and newspapers and then you

scratch out everything that isn't the poem. So you scratch it all out and then you just leave the words and then you read the words that are left over. We do that exercise a lot. Nice. Because that gets, it makes people feel like, oh, wow, look how creative I am. I wrote a poem. And, you know, it's. Yeah. When I was doing my internship in Boston, I asked and they said, yes, for me to do a poetry therapy group. And so, we did all kinds of exercises. That was really great. And at Pepperdine, I've taught, I think, two or three times an elective on utilizing

expressive arts therapy interventions. Oh, great. Yeah. Oh, wow. That's awesome. So I wrote my book Soul Boom during the pandemic. And I talked about, I have a chapter called a plethora of pandemics. I talk about all the pandemics that are out there.

We've talked about some racism as a pandemic. Materialism is a pandemic. Climate change, big granddad Eve of pandemics besides COVID. But the one that is affecting the most Americans, and especially young Americans, is this mental health epidemic that's going on right now, that people really don't know how bad it is. Like the data around it is, it's staggering, it's jaw-dropping.

The number of kids that have suicidal ideation, in high school and in college. Anxiety, depression, loneliness, and alienation, addiction. What's your take on this current epidemic? And I know that's a very broad question, but what are some things we need to think about as a society to address that? And then more specifically, I guess, if there's any kind of younger listeners listening right now,

what are some tools you can give them? I'm so glad you're naming it because so many people think they're the only one. You know, we have something called compare despair. So if you look, for example, on other people's social media, people look like they're having the time of their lives. And so people who are struggling can hide that even more. And so then they become a part of the mass performance that people are engaging in. And also that people are expected to engage in from their schools and from their jobs, even from their family, is that you're just like, we've got to just keep going.

And that we haven't even really taken space for the collective grief. So many losses. And it is. One of the things that has magnified it is the loneliness of people feeling disconnected, a lone objective. And the surgeon general talks about how we were in the loneliness epidemic. Yes, yeah. So, you know.

I talk about it in the book about deaths of despair, which they've kind of lumped loneliness, anxiety, depression, and addiction and opioids that seek to medicate all of that other stuff and to one big headline of diseases of despair. Yeah, people's, you know, searching for relief, but often turning to things that create more problems. And so when we feel one that my circumstance or my response to my circumstance is rare and that it is impossible that someone would understand me

or get like that no one gets me, that is, you know, a surefire pathway for, you know, even more severe depression, hopelessness, suicidality. And so really needing the revival of connection and community. And that's, you know, part of this, why it's a mixed bag, this social media piece, because while for some people it's a place of bullying and judgment and all of that, for other people, especially if they don't have support in their immediate area, then their greatest supports might like live on the other side of the country or the other side of the world. And that is like what's feeding them. We're in such a time where people live very censored,

and I say curated lives. To have relationship, we have to be real. Right? But that's what we're, because if people claim they like me and they're my friend and I'm, and I know I have not revealed the truth of myself, then I don't really feel like I have friends, even though on the surface I do, right? And that's intimacy. That's it. That's it.

We're needing emotional intimacy. I had a therapist who said intimacy is, if you break it down, it's into me see. Get it? I like it. You can use that. I like that. I will.

I will. Thank you. Intimacy, yes. Into me see. Yes. I like it. But yeah, but real intimacy is revealing who you really are. So how do you experience?

I have never heard that before about people living kind of more curated lives, not revealing, not wanting to be as vulnerable. Is it almost a reflection of social media of like, here's who I am on my social media and that's who I present to the world? I think it's that and part, the other part, which is a challenge. So the gift of us all going through trauma at the same time is like people know to a certain extent, right, that everyone's kind of struggling. A negative can be people feel like,

I know they have their own stuff, so I don't want to burden them with mine. Right? So then the curation is more like, I know they have this, this, this. Why should I tell them this? And the assumption it won't be helpful. So people hold back.

Or, you know, this phrase you hear of like being too much. you know people fear that if i'm like if i have too many big feelings then people are not going to want to connect with me um so we have unfortunately you know whenever we have a false dichotomy this you know belief in that it has to be either or is some people have falsely said you know if you're lonely then it means you don't love yourself and it's just not true okay You can love yourself and still desire connection, community, companionship. Yeah. But because it gets presented that way, then, like, if you're struggling or I do have insecurities or do have anxiety, being afraid that then you will be deemed as unworthy of connection, right?

This idea that you've got to be perfectly packaged, you know, for people to want to hang out with you. So the both can be true at the same time that you can love yourself and still desire connection and or you're on a pathway trying to love yourself more. And a part of what can facilitate that is healthy connections. You know, so not to say like go sit in the corner by yourself and then, you know, when you get done, then people will choose you. Let's say there's a 25-year-old from Omaha, Nebraska listening in. They feel like no one understands just how deep their depression and anxiety and loneliness goes.

