Theology in the Raw - How Attachment Theory Helps Us Understand Ourselves: Dr. Alison Cook

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

To listen to our extra innings conversation, head over to patreon.com/theologyintheraw and become a member of the TITR community and get access to all of my extra innings conversations and a bunch bonus contentDr. Alison Cook is a therapist, psychologist of religion, bestselling author, and host of the top-ranked The Best of You podcast. She holds degrees from Dartmouth College (BA), Denver Seminary (MA), and the University of Denver (PhD). Alison has spent over two decades helping people move from feeling disconnected to feeling secure, grounded, and loved. She’s the author of four books including her most recent book: The Secure Soul: Finding Inner Strength and Connection When Trust Doesn’t Come Easy, which forms the foundation of our conversation. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1400352606?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallbackTime Stamps00:00 Introduction02:06 Splitting time between Wyoming and Boston07:35 Attachment Theory Explained10:35 How Childhood Trauma Shapes Adult Relationships18:01 What About People That Didn’t Experience Trauma?22:47 Does everyone have some kind of attachment issue? 23:59 Why the Church Often Misunderstands Self-Care24:37 The Problem with Secular Self-Care Culture 25:22 Avoidant Attachment: First Steps30:09 Preston Gets Live Therapy34:00 Thinkers vs. Feelers 39:04 Core Memories and Emotional Healing46:43 Getting to Know our own Souls 48:06 Can Christians Trust Psychology?50:29 How Your Parents Shape Your View of God53:41 Common Unaddressed Issues: Shame or BlameSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

But what is the self? None of us talk about it. I mean, the ancients did. Augustine did, you know, but in our current world, I just got taught that the self was bad. Or the secular world tells us the self is bubble baths and treating yourself, which is shallow, right? But like, what is the soul and how do I actually access my inner life? Every single one of us has to do this because we all have these wounds and every single one of us feels hurt. Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology. My guest today is Dr. Allison Cook, who is a therapist, psychologist of religion, bestselling author, and host of the top ranked The Best of You Podcast. Allison holds degrees from Dartmouth College, Denver Seminary, and she has a PhD from the University of Denver.

Allison has spent over two decades helping people move from feeling disconnected to feeling secure, grounded, and loved. She's the author of four books, including her most recent book, The Secure Soul, Finding Inner Strength and Connection when Trust doesn't come easy. This forms the foundation of our really fascinating conversation, which includes Allison giving me a free therapy session in the middle of our conversation, which was really interesting. So, yeah, we also have an extra endings conversation where Allison discusses what healing looks like for those who have been raised in abusive households. If you want to listen to our extra innings conversation, then head over to patreon.com forward slash theology and Ra and become a member of the theology and raw community and get access to all of my extra innings conversations and also a whole slew of bonus content. Okay, without further ado, please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Dr. Allison Cook. Thanks, Allison, for coming on Theology in Iran. So you were just telling me you live part-time in Boston and part-time in Sheridan, Wyoming.

Most people have heard of Boston. Yeah, right? Not many. Or Jackson Hole. They've heard of Jackson Hole. And I'm like, no, we're not Jackson Hole. No. Jackson Hole is a very touristy.

Yeah. I've been there a few times. It's beautiful. But it is, it does have kind of like an artificial, like, vagusy. like, I don't know. Like I, and the few times I've gone out to dinner there, I just felt this like exhaustion from the food surfers. Like, I'm so sick of all these tourists.

Well, it's, have you, there's a book called billionaire wilderness that is essentially about what's happened in Jackson Hole and also a little bit Bozeman, Montana. And I grew up in Wyoming. You know, I love Bozeman and Jackson Hole, but they have changed dramatically. Really? Over, oh, my goodness.

I mean, Taylor Swift, and Travis Kelsey were in Bozeman a couple weeks ago. You know, it's not the way it was when you're in Idaho, right? Like, it's different. So when you're from Wyoming, you know, it's like, well, Jackson Hole is great, but it's not really the same as what we're talking about when you typically think of these Western states for better and worse, right? Yeah.

Yeah. There are two sides of that. I didn't know Bozman was becoming a tourist or like a famous spot to visit and stuff. It's gorgeous. Posen is incredible. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah. What's Sheridan like? It's a lot smaller and not very touristy. Well, Sheridan is, I hesitate to say this publicly. I always tell people it's the undiscovered part of because it's actually beautiful. But we're at the base of the Big Horn Mountains, which are undiscovered. And so literally we have the mountain to ourselves and it's beautiful. but we don't have a ski area.

