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A
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B
Hi Dan. It's so good to be here.
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A
Sarah, you write what is what you call Bitter scroll on Substack. You co host the podcast that's the Spirit. I think both of those are new ventures since you were last on to talk about orphaned believers. Your your previous book.
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B
Yeah, yeah, I think so. Well, that's the Spirit. Definitely is. Bitter Scroll. I was probably poking around substack in 2023, but it's kind of been a couple year thing.
- [02:33]
A
Yeah, yeah. So we'll have a link to those as well as your previous appearance on the show. Or maybe appearances. I can't remember. One of them might have been a patron thing. I start to lose track after a while.
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B
Totally.
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A
But before we get into any substance here about your new book Nervous Systems, which should be out by the time this airs. If not, it'll be right around this time and you can Follow that Amazon link or whatever link we put in the notes to pre order it or buy it. The book is called Nervous Systems and just completely divorced from the actual content of the book. I already texted you this. I talked about it with Jaffrey, my wife. What a fucking great title. Come on, Sarah.
- [03:20]
B
Thanks, Dan. I love it too. Gosh, I don't know about the rest of it. The rest we can take or leave, but I'm pretty into the title.
- [03:27]
A
I'll ask you about the actual thoughts contained in the book, but yeah, like the zeitgeisty of nervous system language, which is. If we looked at the Google search trends, I'm sure it is at its absolute peak right now. But then the double meaning, the various systems. We're going to talk about what you mean by that. Just. Just kudos. Hats off. Way to go.
- [03:50]
B
I couldn't believe that no one had used the name. I felt so confused that nobody had used the name before. Like, I was like, looked it up and there's some kind of. There's one book that's about something. There's something academic that uses it from a couple years ago. But I was shocked, so I thought, let's grab it. Yeah, let's go.
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A
You know what? Stake that claim.
- [04:09]
B
Yep.
- [04:09]
A
Plant that flag. So you do talk about basically three. Three systems that can become nervous or anxious. You talk about our own bodies, the church body, which, by which I think you mean both sort of like individual congregations, but also sort of like the American church, and then the body politic. So in our sort of civic discourse. And then you propose a solution to all three of those areas of anxiousness and nervousness, which you. I think you're grabbing Benedictine language here, and you call it holy indifference. Did I get all that right?
- [04:48]
B
Mm, Jesuit. There is some Benedictine sprinkled in, but it's Jesuit indifference.
- [04:54]
A
Yeah, okay. Jesuit, holy indifference. So that's the basic structure. We're gonna talk a little bit about each of those three systems that can become nervous, and we'll talk about this solution. And I'm gonna bring in a little bit of my own kind of psychology and some of the research as we go. And of course, I'll be asking you about what you wrote about and how you think about this stuff. So I guess we can just start with the body. One thing that I am really interested in, a topic that you use here is the intergenerational transmission of anxiety, like from parent to child. And probably the way that I would think that most listeners might contextualize this best is People have been. There's been this key word of generational trauma, which in the psychological literature, intergenerational trauma is actually. The idea is that it's passing down right, from generation to the next generation. And there's been a bunch of research about this with, like, refugees with people who have fled war zones, adults with PTSD having children, and how does that affect subsequent generations of a family, for instance? So that's been in the water, but usually specifically about trauma, and you're sort of saying, well, we can also talk about it, like, maybe one click back, which is just anxiety, which could include trauma and symptoms of ptsd, but doesn't necessarily have to be war and refugees and, you know, all these kind of things. Although that does also come back. Right.
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B
Yeah. Yes. I was. You know, honestly, Dan, I was resistant to talk about it a little bit because, I mean, so, you know, you know, my dad, Tom, he's famous. He's unforgettable if you've met him. And, you know, my dad is very stereotypically anxious in a way that almost feels like a trope. You know, my dad is Jewish. My dad seems kind of like Larry David or like George Costanza. Like, he just seems almost like a character in how he presents. I mean, it's. He's, like, hilarious and funny and nervous and kind of like a character. Right. I think that I didn't love. I didn't love the kind of let's laugh at Jewish anxiety kind of thing. So I wanted to be careful when I talked about it, that I didn't reinforce something. But the fact is, it is very much true that my dad is a certain way and my family is a certain way, and we are all anxious and we are Jewish. And so I just wondered how I could look at that in a little bit of a broader way. And so I just, in my very armchair way, looked a little bit into epigenetics, this idea that shows that the environment, experiences in childhood can then kind of trickle down and kind of be expressed genetically or in genes. There's a little bit of research into how Holocaust survivors may kind of then generations down past some trauma. There was this study in 2015 that showed that Holocaust, I think Scientific American published it, that showed how folks that descend from people in the Holocaust have different stress hormones than peers. And so I just began to ask questions, thinking back in more of. Maybe more of like a literary way, like, oh, let my people go. The Israelites thinking about the Jewish people, thinking about the Holocaust, thinking about my family. We just had this weinrahb Family call. And I have this little nervous system kind of banner behind me that folks maybe could see if they were watching. The book's called Nervous Systems. I talked about it, and my whole family was like that. How did you. That book is exactly expressing our experience. So there is something there. There is something there that I couldn't not pay attention to, that I see in myself. And as a parent, I can now see in my kid. And that felt worthy of exploring, I guess.
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A
Yeah. And I want to hear kind of more Flesh on the Bone from your perspective, sort of narratively. But I thought that this would be one place that I could kind of pop in here with a little bit of research coming from. Coming from my training and angles and stuff. So briefly, I've identified at least three ways in which transmission of anxiety can occur across generations, from parent to child and even grandparent, depending on the further we get. So the first is like straight up genes. So there is some genetic heritability to anxiety, and it's not a small amount. So studies seem to give this sort of 30 to 50% of the variance in anxiety disorders. So let's say you have a thousand adults, and you also know about their parents and whether their parents had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder or not. Let's say you have a good set of data from many clinics where everybody gets a full evaluation, something like that, where you have a decent sense. 30 to 50% of the variance in whether person A ever gets diagnosed with an anxiety disorder can be determined by whether or not their parents did.
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B
Wow.
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A
So across a population, that's a very significant effect. Right. So not, you know, something like approaching half. So that's just. There's no single gene. There's hundreds, maybe thousands of genes that interact with this stuff. But there is just straight up, genetically, you are more or less likely to deal with anxiety no matter what anybody does or says in front of you. Just from your genes. I wanted to. For each of these three things, I want to leave a little space for you to respond or make any connections there. I mean, you've already talked about your dad.
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B
I mean, here's my response. Hell, yes, that's my response.
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A
What else is there to say? Yeah, yeah, okay. Clearly, now that. And that's a fairly straightforward finding that you look at studies, you do the math. Now, epigenetics, which you've talked about, this is the next level Epigenetics refers to. These are not mutations or changes in the genes themselves. But just because you have a bunch of genes as an individual person, the things that happen to us in our life, especially early life, affect which genes we have that may or may not end up getting expressed. So not every gene we have ends up getting sort of turned on or activated. Many of them do no matter what, but some of them don't. And this is where the trauma, chronic stress, this kind of stuff has shown up in the research. And there are at least three mechanisms that have been identified. This is really not my field, but there's DNA methylation, which is about this sort of. If you imagine it like an electrical wire, so you have the metal wiring and then you have the rubber cat casing around the wiring. Methylation is like how thick is that casing? Basically? And I don't, I can't tell you exactly why that matters, but that matters for which genes get expressed. There's also histone modification and micrornas. I can't tell you anything about those two. I just know buzzwords for them. So, but basically there's animal studies. So they have rats where they have. Certain rats get much less maternal licking and grooming. So that's the rat version of like good attachment, you know, parenting type stuff. Right. And then they take those mice that got that low, they compare them to the mice with high. And even if a different mouse raises them, actually raises them as a kid, simply the, those differences in how much maternal licking and grooming they got, they then pass on more or less of those traits to their kids. So just how they're, how their parents acted with them as kids changes which genes get expressed and then that in turn changes which get passed down. So that's interesting.
