The Place We Find Ourselves (Adam Young | LCSW, MDiv)

When you were a child, you were deeply dependent on your primary caretakers. This means that the development of your brain was contingent upon the level of care and kindness in your family environment. Today I identify the six things you needed from your parents, and give examples of each. The “Big Six” things you needed from your parents include (1) attunement, (2) responsiveness, (3) engagement, (4) ability to regulate your affect, (5) ability to handle your big emotions and (6) willingness to repair harm. To download a free document that explains the Big Six, click here.

I am joined today by Heather Stringer, who has lots of experience creating rituals that heal. Heather begins by describing two rituals: one focused on recovering from sexual assault and the second focused on preparing for a double mastectomy surgery. Heather and I talk about why ritual is so unfamiliar to many of us, and the healing that occurs when we begin to move our bodies in particular ways, especially when others are present to bear witness to the ritual. 

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The fundamental premise of story work is that your past story is affecting your present life. This is just as true for your collective story as it is for your individual story. Your present day to day life is deeply affected by the past story of the collective to which you belong. The story of America bears great glory and great sin, just like the story of Mexico, Poland, and Thailand. Every culture contains deep goodness and every culture contains deep sin. Part of the story of America includes destroying the original dwellers of this land, and then exploiting black laborers so that white people could build wealth. If you live in America, these aspects of our collective story have profound effects on present day to day life.

I dive into a detailed explanation of avoidant and ambivalent attachment. I explain why and how a child develops each of these insecure attachment styles. I then outline how you are supposed to know in adulthood if you have an avoidant or ambivalent attachment style. Your attachment style (secure, avoidant, or ambivalent) profoundly affects how you experience relationships and how you express yourself in relationship. And your attachment style develops based on your relationship with your primary caregivers.

Bonus episode! Cathy Loerzel and I dive into why it’s crucial to take your wounds seriously, and how your wounds lead to the “orphan experience,” “stranger experience,” and/or “widow experience.” We also talk about what redemption looks like for each of these three types of wounding. Jesus takes our experiences of trauma and redeems them. That is, God creates glory, meaning and calling out of the very things that were designed to hurt us. If you want to better understand what redemption can look like for you, Cathy and I will be co-leading a live Redeeming Heartache event on May 21, 2022, in Fort Collins, CO. You can sign up here.

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Suppose you have come to realize some of the ways that your parents have harmed you over the years. What are you supposed to do now? How do you engage with a parent now that you’ve come to realize some of the ways they harmed you? This is the first of a four part series of episodes focused on how to engage with someone who has hurt you. Today’s episode emphasizes the necessity of identifying the kind of person you will be engaging. Is the person a normal, everyday sinner? Or is the person wicked/evil?

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We pick up with Curt sharing about Cora’s experience in a story group. Specifically, we talk about about why Cora’s intense bouts of panic were her body’s way of saying “something is wrong and needs care and attention.” We also talk about a woman named Cheyney who experiences deep healing as a result of taking in the acceptance and embrace of other group members in the precise moment when she is feeling intense shame. This is how neural networks get rewired. This is how healing happens. We need other people.

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Last year I saw an Instagram post asking people to share stories of Bible verses that had been used against them. The comments section was devastating. I read story after story of how the Bible had been used to do immense harm. The verse that was most frequently mentioned? Jeremiah 17:9, which says, “the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.” In today’s episode I take a close look at what Jeremiah 17:9 is really saying. I also make some comments about what the Bible teaches concerning whether or not your heart can be trusted. 

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We live in a world in which the kingdom of darkness wars against our hearts. Today we look at the second main tactic of evil—namely, to deceive you to make agreements with it. But what are “agreements with evil” and how are they made? We’ll explore both of those questions in depth. 

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I am joined by Cathy Loerzel to talk about curses, agreements, and vows—what they are, how they come to be, and where to find them in our stories. Cathy articulates the difference between a curse, an agreement, and a vow. She also explains how it is the design of evil for a curse to lead to an agreement, which then leads to a vow.

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I am joined today by KJ Ramsey. KJ has written an important book about suffering called This Too Shall Last. Sometimes suffering lasts… and where is God in this? How are we to live when the place we find ourselves is one of lingering suffering? KJ invites us to allow our emotions to become a compass, leading us to a God who is present… even in suffering.

In Part 3 of this series on how to engage someone’s story, we look at five specific tactics you can use. Tactic 1: Explore the trauma before the trauma. Tactic 2: Explore triangulation. Tactic 3: Ask (good) provocative questions. Tactic 4: Invite the storyteller to be embodied as they are engaging with you. Tactic 5: Name and address betrayal, powerlessness, and ambivalence in the story.