And I think that's what keeps, kind of keeps people away. But it's more like Montana than it's on the Montana border. It's got the hills and the green and the mountains, whereas a lot of Wyoming is a little more desert plain. Okay, okay. Probably more like what you have. Yeah, yeah, Boise,

kind of like, it used to be hidden secret now. It's, yeah, it's exploded with growth. Yeah, you've got it. Yeah, yeah. But we're at the base of the mountains. We get a ski resort. I can see that my ski resort from my bedside. room. It's 45 minutes away. But yeah, it's a gorgeous city, good size. But yeah, it's definitely

growing. Did you grow up in Wyoming or did you grow up in Boston? I was born and raised in Sheridan, Wyoming, 18 years. Went off. I went back east to college. I followed my big sister to Dartmouth in New Hampshire, which is also rural, but very different. And so I've lived half my life in Little Town, Wyoming, half my life in New England. And so I was telling you before we, hopped on. It's my husband and I with the pandemic, both of our work became essentially remote. And we loved going to Wyoming in the summers with our kids. So we decided when Boston was kind shut down, we thought, we'll just drive and spend the summer in Sheridan. My family has a cabin there that has been there since I was a little kid. And we just really never went back because remote work

stayed with this. And so we have to spend, we come back to Boston, you know, maybe 30% of the time for work. And we love it, but we were talking about just culturally, it's actually been such a journey for my whole family to be in such different worlds, especially during this time, you know, in history. That's kind of keep you grounded because people that only live in like Manhattan or, you know, yeah, Boston, you know, these kind of urban centers, very kind of progressive cutting edge. They can't even imagine a world that's not that. So going back and you, and you like you said, you live in two very different worlds. Yeah. And you see through, I think the benefit that it gives you, and I think everybody should have this exposure,

you kind of see through the stereotypes and you see through the hypocrisies of both in a way. Yeah. You know? I don't know how, you know, you just see people for people behind all of what is kind of put out there as the idea of who these different people are. And I don't think many people have that opportunity. I know because people will ask me, you know, what are people really like there, whichever place? You know? And it's like, just like you and me, you know?

Yeah. And you just kind of see the humanity behind all of the stuff that's going on on the surface with the polarizations. Yeah. I could only imagine how the assumptions that each city has of the other city are just, really blatantly stereotypical and largely probably inaccurate or at least extremely thin at best. But we, so I didn't bring you on to talk to geography, but thanks for the little backstory to your life situation. I would love to talk about and this is not my area. So please feel free to correct anything I word inaccurately. But the connection between attachment

theory and spiritual formation because you're you kind of deal with both in your in your recent book the secure soul it's it's something you've thought a lot about um and and you know not not on a professional level not just like oh i read some books on this it's cool like you're like an expert in this stuff so let's let's start with attachment theory what what i think a lot of people are familiar with this it's pretty popular these days but what is attachment theory yeah so Attachment theory is this idea in psychology that is really powerful. It's really profound. And I think in many ways, most people have some sort of practical or lived sense of this. I think the popularization of it has also created some problems and we can get into that. But at its root, all it's saying is that the earliest moments of how we were parented and shepherded as a child still affect us. today. Sure. And if you think of a little baby, you know, the best thing, you know, baby, the way that baby is met when it comes into the world, if it's met with love and presence

and it's seen. And we talk about seen held and soothed. Your nervous system adapts around that anchoring. The role of that parent or the caregiver is crucial in how you arrive at adulthood. and in your ability to understand love, in your ability to feel safe, in your ability to feel like there's someone out there in the world who is trustworthy and who has your back. If you don't have that as a child, it's not just that you, you know, there's a nervous system thing. You will, you will likely struggle in life because we all kind of see that correlation. But also your nervous system, even when you arrive at adulthood and start to experience healthy relationships, loving relationships, your nervous system doesn't quite know what to do with that.

Because your whole brain and nervous system has been shaped in a different soup, so to speak. I always talk about the soup you were cooked in, right? To be crass. But that's kind of, it's deeper. It's more embodied than just, I have a hard time trusting someone. Or when my wife asks me to do something kindly, I receive. it as deep criticism. And even when I begin to realize, oh, she's not criticizing me, I experience it as criticism because for however many years, my nervous system has been wired in the soup of criticism.

So that's kind of a nuts and bolts of attachment theory, just kind of getting at it. And it changed the way we parent. Kids are parented so much differently now for better and worse, right, than I was parented in the 80s very differently. And there's some good and bad in that we can get into. But it's also changed the expectations in many way that we have for parents, for significant others, for partners, understanding the importance of these relational environments that were shaped in. That sparked a lot of questions in my mind.

But let me throw out a scenario of an upbringing. And I would love just to put like concreteness on what you're saying, I would love for you to explain what possible struggles this person might have in future relationships. So say that they were raised. Somebody was raised with a home that just felt unsafe. They were scared a lot. Maybe there was abuse, but maybe not necessarily. But it just felt they were in fear. If they did something wrong, they get yelled at, their parents were harsh.

maybe one was kind of absent or whatever. But there wasn't a lot of like attention and intimacy and, you know, listening to the child and, you know, attunement, which might be a question that comes up later, kind of maybe overattunement in some of our parenting cells today. What kind of relational challenges might somebody like that have, you know, whether it's a romantic partner or friends or whatever? Like, how is that going to affect their relationships? Yeah. So there are different, we talk about these attachment styles, right? Anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, disorganized attachment. And these are all just ways of describing different ways that you will adapt to your environment.

So in layman's turns, let's say a lot of people I work with, maybe their parents meant well. and there was physical safety meals on the table, but there was sort of that absence of presence. Right? And when we talk about trauma, we use this word trauma, we talk about big T and little T trauma. Trauma is just as Gabor Matei talks about it,

unwitnessed pain. So even if, so there's a pain, you go to school and the kids are bullying you and maybe you have food on the table when you get home, but nobody's checking in on you. Nobody's saying, how is your day? Nobody's reading the cues. Nobody's reading the subtext.

So you're on your own as a kid to make sense of these bullies, right? Kids, when left alone with pain, tend to make up self-shaming stories. There's something wrong with me. I'm the problem. I'm the reason this bad thing is happening. And when there isn't someone there to help create a truer narrative, that shame, that anxious, it becomes anxiety, social anxiety, anxious attachment, follows us into adult relationships where there's just this little voice inside.

My work is rooted in this idea of parts work, a part of me, even if 90% of me knows that I'm lovable and God loves me, there's a part of me that's still stuck thinking there's something wrong with me. People don't like me. People think I'm weird. People think I'm different. And that narrative lives in me and really can affect my ability to receive love when it's actually there. It can cause me to second guess motives. You don't really love me. You're just, it can cause you to hold the avoidant to push people away. That was sort of my style. I share that story in the book. like just sort of keep people at arm's length. Be perfect on the surface and distant on the inside. You will not get close to me.

You may feel like you're close to me, but you are not close to me. Because that experience lives inside of me. And it affects how we forge intimate relationships as adult in so many ways. We might cling another way. So that's the avoidant type. Another way is we might try harder. I need to get you to like me.

I need to get you to like me. If you don't text me right away, I feel like I'm going to lose your love. You know, you might see this in a relationship where if you have a little conflict, one partner feels like the world has fallen apart. I can't tolerate even a little bit of constructive feedback. I need to know you love me, right? And so there's that little bit of anxious attachment, checking constantly,

needing lots of reassurance. And all of this is just how we're trying to still. essentially connect to each other when parts of us haven't been fully cared for in the way that God would want every part of our souls to be cared for. So I used to think that creatine was basically for gym rats trying to maximize gains and get bigger muscles. But the more I looked into the research, the more I realized that it's one of the most well-studied supplements out there.

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every day with Mosh bars. Thank you Mosh for sponsoring this episode. When you were talking about you, you weren't talking generically you, but you were saying me like you. Alison, your upbringing. What was your upbringing like? Yeah, so great, I'm a great case of which is part of what got me interested in attachment. Very loving parents, very stable, steady, safe in many ways, environment. It was also the 80s, and parents were not, you know, there was a lot of live and let live, play out in the streets till, you know, midnight, you know, all of which is healthy on some level, but not a lot of emotional attunement. Yes. And then coupled the over, I was raised in a very Christian, I will, I will not bring in any, you know, I won't put any teeth to that.

than a very kind of straightforward Christian environment where there was much more of a focus on rules and morality and behavior and far less on longing and desire and pain and emotion, right? Do the right thing. These are the right rules. And so I was a sensitive kid. And then also within that, My older sister was more of a lightning rod in our little town. And so brought in a lot of attention, both positive and negative and also from my parents. So I was sort of, there was the three of them. And then I sort of learned to just stay invisible, right? To be invisible.

Follow the rules and stay invisible. So I didn't have Preston the Big T trauma. But all of that cocktail left me in my 20s. I didn't know how to, I knew how to make people think I was a good Christian. I knew how to make people think I was a nice person and I was so lonely inside. To an intense degree, I didn't know how to date. I didn't know how to, you know, forge intimacy. I, to the point that I knew how to read my books, disappear into my books, think in my head,

and stay out of, stay safe out of everybody's way. So when I was 32, I was almost at the end of my doctoral program, I started to have panic attacks. Wow. And I had to completely change how I related to that inner life that had really been kind of never seen. How did you do that? What steps did you take? It was very messy. It's much easier to write about it in the rear view mirror.

You can make it tidy. Oh, yeah. It's way easier than dealing with your internal demons. I did some extreme things. But one thing I did that was kind of funny to me now, but it actually really worked for me. So therapy, I was a therapist at this time. So again, I knew how to attune to others. It's classic.

Really? Well, I was completely empty on the inside. So these panic attacks happened while I was, you know, a doctoral student in psychology and theology and a therapist, you know, which is the irony. The first thing I did, I mean, I really, I had to take time off of school. I had so much anxiety. So one of the first things I did was I heard a little kind of just there was always a part of me that seemed crazy to me and I never indulged. I wanted to take acting classes. So I signed up for an acting class. And the acting teacher, the first night, said, I've never met anyone who has more head knowledge about an emotion and literally zero connection to the emotion. Wow.

Your acting teacher saw that. Yeah. And my acting teacher became my therapist. Because at the time, Preston Therapy also wasn't just religion that was all about thoughts and behaviors. So was therapy. It was CBT. It was all about changing your thoughts, having rational thoughts. I didn't have a problem with that.

