Latest / The Virtual Couch / You're Not Bad. You're Carrying the Problem: Shame, Triggers, and Healing

Transcript

You're Not Bad. You're Carrying the Problem: Shame, Triggers, and Healing · The Virtual Couch

0:11
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of The Virtual Couch and or Waking
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Up to Narcissim. I think this is going to, this will run on both podcasts.
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I'm your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist.
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I would absolutely love it if you would go to TonyOverbay.com slash magnetic
0:26
and get on the wait list for my updated, new and improved magnetic marriage
0:31
course coming soon to the internet near you.
0:34
And that is going to talk about my four pillars of a connected conversation,
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the principles of differentiation, the anxious and the avoidant,
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and why it is so difficult to talk to our partner at times.
0:45
We're going to talk about losing strategies and winning strategies.
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It is something that has been, I would say, years in the making,
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this reboot of the Magnetic Marriage course.
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You will not want to miss it. And then follow me on any of the social media
0:57
platforms on Instagram at virtual.couch and on TikTok at virtualcouchsubstack,
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substack.com slash the virtual couch.
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There's a lot of content there, but let's get right into it.
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Today, I'm going to start with a listener's email.
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I love getting your emails and please send me questions.
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Send me questions about your relationships, your faith deconstructions,
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your emotional immaturity, parenting questions, whatever that looks like,
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because I love having a question as a muse.
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And you will see today, I've got an outline of where it's going to go.
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And I'm not even sure if it will go in that direction, which I think is the
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way life works a lot of times. Here's the listener's email.
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Okay. The person said, hi, Tony. I think I can speak fluent,
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Tony, maybe even better than you can, which right out of the gate, they had me there.
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A little flattering, maybe a little bit unsettling.
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Then he told me that his wife had sent him a video from a guy who goes by the people displeaser.
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His name's Nick Pollard. I'm familiar with the people displeaser.
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Spoiler alert, I like his work. So that's what made this even more fun.
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But he said, my wife and I have a bet. I said, I'm not going to tell you what
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I think yet because I don't want to lead the witness.
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Which is actually one of my favorite sayings. So I really do think this guy
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speaks pretty fluent me.
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He said, I want you to go first. I think you and I are going to be on the same
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page. She thinks that you are going to break this down into a million pieces.
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And I think that's so that she can wiggle her way out of whether or not we agree.
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So whether or not he wins the bet, I guess, depending on how many tangents I
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go on. So naturally, I'm invested.
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Now, before I read you the transcript he sent, I'll talk a little bit more about
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Nick Pollard. Again, I like his content. Here's the funny thing.
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I get a lot of people who want to be on the podcast, and I'm grateful for that.
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And I reach out and try to get guests on occasion. They will respond.
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And that's where I'll get, I don't know, you'll call it a big guest.
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And I like Nick's content. So I did reach out to him, I think,
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through TikTok a while back about coming on the podcast.
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And can you believe it? He said yes.
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And then I actually was the one who didn't follow through. So this is even more maybe karma.
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What the listener shared in this particular video, it's going to come across
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as a little bit bold and it's kind of direct.
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And I can understand why the listener sent it my way.
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And I even played it to get some comments in a men's group that I was facilitating
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a couple of nights ago. And it was funny.
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The very first thing out of the mouths of the people who were listening said,
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oh, I think I know why his wife sent him this. And everybody laughed.
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But here's the transcript that is included in the email. So Nick Pollard says,
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A shift that I used to manage my triggers has literally never failed me.
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But he said, you're not going to like it. And it's probably going to make you uncomfortable.
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He said, when I started digging into my triggers, I noticed that I was never
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triggered to do anything good.
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Never triggered to go to work earlier or to make a sales call or to count my
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calories or to have that piece of nicotine gum.
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And he said, and I was certainly never triggered to go to an AA meeting.
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But anytime I did something that I believed was right, I called it a choice.
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I chose to go to the meeting. I chose to have the gum. I chose to count my calories.
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But he said in that realization came a really uncomfortable truth that if I
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could choose the right things, then I was also choosing the not right things.
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And I don't know Nick personally, but it is funny because I have really been
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moving away from the right and wrong.
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And so I love that he said the right things and the not right things.
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And he said in my triggers and trauma responses were my responsibility.
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So he said, so I took the initiative and I changed the word trigger to I choose.
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And then he said, I choose to get drunk. I choose to eat 5,000 calories.
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I choose to have the cigarette.
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I choose to cheat. I choose to lie. And he said, and the darndest thing started
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happening when I took responsibility for myself in that way.
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I stopped doing those things because I realized that I was operating on a flawed
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code and it was my responsibility to solve it.
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But I had to stop blaming my past for the actions of today, which means I don't
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have any triggers anymore. He said, I either choose to do what's good for me
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and what's right, or I don't.
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So first of all, let that sit, because I think it will feel different depending
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on your experiences throughout your life, because you may hear that and think,
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okay, I don't think he really understands betrayal, or I don't think he really
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understands what triggers really are, or if only it was that easy.
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Here's my honest first reaction. When I listen to the core of what Nick is saying,
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at a high level, I agree with the heart of it. He's challenging the way that
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we use the word trigger, and he's pointing out something that's uncomfortable.
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But it's important as well to be able to have nuance here.
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He noticed that he was never triggered to do something healthy.
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He wasn't triggered to go to a meeting. He wasn't triggered to count calories.
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He wasn't triggered to make a sales call.
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But when those things did happen, he called them choices.
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I like that thought because I have not thought of it that way.
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Because yes, I'm choosing, at least this is the story my brain tells me,
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I'm choosing to work out when I get home,
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Or again, that's the story that I want to tell myself. And I have always just
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went with that story until after watching this video, reading this transcript,
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because I'm choosing the good thing.
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Now, when I eventually found myself eating the third Gear Deli dark chocolate
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and sea salt caramel without even pausing to take a breath between consuming
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one and unwrapping the other, I will be doggone it if such a true confession.
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When I was just writing out the outline of what I wanted to talk about on this
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podcast, I reached in my bag and I ate another.
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But that was not a choice. Au contraire, I was triggered.
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I was triggered because I was talking or writing about those dark chocolate sea salt caramels.
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Or at least, again, that's a story I want to tell myself. Because if I go back
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to this example, well, I chose to do the workout when I got home,
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but then I was triggered by my workout to be famished.