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In the near future, I am going to address how healing happens in the brain. But there is a prerequisite to healing, there is something that you have to be growing in if you are going to experience healing. And that something is awareness. Awareness means choosing to pay attention to what is happening in your mind and body. Today we’re going to talk about why awareness is so critical for healing, what it actually means, and how to do it. Terry Bohn can be reached at terry.bohn@live.com.

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Becky Allender and I talk about her book Hidden In Plain Sight, which is a collection of stories designed to invite the reader to engage his or her own story in more depth. Becky shares how her relationship with her Mom led to a style of relating in which she became committed to “staying out of the way and becoming invisible.” Becky goes on to talk about the importance of experiencing “sorrow in the care of wise guides” as we engage our story. 

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This is the final episode in the series on interacting with someone who has harmed you. Today we look at what it means to establish clear boundaries and put relational consequences in place when necessary. I also talk about what is involved in forgiveness and reconciliation. Please consider supporting the podcast by clicking here.

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My friend Bethany shares one of her stories about sibling abuse. And, as is the case with virtually all sibling abuse, there is so much more at play than an older sibling harming a younger sibling. Harm from siblings never happens in a vacuum. An environment is created in the home by the parents that allows for and, in some cases, even invites, sibling abuse. Bethany graciously helps us understand how these dynamics played out in her home.

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I am joined by Cathy Loerzel to talk about how to engage another person’s story. Effective story engagement is not a magical skill that some people have and some people don’t. It can be learned. Today we give a preview of some of the principles and tactics of effective story engagement. If you want to learn more, consider joining us on Saturday, May 13, for a zoom conference on How to Engage Another Person’s Story. You can sign up here.

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What is actually happening when two people interact—whether that’s two spouses, a therapist and a client, or two friends? What is actually happening in the brains of the two people who are interacting? Primarily, nonverbal messages are being communicated from one person’s right brain to the other person’s right brain. This has profound implications for why interpersonal interactions can be so fraught. 

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I’m joined today by my friend and fellow therapist Sam Jolman to talk about the fact that we have been made to need more than God. We have been created to need other people. Deeply. However, our need for others can make us feel weak or “too needy.” How are we to navigate this?

In today’s show we take a deeper look at how our hearts have been wounded and what the path to healing looks like. Guided by Isaiah 61, we see how our wounding is linked to the particular ways that we find ourselves enslaved. I conclude by reflecting on what is involved in walking the path of healing. The bottom line is that you don’t have to wait until heaven for the healing of your wounds. 

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Connections between brain regions lead to a healthy and stable brain (and a healthy and stable life). Trauma prevents these brain connections. This is known as fragmentation. In today’s episode, I explain how trauma leads to fragmentation in the brain and why fragmentation makes you feel unstable in your day to day life. I then suggest that when we feel unstable, we are drawn toward theologies and worldviews that offer certainty. The fragmentation in your brain resulting from trauma can make you a very dogmatic person. Why? Because, as Dan Allender says, “The more certain you become, the less fragmented you feel.”

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In today’s episode, Christy Bauman and I talk candidly about the reality of wounds in this life. What does it mean to enter the wounded places in one another’s hearts? And can genuine goodness really come from places of death? You can read more about Christy at www.christyvidrinebauman.com.

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Jen Oyama Murphy shares a story she wrote for The Allender Center called “My Eyes.” Evil often assaults us through the cursing of others. When a part of our body is cursed—especially during our growing up years—we tend to turn on ourselves. Wars with shame and self-contempt begin. In today’s episode, Jen reflects on her experience of racial trauma directed at her eyes and how she has begun to heal. 

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Therapist and fellow podcaster Vanessa Sadler shares a story from when she was 11 years old. As children, all of us needed to belong—to feel “a part of.” If we did not receive sufficient attunement from our primary caregivers, we likely experienced high levels of loneliness. The dilemma is that it may not have felt like loneliness because it was such a normal part of your life. Vanessa talks candidly about her loneliness growing up, as well as how she came to experience significant healing from that loneliness. You can follow Vanessa on Instagram @abidinginstory.

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Engaging another person’s story is a skill that can be learned! Over the course of the next four episodes, I will explain how to engage another person’s story well. Today, I discuss the first two principles of effective story engagement. Principle 1: Attunement is more important than engaging the story brilliantly. Principle 2: Kindness will take you further than skill.

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This is part 2 of a series of episodes on how to engage another person’s story. Today, we look at principles 3-7 of effective story engagement. Principle 3: Use the exquisite instrument that is your body. Principle 4: Always be monitoring the storyteller’s affect. Principle 5: Your right brain matters much more than your left brain when you are engaging someone’s story. Principle 6: Remember that there is always a reason for human behavior. Principle 7: Repairing rupture is more important than engaging their story perfectly.