I didn't have to connect to painful feelings. So that's what the acting class taught me. I mean, what you're describing the different kinds of attachments, the avoidant person that does it can't or scared of even getting close to somebody or the clingy person who is the opposite, they need somebody to affirm. This seems like. wildly common. I mean, do most people have, all people have some kind of attachment issues? Some might be very minor, all the way to some might be capital T kind of traumatic.

Yeah, it just seems pretty universal. 100%. Yes, enter my own work, which is we all have these wounds. Right? I mean, on the surface, I had a very loving family. But all, we all are looking for. love, right? I think of that movie, whatever you think of the movie, there was a movie, I don't know, this will age me. It was called Closer. It's based on a play. I've never seen it, but I could see the title. And basically it's people just reaching for love in all the most god-awful ways. But the idea is we are all trying to be closer. And we don't know how, so we cling or we avoid. And so the secure soul, what I do is this inner work of becoming

secure within yourself and with God so that we can relate in healthy ways to other people. And so often, especially those of us who brought up in the church, it's the opposite. We talk about pleasing God and pleasing others. And it's not about pleasing or loving God and loving others. And everything I see is we also have to bring in that third relationship that Jesus talks about God, others as self. But what is the self? None of us talk about it.

I mean, the ancients did. Yeah. Augustine did. You know, but in our current world, I didn't, I just got taught that the self was bad. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And so this has been my whole journey as like, what do we mean by the self?

Or the secular world tells us the self is bubble baths and treating yourself. Yeah, yeah. Which is shallow, right? Self care and I need a self-day. Yeah. But like, what is the soul and how do I actually access my inner life? Every single one of us has to do this because we all have these wounds. And every single one of us, to your point, feels hurt.

When we feel rejected or wants reassurance, none of that is bad. But when I'm with myself and grounded in my own self, I can so much more in such healthier ways reach for the love. ask for the love that I actually need, want, and also give it. What are some basic principles you would tell somebody who has that, that avoidant tendency? They're nice, they're kind, like, great on the outside. But, man, they would be scared to death to, like, have somebody look at who they really are to really open up to somebody. If somebody starts getting close and intimate, not in a sexual way, but just close.

You know, like that. They would maybe have a tendency to like, oh, how do you avoid this relationship? Are there some basic big picture things that you would start with as you talk to somebody like this? Again, assuming they're a Christian, we're going to integrate spiritual formation into their hearing. Yeah. When I think of the soul, and I'm borrowing this framework from a popular model of therapy. So I didn't come up with it, but I've adapted it for Christians. I think of three primary parts that we all have. One of those parts of us that we all have is what I call a controller part.

And this is the part of us that is the performer, is the pleas, or looks good on the outside. We all have some version of that. And it's not bad. You know, it's the part of us that keeps us, you know, showing up on time for meetings and wants to do well at work and wants to be a good parent. And it needs to be in healthy balance, though, right? If it becomes all of who we are, that becomes a problem. And then there's another, this is where we get at avoidant.

There's another category that we all have. I call it the shadow. And this is borrowing from psychology and theology for, you know, I didn't come up with that idea. Jung is one of the ones who did. But lots of the great ancients have talked about the shadow as well. But the shadow is the part of us that harbors these feelings and desires that we don't know what to do with. And it's the part of us that wants to mediate between the painful and uncomfortable feelings that we feel, the fear of someone seeing us and the desire for relief. And so this is the part of us that sometimes comes out sideways.

this is the part of us that puts up the wall. Yeah. And says that's the best way for me to, I have the longing, but I can't deal with the pain. Yeah. Or it's the part of us. The shadow is the part of us that also goes into fantasy life. Okay. You know, I, so usually if there's avoidance, there's something else going on there.

You know, for me it was, you know, I loved like soap operas when I was a kid. I didn't know how to like fit in or do what all my peers were doing. So I just like secret. I wasn't allowed to watch them. But I'd secretly record like all the soap operas I wasn't allowed to watch. And then I'd watch them, you know. A natural response would be you kind of have another world you're kind of living in, whether it's a TV show or what's that?

Booze. Yeah, addictions, porn could be just something to escape and have this all. alternative life that has some kind of false meaning that you're kind of trying to absorb. So if there's a lot of avoidance, I'm always asking myself, how is that need that we all have for connection getting met and it usually shows up there. It's not, again, not bad. We need healthy outlets. Sure. And we need healthy ways of relating to the shadow. because underneath all of these is that third part of us, which is the vulnerabilities, the fear, the longing, the loneliness.

It's in all of us, but we're afraid to face those vulnerable parts of us that actually need us and need God the most. So to answer your question, avoidance becomes what I look at as the, surface, these are the things we see on the surface, the controller and the shadow. Yes. And underneath that is, and again, this gets to my work is the eight-year-old who never had anybody show up and say, I see you, I'm here with you. I want to walk through this with you. And so that part, that tender part of us needs care.

And needs us to acknowledge it. None of us had that who grew up in the 80s. Right. I mean, that's it. What do you describe that? I'm like, I don't even know what that means. And I don't know any friends of mine that had that. Even the best kind of homes was one where there was an abuse.

