Painful Emotions with Dr. Alison Cook
Dr Alison Cook has served a lot of people through her work and resources. She’s an amazing psychologist whose speciality is integrating faith with psychology. This amazing woman’s work doesn’t stop there. She is also a podcast host and has authored two books, the most recent being ‘The Best of You’.
Alison had a chat with Jennie about the importance of noticing all parts of ourselves. This is the edited interview:
Many people don’t believe that their childhood experiences are still with them in adulthood. Talk a bit more about that phenomenon.
Dr. Alison: We pick up these wounds throughout our lives, whether they're big or small.
Where we pick up a wound, we pick up a message.
In most cases, it’s a message of self-shaming or self-blaming. Something toxic just gets inside, even if it's a little sliver into our souls, and we take that with us into our adult relationships.
It's so freeing to be able to look inside and see where you got a wound. This helps you figure out why you act a certain way. People are so afraid to do this work, but it's so freeing once you know. When you know, then you can get what you need out of your adult relationships.
Scientifically, what is happening when you revisit that trauma?
We look back to move forward.
Dr. Alison: We have these memories that live in the synapses of our brains. When something comes at us or somebody triggers us, we get frustrated. And we don't know why. That trigger is there for a reason.
Usually, something has happened in our nervous system going all the way up to our brain, where we've been conditioned to fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. We've been conditioned to these responses.
The fight response could be lashing out at someone over a small thing without realizing why you did it. Flight manifests as avoidance and freeze means you’re just stuck, which is so many of us.
The fawn response is a response you learn as a child. If there's chaos in your home or you’re neglected, you learn that you can get a hit of dopamine if you’re kind enough, can please enough, or if you take care of others. Then all of a sudden, that's how you go about your business in the world; you just make everybody else feel happy. It's a way of hiding your own needs and making everybody else feel good.
You can’t wake up one day and decide to stop any of these responses. This is often where we go, especially as Christians. We think it’s as simple as deciding to stop responding in a certain way. But you’ve got to retrain your whole system because you’ve learned to do that for a long, long time.
There's something about connection and doing this with community. Also, we often think that if we just know and understand what’s wrong, then we can fix it. Let’s talk about that community connection and the “fix it” mindset.
Dr. Alison: It’s that intellectualizing part of us that gets excited over having all the data. But that knowledge hasn't impacted the place of the wound. And so, we have to go back and reconnect to that memory with a loving, compassionate present. That's how God designed us.
God designed us to heal, but not in isolation.
Often, these wounds fester because of the isolation. As children, we were alone with our pain. When you're alone with your pain, you start to make sense of it in a self-shaming way. The antidote to that is to bring that pain into a loving presence. That's where we begin to experience what safety feels like.
When we have that feeling of safety while sharing our pain with loving, supportive, and compassionate people, a couple of things happen:
[ O N E ]
Our nervous system goes back to the God-designed state of calm and clarity. You feel centered and wise, but that happens in that compassionate presence.
[ T W O ]
We get a glimpse of what God is like. Our nervous systems have been wired to respond to what we got as children. And so, we heal in the context of another safe, loving environment. We can heal, but we need that experience for our bodies to understand what safety feels like within us.
What you’re saying may sound too good to be true to someone who hasn’t experienced it. You're saying I could just heal in the context of being known, loved, and seen. But everybody thinks there has to be a right answer and that it's got to come fast. Tell us a bit more about that.
Dr. Alison: I constantly go back to curiosity. It takes the pressure off us as friends, ministry leaders, therapists, and pastors. We don't need to have all the answers, but we do need curiosity. That opens up that healing balm. Our nervous systems are designed to return to that calm, centered place in the context of being known.
Even babies need presence much more than words. Presence is someone saying, “I am right here. I see you. I see what you're struggling with. I'm not going to leave you.” When we repair in communities with each other, we provide that loving presence.
When someone comes into the group and has this terrible traumatic story, we don't have to fix that for them. But we can be there with them. Be open to learning more about them and their story. Ask them to tell you more. It's that curiosity that brings healing.