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And when famished and opening the refrigerator door, what am I supposed to do
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with the very combination of events?
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The choice to work out then led to the trigger of famine. Then I chose to open
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the refrigerator door to find something healthy to eat.
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And lo and behold, I was triggered by this open bag of caramels in the fridge door.
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I will now be waiting by my inbox for the emails where you tell me that you
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can't even begin to imagine how difficult that all must have been for me and
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how brave I was to be able to express that.
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But alas, this podcast isn't going to record itself yet. that insert AI joke
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there, the show needs to go on.
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It is funny, though, if I step back and just take all that in without judgment,
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that I absolutely pick and choose which things of mine I want to say are triggers
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or which things are choices.
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And heaven forbid we start talking about an impulse.
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And please, please know that I am going to do everything in my power not to victim blame or shame.
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That's not what this episode is about because I want you to stick with me because
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we're going to get into some really deep water here that I think is going to
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be really helpful and beneficial.
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Because we're going to get to how our reactions happen so quickly, how triggers are real.
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And I'll do my best to make sense of that distinction. Back to Nick's video,
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though, he had the realization that if the good behaviors were choices,
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then maybe the unhealthy ones were also choices as well.
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Now, when he started saying, I choose to drink, I choose to lie,
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I choose to cheat, something shifted.
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He stopped blaming his past. He stopped outsourcing responsibility and his behaviors
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changed. Easy peasy, right? Right.
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And maybe it is for him. I really don't know. And if so, that's amazing.
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However, if I had to guess, and it would not be guessing if I had followed through
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on booking him, so I think I will definitely need to make that happen.
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But I would guess that process that he's talking about took a fair amount of time.
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In my experience, that type of change can take years.
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I will quote the book, The Buddha's Brain by Rick Hansen, Every Chance I Get,
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where the implicit memory, what it feels like to be me or you,
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is based on the slow residue of lived experience. So we have this default to
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continue to do the things that we've done, that we've always done.
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And then we will then start to make change, but then we'll still default back
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to this home base of behavior, these deeply rutted neuropathways.
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And over time, we can essentially change that home base.
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Before I go any further, I want to pause on the word trigger itself,
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because that word, I think, has started to carry a lot more weight than maybe we realize.
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It's really fascinating to have been working as a therapist for years and watch
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certain words come into the lexicon and then take off and get used a lot.
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I think when I very first started in the business, it was bipolar.
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Bipolar was talked about a lot.
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Borderline, trauma, PTSD, CPTSD, narcissism, gaslighting.
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And you watch them have this arc where you start noticing these are getting talked about a lot more.
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I'm talking about them in sessions. I'm starting to generate more content around
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them. And then they hit a peak and then at some point people tend to think the word is overused.
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Over the past couple of years, I've noticed something pretty interesting in
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therapy with the word trigger. I've had clients come in and tell me that they
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are essentially triggered.
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By the word trigger, and they want a different word. And I'm not even saying
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that jokingly, because for some people who are dealing with real trauma,
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their history, their backstory, the word itself begins to feel heavy.
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It starts to feel permanent or almost like it is part of their identity.
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Am I always going to feel triggered?
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Almost if you admit that you have triggers, then you're signing up for a lifetime
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of being hijacked by them, which is not the case, but it can feel that way at times.
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And even that in and of itself is your body trying to communicate something
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to you. So, the word can quietly carry this undertone of hopelessness.
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Like, well, I guess this is just who I am now. I'm someone who gets triggered.
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And that can start to feel defeating before you have really even done the work.
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But the triggers are so big and so heavy. So, that concept of being triggered, I understand, is heavy.
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And then the part that I don't think people are going to talk about is seeing
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that word land differently on the other side of the room.
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When I'm working with somebody who has been the betrayer in a relationship,
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whether that's through infidelity, deception, addiction, or some other form
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of breaking trust, they will often then tell me privately, maybe in the one-on-one
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sessions, that even when they are accepting and they know that they've done
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the things that they're not proud of that have caused real damage to their partner,
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the relationship, they're not proud of.
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And they'll own it. This is talking about somebody that really will sit and own that.
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They feel the weight of it, but they struggle because at times what I hear is
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every difficult moment in the relationship is framed as, you're triggering me.
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Your behavior triggers me. That word triggers me. Because over time,
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that language can start to feel like an identity assignment to the betrayer
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rather than a description of the impact.
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It can feel like no matter what I do, I am the trigger.
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And that is not me minimizing impact at all.
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It's just trying to gently notice how language shapes experience.
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And that can be on both sides of the relationship.
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I am a betrayal trauma certified therapist. I even have a certification with
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my last name spelled incorrectly to prove it.
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But in our current climate, March, 2026, there is more victim blaming and victim
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shaming happening right now.
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I really want to assure you that the direction of today's episode is going to
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land more around the time it takes for change and how much of the content that's
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shared online, while it can be so incredibly helpful.
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It's important to note that it's coming typically from one person's human experience.
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And I think so many interesting factors are at play. That person may be putting
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out content in an effort to sell you something, to get likes and clicks and shares.
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Maybe it's even for their own validation, or it might even be coming from a
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place of healthy ego, something that person believes because of their lived
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experience, and they want to offer it up to the universe in hopes that it might
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be received and change lives for good.
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But with that comes the acceptance that there will be people who take one's
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words, their content, and see what that shows them.
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They're looking into their own mirror. If they don't like what they see,
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then they will attack the person putting out the content.
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So when I hear Nick's take, I don't just hear this hot take on accountability,
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but I also hear a reaction to how the word trigger has evolved culturally.
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And here's why I will own my projection, because I don't think anybody just
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wakes up one night and flips the word triggered to I choose,
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and then everything changes instantly.
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I would imagine there was a pretty decent runway that led up to that,
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where it just started to shift internally for him.
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I imagine there were stages. And this is where I cannot help but think of Rick
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Hansen's work in The Buddha's Brain.
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In another section that I really love, he talks about this path of awakening
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or path of enlightenment that just resonates with me.
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Before we get to that, he first borrows from the Buddha's idea of the first and second darts.
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And if you haven't heard this, I think this is also a powerful way to frame
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the things that we're going through in our day-to-day lives.
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The first dart is the unavoidable discomfort of essentially existing, being alive.
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If you live, if you love, and you do it long enough, you're going to experience a lot of emotions.
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Essentially, you're going to stub your toe when you're walking through the room in the dark.