The parents provided they had family meals. Kind of like your back. You know, like that was a given all the stories I've heard of all my generation grown up in the 80s. It's like your situation sounds like. really good, but there's still, there was stuff that was missing that, you know, every kid needs. I'm curious, would you, can I describe my back? I'm the most emotionally unintelligent person. And on the surface, I seem, and I think I am extremely emotionally healthy. But if you look at my background, you're like, you're probably not.

So divorced family Dad left when I was 10 Wasn't hard or traumatic at all I was kind of like oh okay He's leaving Nice guy One of the nicest people ever met my dad Never had a negative thought about my dad

In my entire life He was remarried four or five times Still alive, kind generous Raised by my mom hardworking, work three jobs, very loving, very, very, she's half Armenian. I'm a quarter. So that very kind of like just, if you see like my big fat Greek wedding or if you think of like a Jewish culture, Armenians are kind of similar to that kind of just very loud and

gargantuous. Yeah, gargant. I don't know if that's right word. Anyway, so brother, older brother, we got along fine, never really that close. I had some friends. You know, my friends became kind of like my family. Never had, you know, like it was just, it was just a house, typical single bomb working three jobs, house in the 80s. You know, just we're all going different directions, whatever. You know, it was just, it was my normal.

As I got older, I was an deep introvert growing up. Had a period of kind of extrovertedness after I became a Christian. and then retreated back to being a deep introvert. I can function as an extrovert. People are sometimes shocked when I say I'm an introvert, but I can be alone in my basement for two weeks with books, not see a single human, and I wouldn't even blink an eye. Yeah.

Yeah. I would say I recharge by being alone. But I do enjoy people, especially kind of 101, one on two. Big bigger crowds, stress me out a little bit. I feel extremely resilient to stuff, you know. I get, you know, tons of criticism and stuff, and it literally doesn't seem to bother me. It just doesn't bother me. I don't know what loneliness feels like, even though I feel like I should experience lonely.

I don't know. Like my wife, my wife, this is what drives her crazy because she's like, either you're just not being honest or I just don't, I can't relate to that because she, like most humans experience, you know, loneliness when, oh, they haven't seen somebody or haven't. connect with people or whatever. And I would say emotionally connecting. I enjoy, but it doesn't, like, I don't think I need it. And I'm not going to do it unless somebody reminds me, like, you should probably be, you know, connecting more. So that's a, yeah, so two-minute summary. Do you have any? Yeah, so who am I? What are my issues that I need to do?

I love it. And I'll send you a check later. So first of all, I put my little therapist head on. There's different. So first of all, I'm guessing you're a thinker, not a feeler. I am an off the chart thinker. Off the chart. Like my strength finders is all like in one box of intellect and just all that rational, highly analytical. Yes. So I have my son is a lot like you. So we have conversations like this too. He just doesn't have the big emotions. And I do, I want to, I don't want to pathologize that. I do think we are wired differently. I'm a deeply feeling person. right? So there's there's a high feeling side to me, a highly sensitive person. There are a lot of people who, you know, there certainly is a category of person that the feelings aren't going to be

as big. It doesn't mean they're not there. It doesn't mean they don't matter. So I don't want to pathologize that. There are traits, you know, that we've studied, you know, a lot of the personality tests are not scientifically valid, but the big five, the ocean ones are. And I hear that you're, based on what you're saying, I'm guessing, I'd want to know what your wife says. Right? Like, what's the real thing? He's actually like, pulling up me. She would love to come on and talk to you.

Yeah. But I'm guessing you're low on neuroticism. You know, you have a low, you don't have the big emotions. No, no swings. I get passionate about things. I get really passionate. Yeah. I think I'm, yeah.

How about with God? Very, there's different seasons I've been through. Some have been more, feel more emotionally connected to God. Others have been more, and I hate, this sounds almost like deistic, but almost analytically connected with God. Yeah. Like the truth that I know and firmly believe about God drives me. It doesn't give me the emotional feeling that I have.

have when I'm, say, with my wife or with somebody else, a good friend or something like, do you have this just emotional high, you know? Like, I don't have that with God. And I used to feel guilty. Like, do I even believe in God? Because I don't have, like, all my charismatic friends are just like, weeping every time they're in church. And I'm like, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, half the time I'm checking my watch. Like, hey, we're going to lunch with people. Cool. I can't wait for that. Like, when's the service going to get off for you? Yeah. So, yeah, I don't, is that? So if the normal, I don't know if your listeners can see the screen, but if your normal range of emotions is here. Yeah.

And let's say mine, someone like me are here, just a little bit. Yours might be here. Very narrow. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Probably even. Probably.

Yeah. Yeah. And some of that is nature, not just nurture. Because based on what you've told me about nurture, I'm guessing, I'm guessing, there's a little bit of both. Because based on what you've told me about nurture, hardworking mom, loving, but. probably not super present. Yes. Dad, who's very nice but left.

Yes. And has had trouble with four or five marriages being emotionally connected in a deep way. Yeah. So obviously, I'm going to guess, wasn't super emotionally connected in a deep way with you. No. There were a couple times here and there. It was almost like shocking that he, I remember one time I was a baseball player and I was this worst up in my life.