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Here’s the bottom line with parenting: the past isn’t dead; it’s not even past. Your past experiences in life are profoundly influencing how you interact with, and parent, your children. Every parent knows what it’s like to lose it with their children. But what’s actually happening neurobiologically? What do you do when you realize that you’ve harmed your children? To financially support the podcast, please click here.

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Your nervous system is constantly surveying your environment (think: relationships) to determine how safe and supported you feel. When your body scans the environment and detects anything that feels remotely threatening, it triggers your nervous system to do one of three things: socially engage (i.e. talk to the other person), go into a fight/flight/freeze reaction (i.e. yell at the other person, run away from them, or just freeze up in a state of paralysis), or shut down (collapse into a state of hopeless despair). In today’s episode, I explain how your nervous system determines which response to choose… and why this matters for your interpersonal relationships. To financially support the podcast, please click here.

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In Warfare Part 5, we look at how to wage war against the kingdom of darkness. Warfare move #1 is to pay attention to your life and question the voices, particularly the voices of accusation that you hear throughout your day. The first tactic in waging war is paying attention to what you are hearing and then determining the source of that voice. You can discern the source of the voice with a simple question: what is its tone and tenor? 

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I met Blaine Hogan at a Recovery Week a decade ago. Blaine is an artist, creative director, and filmmaker. Our conversation covers sexual abuse, sexual addiction, and the importance of being curious when it comes to engaging your stories. Blaine reads a story from his childhood… and then shares what happened as he realized that he had left out the most important part of the story. You can read more about Blaine at blainehogan.com.

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We live in a world at war. It’s a war between light and darkness, between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Evil. This is the place we find ourselves. In the episodes to follow we’ll look at how evil operates and how to fight back to win the war for your heart and the hearts of those you love.

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I am joined today by Jay Stringer to talk about the relationship between our current sexual difficulties and our attachment histories. At some point in our lives, each of us will encounter difficulties in our sexual life. It might be the compulsive use of unwanted sexual behavior or a struggle to locate any sexual desire at all. Sexual struggles are rooted in our stories—and more particularly, our stories of attachment to our primary caretakers. If you want to explore this material in more depth, please sign up for the Sexual Attachment Conference on Saturday, April 24. You can sign up here.

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When it comes to resisting the assaults of evil against your heart, the starting place is stepping into the authority that is yours. Jesus Christ has set you up to succeed in warfare with evil. However, it’s essential to get clear about the authority that Jesus has delegated to you. This entire podcast began with the claim that “you have a story and that story matters.” The corollary today is “you have authority and that authority matters.” Are you aware of your authority?

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Your body knows things that your enskulled brain does not. Moreover, if you listen, your body will tell you important things—things that will help you heal. Your body is a truth teller. It is the trustworthy prophet from within. In today’s episode, I explain why it’s so important to listen to your body… and how to do it. 

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Gary explains what brought him to begin engaging his story. Through counseling with Brent Curtis, Gary came to realize that there were several characters in his life story who had a profound influence on his heart and life. Gary tells a story that happened when he was 10 years old, and he explains how he made a commitment at the end of that story which would enslave him for years. 

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I’m joined today by Jenny McGrath, a therapist in Seattle who focuses on how trauma is stored in the body and how the body must be engaged in the healing of trauma. Jenny talks about how and why she began to take the body more seriously when it comes to healing. Topics covered include why our body has a fight, flight, freeze response and how to work with our nervous system to facilitate healing.

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I am joined today by Dr. Dan Allender and Dr. Steve Call to talk about the complexities of marriage relationships. Dan and Steve recently co-authored a book titled, “The Deep-Rooted Marriage: Cultivating Intimacy, Healing, and Delight.” If you are committed to the growth of yourself and your spouse, marriage will be hard. Today, Dan and Steve talk about how the look and feel of our present marriages are tied to each partner’s past story. We also discuss stuckness, shame, neurons, and blessing/cursing.

John Eldredge returns to the podcast to talk about his newest book titled, “Experience Jesus. Really.” Topics covered include: how to live as an ordinary mystic (someone who experiences the sweet presence of God on a regular basis), why you don’t need to understand something to experience it and benefit from it, the importance of turning toward Jesus with the parts of our hearts that are not doing well, and how the presence of Jesus heals even the fragmented and traumatized parts of us.

Last week we talked about Cathy Loerzel’s U-diagram and about the importance of engaging particular scenes of heartache and harm in order for healing to begin to take place for you. Today we continue our discussion of what the process of healing requires and what it looks like. If you linger in death, if you dip down into the bottom of the U-diagram, you will enter sorrow and grief… and grief is met by the comfort of God which brings a newness to your heart, and a restoration of vitality and joy. This is the path of healing.