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You're going to be misunderstood. You're going to feel disappointed,
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rejected, overlooked. That's the first dart.
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It's part of the human experience. It hurts, but it's natural. It's going to happen.
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The second dart is the reaction that we add to it. It's the dart that you throw at yourself.
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So you stub your toe and then right after the pain comes the anger.
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Who left the chair out? Or your partner seems kind of distant one evening.
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And then along with that already kind of a little bit of a natural drop in your
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stomach comes the old story.
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They don't care about me. I'm unwanted.
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That's the second dart. Most of our suffering doesn't come from the first dart.
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That's inevitable. Part of the human experience. Most of it comes from the second
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one, the one that we throw at ourselves.
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Then it gets even more layered because second darts often trigger more second
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darts. You feel angry, and then you feel guilty about being angry.
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So you feel hurt, and then you feel ashamed that you feel hurt.
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In relationships, these second darts are the things that start to create these
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vicious cycles in the relationship.
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My reaction triggers your reaction, which then triggers mine again.
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And before we know it, we're no longer dealing with whatever the problem was,
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the milk that didn't get bought or brought home.
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We're dealing with childhood wounds, attachment fears, threats to our identity
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and to our ego. And what I love about the way he frames it is that he describes
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these stages of growth along this path.
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Stage one is unconscious incompetence.
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Unconscious. You're not even aware of it, but you're pretty incompetent.
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And that's in a bless your heart kind of way.
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You're caught in these second dart reactions, but you don't even know it.
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Your partner forgets to bring milk home. You're just angry about the milk and
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you think that your anger makes perfect sense. Actually, you're not even thinking
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about it. You're just angry.
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Then he talks about stage two on this path of awakening. Stage two is called
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conscious incompetence.
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I'm aware now that I'm kind of being a jerk. I am conscious of my incompetence.
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Now you realize that your amygdala is hijacked, but you just can't stop yourself.
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You've already been pulled into the tractor beam and you're squirming.
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You know the reaction is probably bigger than the situation.
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Oh, actually, you know it is. but you cannot stop it. You're still grumbling.
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And what is so enlightening about framing things in these stages is that's the
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stage that is the hardest.
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It's the one where people want to quit. They want to give up because awareness
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is here. I'm conscious, but I am incompetent.
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That awareness does not mean that the job is done.
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It's now on your road to mastering whatever this situation is.
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Then there's stage three, conscious competence. I'm now aware and I kind of know what to do.
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The reaction is arising, and I'm aware of it, but I don't necessarily act on it.
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I built in the pause. I feel the irritation, but I can remind myself, you know what?
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They forgot the milk, but they do a lot.
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And you start recognizing nobody's perfect. I forget things.
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And then finally, there is the stage of enlightenment, awakening.
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He calls this one stage four or unconscious competence.
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I'm just doing and being. This is the way that I show up.
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This is my reaction. My reaction isn't anywhere near that unhealthy or emotionally immature way.
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They forget the milk and there isn't a pause in my body.
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I just say, hey, we can make something without it. I'm probably calming the
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person who now feels bad about forgetting the milk.
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Calm from a place with perspective, grounded. So when I hear Nick say he shifted
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from I was triggered to I choose, I can imagine that shift maybe happening somewhere along those stages.
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I imagine, and this is, again, my projection,
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a long stretch of not even knowing what he didn't know, then starting to realize
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he was hijacked, then realizing it over and over again and slowly starting to
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interrupt the pattern more often than not, and eventually becoming somebody
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whose default has changed.
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So that feels less like this single moment of revelation and more like a path,
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because I think so often people hear of stories like this and they make so much sense.
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But then when they can't just immediately flip a
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switch now they go back to the they're doing something wrong and i
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think that distinction is significant because if
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somebody listening hears this and says okay tonight starting
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tonight i choose differently i will never have triggers again i would imagine
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they're most likely setting themselves up for frustration and then eventually
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beating themselves up and then shame will creep in and then it almost has a
18:13
net negative effect growth is.
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I think tends to look more like stumbling through that stage two for quite a
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while before you get to stage three and you start to realize,
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I'm starting to do this more often than I'm not.
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And then you start to feel more steady, grounded.
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So there isn't any failure there. It just is. It's part of the work.
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And there's something really powerful about that shift.
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I have sat with so many clients who feel captive to their reactions. They are just reacting.
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And that's where I want to go back to the concept of being triggered.
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They say I was triggered and it almost carries this tone of inevitability.
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Like once the button was pushed, the outcome was pretty much predetermined.
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And there's a case to be made for that. When somebody says, no,
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I chose, that does interrupt helplessness.
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So that can feel like you are more empowered.
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It restores your agency, it brings you back into the driver's seat.
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So from a differentiation standpoint, the lens of David Schnarch and his work
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on differentiation, that is solid ground.
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I mean, differentiation is about self-confrontation. It's about saying,
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actually, everything's a me thing.
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Even my reactions are a me thing, because then if I go down the path of what
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was I supposed to do, well, that's actually a good question. Now the work begins.
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It's time to go to therapy. Maybe I need to look at some of the trauma-based
19:33
therapies, some EMDR or brain spotting or brain mapping, or I need to really
19:38
be serious about guided meditation. I need to learn to lower my overall resting
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heart rate so I have a longer runway until I hit my startle response.
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But that's mine. The work is mine. Not, well, if you wouldn't have done that,
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or you made me do it. And this is where I think it gets tricky.
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Not even, well, what I was supposed to do is my past. That's my childhood.
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Not my trauma forced me, but it is, I did do that thing,
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And that kind of ownership is deeply aligned with emotional maturity.
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But if even the way that I just framed
20:09
that last paragraph felt a little triggering, I hear you. I really do.
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Because our childhood, the things that we bring into the relationship,
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into who we are right now, it did come from somewhere.
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That's why I love origin stories so much. I mean, I want to be really clear with that.
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I do say that we are responsible for our behavior.
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Trauma can explain why we developed certain patterns, but it really doesn't
20:35
excuse the harm that we cause.
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And I'm talking about first to ourselves and then also to others.
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In that sense, I am really on board with what Nick's saying,
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especially for people who have used the word triggered as a shield or as a way
20:50
to avoid accountability.
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That kind of reframe, it can be life-changing, game-changing for sure,
20:57
because there's something sobering about looking at your life and saying, okay,
21:01
I did choose this, but I also understand why, why I got to this point where
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that is what I did. It just is.
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And now I can work with it. I can move away from it. I can understand it more. Now the work begins.
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It strips away this illusion that your behavior for the rest of your life is inevitable.
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But then I literally want to slow my roll a bit.
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This is probably where the listener's wife, the guy who wrote in,
21:28
thinks I'm going to start breaking this into pieces because I kind of am.
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The line that gives me pause is when he says that this means he doesn't have any triggers anymore.
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That's where I just gently want to lean back and think, okay,
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maybe we need to talk a little bit more about the nervous system science because
21:45
triggers in the sense of a conditioned nervous system response are real.
21:51
Your emotional reaction, some believe your emotions travel up to two and a half
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times faster than your logical response.
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And that's a survival mechanism. And some believe that it even travels faster
22:03
when you've been betrayed because you're hypersensitive and wired for vigilance.
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And now taking that, if you grew up in chaos, oh, your body learned to scan
22:13
for threats constantly.
22:15
If you experienced betrayal, your system learned to anticipate abandonment.
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If you wired your brain through addiction, certain cues are going to light up
22:24
those pathways of your brain.
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So then the initial surge of emotion, the adrenaline spike, the tightening in
22:30
your chest, the rush of shame or anger, that isn't something you consciously choose.
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That's your neurobiological response doing what it was trained to do.
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Where choice comes in is what happens next. And I think that that distinction matters a lot.
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I may not choose the first flicker of anger when I feel dismissed.
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And I don't choose the immediate jolt of fear if something touches an old wound.
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I can learn to choose whether I raise my voice or whether I withdraw or I choose
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whether then to control, lie, drink, or lash out.
23:05
There are times where I'm even going to choose to do that. And I'm going to
23:08
be honest with myself that that's what I'm doing. And that is a place of growth.
23:12
So if somebody says I was triggered, so I yelled, that's a place to begin.
23:17
But now the work begins because that still is a bit of an emotionally immature
23:22
response where the more adult decision response might be speaking up for myself,
23:27
or it might be a boundary.
23:29
If I'm noticing that I want to yell, then I'm going to leave.
23:32
Not an ultimatum. You need to not say that thing because I might yell,
23:36
but hey, if I'm noticing that you're saying the thing, I'm probably going to take off.
23:40
That's starting to become a little bit more in the emotional maturity camp.
23:44
But if somebody says I was triggered and slight reframe here,
23:48
I was triggered And you know what? Yeah, I was like, oh, I'm yelling.
23:52
At least we're starting to move into the territory of accountability.
23:55
The trigger explains the internal activation, and then the choice is defined by that behavior.
24:00
And the other reason I want to really be careful here is because of the people
24:03
who already over-own everything.
24:05
Part of the reason why I want this to go not just to the virtual couch audience,
24:08
but also my wonderful waking up the narcissism audience, is that a lot of the
24:11
people who listen to that podcast in particular are navigating some really emotionally
24:15
immature, even narcissistic relationships.
24:18
And I call them the pathologically kind.
24:21
They are kind to their detriment, the pathological piece to that kindness.
24:25
And I do not want somebody to eventually move away from this desire to be kind.
24:31
But when it is to your detriment, then it's important to really understand how
24:36
you show up in a situation.
24:37
Back to the boundary concept. Because if I'm starting to notice,
24:41
fill in the blank, then I need to do something.
24:44
The pathologically kind people, they're the ones who already assume everything
24:47
is their fault. So if they hear you choose every trauma response and there is
24:53
no nuance there, I worry it will quietly morph into shame.
24:57
And shame does not produce sustainable growth.
25:01
Shame produces rigidity. It produces suppression. It produces white knuckling through things.
25:06
What I try to help people do instead is hold more than one truth at once.
25:10
My past shaped my nervous system and I'm responsible for my behavior.
25:15
And I might not even know what to do next.
25:17
And I'm going to figure it out. My trauma is context.
25:22
And I still even hesitate even saying the next line of it's not my excuse.
25:27
My trauma is real. And now I can accept that I've had traumatic experiences.
25:34
And now what can I do? to help myself.
25:38
So that's where I would suspect that most people listening, and I probably agree
25:42
far more than we disagree, that I'm not interested in creating wiggle room for irresponsibility.
25:47
I'm more interested in people being able to get to the bottom of reclaiming their own agency.
25:53
And that's really scary, especially when you don't know what to do with it.
25:57
I don't want to flatten out the complexity of how the nervous system works in the process.
26:01
There's a big difference between saying triggers don't exist and then saying
26:05
triggers aren't going to run my life. They're still going to show up at times, but,
26:10
That's to be expected. They're not going to completely go away.
26:13
Because that first concept dismisses biology, then the second one,
26:17
I think, is more of it's going to build character or who I am.
26:20
So if the bet is whether I agree with the heart of the message, I do.
26:24
Adults eventually choose their behavior. Where I'll always add nuance is in
26:29
protecting the space, though, between activation and then action,
26:32
because that's where the growth lives.
26:34
That's where the differentiation happens. That's where we learn that we can
26:37
feel something intensely without being owned by it.
26:40
And we're not doing anything wrong if it still comes up in our body or even in our thoughts.
26:46
I want to stay right here for a second because this is the part that I was looking forward to.
26:51
I've got a little bullet point that I just now want to riff a little bit because
26:54
here's something that's been rattling around in my head as I've been working through all of this.
26:57
And I think it connects more than I initially realized. We're talking about
27:00
the word trigger and how it lands differently depending on who's hearing it
27:03
and how it can feel like a prison sentence for one person.
27:06
And it can also seem almost like a shield for another.
27:09
And then one of the important pieces here is how the language itself shapes the experience.
27:14
And I keep coming back to this idea that the words that we use aren't neutral.
27:18
And it's not from a you must get every word correct.
27:20
The semantics do matter because words can carry weight.
27:24
Words can carry history. They carry assumptions about who we are and what we
27:28
deserve. I'm currently mulling over a concept that has to do with consequence.
27:33
And I don't really like the word consequence. And I've been toying with the word outcome.
27:37
I like that one better because if we're going to talk about the power of language,
27:40
I think that's really what...
27:42
This episode has as a through line, then I need to take us somewhere that might
27:46
feel like a very, very sharp left turn.
27:49
But I promise you it's not. Because there's another word that I think does even
27:54
more damage than trigger.
27:55
And I think it's one that a lot of you carry, whether you're aware of it or
27:58
not. And that word is sin.
28:01
Sin and shame are ones that they're essentially best friends.
28:05
I think they hang out a lot together. They go to sleepovers.
28:08
I think they did some summer camps together, but stay with me because I know
28:11
that for some of you, that word is deeply meaningful in your faith tradition.
28:14
And I absolutely respect that.
28:16
For others, you may have already moved far away from it entirely.
28:19
And you're wondering, what are you trying to say, old man? Why are you bringing this up? Here's why.
28:24
Because even if you've intellectually moved past the concepts of sin,
28:28
I would bet that the feeling it installed in your programming is still running in the background.
28:34
You don't even know how to force quit it.
28:36
And this came up just a couple of days ago. I came across a quote from a guy
28:41
named Father Richard Rohr.
28:42
If you aren't familiar with him, Richard Rohr is a Franciscan priest.
28:46
He's not somebody that's poking at faith from the outside.
28:50
He's speaking from deep inside the tradition. And this is what he said,
28:54
and I just loved it. And I'm going to paraphrase parts of it,
28:56
but I really want to get to the heart of it.
28:57
He said that we got obsessed with the notion of sin as a moral category,
29:01
which then immediately puts you in this lane of judgment, reward, and punishment.
29:06
And that he said, if we had remained in what he calls the Jesus lane,
29:09
then we would have said that the issue is not sin, but it's brokenness.
29:14
And yes, I know that I say you're not broken, you're human, but in the context
29:19
of what we're going to talk about right now, I'm on board.
29:21
Again, he said that the issue is not sin, but brokenness and the need for healing.
29:25
And Richard Rohr is a big 12-step guy, so he connected that to 12-step work
29:29
saying that the, he says the spirit, that it's clearest, most simple work through
29:32
the 12-step program, which recognize that addiction is not a sin to be confessed,
29:37
but it's a healing to be requested.
29:39
And then he said something I think is so profound for anybody who has had the
29:43
opportunity to sit with another human being and try to help them untangle their
29:47
story, whether you're a therapist,
29:49
whether you're in a position of ecclesiastical authority, or just a friend, or a kid, or a coworker.
29:55
He said that if you've ever directed somebody, meaning walked with them spiritually,
29:59
or I would say therapeutically, or just in life, he said, you know that this
30:03
stuff is intergenerational.
30:04
It's not one person's sin.
30:06
Richard Rohr said, it's the sin of my culture. It's a sin of my nationality,
30:09
my family, my inheritance.
30:11
And he said that it is passed from parent to child, parent to child, parent to child.
30:17
And this is the part that landed so well for me that he said,
30:21
with that in mind, it doesn't deserve judgment.
30:24
It deserves sympathy and healing. Maybe you can see how that connects to everything
30:28
that we're talking about today.
30:29
When we started with Nick Pollard's reframe of Triggered to I Choose,
30:33
which is about reclaiming your agency. And then I said, yes,
30:37
also let's protect the space between activation and action because that's where the growth happens.
30:42
But now I want to zoom back even further, because what Rohr is pointing at is
30:45
the framework underneath the framework.
30:48
He's asking, what if the whole system that we've been using to evaluate our
30:52
behavior, this sin-based, confession-based, judgment-based model,
30:56
what if that system itself has a big role to play in the problem?
31:02
What if the very structure that's supposed to help us get better is one of the
31:06
things that is keeping us stuck? And I'll tell you why this matters to me clinically,
31:10
because in my office, I see this play out probably every day that I have people
31:14
sitting across from me who are doing the work.
31:16
They're showing up. They're trying to be better partners, better parents, better humans.
31:20
But then somewhere deep in their operating system, deep in their psyche,
31:24
there's this belief that says, but you're bad though.
31:28
You're still bad. Don't get too far away from that.
31:31
You still did the thing. You're still a sinner. And I'm convinced that belief
31:36
doesn't produce change.
31:38
It does produce shame.
31:41
And shame doesn't motivate lasting growth. Shame produces rigid,
31:46
black and white, all or nothing thinking.
31:48
Shame produces hiding. It produces white knuckling through addiction.
31:52
It produces people performing recovery instead of actually healing.
31:57
So where does shame get installed? Where does the shame come from?
32:01
And I think this is where it gets really fascinating and honestly, also heartbreaking.
32:06
Because I don't think it started necessarily in a church. I think it started
32:09
in a kitchen or a living room or a car ride home from school.
32:13
You're four years old. You're doing what four-year-olds do. You're moving through
32:16
the world impulsively, curiously, clumsily.
32:19
Let's just say you knock something over or you say something that you were told
32:22
not to say or it's taken as very rude.
32:25
Or you do something that your parent literally told you not to do,
32:28
even though you honestly don't fully understand why you were told not to do it.
32:34
Again, because you're four, but now your parent's upset.
32:38
And they, whether they recognize this or not, need something from you.
32:41
They need to see that you understand that what you did was wrong.
32:45
So they need the apology. They need the face. They need you to look sad or sorry
32:50
or scared because, and I say this with compassion for the parent too,
32:54
because they're running their own inherited programming.
32:57
Because if you don't look like you feel bad enough, then you obviously don't
33:01
understand how bad the thing that you did is. And if you don't understand that,
33:05
then what does that say about them as a parent?
33:08
If my kid hasn't even shown remorse, are they even doing their job as a parent?
33:12
Eventually the kid performs. The kid learns to read the room.
33:16
The kid figures out what expression will make the scary moment stop.
33:20
What expression will allow me to come out of my room sooner?
33:23
What expression will then allow me to stay home because I'm showing that I am sick?
33:29
And here's where the challenge is, I'll say the damage can start to happen.
33:33
And it's so subtle that nobody even notices.
33:36
A four-year-old doesn't have
33:38
the cognitive architecture to separate I did a bad thing from I am bad.
33:43
So those two concepts are fused. They're one thing. And in that moment,
33:48
shame gets installed. Not guilt.
33:51
Guilt, which I could still poke holes in, says, I did something that I want to repair.
33:55
Notice I don't even want to say I did something wrong or bad,
33:57
but I need to repair that. not my finest moment.
34:00
Shame says, I am bad. I am fundamentally broken. And that shame becomes the operating system.
34:07
So then what happens? The kid grows up and maybe they do walk into a church
34:11
and somebody tells them, you're a sinner.
34:13
And it actually doesn't feel that new. It actually feels familiar.
34:17
It confirms what they believed about themselves ever since they were small.
34:20
Of course, I'm a sinner. Yeah, I need to confess.
34:23
There are plenty of things wrong with me. And I need somebody to tell me that I'm okay.
34:28
I need somebody to tell me that that feeling or that emotion is the right one.
34:32
I need to perform well. I need to hang my head. I need to be very performative
34:37
and transactional so that then I can get what I want, which what I want might
34:40
just be the attaboy champ.
34:42
You look like you really are repentant. You look like you're really taking this seriously.
34:47
So, I learned to perform. And I also learned at the same time,
34:51
I'm broken and something's wrong with me.
34:53
And that whole system then reinforces the wound instead of healing it.
34:57
And I don't think that's what the concepts around religion were there for, to make you feel worse.
35:02
I think that's what Richard Rohr is getting at when he says,
35:05
this is intergenerational. It's not one person's sin. It's a pattern. It's inherited.
35:10
The parent who needed you to perform remorse, well, they learned that from their parent.
35:14
Who learned it from theirs? And somewhere along the way, we built entire institutions
35:18
around the idea that this cycle of shame and confession and judgment was the path to healing.
35:23
And here's Richard Rohr from the inside, inside of one of those institutions
35:28
saying, I don't think that's it.
35:30
I think the path is recognizing brokenness and requesting healing,
35:35
not performing penance, not trying to prove you're sorry enough. It's healing.
35:41
I've worked with so many people who have done things that they're not very proud
35:46
of, things that they never anticipated they would do.
35:49
And when that is brought from the shadows out into the light,
35:53
which I think needs to be a time of healing.
35:56
It takes a tremendous amount of courage for a person to do that.
35:59
Some of my favorite work is when somebody really trusts me and opens up and says, here it all is.
36:06
And then I get to respond and say, man, thank you. I can't imagine how heavy
36:10
that was to carry all of that.
36:12
But now they need to go show someone else, hey, I did this thing.
36:17
And that person now is in charge of their, in essence, their outward looking salvation.
36:24
Now I'm handing this important emotional thing over to somebody who doesn't
36:30
know what it feels like to be me. And I'm saying, do you think I'm okay?
36:34
But you are okay. What if that is the programming that the goal was to know
36:39
that you're going to go through life and do things?
36:41
And let's go full acceptance and commitment therapy here. This is why I stress
36:45
that you're the only version of you walking the face of the earth.
36:48
Going through life for the very first time, and you did the things you did because you did them.
36:52
And over time, you were telling yourself all kinds of stories of why you did them.
36:56
But at some point, it's important to accept that those are the things I did,
37:01
because now I can start to heal.
37:03
Because what is shame? When I look at it clinically, shame is cognitive fusion
37:08
at its most destructive.
37:10
It's fusing to a thought, and we need to learn to change the relationship with our thoughts. And,
37:17
It's so destructive to fuse to shame. It's not, I'm having the thought that
37:21
I messed up. It's, oh, I messed up.
37:23
And if I step back from that, when somebody says, I'm mad, honestly, though, I'm me.
37:29
And I'm noticing I'm mad because now I can really look at what am I mad about?
37:33
What's the story my brain's telling me?
37:35
The thought and the self become one thing.
37:39
And what does the traditional sin framework ask you to do? It asks you to walk
37:43
into a room and declare that you are a sinner.
37:45
It asks you to fuse with the most painful story that you can tell about yourself.
37:49
And then it tells you that doing so is the path to freedom, but I got to do
37:53
it in the right way so that somebody else will tell me that I'm okay.
37:57
But from where I sit, that's not freedom.
37:59
Freedom is defusing. Freedom is being able to notice the thought.
38:03
I'm telling myself the unbroken thought or the I did bad or I did the thing
38:08
and hold it with some space.
38:11
View it in the context of this moment. to say, I'm having the thought that something is wrong with me.
38:15
And I noticed that that thought has been with me since I was very small.
38:18
And it was given to me by people who were carrying their own version of it. Bless their heart.
38:22
That's not avoiding responsibility. That's actually deeper responsibility because
38:27
now you're not just owning the behavior, you're owning the pattern.
38:31
And that's where you can begin to stop the pattern and have an impact that will
38:37
be generational moving forward. You're saying, you're not.
38:41
I am going to be the courageous one, the brave one, to see where this came from.
38:44
And now I'm going to choose to do something different with it.
38:47
And that brings us full circle, doesn't it? Nick Pollard said at the beginning, I choose.
38:52
And I said, yeah, let's also take a look at the nervous system that fires before the choice arrives.
38:56
Now, Roar is adding another layer. What if the framework you've been using to
39:00
evaluate your choice is good or bad, righteous or sinful?
39:03
What if that framework itself needs the healing?
39:05
What if the most important choice you make isn't I choose to do the right thing,
39:09
but I choose to stop believing that I'm fundamentally wrong,
39:12
that I'm broken or that something's wrong with me.
39:15
Because I think that's where real change lives, not in performing better,
39:19
not in confessing more or harder, not in white knuckling your way through one
39:24
more day of choosing right over wrong, but in slowly.
39:28
Imperfectly, stumblingly updating your operating system.
39:33
Moving from I am bad to I'm actually a human being who is going through life
39:38
for the very first time, who is doing my best with the programming that I was
39:41
given, and I can actually look for the upgrades.
39:45
I'm allowed to request healing instead of judgment.
39:49
And if you're listening to this and something in you just exhaled a little bit,
39:53
that is not letting you off the hook. It's not weakness.
39:57
That's your nervous system recognizing something resonated, something felt a
40:01
little more true. What if you never were the problem?
40:05
What if you were always the person carrying the problem? And the difference
40:09
between those two things? What if that's everything?
40:13
Now, I need to give you a little bit of a warning here. I didn't know if this would actually fit.
40:17
I had all these pieces that I thought might be interchangeable,
40:21
but I need you to grab a yoga mat,
40:23
maybe a clip-on ponytail for those who don't have one, maybe light some incense
40:28
because I'm about to go a little zen on you, but stay with me here because I
40:31
promise this is going to land, I hope.
40:34
Tara Brock is a psychologist, a teacher, and she wrote a book called Radical
40:39
Acceptance that I've gone back to a couple of times, and lo and behold,
40:42
it's a different book each time. I don't know how people do that.
40:44
That's a joke, but it changes when I am in a different headspace.