And he, and this is after the divorce. over, picked me up, we went on a walk, and he kind of talked me through it. And even now, it's like, looking back, it was like, that was really neat and special, but it was so weird in the sense that that just didn't, stuff like that didn't happen. How did you feel then? Yeah, I felt loved. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't say it. I probably didn't say it were. I probably didn't say it were. I probably was, oh, thanks, you know, but I was like, wow, that was, yeah. But that stands out to you. I remember like five things from my upbringing. That was one.

So, but the fact that you remember five things, that means that means the emotional part of your brain lit up. It mattered to you. And there wasn't a lot of it. That's not a lot for that to happen a handful of times. I remember feeling really depressed because my cat ran away. I named him codfish because he would eat. he ate fish once or something. His breath smelled like codfish. I don't know, whatever. So codfish ran away and I remember just being, it's the only time I remember a season of just

like deep, deep, deep sadness wondering every day is codfish going to show up. That memory sticks out. How old were you? 10, 9, 8. Formative. That's formative. Yeah. I do remember another connecting time. My mom woke me up at midnight and took me out to some diner to go eat mozzarella and marinera sticks, which I love. And, you know, here's a divorced mom working three jobs. And she, yeah, woke me up. She was like that, though. She was fun, love to go out and do stuff. And even though she was busy a lot when she was there,

she was fairly present, I would say. But, um, this is weird. This is get, wow, I did, getting all, getting all open here. This is weird. But what I'm hearing, I mean, without going into a full blown, you know, because you asked. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But those did really register. Those are core memories that you felt connected. That's a high, that is a high capacity for connection. Okay.

I'm guessing you could trace moments like that into your adult life where you really felt something. And I guess is you're someone who was able to filter out. the times in between as neutral or nothing that probably were lonely I mean there's a reason you connected to that cat

so there's meaning there that's not just some random that's probably connected to some way I'm wired or just some I hear a boy who really felt connected connected to something and mattered to you. And that's a core, we call these core memories that we still have, that we think are stupid, but actually tell us something about ourselves.

I hear someone who's very sensitive and cared a lot that your dad showed up that once. Right? And that doesn't say that everything else we said about maybe you are someone who can kind of keep the negative emotions at at a real minimum, you didn't, you were able to kind of stay fairly flagmatic. Yeah. I still hear a real capacity and desire for connection deeply. All right.

I'll tell my wife, I've thought a robot. Yeah. Those are core memories. And those are the places where I believe. When we talk about attachment, I call them tethers. That's a tether of God's love. And humans and cats, I mean, I love my dogs. And the mountain, I always talk about the land because I really relate to the land. And the psalmist relates to the land. They're different tethers reminding us that we do need connection and they point ultimately, you know, to God. But for you, it's very tactical.

Yeah. Yes, yes. I struggle with the, like, analyzing the abstract, 100%. I can live there all day. But it doesn't affect my emotions. I need tangbleness, sight, smell, touch, you know, like, again, I take great comfort in a couple of verses at the end of Ephesians. So, one that most people just kind of pass over, but it says that the fullness of God is, I forget the exact wording, but it's basically saying the fullness of God is manifested in the body of Christ. So that when the community of God's people are gathered together, like there is a godness there, you know, or two or three are gathered, you know, there I am in your midst. So I do almost, people say, wouldn't you connect with God the most?

I say when I'm with a few deep, meaningful Christians, and we're having meaningful conversations and relationships like that, I feel that's where my emotional connection with God is almost most vibrant, I would say. You know, it's interesting, Preston, all three of those memories. And then we can pivot away from you if you want. They are all a cat, I'm guessing you, did you hold your cat? Oh, yeah. Right?

I had a thousand stuffed animals in my. bed and I was very, and even now my dog, I'm the same with my dog. My kids laugh. I'm constantly rubbing his face over without even realizing it sometimes at dinner. I'll be, yeah, yeah, yeah. With your dad, it was a walk with your mom that was waking you up, taking you out, right? These are practical. And so my guess is as a kid, the attunement that maybe you didn't get as much of, I don't know with your dad, but, you know, is the holding, is the wrestling, is the, I see it with my son. You know, both my very athletic. I married into a very athletic family.

It's very different from me. And they get out their emotions, you know, my kids, I married a widower with two young kids. And I came into that. And, you know, my daughter, she's also very athletic boy, too. So they're different from me, kind of a little bit more like you, even my daughter, although less so. But she would like punch your dad's. And that's how she was getting out. Oh, yeah.

She would never say I'm angry or I'm sad. It was just like, and you know. But again, dad, my husband just stands. they're holding or through that, that's a form of attunement. The wrestling after a rough day at school is a form of attunement is a form of being with. That may not register as emotion. And I think that's really an important thing to notice as parents, right? Like I was fascinated coming in.

I was like, they had lost their mom. It wasn't, we didn't, they didn't sit around and talk about their feelings. It came out physically. But it was real. And they were with each other. My husband was with them in that. So that is a form of connection. That's not avoiding deep connections.