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Season 3 concludes with the final episode on Warfare. I am joined again by Cathy Loerzel to talk about soul ties—what they are and how they are formed. We also address how to break curses, agreements, vows, and soul ties. 

Anxiety can be so debilitating. But what exactly is it? Why do we feel anxious? And how can we address it? Anxiety is what you feel when you are avoiding important unfelt emotions. And your anxiety is almost always related to some particular part of your story. 

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I interview Sam Williamson, author of Hearing God In Conversation. Conversation is possible... even with God. Sam and I talk about what gets in the way of hearing from God, why we tend to have low expectations about hearing from God, and how to begin to learn to hear in our ordinary day to day life. If you enjoy this episode, you might want to go back and listen to Episode 38 — The Process of Learning to Hear from God. 

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I am joined today by therapist and friend Reid Zeller who shares a story about egging cars when he was 16. Behind every story is a backstory. The backstory includes the nature of the environment we grew up in. When religious or spiritual expectations are placed on the shoulders of a child, pressure builds within that child. And when that pressure inevitably leads to a bursting, what results is always a mixture of dignity and depravity. Both. If the podcast has been helpful to you, please consider supporting it financially. 

I am joined today by Scott Gibson who is a therapist in the Chicago area. Scott graciously shares a story about himself as an 11 year old boy. It’s a story about desire, about devastation, and especially about attachment. If you resonate with Scott’s words today, you might want to go back and listen to Episode 14 in which Scott talks more about his own story, particularly with regard to engaging the harm of sexual abuse.

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Today I talk about racial trauma, and, in particular, the racial trauma that African Americans experience. One central tenet of all story work is that in order for healing to occur there has to be an honest naming of what has been true. This is true in your individual story and it is no less true in our collective story as a nation.

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This is really two episodes in one. In the first half we talk about sexual abuse that doesn’t involve physical touch, also known as subtle sexual abuse or covert sexual abuse. In the second half, Sandy graciously reads a story from when she was in kindergarten. And as we reflect on Sandy’s story, we see how a single story can affect your brain for decades. As Sandy puts it, “I don’t think I was ever the same after that day.”

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Fellow therapist Mary Ellen Owen joins me today to share her journey with sorrow. Like many people with trauma, it took Mary Ellen years to find her tears, years to befriend her sorrow. Although she cognitively knew that grief was necessary for healing, something within her said “hell no” to feeling the unfelt sorrow. In this final episode in a series on grief and sorrow, Mary Ellen shares how she came to befriend her sorrow. In the words of Fredrick Buechner, “Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are but, more often than not, God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next.”

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In “As Long As You Need,” author J.S. Park writes that “Grief is not about letting go, but about letting in.” Letting in sorrow, letting in anger, and especially letting in other people who can be WITH us in our pain. This episode is about all kinds of grief—not merely the grief of losing a loved one. One of Joon Park’s main points is that we often experience loneliness in the midst of our sorrow and pain. He says, “It is possible to be in a room full of people, but feel more lonely than if the room had been empty. It is to be unseen. Unseen by those close to you is in some ways worse than having no one see you.” 

Friend and fellow therapist Matthias Roberts joins me today to share a very vulnerable story involving triangulation with his mother. How does an adolescent boy answer his Mom’s questions about his homosexuality when Mom is disgusted by it? This is a story about Matthias’ deep love for God… and the torment he felt as a result. We talk about Matthias’ immense hope that God would “heal” his sexuality and how he came to feel God’s blessing rather than shame.

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Today I focus on two important ways that your body tells you things. The first is through your affect. Whenever your affect becomes dysregulated, your body is letting you know valuable information about your present environment… and about your past story. Dysregulation makes implicit memory known. And the second way that your body communicates with you is through impulses. Your body has impulses… impulses that it would like you to take more seriously than you probably do.

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The opposite of trauma is not "no trauma;" the opposite of trauma is connection. To be human is to be wounded. However, wounds heal naturally when the environment is right… and the right environment for healing is the empathic presence of another person. God made our brains and nervous systems to need one another. This is particularly true when it comes to engaging your story. You cannot engage your story alone. Sitting in your favorite chair with a journal, a Bible, a cup of coffee, and a good view out your window is not sufficient to heal your wounds. But the attuned presence of another human being can change your brain. 

If you have difficulty regulating your emotion, there is a reason for that! No one comes out of the womb with the ability to regulate their affect. The way you develop the neurobiological structures to regulate your own emotions is by having your affect interactively regulated by another. This is the main gift that a primary caregiver gives to a child. Another name for this gift is “secure attachment.” The essence of secure attachment in adulthood is that you have the ability to both self-regulate and reach for help (that is, receive regulation from another). If the podcast has been helpful to you, please consider supporting it financially by clicking here.