40:49
There's a quote that she gives that I shared a couple of hundred episodes ago
40:53
that it's interesting because it even feels different now.
40:57
She draws this contrast that I think puts a nice bow on everything that we've been talking about.
41:01
She talks about the concept of the Buddha's teaching that this human birth,
41:07
just being here, just being alive is a gift.
41:10
And it's not because you have earned it. not because you've proved yourself
41:14
worthy of it, but because it is, because you were born.
41:18
And it gives you now the opportunity to recognize something that was already there from the start.
41:23
And I started, because this is Tara's quote from a place of Buddhism,
41:27
but there's a Christian version of this too, so hang on.
41:30
But that love and that awareness are your true nature.
41:34
And spiritual awakening in that tradition isn't about fixing what's broken,
41:39
It's about recognizing what was never actually broken in the first place.
41:42
It's recognizing your essential goodness, your natural wisdom,
41:45
your natural compassion that are in there and you need to experience life to unlock those things.
41:52
Here's why I think this matters. And here's where I think Tara Brock's quote
41:55
is something I can read over and over again, because she contrasts that view
42:00
with what she calls the guiding myth of Western culture.
42:03
It's just deeply baked into our psyche. And that's the story of Adam and Eve.
42:07
And she says, we might forget how powerful it is because it's so familiar. It's so worn.
42:12
The message of original sin, she says, is unequivocal because of our basically
42:17
flawed nature, we don't deserve to be happy. We don't deserve to be loved.
42:21
We don't deserve to be at ease with life because we're outcasts.
42:24
And if we want to get back to the garden, now we have to redeem ourselves.
42:28
We have to overcome our flaws by controlling, controlling our bodies,
42:32
our emotions, our surroundings, other people.
42:35
And we have to work and strive tirelessly, acquiring, consuming,
42:39
achieving, overcommitting, rushing in this never-ending quest to prove ourselves
42:43
once and for all that we are worthy.
42:45
And I would love for you to sit with that for a second.
42:48
Because what does it sound like that she just described? I think she describes
42:52
the internal world of most every single person that I've sat across from in
42:56
therapy, that they feel like they're just running on this treadmill or in a hamster wheel,
43:00
that constant low-grade hum of, okay, I still don't feel good.
43:05
Maybe it'll be after I do this thing or this thing or this thing.
43:08
I'm a human doing, not a human being. The feeling that if I just work harder,
43:13
if I just achieve a little bit more, if I can control myself a little better,
43:17
then maybe, maybe I'll deserve to feel okay.
43:20
And it's also what keeps us comparing ourselves to others.
43:23
Because if I need to earn my way back somewhere, then I need to certainly make
43:28
sure that I'm doing it better than somebody else, because probably the last
43:31
person in line is not going to make it to the buffet.
43:34
But what Brock is saying is that's not a personal failing. That's a cultural operating system.
43:40
It's a myth that got installed so early and deeply that most of us don't even
43:43
recognize it as a story. It just is. It's our baseline. It's.
43:48
We think that's just what life is, this endless project of earning your way
43:51
back from some original deficit.
43:54
Now, I want to connect that back to everything that we've talked about today.
43:57
Because we started with Nick Pollard's reframe I chose, which is about agency.
44:01
Then we talked about the nervous system and honoring the space between activation and action.
44:08
And we throw some Richard Rohr in there and he says, what if the whole sin framework
44:12
might actually be the problem? and that what looks like personal moral failure
44:16
is actually intergenerational trauma or brokenness and that deserves healing, not judgment.
44:23
And now, Tara Brach is pulling the lens all the way back and saying,
44:27
what if the deepest wound isn't even the specific thing that you did or the
44:31
specific thing that was done to you?
44:33
What if the very deepest wound is this belief baked into the very foundation
44:37
of our culture that you are fundamentally not okay?
44:40
That you arrived here already in debt, already exiled, already needing to earn
44:45
your way back. Because if that's the water that you've been swimming in your
44:47
entire life, and I think for most of us it is, then of course you feel like
44:52
you're never doing enough.
44:53
Of course, you feel shame when you fall short.
44:56
Of course, you perform remorse for things that may not even require it.
45:01
You've been running the original sin operating system since before you could even walk or think.
45:07
And every time that somebody told you to try harder, to be better,
45:10
to do more, to confess more, and to do it more sincerely, own it more fully,
45:16
they didn't know it, but they weren't helping you heal. They were reinforcing the code.
45:21
And what both Roar and Brock are saying from completely different traditions,
45:25
one from inside Christianity, one from Buddhism, is that the code itself is actually wrong.
45:31
You didn't arrive broken, you arrived whole. You had everything you need.
45:35
The power of God is within you, or you were born with your Buddha nature.
45:39
And the work isn't to fix yourself. The work is to slowly, gently,
45:44
imperfectly stop believing the story that says you were never okay to begin
45:48
with, and then you have to earn it.
45:49
And I can already hear some of you thinking, okay, apparently though,
45:53
does that mean that nothing is my responsibilities?
45:55
I mean, I just declare myself good and I go do whatever I want.
45:58
What I'm saying though is that sustainable change, real growth,
46:01
genuine accountability, the kind that actually lasts and doesn't just produce
46:04
these white knuckling and performance type of reactions,
46:09
that kind of growth happens best when it starts from a foundation of worth,
46:14
not from a foundation of deficit.
46:16
You cannot hate yourself into becoming a better person. You may be able to scare
46:21
yourself into real short-term compliance.
46:23
You may be able to shame yourself into performing recovery for a little bit,
46:28
but lasting transformation, that is going to require believing,
46:33
even just a little, that you're worth the effort.
46:35
And I don't need somebody else to tell me that I am.
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It's not because you have to earn it, but it's because you're here right now.
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And I want to double down for my Christian listeners, because I'm there a lot.
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I worry that you may be thinking what I'm describing is somehow outside of the
46:52
faith, but I think it's actually at the very center of it.
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I did a little bit of digging. You can find this in Jesus' own words.
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One example, good old Luke 17.
47:00
You got these Pharisees, they come to Jesus and they say, hey,
47:04
when is the kingdom of God coming? Can you remind us again about this?
47:07
They're expecting him to describe some grand external event with an army and
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a government and a pageantry, everyone will be aware.
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And Jesus says something that I think is so profound.
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He says, so the kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed.
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People won't say, look, here it is, or there it is.