That is a form of deep connection. It looks different for different people. 100%. That's okay. That's good. 100%. Yeah. Yeah.

Huh. I'm the same way. I would say physical. Like for me, like exercise running is a form of me. I don't know the language. Like it makes me feel more human. Yeah. feel connected, even though I'm by myself.

I don't know. It just feels like, yeah, I can resonate with that. Like getting like just a form of healing just is just being just turn off my brain and just do something physical. And I think as Christians, it's so important because for me, my husband and I'll talk because we're opposites. He's a little bit more like you. For me, because as Christians, sometimes we focus so much on the relational and emotional,

at least in my experience. know, for me, it's for the opposite reason, but it's the same effect. I get exhausted being with other humans because I take in so much data. I sometimes say being a therapist, you know, going to a Super Bowl party, it's like being a, you know, a surgeon going into a room full of people with head wounds. But you're not, you're not supposed to do anything with it, you know? Oh, great. Here's Allison. She's going to diagnose this. Well, no, and I don't want to do that. But, like, I can't help it. I'm like, I'm having a conversation. with someone. I'm like, something's not right here. It's not fun. It's not fun for me either, right?

So yeah, so we are, our outlet is nature. I've always gone to nature. You know, I'll get more out of a walk in the mountains spiritually, you know, so I do think it's important to pay attention to, and those cues come from childhood too. Like, I love the cat. Like, what is it? Some of this is just, what did I need? What did bring, what does bring me a, a, a, glimpse of, I think, these are tethers. These are signs of big capital L love, God's love, for me, but they come in surprising ways. All right. Let's close down the session before. Let's go back. I want to talk about your book, The Secure Soul. You've written,

how many books have you written so far now? This is my fourth. Fourth. Okay. And, What led you to write this book? And how does it relate? What's it about how does it relate to your previous work? Let's start there. Big picture. Yeah. So my first book Boundaries for Your Soul, which most people are, the most people are familiar

with, was a Christian adaptation of this internal family systems model of therapy. Okay. And that basically, if you saw the movie Inside Out, Pixar. I haven't seen it. I need to watch it. It's a good movie. It's a great movie that depicts the inner world. It's based on this model of therapy, which is just this idea that we have different parts of us. Okay.

And at any given moment, there's all these different thoughts going on inside our heads. Okay. So that was my first book. And the secure soul is built on that same idea of zooming. What I'm trying to do with all that I do is help people. Of course, we love God. Of course we want to love others. But how do we get to know our own souls?

Okay. Which is why I love this conversation with you, right? Yeah. And in the secure soul, I'm zooming into the soul, but I'm sharing my own journey through healing the parts of my own soul. And what role is, so we talked a lot about psychology. We have talked about God, but the spiritual formation side. Yeah.

What does that look like? Because oftentimes these worlds are kind of separated, you know, you have the kind of like psychology side, right? And all this stuff. And then the spiritual formation. And sometimes there's even maybe anima muscle. or, I don't know, like, oh, you just need to practice the spiritual disciplines. You don't need all that psycho-vabble stuff. And, you know, some psychologist who'd be like, oh, that Christian mumbo-jumbo,

you're blending them. So, yeah. Yeah. What does that look like? I have a daily podcast now right now. It's eight minutes where I take scripture and I speak to it only from the lens of psychology. It's really fun. Interesting.

I love that. And I'm not promising, I mean, you're a new time. I'm not promising to be a social. scholar. I'm literally saying, here's the scripture. Here's the psychology I see in it, attachment. So I'm, I, yeah, that was, I mean, it's changed a little bit where there's definitely more therapy speak, at least. I don't know if it's good psychology, but there's definitely more therapy speak in the church. And there's definitely, I don't know about the other way. I still feel like there's a suspicion. There's a little more room in secular world for spirituality. I think

There's a little more of an embracing of the spiritual brain. There's just more data scientifically that we do have a spiritual part of us. So people are having to wrestle with that. So I think there is a little bit more openness than when I was coming through, you know, when it really was such a suspicion, especially of psychology from Christians. But it's always been, you know, like I said, raised in a Christian home, I had a deep love of God early on, but I always wrestled with how, you know, the psychology questions, you know, and how those fit into. Because your wounds, we were talking about attachment, the way we are shaped as children in that soup affects how we experience God.

You know, God is sort of our ultimate attachment figure. So if my little brain doesn't understand, and I say in the brain, book, you know, we, your, your experience of God is formed long before what you believe about God. That's fascinating. Wow. I often think that the classic example right is your earthly father, how you're treated by your earthly father. When you read about the father in the Bible later on the life, you'll oftentimes kind of map one on the other. Is that, first of all, is that true? And are there other examples? Yeah. I think it's, yes, I do think there, the imprint of, and I think it's primary caregiver, I prefer.

Like sometimes we can have this one to one correlation of dad to God. And it's like, well, whoever that people, that I'm not sure. The research is a little more like that first person that comes along, those first people. You know, for some people as a grandparent, but there has to be that loving presence. That's what you tend to map. whatever you internalize first, whomever that is, is what you tend to map onto God. And a lot of that is neurobiological. Kurt Thompson, I don't know if you've read the anatomy of the soul.