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B
So interesting.
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A
Anything there as a person?
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B
Yeah, I mean, this is something I think I write about in the book. Like, I am certain that I was worried over in the womb by my dad. And I know that as a baby before I was able to express words or emotions I was worried over. So I think some of us are worried over from before the, before we're actually interacting or really having any back and forth exchange. So that, that's interesting. That resonates.
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A
Now epigenetics doesn't, and epigenetics does not stop once you're born. That continues into our life and our family life and family culture. So the second and the third kind of bleed together. And that third one is like modeling. So what do we see from our parents and other caregivers that basically families, we teach each other what to fear, how to respond to threats, whether and when safety is possible. And just think about like what children pick up on. You know, anybody who has kids knows this. You've got two kids, Sarah. I've got two kids. And like, the stuff that they pick up, I mean, they just. They pick up on way more than they could articulate. And so. And that also has epigenetic effects, to be clear, that that kind of chronic stress or whatever would affect how DNA is methylated and therefore how genes are turned on or off. And really, you learn these things, like I talk about it with my. With my clients, something like your genesis, plus whatever happens to you in the first eight to 10 years of your life, ish. I call that the hand you've been dealt. And then from there on, you start to have more agency. You learn new things. You might go to therapy. You might learn spiritual practices like we're going to talk about. You might just learn good conversational, relational repair tactics that you pick up somewhere. You learn new skills, and then you can use those to sort of fill in the gaps of whatever you were given. But, like, you do start with these very basic models around when should I be anxious? What do I do when I'm anxious? Where is safe? Who is safe? And I know you talk about these kinds of examples that you got. What would be good for us to hear for context, like either from your personal life or other stories that you kind of tell in the book around those models. And we're not yet talking about the church. We're more talking about, you know, the individual person in the context of their family system.
- [15:11]
B
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, as you were talking about that kind of third piece, by the way, I was reflecting on something I heard Kurt Thompson talked about about how we can. There is some agency. And it is a little bit of a relief to know that we can, through behaviors and different choices, sort of redirect or. I don't know if modify is the right word when we're talking about genes, but there are things that we can do to kind of change the course of how we manage anxiety. It's not like we're sort of stuck. It's not a victim thing, which I thought was. I think is important to say as well, which is. Which is something I've been working on. So. Yeah, but I mean, gosh, personally? Yeah, I mean, my. I think the. The example that I would give is certainly around anxiety of the body, illness, anxiety. You know, my dad had a dictionary, like a medical dictionary on the shelf in the guest room way before we could Google stuff. So he, as a very like you know, as a very young kid, came to me and said I was maybe 10. Maybe I was eight or 10, he said. I was so worried. My body was shaking everywhere, and I thought I had Lou Gehrig's disease. And I had to go and get all these. He was, like, confessing a very freaky thing. So I was hearing sort of like medical anxiety. Confessed and seeing his actions and then the immense relief he would have after. Let's go out to dinner. I don't have Huntington's disease. I mean, I'm being extreme, but there were lots of little things like that.
- [16:35]
A
If you had to guess how many total disorders like your dad went through this cycle with, where he got anxious, got the thing. Okay, a relief. And then we'll go celebrate. Like, what's. What's the rough number?
- [16:49]
B
Six to six to six to eight big ones. But then my mom, maybe she had a breast lump. Does she have cancer? She doesn't. Let's. We're okay. So it wasn't. And it was, of course, me. Do I have seasonal allergies? Let's go to the doctor for everything. So he was modeling it in his parenting, in his husband, his spousing or partnering, and then in himself. So together combined, there were a shit ton.
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A
There's one of those a year or more, you know, the.
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B
Oh, maybe every. Every quarterly. Quarterly little, little earthquake cycle. Yeah, so. Yeah, totally. So for. So for me, I mean, health anxiety was certainly transferred. And so I'm very. I have a strong mind, body connection. So I talk in the book about how my dad went through these times where he'd have these muscle spasms and shake, and then that would start happening to me where I. This is maybe 10 years ago, maybe 15, had a series of tests. I just thought, is there something going on? I mean, it was really. It was really scary. Like, if somebody says, my heart's racing, I can feel my heart get faster. Some of us just have that kind of strong connection. And so I. I know that it's very much because of what was modeled and who knows what the cocktail was of genetics versus what I was learned, learned behavior or whatever. But that was a big part of my life. And so I think for me, health anxiety can. I mean, in the last five or 10 years, I've done a ton of work, and I feel like I'm at a pretty good place. But that's sort of my flavor.
- [18:22]
A
Something that comes up a lot with OCD clients. And this is a tool that I will often use. And I know you talk about we'll probably get into a little religious scrupulosity, which is like religious OCD as we talk about the church. But I share this image and I'll have a client sort of understand the image and then apply it to their own personal OCD cycles. But I think it applies maybe just in a less strict way to anxiety cycles like you're describing, because OCD is generally thought of as the thoughts themselves are distinct from what I call organic anxious thoughts. But the way that the body handles it is very similar to other anxiety disorders. And so it's often grouped together for that reason and maybe other reasons. So with that OCD cycle, it's like, okay, you have the intrusive thought which then causes this sensation, which then leads to this particular ritual, which then leads to temporary relief before the cycle starts over again. And the thing here is like you're Talking about maybe 30 times over 10, 12 years growing up this like quarterly, like medical anxiety cycle. And it's not exactly the.
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B
And that's what was expressed, Dan. I mean, who knows?
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A
Those are the overt ones that we actually talked about in family, right?
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B
Exactly.
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A
So that idea though, of like, okay, it starts with a fear, you know, we could fill it in and then, okay, the ritual. And that leads to this feeling of like completely uncontrollable anxiety. Which is why, as you said, we go to the doctor for everything. Because we don't have the capacity, we don't have the capacity to just like hold a little bit of uncertainty here or maybe other families could hold a bit more or something. So then we go, and that's the ritual again. I'm not saying this is ocd, I'm just saying it maps similarly and then that gives us the reassurance and then we celebrate until the next scare. Now with ocd, that becomes a vicious cycle that actually perpetuates the next intrusive thought. I'm not making that claim here, just to be very clear to the other therapists listening, but the basic cycle of reassurance and then whatever, like you do that pattern over and over again, you pick up, oh, this is how a person goes through the world.
- [20:32]
B
Absolutely, yeah. I'm so glad you mentioned that. I've thought about that and I talk, you know, you mentioned my kid who has ocd. Pure O. Less sort of hand washing, visual stuff, light switches and more reassurance seeking. Confessing a lot of other, you know, a lot of other threads. But yes. So I think because of my kids diagnosis in middle school, of course, a lot of Us then look more closely at our own experiences. I feel like it's dangerous to sort of do that in a way that's diagnosing. I mean, it's something I've been obviously talking about in therapy. So I think there's certainly in my dad and me, OCD traits, tendencies, a lean. I don't know that there needs to be or is a complete diagnosis, but there are certainly threads. That cycle is very familiar. And so whether or not it's official, that is that it rings very true. And that is interesting. As my dad's daughter, I mean, my dad is in end of life right now. And so he, as an evangelical, you know, I've spent probably the last 10 years trying to get him to go to therapy. Therapy is not for Christians, I was told my whole life. So he had no healthy supports or outlets. So I kind of became his he confesses and reassured and seeks with me. So I actually have learned how to not do that with my kids. So I have, I have applied that up a little bit. It's so interesting. But just, you know, a month ago he said, maybe I need to talk to somebody, maybe I should. I mean, it's sort of like, I don't mean to be. It feels like there might not be a lot of time for that. But, you know, the idea maybe he would go to a Christian counselor one day. Like the Christian counselor was maybe okay for some people if it was really bad, but like we're talking about like maybe a suicide attempt, maybe then that would sort of justify somebody's kid doing that. But the amount of mental health support that he could have had in his life and did not have because of this sort of culture in Mori is really heartbreaking to me. It's something very heavy for me and very present right now in these last months with him. You know, it's kind of intense.
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A
Can I ask a follow up about that? I appreciate your vulnerability here and I know that your dad has given you enthusiastic consent, a term we use in another area for, you know, he's such like, he's such an extrovert, such a public, like, open book kind of a guy, which I love about him, makes him so fun. But you're getting at something that I find so fascinating, which is as a loved one nears the end of their life, the shortcomings, the things that need to be grieved and accepted, the things that never made it to the spot we wanted them to be, these go from tentative to final or increasingly final. Just mathematically, there's no More time. And I'm wondering if you've noticed anything about that internally of like, has it been a different acceptance and grieving process as, like, okay, we're probably not gonna get there, you know.
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B
Oh, totally. Yes. Gosh, I love this question. And you know, my dad read Nervous Systems. He of course, loved all of it. His. His dream is always to be famous, even if it's for strange things. He's a complicated guy. He's such a, like, loving. He's such like a. I. I do feel like I need to say this, but wanna say, like, what a loving, selfless person that will do anything?
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A
Absolutely.
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B
Just like, he's a real. He's a real person with a lot of complications. I talk about his gambling addiction in the book, and he knows that and is so. Everything is done with consent and he's completely aware. So I feel like I'm being, quite.
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A
Frankly, contextually, shouldn't we say he's a real. I mean, isn't that really what we're. Isn't that what we're just. We gotta say.
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B
He basically.
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A
He's a real men.
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B
I think he, like, defines the word. I think he defines the word. But interestingly, as his kid, I mean, I'm in my. I'm 47 years old, but I find myself patterning a lot of, like, inner teen right now. You know, I see my kind of reaction to some of the limits that I have with being able to care for him. Well, while promoting a book, let's say Dan, or working full time or having kids, I. I see the. I, like many of us, revert back to this kind of inner teen thing, and I don't love that. So I see that happening. I see the way that we talk about. I see his sort of denial sometimes, and that makes me feel frustrated. But one thing that I've gotten good at and that I think that these end years have shown me is how to be clear. For example, when he says, I don't think therapy's not for me, and he's confessing to me or texting me, I tell him, clearly, I'm not your therapist. You need to be able to talk to someone professional. I wish that you had more friends to reach out to for support in this way. I'm your child. And then I'll say, I'm not your administrator. I'm happy to help you make appointments and to care for you, but I am not the person. I am not hired to. You know, then we talk about it. Then we have very tender talks, and he says, I understand that. Then. Then it's like we kind of get there. So I'm. I think that I've been able to be clearer. And the. The last thing. I mean, this big family call I mentioned, you know, my dad's. Two of his brothers have passed, and my. My cousins were on the call. They were asked at one point, how are you doing without your dads? Without my dad's two brothers and Dan. Their responses were like, my one. My one cousin who lives in Philly said, I realized that his demons were not mine. And in his passing, I can clearly see that. And my other cousin said, I feel like for the first time, her dad was very. All of my dad's siblings were very interesting. He says, I feel like for the first time I am not moving in opposition to somebody. I'm not moving in resistance to him. And they both kind of had this certain liberation after passing, as well as immense grief and man, that just burned into my mind. I just thought, is there a way to love him well and to be with him and present with him and honest with him and not to be. But yet to be healthily detached, to be possibly indifferent in this Jesuit way I talk about in the book. Is there a way to not have. To wait, to not move against somebody that has been both an immense blessing and the hardest thing that's ever happened? You know, is there something there? So that's really been coming up for me, A and B, I didn't think we'd kind of go this deep, but it's pretty fun to talk about this stuff. So thanks for going there with me.
- [26:41]
A
You should have.
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B
You never know.
- [26:43]
A
You should have known or suspected.
- [26:45]
B
I should have known.
- [26:46]
A
You know me well enough. You've used this phrase twice now. Inner teen.
- [26:51]
B
Yeah.
- [26:52]
A
And it's giving me, like, internal family systems, vibes insofar as. Like, which we talk about sometimes on the show. I'm not trained in it, but I find the language to be helpful sort of parts work. And one way that you can talk about a part of yourself is to sort of age. Give it an age. Right. And there's. That's not exact. Although it may actually be. As we learn more about the brain, it may actually be that, like, a certain structure within your brain forms at a certain age and is sort of like. You sort of double and triple down on that over the years. And so it sort of stays where it is. Maybe that's kind of what you're getting at with this inner teen. Like there's a part of you that has Stayed a teenager. I just wanted. I like that term. And I just figured there might be a little more under it.
- [27:34]
B
Yeah, totally.
- [27:35]
A
So I wanted to have you say more.
- [27:36]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, people talk about inner mother, inner parent, inner child. But for me, I was talking to my friend Morgan, a therapist in Arkansas, and she said, sarah, I think that you are really stuck in your kind of inner teen. And I was. Of course, when someone says that, I get a lot of curiosity. I get really energized. And when you are in your parents house as a teenager, like when you live with them, there are ways in which, if you are still under 18, you are still kind of bound by those rules and you react against them, I think in this healthy way with teenage development. Right. Differentiation, taking healthy risks, all of that stuff's happening. But there is a way in which you are still kind of capped or under this umbrella of your family, for better or worse. I see myself kind of reacting in a similar way with caring for my parents as only child, living 10 minutes away, like being their primary caregiver in terms of the one coordinating, sometimes the one changing diapers like. Like this. Like some. They spent this weekend doing a lot of that. There are some visceral, real care that happens as well. So I don't want to. I'm not going to pretend that I'm a medically trained caregiver, but I do that sometimes, and so does Drew. But I see myself reacting in a similar way as I did when I felt. It's almost like I am bound to them at end of life. And instead of that being like, tender, let me put the shah around your shoulders. Let's reflect on our life together. Let's walk around the reservoir and talk. It's like a lot of resentment. I think I'm being really honest. Like, a lot of sadness, anger. I see myself kind of like with a short attention. With a short attention span, kind of reactive more. And I noticed like, oh, this is how I was back then. And that is like kind of blowing my mind. For example, this. My dad is with us this weekend after a hospitalization. This morning, I was trying to do pray as you go, right? I was doing my prayer sesh. Five minutes in, I hear him come out of the bedroom and needs to use the bathroom. And I'm literally. I'm literally like grounded and like calm and breathing. And then I snap it. I snap in like two seconds out. I'm like, what is it, dad? What do you need? And I think, what the.
- [29:44]
A
Like, what's you're mid contemplative practice, and you're just like, what the hell?
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B
And then you gotta laugh. Then I had to laugh. Then it just gets funny because it's absurd. But that's kind of what I mean when I say entertain. I don't know how clinical that is, but that's what I mean.
- [29:59]
A
Well, no, yeah, it's very interesting. I mean, it doesn't need to be clinically buttoned up or anything like that. I want to move us on to talking about the church and then politics and stuff so that we can spend a little bit of time on each of these without giving super short shrift to the others. So we've been talking about an individual person's sort of system, not just their biological nervous system, but sort of our overall individual system, ourselves, and the way that we can kind of get that through our families. And then you move on to talk about the church. So the American church, as you write, has basically absorbed, like. I want you to tell me what you mean by this. That it has absorbed the anxiety of our culture rather than embodying a sort of peaceful alternative to it. So where do you see that? What's the evidence of that? Why do you say that? That's what the church has done. Which church are you talking about? You know, that kind of thing?
- [31:00]
B
Yeah. Oh, totally. I mean, I think that on this congregational level, denominational level, more broadly within America, evangelicalism, I don't know. I don't have an expertise into kind of mainline or into the Catholic Church. I'm sure it's there too. But there's this. It's all. I mean, Dan, it's all an anxiety response. Like, every, like, church is splitting. Sex abuse cases. What was just talked about in the Anglican Church in the Washington Post and New York Times this weekend. Sexuality, gender, like any issue, the baseline of it is all rooted in anxiety and in fear and in assumption. And so I'm just. So many of us are so tired of it. I am so tired of it. And when I see people continue to leave the church, I don't blame them. I get is so much easier to opt out. I've been thinking about it. I can't verbalize it well yet. And I was talking to Drew about this, but this almost like kind of contamination by association. Like, we're kind of disgusted by. Drew just put this in his sermons. That's why I was thinking about it. We're, like, disgusted by certain things that, like my dog Mateo is not right. Like, he eats, like, rabbit entrails that's disgusting. He doesn't have that. But he like we have this disgust response because it keeps us safe. And I think that when we are associated with such a broken church, and specifically evangelicalism, I think that our impulse as people is to separate ourselves from that is to kind of separate ourselves, to keep ourselves safe and because the association we feel kind of tainted individually. But I unfortunately happen to find myself tethered to the way of Jesus in a way that I cannot escape. So I have this interesting conundrum of being quite convicted in my personal belief. And also a person that, gosh, Dan, I mean, if the church is just the gathered body of believers, if it's what Jesus left us with, I have to grapple with it and I grapple with it disar all the time.
- [32:55]
A
I want you to say a little more about, like map this on to let's say sort of same sex affirmation or lack thereof maybe. So here's how I'd like to set it up and then you add to it and make sure. I'll make sure I'm understanding you right. Because I think there's like a legitimate question there. Right. So like Methodist churches has gone through this other covenant and other denominations like Episcopal Church has already handled this. The American, the Anglican Church of North America basically exists because it didn't go the way that the official Episcopal Church went on this question. There is a real question there. Like there are genuine consequences. Who can be ordained, who can get married, who can receive communion. Like, you know, like, you know, these matters. Right. So it's not, it isn't like it's merely a culture war. You know, are we going to get all up in arms about Lil Nas X being a gay cowboy or not? It's more substantive than that. Right, okay. And I could imagine. So what I think I'm hearing, what I'm hearing you saying is that the way in which we are going about solving a difficult and maybe necessary question for certain denominations or groups to answer. Right. They do need to decide who they're gonna ordain and things like this, the way we go about answering it is indicative of this like overactive nervous system. Right. So I could imagine. So what I want to do really quick is motivate why a person on either end of that, each of them might feel very anxious about this. So I'll start with a conservative. I'll start with the conservative and then a liberal. And then I give you a chance. So I can imagine a traditional conservative Christian being like, what the hell they Wouldn't say it that way. You know, what's going on? Like, am I gonna get fired? Because I believe the same things that people have believed for hundreds of years because, like, something else has changed in the culture or whatever. And I think, you know, recent Supreme Court cases in the United States have sort of calmed some of that anxiety. But that was. That's only recent. And I could just imagine someone being like, how fast do I have to change to sort of not get canceled or whatever, something like that. And then I can imagine someone on the other side of this question going, like, look, this has, like, real world effects for my closest friends or myself if I'm queer or whatever. Right. Like, this really impacts my relationship with my family, with a bunch of other important people in my life. It may impact political rights. Again, that's kind of been, for the time being, solved, you know, technically at the legal level, but there's still all these other consequences. And so, yeah, like, it's a. It's a question that would sort of increase people's anxiety. I kind of want to start there with just, like, that's how I would think of it psychologically and sort of toss the baton to you.
- [35:52]
B
Yeah. I mean, okay, I like playing this out on both sides, because let's say I'm a person that is open and affirming. Let's say I'm queer. How can I not feel like I am being hated or that somebody is bucketing me in a cultural political issue with not seeing my humanity? How could it not be personal when it is my very person? Right. And if I am a conservative person or a person that is not affirming, would I think I am going to be. There is no way that I will not be seen as a hater or hating if I have a theological stance. And so that pain, that tension point is exactly, like, exactly the illustration of what I mean by an anxiety response. And this is how it's playing out online. I mean, this happened. It's a little bit different, but it feels really relevant. I was talking. I posted something on Instagram, I don't know. I don't know, before the election that said, Jesus calls us to love Kamala Harris. Jesus calls us to love Donald Trump. And, like, the. Like, the quick vitriol was, like, surprising a. I put that out. I chose to put posts up. And so I understood that there'd be some kind of, like, bl. Like, it is. It is that we are.
- [37:06]
A
You did it to sell books, trying.
- [37:07]
B
To be like, no, I'm kidding. No, this was, this was, this is pre book launch season. Totally. But it's like I, I felt convicted. Like, we don't, we still don't get to decide who we, who, who Jesus loves. Like, it's just not. I, I hate that. I hate that. But it's not like in my power. But now it's like when orphaned believers came out in 2023, there was still this, like, my family, I've lost my family member, There is a broken relationship. I want to reach across the aisle. I'm like trying to put my hand out. And now there's like a little bit that I write about or think about in reaching across difference in the church or across. And I think from a civic standpoint, if we cut off that dialogue, there is no chance of reconciliation. But the baseline is, I cannot tolerate that difference because I cannot reconcile what you believe because it is oppressive. And I cannot, I can, I have to shut you out so that you do not contaminate me. And it's because it is personal to me. And I, God, I get that so much. I viscerally get that. But then what do we do? Like, where does it go? Is it not. What is like the theory of change and that kind of exclusion? What are we supposed to do? How does it get better? Yeah. And so that's something I'm thinking about a lot.
- [38:17]
A
I think there's a really good parallel there, by the way, with the way that the left talks about race. And It's a catch 22. I don't think there's an easy solution here either. I heard Ezra Klein talk about this recently on his podcast where he's like, to paraphrase, he's like, I totally understand the line that says it is not the responsibility of oppressed black people to convince and persuade white people to vote differently on these topics or advocate differently with their representatives, et cetera. And then Ezra Klein said at the same time, who will persuade them? Because politics is about persuasion. And if it's not, I heard that.
- [39:02]
B
Too, that if it's not going to.
- [39:03]
A
Be the person who's got the powerful story of their lived experience, which will cut through all the algorithmic horseshit and the crisis merchants enriching themselves through clicks and sponsored NFL betting ads, then how are you gonna persuade anybody? And that is it. I see both sides. I see both aspects of that at the same time. Like, wow, shitty. That it would be your responsibility, and yet you're gonna be the best advocate.
- [39:32]
B
Same.
- [39:32]
A
You know, same.