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And then depending on your translation, both the ones I found are pretty good.
47:28
He says, either the kingdom of God is actually within you.
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Well, that sounds a little bit similar to our Buddhist friends who say that
47:34
you have everything you need. It's already there.
47:38
Or another translation says, the kingdom of God is in your midst.
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And yes, scholars have debated that translation for centuries within you,
47:47
among you, in your midst.
47:49
To me, either way, what Jesus is not saying is the kingdom of God is out there
47:56
somewhere and you have to earn your way back.
47:59
He's saying, oh, it is here. It's in you.
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It's not a destination you arrive at after enough confession and penance and
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performative events to prove yourself.
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It's a reality that's already present if you have the eyes to see it.
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And I think that's just one example. I could take you through Paul's letters
48:14
or the Psalms or Jesus sitting at the table with tax collectors and sinners
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telling the Pharisees that he desires mercy, not even necessarily sacrifice.
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There's thread after thread after thread in scripture that points to inherent
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worth, to the divine already dwelling within you, to healing over judgment.
48:29
And if that's a rabbit hole that you want to go down, oh, I encourage it.
48:33
Go down it. Because I think what you'll find might surprise you.
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I think you'll find that the person that your faith is named after was far more
48:41
interested in compassion than keeping the score.
48:44
Far more interested in letting everyone eat at the table than kicking people out of the room.
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So, whether you're hearing this from Richard Rohr's perspective inside of the
48:52
Christian tradition, or from Brock's Buddhist lens, or even the ACT framework
48:55
that I'm bringing to my clinical work, or from the very words of Jesus himself,
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I think the thread's the same.
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The invitation isn't to try harder, it isn't to confess more,
49:05
it isn't to earn your way back from some big deficit, and it's not to say to
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someone else, tell me when I am okay.
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The invitation is to stop believing the story that says you were never enough to begin with.
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Deep breath. Okay. So what did we learn today?
49:20
Let's bring this all the way back to where we started because a listener sent
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me an email and he told me that his wife had a bet about whether I'd agree with
49:26
a video from Nick Pollard about triggers and choice.
49:29
And he said he thought we'd be on the same page. And his wife thought that I
49:31
would break it into a million pieces so that she could wiggle her way out of
49:34
whether or not they agreed.
49:35
And I forget now who even had to pay who and what.
49:38
And I love that. I love that because that's exactly how this works.
49:42
Somebody sends me a question. I sit with it. It becomes my muse.
49:45
Best word I can think of. It becomes the thing that I turn over and over in my head.
49:48
And then one idea will connect to another. And before you know it,
49:51
we've gone from a video about triggers to childhood shame, to a Franciscan priest,
49:56
to the Buddha, to Tara Brach, to the words of Jesus at dinner with a bunch of outcasts.
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And I did not plan all of that to go down. I didn't sit down and think,
50:06
I think today I'll connect Nick Pollard to the book of Matthew.
50:09
But that's what happens when you follow a thread honestly and
50:12
you're not doing it wrong it takes you somewhere and here's
50:16
what I know about right now about this moment some of you are going to walk
50:21
away from this episode and it's going to land exactly the way you needed it
50:24
to something here is going to give you permission to set down a weight you've
50:28
been carrying for a long time and you might not even be able to name that weight
50:31
yet but something's gonna feel a little lighter and I really hope that for you I do.
50:37
Some of you are going to go in a completely different direction with it.
50:39
You're going to hear what I said about sin and think I've gone off the deep end.
50:42
You're going to hear the quotes around Tara Brock's section and think,
50:44
okay, he's lost his Christian listeners.
50:46
Or you're going to hear the scripture section and think, oh,
50:49
he's cherry picking verses to support his agenda.
50:51
And some of you are going to make assumptions about what I believe or what I
50:55
meant or what my intentions are.
50:56
And those assumptions are going to tell you more about your own mirror than they tell you about me.
51:02
And that's okay. And I mean that. There's no sarcasm there.
51:05
That is genuinely wonderful because that's exactly what's supposed to happen.
51:10
That's part of the human experience.
51:11
That's the whole point of putting something out into the world.
51:14
You don't get to control how it lands.
51:16
You can't manage every interpretation. And sometimes that's scary.
51:20
And it's the same within your relationship with your partner, with your kids.
51:25
You offer it and then people do with it what they're going to do with it.
51:28
And some of them will love it and some of them will hate it.
51:31
And most of them will take a little piece of it that was meant for them and leave the rest.
51:35
And that's the way it works. And I'll be honest, I'm at a place in my career
51:39
that I'm very grateful for where I'm okay with that.
51:43
I've sat across thousands of people now and I've heard stories that would break
51:46
your heart and ones that would restore your faith in humanity,
51:49
sometimes in the same session from the same person.
51:51
And one of the things I've learned from all of it is that the things worth saying
51:55
are usually the things that make you a little nervous to say.
51:58
Because I know that talking about sin and shame and scripture and Buddhism and
52:02
triggers and betrayal all in the same episode is going to push some buttons.
52:07
And I also know that somewhere out there, someone needed to hear exactly this
52:10
combination of ideas, maybe even in this order.
52:12
And if that's you, then this episode was for you. So to the listener who sent
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the email, thank you. I don't know if you won or lost.
52:20
Thanks for the question. Thanks for the bet with your wife. And I hope you feel
52:24
like you both won something today, even if it wasn't what you expected to win,
52:26
because your question didn't just get answered.
52:28
It became the seed that grew into something I didn't see coming and that's beautiful.
52:32
And everybody else, I am definitely one of those people who wants to put things
52:35
out into the universe and hopes that it might do a little good.
52:37
That's it. That's the whole mission statement.
52:39
Yeah, sure. Click on things and buy things if I'm offering them. That'd be great.
52:44
But I definitely don't think I have all the answers and I'm not trying to tell you what to believe.
52:46
I'm just a therapist with a microphone and a bag of Ghirardelli caramels who
52:50
followed up a thought and then ended up somewhere here.
52:54
If any part of this episode gave you even one moment of feeling like maybe just
52:57
maybe you aren't as broken as you thought you were, then I think we did the job.
53:02
Taking us out per usual. The wonderful, the talented Aurora Florence with her
53:04
song. It's wonderful because I genuinely think it is whatever it is, fill in the blank.
53:09
I hope you have an amazing week.
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We'll see you next time on the virtual couch and waking up next week.