As I did therapy this summer, I started realizing that there are different parts of me. One part was anxious about going back to work and another was excited about it. The fact that both of those things could be present in me was mind-blowing. So, let's talk about the idea that there are different parts of us.
Dr. Alison: What's mind-blowing isn't that the two things exist but that they can both exist side-by-side.
You don't have to choose one; you can be both excited and anxious. Both are serving a role in your system.
You have parts within you that require a wise adult. You see anger, fear, and all the different emotions. But we think we have to pick the best one instead of acknowledging that each of those emotions is attached to a part of us that exists for a reason.
That wise adult within is where the Holy Spirit lives inside of us. We call it the spirit-led self. So, we have to parent those parts of us. All the parts of us are valid, but you also don't want to let any one of those take over you. With the Holy Spirit's help, we drive these parts of us well, wisely, and with discernment.
We have more volition and authority over our minds and lives than we’d like to admit. So, tell us a bit more about these different parts of ourselves.
In this model, which we adapted with a Christian theology, there are three categories of parts:
1 - The Protector Parts
These are the parts of us that want to please, produce, and perform. They essentially want to manage the perceptions of everybody around us. This is not all bad because there is a time and a place to put our best foot forward. These protective parts want to keep us from making a fool of ourselves. However, we get exhausted from managing everybody's perceptions, producing, performing, pleasing, and other things.
2 - The Firefighters
We numb out. We just put out the flames and start to get tired. The facade drops and we can’t keep up with the persona we've created. In extreme cases, we might use harmful substances like booze and drugs to numb ourselves. Some of us binge television, shop, or scroll through social media for hours, and we do this mindlessly.
This is not all bad when done with intention. Sometimes we need to soothe ourselves healthily. You could check out with a really good show but do it with intention. None of these firefighters is bad, but they can go extreme. Because we're doing these things mindlessly, we have no agency.
3 - Exiled Parts
These are the parts of us we don't want to face. But I promise you, these parts of you are precious. When you get to know them, you will be more fulfilled, and your relationships will be better. Our exiled parts harbor the loneliness, pain from the past, hurts, depression, sadness, grief, anger, bitterness, and self-doubt. We do not want to face any of these things, so it becomes easier to check out.
Jesus always brought in the people who were hurting. Those are the parts of us Jesus wants to bring into the forefront so we can give them the care they need. Facing these parts allows us to seek the help we need to start leading ourselves. And that’s hard because it requires vulnerability. The exiled parts of us are the parts we have to get to know. And yet, we're scared to get to know them because they sometimes bring up the pain. Other times, they go back to traumas from our past.
I’ve come to realize how freeing it is to face those parts of me, but not everyone has had this experience. So, they might not even see a need to do this. Tell us why this is all worth it.
Dr. Alison: When you address those parts of you, you’re able to differentiate from them instead of those parts running circles through your brain. For example, you look at the fear and acknowledge that it’s okay to be a little afraid. That helps you relax a bit more and calms your nervous system.
As you do this work, what feels big gets smaller. Then we can tender ourselves gently so that when we show up, we're clearer and calmer. We're more joyful because we've done that work to name our pain.
When we name something without shame, we feel a little lighter, clearer, more confident, and a little braver. That's the person we want to be.
What is one thing people can walk away with and think about before we're together again next week?
Dr. Alison: Start to notice and get curious.
The next time you notice anger or fear, ask yourself:
Why did I feel this way at that moment?
Can I notice that part of me and get curious about it?
Instead of trying to get myself to do better and beating myself up, what if I could just notice?
Notice if you just felt like comparing yourself to another person, for example. Jot it down in your journal. Don't try to fix it; just notice it. It’s not bad because it's there for a reason. So, try to notice if there’s a critical or shaming voice around what you’re feeling. It’s a great opportunity to get to know yourself a bit more.
This is just part 1 of the podcast series we’re doing with Alison. For the next three weeks, you are going to hear from Jennie and Alison as they take us through what might as well be therapy in a podcast. So, you’ll want to take a lot of notes.
Dr Alison Cook’s new book, ‘The Best of You’ is available in all book retailers. If you want more from her, you can listen to her podcast right here.