I am joined today by Christian neuroscientist Curt Thompson. In this vulnerable conversation, Curt and I talk about: why our brains change when we share our story with another human being who is attuned to us, why engaging your story is the single best way to become a better parent, and why it’s so important to pay attention to the younger parts of ourselves.

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Today’s focus is how to engage with, love, and honor a wicked person. Direct confrontation is not going to work. You need to be cunning, shrewd, and strategically disruptive. Think “surprise attacks of disruptive kindness” rather than direct confrontation. Dan Allender and Tremper Longman point out that the key to loving a wicked person is “insightful preparation, clear boundaries, and courageous consequences.” Today we focus on insightful preparation. 

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In today’s episode, I talk to a fellow therapist named Scott. Scott leads groups for men who have a history of sexual abuse. Today, Scott talks about part of what it looked like for him to engage his own story of sexual abuse. In particular, we reflect on the importance of listening to our bodies in the battle to overcome the shame inherent in all sexual abuse. We end by talking about the necessity of coming to bless our bodies rather than curse them.

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Trauma impairs integration in the brain. When you experience trauma, the neural circuits in various regions of your brain do not make enough connections with one another. Here’s the good news: there is something you can do to promote integration in your brain. In the book Aware, Dan Siegel shares a mindfulness practice that he developed called The Wheel of Awareness. The Wheel of Awareness helps people to integrate the various regions of their brain. And integration leads to emotional stability, which is to say affect regulation.

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Last year John Eldredge wrote an important book called Get Your Life Back. In today’s episode, John and I talk about my favorite parts of his book. In short, we talk about simple everyday practices that will help you get your life back. Why is this important? Because the pace of modern American life—even in the midst of Covid—often borders on madness. It doesn’t feel like madness for many of us because we’ve lived life at this pace for so long. The pace feels normal. But the human heart was not designed to operate at 5,000 rpm’s all the time; it wasn’t designed to carry the weight that most of us carry.

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Abuse often involves intensity. Whether it’s sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse—the nature of abuse is that there is an intensity between the two people involved. When a parent abuses a child, the intensity at play serves to bind their hearts together. Today, Victoria shares a trauma story that illustrates how her heart was bound to her abuser… and how she has come to be released and find new levels of freedom. Victoria also talks about how she has come to bless her longing—as a child and as an adult—for her father’s gaze… even though the price of that gaze was abuse.

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Jen Oyama Murphy and I reflect on the U Diagram of healing. The human heart heals by engaging one’s story. But how does cultural background factor into effective story engagement? Whether you are a person of color who is engaging your own story, or you are someone who works with people of color, Jen shares some important categories for you to consider. 

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This is part 2 of a discussion on the necessity of naming intentional harm. You can’t heal until your brain has constructed an accurate and coherent autobiographical narrative of your life. Today I introduce the idea of antisocial empathy, which is a very important concept from David Schnarch’s book Brain Talk. I also talk about how to heal when traumatic mind-mapping results in gaps in your memory.

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Complicity often haunts people with a history of trauma more than anything else. The essence of complicity is the sense that I volitionally participated in my own abuse. In today’s episode, I outline four ways in which we may feel complicit in our abuse, and then talk about how to address the feeling of complicity by blessing arousal.

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One of the things that prevents people from engaging the ways they have been harmed is the simple objection, “Who am I to judge my parents?” The premise of the objection is simply, “It’s wrong for me to judge my parents. That’s God’s job, not my job.” In today’s episode, I take a look at what the Bible says about judging other people.  

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Memory is the way in which a past experience affects how the mind will function in the present. There are two layers of memory: explicit and implicit. There are two key attributes of implicit memory that are critical to understand. First, implicit memories are created whether you are paying attention or not. In other words, when you were a child, you recorded tons of information about your environment without trying to. It just happened. Because that’s how the brain works. Second, when you recall something that is stored in implicit memory, you do not have the sensation of recall. You don’t have that sense in your body of “I’m thinking back in time and remembering something.” When we leave home and set out into the world, we carry within us a storehouse of implicit memories. And those implicit memories tell us what to expect around every bend. 

Jay Stringer joins me to talk about the relationship between our current sexual difficulties and our story in our family of origin. Sexual struggles are rooted in our stories—and, very often, our stories of attachment to our primary caretakers. As Jay puts it, “When it comes to sexual struggles, there are always two story lines at play: there is the story line of your present sexual struggles, and then there is the story line of your growing up experiences which set you up for those present sexual struggles.” If you want to explore your sexual story in more depth, please sign up for the Sexual Attachment Conference on May 5-6. You can sign up here. 

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Cathy Loerzel joins me to talk about how to engage your family of origin story in a way that brings healing to your brain. We examine three byproducts of trauma (fragmentation, dissociation, and isolation), the importance of naming the intentionality of those who harmed you, the role you played in your family, and the U Diagram of healing. Cathy and I will be co-teaching the Engaging Your Story Conference on Saturday, June 12. You can register here.