It's a fascinating dive into, and it really helped me understand. I tell the story of, you know, crying out to God as a teenager and just feeling a brick wall and kind of reading that and recognizing that there is some way in which the pathways, the neural pathways weren't quite formed. So it wasn't that I was doing anything wrong. It was that I didn't have the capacity yet to recognize the love that was there. Okay. And I hear that all the time in my practice.

You know, people coming in going, I love God, I do all these things. Why do I feel so far from him? That's very common. Oh, it's so common. Yeah. Yeah. And what do you, yeah, what's your, does your answer differ from person to person? or is there some general response that you give to pretty much everybody?

I mean, in my world, usually we're going right back to this childhood, you know, childhood wounds, places inside that it's not just God's love. I don't know. I don't know how to receive love at all. You know. Do you find it more common among women than men? Is there a... Well, I see mostly women. Okay. So it would be hard for me.

I, I, that's a really good question. I wish I was more, I wish I had a better answer for the gender differences in how we map emotionally. But I do know shame is universal. And I do know that I call it spiritual bypassing, which is where we spiritualize any, um, instead of meeting any negative emotions or meeting any, any, negative thoughts or doubts or fears with compassion, we try to spiritualize them a way is common for men and women. But I do think there are probably differences. Yeah. That are general, right?

I mean, there's always... Of course. I mean, we know that anecdotally. Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I kind of similar question. Like, what are some of the most common unaddressed issues from people's upbringing that you most often see? Is there kind of a dominant trend or does it differ from the person's age that comes in, the generation they're raised in, whether you see patients in Boston or Wyoming, maybe? I mean, I think the common, the two common ways that humans, and this goes back to Adam and Eve, and I think this is true for both men and women. Okay. Just the two most common ways that people have been shaped relationally, shame or blame. And neither is how we forge secure connection. And so shame is we, what I see is people having that self-hatred. And blame is having that I'm the victim and other people have caused all my pain.

And usually those are born in some sort of family environment where that's what was caught. You know, more is caught than taught. So shame is I'm the problem. Blame is you're the problem. And I mean, I would say those two, those are the two things I'm looking for when I'm working with someone. And those are the two things we're trying to heal because neither of those are very helpful. Those seem like two ends on the same spectrum, right? Of hard stuff you went through in life.

Like are you wearing that as all like, yeah, you're the problem or is it? Is the answer just somewhere in the middle? or how do you help people bring either one side in or the other side in. Yeah,

I think this is why the serenity prayer is so helpful. The, Reinhold Niebuhr, it's sort of the AA, I think the health,

the secure soul comes at, I am responsible for it. I'm responsible and not responsible for what I'm not responsible for, right? So I,

it's kind of learning to, not to name, whatever the harm was that was done to me. Right? And so we resort to shame when a lot of people that I see self-shame and they don't want to blame somebody else. My mom worked really hard.

I don't want to blame her that she didn't give me much time. I'm not saying that about you. It's just something I hear a lot. Or my dad did his best, but I don't want to blame him. And I don't want you to blame anybody either, but I do want you to name gaps in one. what you didn't get because it does affect you. So naming is how we begin to come out of shame. This is what happened. That's a fact. This is the truth of what happened. We're not blaming when we name.

We might not even tell the other person. But it helps me go, oh my gosh, I didn't get what I needed. Or I didn't get enough. And so then that flips us out of shame into truth telling. Truth sets us free. Right. So blame. I'm blaming all these other people. It's sort of like, so then we have to. And, you know, this could be gendered too.

I'm going to, I hate, I hate the psychologist to me, doesn't like not having research to back this up. So anecdotally, maybe women tend to self-shame and men tend to blame. But that's there. But I think that's immediately, I can hear men in your audience going, I shame. And I want to validate that that's. Yeah, there's always, yeah. And there are women who definitely play the victim role in blame. But one of those two we tend toward as humans.

But the blame is, you know, at some level, what is my responsibility now? Even if there was truth in that, what is my responsibility now? And that's also the truth. The truth is it's on me now. I wasn't responsible back then. I am responsible now. So I think the truth is what sets us free. and the truth isn't shame and it's not blame.

Right. That's good. Do you have a few more minutes or what time do you have a... Sure. Okay. Well, I would love to have an extra innings conversation about abuse. Extra innings is just for our... It's for our Theology and Ra community,

so it's a lot smaller group of people. If someone wants to access it, you can go to Patreon.com forward slash Theology and Raw and become a member of the Theology and Raw community. So my question is, we haven't really even mentioned abusive situations and here I'm including sexual or physical

abuse talk to me about what that is somebody who is raised in that environment are there some how do you I just can imagine how do you first of all heal from that

is heal as if it's a complete thing even a possibility and what are some main struggles that people will have as a result of growing up in that kind of environment. If you would like to listen to the extra innings portion of this episode, head over to patreon.com forward slash theology and raw

to become a member of the Theology and Rock community.