- [39:33]
B
And that's what I'm saying. I mean, it is deeply. I am so deeply uncomfortable with the oppressive politics of the administration. I am deeply uncomfortable with how it has embedded itself in the church, which I still choose to be a part of. But is the church not still a best hope at seeing a cross difference even with our deeply embedded difference in anxiety? Am I a Pollyanna and a fool? Maybe. But I still choose to believe that it could be. I still choose to believe that in some places it is. I do.
- [40:03]
A
Let's talk about politics then. Okay. Because obviously these things are related and in fact I would say here's just a real back of the envelope number but amongst my own, my own heart and mind, my close friends that I understand well enough to be able to guess on this. Listener stories and clients. So I'm not only talking about clients because I know that's self selected. All of these are self selected to some degree. But the broadest circles I can possibly paint of people I'm associated with and know something about their story, I would say the alienation along religious lines between individuals and for instance, family members and other community members, like 60 to 70% of it is either down to politics or very tightly bound up in politics because of the way that that has become so central. It's become our primary source of identity in American culture. The social media and algorithmic forces have, have not mellowed that stuff out, they've only intensified it. And the church, like everybody else, I would say, has done a pretty bad job. I think universities have done a bad job, I think churches have done a bad job. I think political action committees have done a bad job, Pundits have done a bad job. Everyone's fucking doing a bad job around this stuff and we're letting that polarization increase. Yeah, that's kind of where I want to start, that part of the conversation.
- [41:28]
B
I mean, I agree.
- [41:30]
A
Well, so I guess that's just blend. That's bridging church to politics because that's the main issue in so many of the church conversations.
- [41:38]
B
Yeah. Like what do we do with parts of the church that are Trumpified? What do we do with the Christian nationalist church? I mean we one check out like we literally just say, that's not for me. I write in nervous systems about this woman named Winifred Wagner who was a Nazi sympathizer, friend of Hitler. She didn't really see anything that was going on because she talked about the fuss. She said, why do we worry ourselves with the fuss? It's not why. That's not for me. You know, it's Kind of like if I were to paint a picture of somebody that might identify as a trad wife or somebody that might be kind of like Benedictine, optioning it back on land. Like we check out and we just live our life well in our community and we don't get to. We have that luxury of access to not decide. So maybe we do that, or we vocally and aggressively push back in a way that becomes vitriolic, or you're just preaching to the choir, essentially. And so that doesn't really necessarily get us anywhere. I think that the only option then I think that at least for me, the only option is to be able is to know how to lose, to be okay with losing and to live faithfully and locally where I can. And I don't like saying that out loud because it is not satisfying. Like, serving your community well and being there for your neighbors is not sexy or satisfying. It's not like that's a breaking news thing. I'm not going to get any more social media followers by doing that. I mean, I know. I know how to do that. And it is not. That is not that way. But, like, how do I live faithfully and consistently and love people in my circles as a small sort of drop in the bucket? I don't know. That's. That. That is at least something that is not nothing. That's the first thing I'd say.
- [43:21]
A
Learning to lose is a really interesting phrase there because it bristles against the increased sort of apocalyptic stakes of so much messaging right now around politics and culture war issues and from many commentators on every side of every question. Right. You've got, you know, it became like sort of the official Democratic Party party line that, like Donald Trump winning again is the end of democracy. Okay, well, tough to sort of say more than that. I mean, it's tough to sort of be more apocalyptic than that. Now, so far, we still have democracy. You know, time will tell, but, like, you know, that's an example on the left. And of course, I mean, literally everything Trump has said since 2015 is apocalyptic. And the entire media sphere on the right half of the country has adopted his tonality. So. So we're now at a place where like 80% of people are using apocalyptic language or some shit like that.
- [44:24]
B
Yeah.
- [44:25]
A
And like, you can't accept losses if it's apocalyptic. But in normal political, civic life, you lose all the fucking time. You're constantly. You lose half the time, roughly. And then, you know, you lose and you figure out why, and then you win and they figure out why? And then they win. And it goes back and forth like that. And I think I found it helpful when certain commentators and pundits have pointed to sort of this escalation of rhetoric to apocalyptic levels as sort of obviating or making that sort of back and forth. Tennis, let's say pickleball. And it has to all be Pickleball now in 2025, this pickleball match back and forth, you know, where you kind of find it in the middle. Well, that's not happening if everything is apocalypse, right?
- [45:10]
B
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, totally. Isn't. Isn't like learning how to lose. I mean, that really just drives back again. If anxiety is about kind of control and not being able to sit with ambiguity, of course we are not naturally wired as people if we're anxious to be able to lose. And you know, when I say that from a faith tradition perspective, like, of course losing was, you know, being crucified to empire was certainly the way of Jesus. And so I think I talk in the book about these Benedictine vows of fidelity and stability a little bit. This idea of holding fast and of modeling being a non anxious presence and being stable in the presence of various outcomes, including losing, I think is a way to kind of like a vitamin or a way to kind of fortify us a little bit from within whatever happens. You know, like we have, like you mentioned, we have kids thinking about what might be in store in the future for those guys. Like, hey, I got to live through the 80s and 90s. Those were like, maybe we were totally in the dark about a lot of shit happening, but it was a pretty fun time to be a young person. Like we don't know what's going to happen. And that can be incredibly destabilizing and kind of terrifying. That is why I think it is so important for us individually to have practices in place to kind of fortify us and to take the long view and being able to sit with the discomfort of loss. I know that's a privilege. I say, you know, whatever. This is the part where I say I'm a middle aged white lady. What do I know about loss? I mean, I'm Dr.
- [46:42]
A
Your dad.
- [46:42]
B
What do I know about it?
- [46:43]
A
Your dad is dying right now in your care. You do know something about loss.
- [46:47]
B
Sure. Thank you. I just mean collectively, politically, some of us are more able to manage loss in our minds than practically. That's what I mean. But thank you. Yes. So the point is, are there things that we can do as kind of as fortification while we kind of get comfortable with the idea of loss that may not be ending for us and certainly not our kids.
- [47:10]
A
As a way of getting into some of the solution, I'd like you to actually put a little more flesh on this too. So what are some specific losses like we have to be comfortable losing. Losing what? Like, what do you have in mind that then this holy indifference can help us with?
- [47:27]
B
Yeah, I mean, I can answer in a couple of ways. I can answer personally first, if we can kind of dip back in there. I mean, as a. Again, a person that is seeing my parents bodies kind of disintegrate, as a person that is seeing my parents move into a season, my mom has advanced Parkinson's, and seeing the people you love who brought you into the world's bodies disintegrate is pretty intense. And so I think a mix of that and the fact that I am now in my late 40s and see my own body changing in my own mid-40s way and see the promise of like, the allure of wellness that, you know, is a myth. But there's this sort of constant marketing and messaging. I think that getting comfortable with loss means understanding that it could be. There's no guarantee of a long life. Maybe something happens today, maybe we get into a car accident, whatever. But if we have the immense gift of a long life, it means understanding the loss of capacity, the loss of dignity that may come from that, the amount of dependence on care, the fear of financial resources not being there. It means being comfortable with kind of losing the sense of who you are in terms of how other people see you or perceive you. It is just really uncomfortable. The fact that this sort of embarrassment and kind of tenderness of the kind of care I've had to do for my parents and then knowing that like this is a hint into maybe what's ahead for me and for you and for everyone with my own kids, it's just incredibly uncomfortable. And there's an invitation there to hold that and still be able to live well, be present. And even with our cultural storms and political storms, to be able to still, day by day, look for a little bit of relief or of connection. There are just calls more towards the present than I think because of it. So that's kind of a personal example.
- [49:24]
A
How dare you remind us of our impending deaths. This is supposed to be an entertaining podcast.
- [49:32]
B
I should insert joke here.
- [49:34]
A
That's my job. Okay, so I want to talk about solutions. And I had one thing. I meant to get in earlier, but I didn't get it in in time. And it would have been kind of a non sequitur. But I think I can say it here just to sort of maybe increase our hope that this is possible. You know, like change is possible and learning new systems and you know, if we're talking about the brain, neuroplasticity exists, is real. We do have the ability through repetition and habit and therapy and other practices to rewire our brains, you know, literally to sort of re dig those trenches. And just an example from my own life that is relevant to what we've been talking about. It was always going to happen for me that I would end up with panic disorder. It manifested by third grade, possibly before. So I'm like nine and this is well within my hand. I was dealt language that I sort of gave you earlier. My mom had panic disorder. My grandpa probably had it. And my mom's panic disorder didn't really kick in until she became a mother. So it was modeled for me against her own will and wishes. And so there was just no way that I was not going to have it. Right. But I don't have it anymore. I just literally, I don't know the last time I had a panic attack. It's a full fledged panic attack. It's been probably 10ish, 10 years or so, maybe 8, a long time and much diminished for the last 15 years as I got language and skills and I eventually rewired. So it's totally possible to change these things. And not just because I say that, but I'm a therapist in part because I see and love being involved in my clients changing these things about themselves. So there really is hope there for lasting change. And let's talk about sort of. Okay, so I love your diagnosis here of this, you know, putting that nervous system's gold title, platinum book title to good use diagnosing. Okay. We got these three systems and here's the proposed solution. So how do we start understanding this proposed solution? Maybe actually like when did you get the idea for the solution? Did that come first, did it come later? You know what I mean? I'm interested in that.
- [51:56]
B
Yeah. So I, you know the church that we go to, there's a couple, Dan and Renee, that have a kind of the house of spiritual formation that sounds cool. Called Soul Care Seattle. So they do half day retreats, silent retreats. And I knew that there was this thing called the spiritual exercises and that it took nine months and it was kind of serious. And so I was mildly curious for a while but actually avoided it for, I don't know, three or Four years.
- [52:22]
A
And these are the Ignatian Spiritual exercises.
- [52:25]
B
That's right.
- [52:26]
A
St. Ignatius, who founded the Jesuit order, which is a. You know, it's like a. It's called a religious order within Catholicism, which means monks and nuns. It doesn't mean religion religious. So.
- [52:38]
B
Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. I knew that Ignatius was like a Spanish priest from, what, the 1500s? I didn't know much about the Exercises, but I read a little bit, decided it was time to give it a go. Typically, I did something called the 19th annotation, which is done an hour a day for nine months. It's split into four weeks or sections. Typically, it is historically done by somebody going away for a month if you have that kind of luxury of time and resources and praying all day. But basically, I decided to get to this pretty intense nine months that ended up being, by far, clearly, without question, the best thing that I've ever done for my spiritual health. It was a really big deal for me. And it's because there's a lot of kind of writing, a lot of processing. I'm an enneagram 4, whatever. I'm a creative person. I think if we can pray visually or kind of work things out in that way, it can be a really healthy exercise. But essentially, I'd pray in the morning and then once a week meet with my spiritual director and we talk through some of my notes from the week. The different weeks include kind of like creation. And there's a really cool number of prompts. Right. About your sort of earliest memories. Right. There is a sort of therapeutic aspect to this work. Right. About sometimes of consolation, AKA when you felt God close desolation, when you felt the absence of God. Then it goes into a hell week, which is a couple of months, which is really fun. I said, that sounds funny. It was actually pretty cool because we basically wrote out. There was an exercise to write out lots of times of regret, things that were difficult in your childhood. It was really powerful and kind of cleansing to like, just list out many different things. Personally, this is something that you're asked to share. This is just something that I did as kind of a part of prayer. Then there's kind of a prayer exercise where you sort of sit in silence until you sense God's love, and then kind of do a lot of listening. So again, as a person who was raised in evangelicalism, who did a lot of pleading prayers, a lot of asking, it was a very different kind of posture of learning how to listen. Sometimes I just sat there and quiet for a long time, and didn't really say or think anything to bring it.
- [54:50]
A
Back to what you talked about, that cycle of medical anxieties. Right. The through line there was seeking assurance, and in that case, it was through going to the doctor. But we seek assurance through many, you know, many mechanisms to sort of be. That's a way to calm our anxiety, is to be assured that we don't need to be anxious. Contrast this approach with an assurance seeking approach.
- [55:15]
B
Yeah. When my kid got diagnosed with ocd, we had to learn how confession was a big thread. We would go in at night for tucking him in, and he would tell me lots of things that sounded pretty freaky because he was scared of them. And typically, as a parent, you would say, you're not gonna have this happen, or, you know, the new script, which was very counterintuitive. Dan, was to say, you know what, Asher? It sounds like you're experiencing ocd. We can't know for sure if A, B, or C. Is there something I can do to help you with that sort of changing your. Do you want to get up, or what can we do? Put water on your wrists or do you want to breathe together? Very much. In prayer, there was a really powerful parallel. I mean, instead of pleading, instead of reassurance seeking from God, essentially in prayer, it was like after a time of discomfort. A, is this okay? B, am I doing this wrong? C, what am I supposed to be hearing or not hearing? There was, like, a lot of, like, rest and into just kind of sitting and being. I wasn't looking for needing asking for something specific, but I was just kind of receiving just the sense of, like, goodness, of quiet, looking around, seeing something in nature. Like, it felt like a big way to reframe the way that I had approached prayer and kind of like how I understood how God may. As a. How God may talk to us. So it was a really important change.
- [56:41]
A
Let me see if I'm getting this right. I want to sort of synthesize a few things you've said. So you're raised with this assurance seeking kind of anxious cycle, which is both genetic, epigenetic, modeled all of the above, right down to the Seinfeld tropes with the Jewish heritage. Okay. And then you have an experience with your son Asher, who is diagnosed with ocd. And I'll throw a little bit of therapy talk in here just so people don't get the wrong idea. OCD treatment requires a counterintuitive act set of actions by other loved ones. So parents, partners, siblings, whatever. In. In a normal sort of like, we might call it folk psychology. We might call it just sort of the. The standard way that we are built. When a loved one is experiencing anxiety, our reflex as loving people is to reassure them is to say, oh, that's. You don't need to worry about that. Like, that's. Yeah, I understand. You know, no, that's fine. That's not gonna be a problem. That is what we do naturally, and that in normal sort of everyday circumstances. There's nothing wrong with that. And so that's what I'm trying to be clear about. We're not pathologizing, giving reassurance to regular people in your life.
- [58:01]
B
Totally.
- [58:02]
A
Right. But with ocd, that actually makes their treatment worse, because the thing that they have to do is different. What a regular person with some anxiety needs to do is like, yeah, learn to think about, like, evidence. Maybe, like, this is what I. When I do CBT with sort of standard clients of like, okay, yeah, maybe there's not evidence for that. OCD is different. OCD is like, you lean into the worst thoughts, and you basically have to prove to yourself through repetition that there's nothing there. But simply receiving reassurance does not do that. It has the opposite effect. So you had to learn this particular way of doing things differently that was distinct from your upbringing because of Asher's diagnosis. Right.