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Triangulation occurs when Mom or Dad becomes emotionally closer to one of the children than to their spouse. Patria and I discuss the fallout of triangulation in the life of the family and the life of the "special" child. The triangulated daughter often becomes hyper-attuned to Dad, and is setup to be envied by Mom and her (unchosen) siblings. It’s a devastating dynamic that does immense damage to the heart of the triangulated child.

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Often the place we find ourselves is a place of desert, of wilderness, of valley. Indeed these are places of death. And they are real and they are part of the process of healing. But they are not the last word. Today we look at what happens when you linger in death. The thesis is that if we are faithful to enter death—to dip down to the bottom of Cathy Loerzel’s U-diagram—then resurrection and healing can begin to exist.

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Matthias Roberts joins me today to talk about his book Holy Runaways: Rediscovering Faith After Being Burned By Religion. Topics covered include: why belonging is so crucial for each of us, how to trust when you’ve been betrayed by others so many times before, and why it’s hard to open ourselves to actually receive care when it is available. 

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I am joined today by Dr. Hillary McBride to discuss excerpts from her new book titled, “Practices for Embodied Living.” Topics covered include: how to feel your feelings, being alive in your body (eroticism), and the story of your relationship to your sensuality and sexuality. Finally, I ask Hillary about her beautiful claim that we often find the Holy precisely in the places we were told not to look (including in our bodies).  

Many people with a history of trauma find themselves stuck. Stuck in a place of hopelessness about our own healing. It’s this sense of “nothing significant is really going to change for me.” The present ordering of your life—the way things are—claims to be the final ordering of your life. Drawing from the book of Jeremiah, today’s episode explores the question, “What if God is free to create a new beginning in your life that is underived from your present circumstances?”

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Laurie tells us how and why she began to engage her story at a deeper level. She then shares a story from when she was 12 years old. It’s a story in which her sense of innocence, beauty, and hope were shattered in an instant. We talk about how she responded to the assault against her heart and body, and how she has come to reclaim much of what was stolen.

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I am joined by KJ Ramsey to talk through her new book, “The Lord Is My Courage.” KJ explains why it’s so important to be honest and clear about the ways we have been harmed, and how our bodies often reveal truths about our trauma that our minds are afraid to speak out loud. Gabor Mate says that “Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.” KJ and I both love that sentence and share our thoughts about it. 

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I am joined today by author Jay Stringer to talk about sexual stuckness/difficulties/struggles. Healthy sexuality is deeply tied to the degree to which we have made sense of our story in our family of origin. Sadly, so few of us have ever been asked to connect the dots between our past life story and the sexual difficulties we face in the present. Today, Jay and I try to connect some of those dots. If you want to understand your sexual story in more depth, please sign up for The Sexual Attachment Conference on May 3rd, 2025. We want to help you understand and transform some of the sexual difficulties you may be experiencing either individually or as a couple.

This is the episode about sexuality, lust, fantasy… and your story. Are you curious about how your story can help you understand your current sexual struggles? Jay Stringer presents a surprising—and deeply refreshing—approach to understanding your sexuality in light of your story. He is the author of Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing.

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Your body tells a story. The sensations in your body reveal something about what you have experienced, what you hold, and what you carry. Most of us are either unaware of the sensations in our bodies, or we ignore them, or we war against them. An alternative is to pay attention to your body and to become curious about what your body may be telling you. Jenny McGrath joins me today to talk about her Embodied Story digital course. You can sign up here.

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This episode is for people who experience emotional pain but feel like “nothing that bad happened to me growing up. I had a pretty good childhood.” As it says in Jeremiah 6, it is very common to dress our wounds as though they are not serious. One way we tend to minimize our wounds is by comparing our story to someone else who “had it worse.” Another way we minimize our wounds is by spiritualizing away the harmful experiences we endured with sentences like, “God used that terrible experience to shape my character.” What is keeping you from having compassion for the harm you experienced as a boy or a girl? If the podcast has been helpful to you, please consider supporting it financially here.

The way you attached to your primary caregiver shaped your brain more than anything else. Attachment refers to the manner in which you connect with others. It’s the emotional bond that you develop with the people you are closest to—the people who are there for you and who truly know you. We are biologically driven to attach to others in order to survive. When we perceive threat or danger, we are hard-wired to maintain proximity to someone who will be there for us, and who truly knows us. In this episode, I give an overview of attachment—what it is and why it matters so much to your day-to-day life.

My website: adamyoungcounseling.com
Contact me at adamyoung4@gmail.com. 

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This episode is a joint release of The Allender Center podcast and The Place We Find Ourselves.

We have all experienced hurt, abandonment, or disappointment at the hands of our parents or caretakers, whether it was intentional or not. So much of our beauty and brokenness — so much of what makes us human — is tied to our family of origin. In today’s episode, Dan Allender and I discuss what it means to begin engaging the harm that we endured during our growing up years. Are we dishonoring our father and mother if we name the hurt we experienced growing up? Should we just “let it go?” If you want to learn more about how to engage your story in your family of origin, please join Dan and I for a 2 hour webinar on February 23, 2023. You can register here.

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In this week’s episode, we begin a three part series on the subject of healing. What is necessary for healing to begin to occur? There is no way to experience healing apart from taking an honest look at those stories from your growing up years that hold intense feelings for you—shame, powerlessness, terror, sexual arousal, ambivalence, a sense of betrayal, etc. Healing requires that you allow your heart, mind, and body to ponder and engage what it was like for you in your family of origin.

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Today I want to look at the Bible’s take on how Christians are called to respond when racial injustice is occurring in our land. I am not going to devote any time to making a case that America is an unjust society. If you believe that America is just and fair, I beg you to pick up any of the books on anti-Racism written by a person of color and find out if people of color experience America as just and fair. This episode is primarily for White Christians who have a sense inside of “I acknowledge that racial injustice exists in America, but since I am not personally committing acts of injustice, I am therefore not personally responsible for the injustice that is occurring.”

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I am joined today by Susan Cunningham, a California-based counselor, life and soul coach and spiritual director. Sue shares one of the most formative stories of her life. It’s a story about a first grade girl who decided to use her voice. Your voice is one of the parts of you that is most frequently targeted by Evil. If you have a history of trauma, it’s likely that you struggle with using your voice.

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Jason reflects on why he began engaging his story and what that process looked like for him. Jason began addressing his story as part of a story group... but (surprising twist) his father just happened to be a participant in that group! In today’s episode Jason talks about why his growing up years had such a big influence on his adult life, and what the path toward healing and wholeness has looked like.

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This is part 2 of my interview with Wendell Moss about racial trauma. Today we continue to discuss the importance of naming what has been true of the past so that we might be free from it. We also begin to talk about what the path toward healing looks like, including the role of lament in the healing process.

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You have a story and that story matters. Your story in your family of origin significantly affects the way you think, feel, and act in the world today. This is why Dan Allender says, “It is time to listen to your story.” What if healing begins by listening to your story? By reflecting on the experiences in your growing up years, you can better understand why your brain has been shaped in the way that it has. If you want to experience more of the healing power of understanding your own story, join Dan, Cathy, and myself in Atlanta, GA, on Saturday February 22, 2025, for the StoryWork Conference. The conference will be live streamed if you can’t make it to Atlanta. You can register by going to adamyoungcounseling.com. CEU’s are available for therapists.

God created our hearts, minds, and bodies to heal. When the conditions are right, healing will occur. Therefore, it’s important to clear away the things that block the right conditions for healing. Today I discuss four of the most common obstacles to healing: minimizing your story, spiritualizing the bad things that have happened to you, self-contempt, and the frenetic pace of your life.

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Pascale Wright joins me today to share a very vulnerable story from her childhood. The temptation is to view her story as one of neglect… but it’s not. We cover a lot of ground today, including: Pascale’s ambivalence about longing for care from her therapist and being afraid of his care at the same time, how our family of origin story plays out in the client-therapist relationship, how our family of origin story affects our relationship with God, and the mysteriousness of self-harm.

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Your story started with your relationship with your parents. Every child needs 6 things from his or her parents. In this episode, I discuss these “Big Six” needs. I also explain two kinds of relational styles that result from being either dismissed by your parents or being asked to be a parent rather than a child. 

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Hope is flat out agonizing. Hope requires that you groan inwardly while, at the same time, waiting expectantly. The alternatives to hope are a deadening of desire and a growing cynicism about what you can really expect from life in this world. Indeed, most hope is squashed by the simple phrase, “I’m just being realistic.” But our war with hope inevitably leads to God: will God respond to the cries of my heart? 

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Today’s episode focuses on how attachment styles play out in close relationships. I am joined by Rachel Blackston, who is a therapist in Orlando, Florida. Rachel begins today’s conversation by reading an essay about love and war in her marriage. It’s a beautiful and vulnerable piece that gives you a window into how insecure attachment plays out in a real-life marriage. I’m deeply grateful to Rachel for her willingness to dive head first into this very difficult and important arena. You can read more about Rachel at rachelblackston.com.

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What is our calling with regard to forgiving those who have harmed us? If forgiveness doesn’t require forgetting, what does it require? And how do I know if I’ve forgiven someone for harming me? These are some of the questions we explore in today's episode. The Bible’s treatment of the subject of forgiveness is far more nuanced and complex than many people acknowledge.