They feel like I'm the only one feeling this way. Everyone else is having a grand old time. What are three things you could give a young person like that to do to create deeper wellness? The first thing I would do is say, I love your honesty. And so many of the people you're meeting aren't being fully honest for whatever reason. So it takes courage to admit this is hard. This is heavy. I'm overwhelmed.

And that honesty, though, opens the door for the healing. Right? I can't heal what I'm just like, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, right? No problem over here. And it's like, no, the confessional of like, I need support, I need help, I need a way out of this. Like this part, it just feels unsustainable, you know. So the truth-telling is important.

Yeah, truth-telling is courageous. It is courageous, number one. That's great. I love that. Yes. That's so good. And then I would test out with the connections that you do have giving deeper answers. So like, go deeper.

some people can go deeper with you. What happens is in social circles, even in families, a lot of people are very buttoned up. And if you just have like that one cousin or that one friend who like is radically honest, a lot of times other people are like, oh yeah, like me too. Like I can't sleep either or this, this, this. So then they can, the truth telling can open some doors for the right people. So some of the people you are more honest with, you know, may do what you fear of like,

uh, back away. They don't want to go there. But there will be others who are also thirsty for like real relationship. And they're just like waiting for someone to initiate it. So be courageous enough to find the people that are willing to go deeper with you. Yes. And then the third one is step outside of your circle. So that other one was trying to go deeper.

with people you already know. Right. The third one is outside of my circle. So that may be a therapist. It might be a support group. It may be going to do an activity I like, like a book club or a political something, whatever you're into,

to go to those spaces because the people for this season of your life, perhaps you haven't met them yet. And what about spiritual tools? So one of the practices, which is really helpful, in combating depression is gratitude. So to begin keeping a gratitude journal.

Because when we're in a place of despair and depression, our mind focuses on everything that's wrong. So at the end of each day, you just take out your journal and write down three things that went right today or three things that you're grateful for because often those are the things we take for granted. It's like, yeah, you know, of course I had, you know, money for gas. Of course I had, you know, food to eat.

yeah my mom called and checked on me she's always calling right but those are three things that I can like really take in of like yeah I I'm not stuck I have transportation right um that I was able to nourish myself today because I'm worthy of that and there is someone may not be like my favorite call but there's someone who cares right about how I'm doing in this moment um and it's a it's good to end the day with that because, you know, many people during this time are struggling with the insomnia. So if your mind is just in that despair loop or you're just scrolling on social media, seeing other people have the life you want, that's going to keep you up even more. And are there spiritual tools to help with resilience in times of struggle, tests, and difficulties?

Yeah. So one that, and as you were mentioning the evidence before prayer, not only praying for yourself, but other people praying for you, it's remarkable the research around that. Because with that research, it's even when you didn't know they were praying for you. So it can be helpful. One of the ways sometimes people will talk about it is even if my circumstance doesn't immediately change, that I'm changed. And actually, I was talking with someone about that earlier today, you know, they're in an environment and people are stressing them out. And I'm like, ever since I've known you, you consistently tell me how these people behave. So what would it be like to no longer be surprised or shocked? Right. But you're draining yourself by getting worked at, right?

It's like they're being who they are and they're going to do it again next week. So I release the shock of it all. It's kind of like that definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. But that can be with other people too. And I went back to them and I told them X, Y, and Z and they were a jerk. And like, yeah, they've been a jerk 18 times in a row. Maybe. Yeah, got to shift our, let it not drain you anymore. It is the truth of how they're choosing to show up in this season. So, you know, you can adjust accordingly. Yeah. Yeah. And for these spiritual tools, have you experienced some pushback from clients and from patients? Right. So there is something called Solutions Focus Therapy. So with Solutions Focus Therapy, I would ask about, you know, what are things that you've used before that have been helpful that may be with your current stress like you've forgotten about.

So let's say, you know, a person, atheist, agnostic of a particular religious persuasion or not, may say, you know, when I was doing better, I used to meditate every day. And come to think of it, I drop that. Right. So then if I'm going back to what works, then people are going to be open to that. in terms of if it's a strategy people have never tried, I try to give a range so they can have a choice because different things connect with different people. You know, for some people, and I do encourage people to create a morning ritual. And that can be whatever you feel like nourishes you so you can start the day with your well full, right?

So that might be waking up early and going for a walk in nature. It might be reading a spiritual text or reading poetry. It might be choosing your theme song, put your music on. That's going to put you in the right mood so that when you go out into the world, you're not showing up empty. And what role can ministers play and clergy play in the not only spiritual, but the spiritual slash mental health of their congregants and of the world. I think us being a bridge and showing that we work together instead of this being either or,

like pray or go to therapy. That's a false choice that no one should be required to make. And so incorporating it in their sermons and in the prayers that when you're praying for the congregation, and praying for those who are dealing with grief and loss. We're praying for those who are, it's the holidays. We know many people are lonely at this time or grieving. So naming it removes the shame. I remember my prior minister was courageous enough to say in a sermon that she's in therapy.

That gave so many people permission. Yeah, that's huge. Because they're like, she's, you know. You wouldn't have heard that 20 years ago. No way. Yeah. No way. Yeah.