- [58:48]
B
Yeah. I would just say. Can I say two things really quick, before I forget? One, it is typically the kind of most tender, like, gentle people that may struggle. It'll latch onto what your greatest fear is. And so my kid will move like a crane fly off the sidewalk so he doesn't step on it. And that's why Harm OCD became. Can become a really big threat. So, like, it is. It is fast. There is a existential ocd. There are so many interesting kind of pure or moral OCD threads. And I write about scrupulosity in the book, and I do that with his permission as a parent. I mean, we've talked a lot about what makes sense for me to talk about or not. And he is. I think he. He is very articulate, eager to talk about it with people. I think he. And there's been people we've connected with that he feels like he's been helpful to. And I have as a parent. So I just feel like it's important to say that too. Please continue.
- [59:33]
A
Yeah, and it's important to respect people's confidentiality. Josh Gilbert, editor of this show, has been diagnosed with religious scrupulosity and OCD and is doing much better. And he Talks about it openly as well.
- [59:44]
B
And Josh, let's talk.
- [59:46]
A
Yeah. And I think he finds it helpful to be open about it and have people included.
- [59:50]
B
Yeah.
- [59:50]
A
Anyway, so. So you then. So you had to learn this particular thing that is particular to ocd, which is interesting. And then you're like, oh, shit. There is something here about my spiritual life, and there's something about the counterintuitiveness of not seeking assurance and living with uncertainty. That has to be done in a very concentrated form to treat OCD and to help your son treat his own ocd. But then there's also this broader thing. So then I want to now that set the table there. So connect that thing for us. So then how does that show up in this unique way spiritually?
- [60:30]
B
Yeah. So then I. Then I'm required to take it a step further by exploring this idea of Jesuit indifference or holy indifference. It takes that kind of open posture of not seeking reassurance. And there's this extra layer of invitation, Ignatius says, which is whatever the binary may be a long life or a short one, he says fame or disgrace in this language, health or illness, whatever the two kind of situation sides may be, is there a way to open your hands and be indifferent, to have the ability to only choose the things Ignatius would say that would glorify God. In other words, to only, he says in the 23rd exercise, like to praise, reverence and serve God. Can you be so convinced of the fact that this is all going somewhere good, that you can have the capacity to then release or let go of the outcome, which was like, next level stuff for an anxious person. And that specific practice has become a daily, constant, constant thing for me. It has basically changed and shifted my own anxiety immensely. I mean, it's been a big deal and I mean, it's come up in small and big ways. For example, trying to bring a book into the world. And then it's just. I'm being kind of funny as a very light example, Dan, but like, having practicing indifference to the outcome of the book in terms of how well it does by releasing it has been like a very sort of simple example.
- [62:03]
A
Yeah. Resonates with my experience of putting out records and every single conversation with friends who have also put out records or books or anything like that. Yeah. Podcasts to some degree. I'm wondering if you think that that idea felt foreign to you, not just because of your, you know, typical anxious Jewish Christian upbringing or whatever, but also because it is actually a thought that's kind of more common in Eastern thought. I mean, that's it is. It lines up very well with the basic, you know, detachment, which is one of the four noble truths in Buddhism. Right. Sort of detachment. That detachment is to outcomes, essentially. It's like becoming unattached to the things that we require to feel okay and being like, hey, that's actually a mental construct. And I can open my hands to that. So, yeah, maybe just like anything coming up around sort of east versus west or anything like that in your own personal work or research.
- [63:01]
B
I've totally thought about that. I think that's really right. I mean, the indifference is sometimes called detachment. And I think that just one thing I wanted to make sure that listeners, I think are probably intuiting, but just to say is that indifference is not about not caring, it's not about checking out. And I think that indifference to outcome.
- [63:23]
A
Is what I'm hearing you describe.
- [63:25]
B
That's exactly right. It's about being detached from things or people or experiences that may not sort of lead to. It's not about what happens, it's about our posture and whatever happens while staying engaged and being present.
- [63:41]
A
Yes. And in your experience, what would you say? Because one thing that I'll often talk about with clients around acceptance and detachment is that a good sign that a topic is a good candidate for acceptance and detachment is whether it is entirely outside of your locus of control and it is up to other things that you have no control over, then that's a really good candidate for detachment because what the fuck are you going to do about it anyway?
- [64:12]
B
Yep, that's right. Let's talk about my kid. I mean, see.
- [64:16]
A
Well, that's hard. Kids are hard. Because you. Well, speaking for myself, I feel a sense of ownership. Well, I mean, I am going to sort of form. I'm going to shape now, by the way, OCD, one of the most heritable mental conditions. More like 50 to 60% genetic based on studies. So you probably could have as you, as you have sort of hinted at earlier, you had no control whether Asher got ocd. That was. Sounds like basically a genetic. In this case, a genetic cause. Especially if you think your dad and you and someone got three generations. That's a lot of information, a lot of evidence for that. Right. So. But then as a parent, you do, you know, all the parenting advice and all the heavy weight of like my family cult setting, our family culture. And I actually find that children are a place where it's harder for me to sort of let go there because I do feel like I'm in the soup. And also My kids are younger, so I maybe am feeling just more the weight of, like, there's so many more years for me to fuck them up and what. You know, like, you know, make mistakes.
- [65:22]
B
Right.
- [65:22]
A
But, like, it's interesting that you went to kids. Cause that one feels messier to me about letting. Politics is much easier. Who will win the election. Okay. I don't control that. Like, that's easier for me to do than my own children or whatever.
- [65:34]
B
Yeah, it is. No, it is. It is really hard. But that's just where my mind went first because I think that. So in this. In Telling Secrets, in one of Buechner's biographies, he talks about his daughter that had this anorexia.
- [65:46]
A
Frederick Buechner, the wonderful Christian author.
- [65:49]
B
Yes. He talks about how his daughter had this anorexia diagnosis, was hospitalized, and he went about his normal life. He went out to dinner with friends, he played tennis. But in his mind. His mind was not able to be separated from his child. And so he said at one point, my anxiety for my child eclipsed my love for my child. Something like that. And I just. Whoa. It really. I mean, so my. That is. That has been, over time, my experience with my child. So maybe I am saying the extreme example, but.
- [66:21]
A
Well, can I say why I think that might work?
- [66:23]
B
Yeah, sure.
- [66:24]
A
Is because there's a different battery source implied there. When you can identify it as my anxiety for my child has eclipsed my love for my child. You are basically giving yourself a permission structure to lean into the love and go, okay, I'm actually harming or I'm certainly not helping by doing this. And because I love them so much, I think that it's actually harder to apply a similar thing to something like politics, where if I ask myself, oh, my anxiety for America is eclipsing my love for America. I'm not feeling a whole lot of love for America right now.
- [67:03]
B
Right.
- [67:03]
A
Like, I was feeling it during Obama, but like, you know, maybe in 08. And I do feel. I do feel like Trump, or as I try to refer to him more consistently, President Corleone. I has. That's actually one of my little coping mechanisms. Assurance seeking is that, like, it has actually reminded me of what I do love about America. I'm grateful for that. But that's like not a situation where I can pull on that as a battery source, as like a pulling the juice, like my love for my kids. So that's something that I noticed. Sorry to cut you off.
- [67:38]
B
No, that's right. No, that makes sense. So that has. That is why I do feel a significant shift in how I parent my kid. I do. Something has really changed. I mean, he is also almost 16. You are right that we are in a different. He has his own agency, autonomy, way of being. So he also developmentally is at a different place too. So maybe it's kind of a mix of both.
- [68:00]
A
Yeah. Okay. I wanted to just share a little bit of like, you know, to take the mystical and spiritual and make it mechanistic and therapeutic and ruin it. Like so many of my listeners count on me doing this is really more important. This is important.
- [68:16]
B
If you didn't do that. Yeah, you would be okay.
- [68:18]
A
So this is just sort of like findings. I'm going to keep this very thumbnail sketch here, but I figure it might bring up some stuff for you to just talk about when things like Ignatian spirituality, sometimes literally the Ignatian practices, sometimes other parallel contemplative practices in the west have been studied through peer review and these studies and all that stuff. There's sort of six little points here, takeaways from that research that researchers, whether or not they themselves are religious, can point to sort of these benefits. And this is not to be exhaustive, but it's to just say, okay, if we look through this lens, you've got attention, regulation and sort of awareness of the present moment.
- [69:04]
B
Right.
- [69:05]
A
That's basic mindfulness stuff that most people are aware of, de centering and emotion regulation. Or we could talk about sort of like when you're talking about perspective shift and like, you know, letting go of outcomes that in a way that is sort of decentering yourself or decentering your hopes for a particular outcome. Right. So we could see how that would help with emotion regulation, sort of, you know, lowering that anxious clawing, which is then going to be correlated with a feeling of anxiety or worry. Third is physiological downregulation. So we think about maybe being flooded and. Or just like if you are living in this sort of anxious space day after day and you've got a lot of cortisol and adrenaline flowing through your body, maybe more so than your normal baseline, engaging in this slower contemplative practice will have these sort of hormonal and neurotransmitter effects that will just bring down that, you know, bring up the regulation and down that physiological arousal. Right. Moving into more cognitive and philosophical waters, we've got meaning making and sort of support for existential concerns. Daryl Van Tungren is always talking about this and how religion is powerful in part because it uniquely addresses these existential concerns, including the need to make meaning out of things. And I'll just say, actually this is totally off the cuff, but I wouldn't be surprised if someday somebody draws a connection between the way that we make meaning as we sleep and consolidate memories in a way that gloms onto our narrative and the way we make meaning through quiet contemplative practice, which is not the same as sleeping, but is. It's sort of this in between state of wakefulness and sleep, being asleep or whatever. But yeah, just thinking about like this one shows up for me a lot. And you know, when you're talking about like if you need to let go of something, if you have something that you have to practice some holy indifference on, telling yourself that as you try to do that is changing the meaning that you are making as you tell yourself that. Right.
- [71:23]
B
Yeah.
- [71:24]
A
So now you've got.
- [71:25]
B
So seen.
- [71:26]
A
Okay, good. But now you've got a new. Now you have a new set of terms, you have a new couple sentences about it that you can sort of imbibe. And now, so now you're sort of approaching it differently from a meaning standpoint, relational and communal regulation now, going outside the personal existential needs and sort of this need we have for relationship with other people. And this is actually probably my number one finding around this stuff for the contemplative practice that I've engaged in, not the Ignatian exercises other than the examen, which is an Ignatian practice, which we should talk about very briefly at some point. But like I often will get, like, I should text that person. Oh, there's, you know, I think about Jesus saying like, if you bring your sacrifice to the altar and you realize you have something against your brother, like that is often what happens. For me, I sort of, it snaps me out of maybe my more egocentric stuff, which has a lot of natural sticking power in my psychology and has me thinking about where I need to make amends, for instance. And then finally kind of bringing these things together is just integration and having a more coherent self understanding that slowing down and even just enacting agency around what I'm going to focus on, I'm going to attempt to release this control. All that stuff is like using agency in a way toward generally speaking, your own values, congruent with those values closer to the kind of person you are wanting to be. And that just is usually sort of a. A self fortifying, positive cycle. So that's just a little bit of, you know, turning it all into science and evidence and all that stuff.
- [73:15]
B
Yeah.
- [73:16]
A
What did any of those bring up for you.
- [73:18]
B
Yeah, I mean, so the part that I have gotten sometimes good at would be the first stages of that journey. I think a lot of us can do that work internally. The communal piece is interesting going back to my sort of my special quiet time this morning that was interrupted. But I think that what. I think that what happens, what kind of sabotages that cycle is, you know, guilt and shame. Guilt or shame getting in the way. So, for example, I feel like the personal work that has happened that helps me apply some of. Some of the indifference that I've been able to learn about can quickly. I think that we all can be nicer to ourselves about receiving sort of parts of that and having better days than other days. I think that there's a. A call towards compassion and kindness in any of this work, to be able to really see it as a slower journey. And I think that that's kind of countercultural because we just kind of want to get better and be relieved or have some kind of relief, you know. So I think I try to tell myself that, and then for me, it is very much a guilt, and for others, very much shame. I can see how that this work can be sabotaged quickly. So that's something that I think we can be gently, gently mindful of, gently aware of and just kind of notice that's. So that's kind of what came up when you're talking.
- [74:37]
A
Yeah. Well, Sarah, what a great conversation this has been.
- [74:43]
B
Thanks for making this totally fun and interesting. I can't wait to listen back and make some notes. I think we may have had some. Brett. I didn't think I was going to therapy, but I may have had some personal breakthroughs here, Dan. Oh, thanks, Brent.
- [74:55]
A
That's the best case scenario within ethical boundaries of me not asking you to share anything you don't want.
- [75:02]
B
Look, nothing is clinical. This is so unofficial. It's so unofficial.
- [75:06]
A
But insight. Insight can come from anywhere.
- [75:09]
B
You know, it just feels like talking to a friend.
- [75:11]
A
Yeah, it is. Yeah. Literally. In this case, the book is Nervous Systems, of course, the wonderful title that I can now never use and will forever be jealous of. And our other episodes and stuff will be in the show notes as well as we'll have a link to your Instagram and substack and all that stuff. So, Sarah Billups, thanks for returning. And I, you know, with your permission, eventually, I'd like to kind of have a more regular. I'd like to have you on the show more regularly to talk about.
- [75:43]
B
I'd love that.
- [75:44]
A
Whatever you Want to talk about really?
- [75:45]
B
Let's talk about the examine next time. I wish we had time.
- [75:48]
A
Yeah, well, I said we should mention it. This is very easy to look up. Just Google examine prayer. It's like you can do a five minute version of it. It's generally done at the end of the day, although some people like to do it in the morning, sort of thinking back to the previous day. But it's really a very simple sort of centering. You kind of quiet yourself. You try and be aware of God's presence or whatever that means to you. And then you sort of rummage back through the day and you sort of look for God. It's a very Jesuit thing. Finding God in all things is sort of the unifying theme of Jesuit spirituality. And you kind of go back through the day and you sort of thank God for some stuff, and then you look at the next day and you say, what's coming up? Or if it's in the morning, the coming rest of your day, and you're just sort of like checking in. And what I love about it is it does give you some of that physiological down regulation. It increases that basic mindfulness muscle. And through the looking for God and looking at the next day, you're really bringing in values work. You're saying, okay, where did I see God in the world? And generally that does tie into values of like, what we should. What we want to be, appreciating, savoring things like this. And then certainly looking at the day ahead, how do I want to approach this and be the best version of myself? I mean, now we're. Now we're rocking and rolling, cooking with gas. And so it's just like a lot of bang for your buck for five, ten minutes. And so, yeah, maybe we can get into some more detail on that in another episode.
- [77:22]
B
But that sounds great. Yeah. And, you know, sometimes I'll do the examine alone, sometimes I'll do it with Drew. And there's even a kids one. We've done a family one occasionally, which has been. It's just a nice way to talk after if you want to. And yeah, Dan, it'd be really cool to keep talking. I'm also really into Quaker clearness committees. If you want to talk about discernment.
- [77:40]
A
Whoa. Okay. I mean, discernment comes up a lot. Okay. We can. That can be a particular model we like, look at. All right. Thank you so much, Sarah.
- [77:48]
B
Thank you so much.