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Naming intentionality matters because if you are unsure about whether or not the other person meant to hurt you, it will be very difficult for you to heal from your wounds. This is because you can’t heal until your brain has constructed an accurate and coherent autobiographical narrative of your life: the narrative has to be true and it has to make sense. Drawing from David Schnarch’s book Brain Talk, I explain two important concepts: mind-mapping and traumatic mind-mapping. Mind-mapping refers to your ability to map out the thoughts and feelings of another person. Traumatic mind-mapping is a collapse of your brain’s normal mind mapping abilities that occurs when you are mind-mapping someone and what you see is terrible.

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Curt Thompson returns to the podcast to talk about how we heal from trauma. In short, trauma and emotional pain begin to heal when our stories are witnessed by an empathetic other. Curt shares a story from his newest book about a woman named Cora, who is disconnected from her emotions and finds it very hard to receive care from Curt. Curt’s newest book about suffering and healing is called The Deepest Place. 

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Cathy Loerzel joins me to talk about why it’s so important to do the work to understand your story, particularly your family of origin story. In short, the three reasons are: understanding your story will allow you to experience healing, stop reenacting your past in the present, and discover what you are meant to do in your part of the world (discover your kingdom). Near the beginning of the episode Cathy shares a personal example of how her family of origin story is presently affecting the way she shows up in her marriage. I do the same thing at the end. What fun. Cathy and I will be co-leading the “Understanding Your Story Workshop” on Saturday, November, 19. It’s virtual, via zoom. You can register at adamyoungcounseling.com. 

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“Affect” refers to your moment by moment experience of your internal bodily sensations. Think of affect on a scale of 1-10, where 1 represents completely numb and shut down and 10 represents panic, rage, or terror. On this scale, 5-6 represents a slight feeling of relaxed excitement—you are alert, present, and attentive. When you become dysregulated, your body’s greatest need is to return to a regulated state in that 5-6 zone. Affect regulation lies at the core of feeling like you can control your insides. Moreover, all dysfunctional ways of being in the world—all addictions and compulsions—are, at their core, attempts at affect regulation. An impaired ability to self-regulate wreaks havoc in interpersonal relationships because, when you become dysregulated, you are no longer present.

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Jimmy McGee and Rebecca Wheeler Walston join me to talk about how they came to understand the importance of trauma and story engagement. If you want to engage your story in more depth, the Impact Movement is hosting an online event called Hope and Anchor Story Weekend. This zoom event will take place Sept 30 to Oct 1. You can find out more here.

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Sexuality is an emotionally charged topic. Period. But when you are talking about sexuality for people with a history of trauma, you are stepping into terrain where angels fear to tread. However, if God intends for you to experience overflowing sexual pleasure and lavish sexual freedom, then exploring your sexual story is more than worth it. Human beings are aroused by particular things in the present because of our experiences of being aroused in the past. Your past story can help you understand why you are turned on by the things that turn you on. Your sexual preferences and sexual fantasies are not random. There is a connection between your painful experiences growing up and your present sexual struggles. Sexual harm in the past becomes reenacted in the present. This is because you have neurons... and that's how neurons operate.

If your parents did not have a healthy marriage—a deep emotional connection—then it is likely that either you or your sibling has experienced some measure of subtle sexual abuse. Subtle sexual abuse wreaks havoc in your heart… but because of its subtlety, you can live your whole life without knowing what’s plaguing you. Today we talk about what subtle sexual abuse is and how it can affect you.

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John Eldredge joins me today to talk about how to care for our hearts and bodies in the wake of trauma. Topics include how to navigate life when you feel deeply disappointed by God, how to access the mothering of God, and why it’s so important to get a piece of paper and write down our losses so that we might grieve them. Today’s episodes is based on John’s new book “Resilient: Restoring Your Weary Soul In These Turbulent Times.”

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This is Part 2 of the episode about sexuality, lust, fantasy… and your story. Are you curious about how your story can help you understand your current sexual struggles? Jay Stringer presents a surprising—and deeply refreshing—approach to understanding your sexuality in light of your story. He is the author of Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing. 

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This is Part 2 of a discussion about what happens to your nervous system in the midst of relational conflict. When your body scans your relational environment and detects anything that feels remotely threatening, it triggers your nervous system to do one of three things: socially engage (i.e. talk to the other person), go into a fight/flight/freeze reaction (i.e. yell at the other person, run away from them, or just freeze up in a state of paralysis), or shut down (collapse into a state of hopeless despair). In today’s episode, I explain why your body might opt to shut down. I also outline the difference between the freeze response and the shut down response. To financially support the podcast, please click here.