So it, just like the saying it made it like, well, we all know like she's tapped in. So if she could use it, like maybe it'll be okay for me to go. And then a lot of churches have health fairs to make sure there's a booth there for mental health. And there are, you know, community organizations where they will send volunteers like NAMI, National Alliance of Mental Illness, or rape crisis centers, domestic violence, places, to let them have a booth there. In your book, Homecoming, you talk about how stress and trauma disconnect us from ourselves. You say in that book, to come home is to heal and reconnect with the truth of who we are

instead of just being in survival mode. You can talk a little bit about your book and this idea of creating a homecoming? Mm-hmm. So first, I'll say similar to you, I wrote my book in the pandemic. Okay. A lot of books got written. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And make lemonade. There we go. There we go. And during the pandemic was my first time having to put a notice on my website that I was at capacity and couldn't take any more clients. Oh, yeah. And that was a really hard thing to do, especially because within the black community, you know, there's still such stigma that it's such a act of courage when people, reach out that you don't want to say no, but I just, it was just too much. And so, you know, part of what I did in that process was start this writing, which has been great to see that the book has gone places like I couldn't go. I'm like one person. And so I wrote it from the

perspective of understanding what it costs us, it even cost us time in years. when we're living as someone else. We get messages early on about how we have to be to be acceptable, to be chosen, to be praised. And then if you put trauma on top of that of how you have to be to try to even be safe. Right.

So, you know, and kids can be an overachiever, for instance, people pleaser. Right, right. Mm-hmm. That teachers will love me, my parents will love me. And, you know, sometimes it's that kid who people say like, oh, you never have to worry about that one, right?

So it's like the parentified child who, you know, has had to be super mature. They're like, you're wise beyond your years. Like, where did all that wisdom come from? You know, they've observed some things and seen some things and felt like they had to be responsible for themselves and perhaps even for others. And so,

you know, one of the question. Or conversely, you're never going to amount to anything. Yes. You know? Yes. It's a living that out. That's the black sheep. And he's not going to ever amount to anything or fit in or find his place. Yeah.

Yeah. So you can, you know, we'll call it. Playing these different roles. That's right. So what is homecoming specifically? Right. So to come home to yourself is to tell yourself the truth and to then live based on that truth. So it's living authentically, honestly, with a sense of liberation. Yeah.

Yeah. Nice. Yeah. And so it's a beautiful place to be in, especially for some people, didn't know it was possible. It's one thing, let's say you were living, you know, kind of a regular kind of life, and then in your 20 something happened, and you're trying to like reclaim or get back to that self, but then there are other people who will say to me, what if I've never felt at home within myself? And I'll say, you can still have a homecoming, right? Sometimes it's not a return to a prior self, but it is the creation of a self that I never got to be, you know, that in an environment I had to be on tiptoe or I had to be this, I had to be that. And now I want to see, like, who am I? So I get to explore and play with that.

It's beautiful. We're, you know, the thesis of the book is trying to ignite a spiritual revolution. What does that mean to you when I say a spiritual revolution? I don't think you've read my book. You're forgiven. I forgive you. It's okay. Thank you.

See, that's how forgiveness works. Look at that. Right there. Look at that. And I'm still here. Yeah. I'm still at the table. You're still, but when I say that, like talking about a spiritual revolution and why we need one, what springs to mind for you?

For me, it is a dramatic, radical shift from business as usual. And people are longing for what is real and what is authentic. and when there was a mass exodus from a lot of religious spaces and, you know, these Pew studies and, you know, research studies talked about people wanting authentic, there was a misunderstanding of what that meant. So then you have all these faith leaders just wearing like jeans in a t-shirt and saying, call me by my first name, and they think that's it. And it's like, but if you're still not real, it's still not, it's not, they weren't looking for a change of outfit.

I'm looking for a change of heart. So this spiritual revolution is actually ancient, right, to indigenous understanding where it is not separate, but it is whole, that it's a part of everything. It's not just Sunday morning or Saturday, but it is the way I breathe, the way I speak, the way I see the world, the way I treat people. it's in its totality. And that's what's necessary. And I love that you manifest that by being an artist and a minister and a psychotherapist

that there isn't a difference between the three. It's all the same work. Yes, it is. It's the same work. It's expression and connection and finding authentic voices and building community and healing. Yes. And that's done. That's the umbrella.

You see, I facilitate healing in multiple ways. Sometimes it's preaching, sometimes it's spoken word, sometimes it's dancing, sometimes it's therapy, sometimes it's in the classroom. It's all healing. Same stream, you know, different manifestations. And you brought that healing to this podcast, and sometimes it's podcasting. That's it. So thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for having me.

And I just want to give a plug that this summer, the workbook for Homecoming will come out. and it's called Reclaim Yourself. Oh, sweet. Yeah. Okay, great. Oh, that's wonderful. We will watch for that and we'll put a link in as well. And thank you for coming on the show.

Absolutely. The Soul Boom Podcast. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts.