Latest / The Wholehearted Enneagram Podcast / Healing, Identity, and the Power of Story Work with Adam Young

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Healing, Identity, and the Power of Story Work with Adam Young · The Wholehearted Enneagram Podcast

0:01
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Simply Wholehearted Podcast with Amy Wicks, your wholehearted life and business coach.
0:09
SPEAKER_00: You should know this podcast will inspire you to grow in self-awareness, be passionate about your faith, and get clear on your calling.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: If you are new here, then welcome to the community of multi-passionate women who love to go deep on topics like faith, Enneagram, relationships, leadership, and community.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: This conversation might provide the step you need to make the change you desire.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: So let's get started.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: While I've been so excited to share conversations with dear friends of the podcast the last couple of weeks, I'm thrilled to share a conversation with someone that I have really wanted to, well, sit and learn from.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: I've actually listened to Adam Young's The Place We Find Ourselves podcast for years.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: Um, maybe as long as I've been in podcasting.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: There has been so much that I've learned from him about story work, about psychology, meets Enneagram, around healing, especially those traumatized bases in my story.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, there's just been a lot of things that I've learned from Adam Young over the years.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: So when I got the opportunity to talk with him, ask him questions, and share about his new book, Make Sense of Your Story, why engaging your past with kindness changes everything.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: I was like, sign me up.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: I am so for it.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: So this conversation is really me asking a lot of questions.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: Questions about the book, questions about the process, questions about how some of the simply wholehearted mission aligns with the sense of story, because very much so the coaching process that I use has us not only explore our story, but identify the characters that we've played in our story.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: So we talk about Enneagram, we talk about his book, we talk about counseling, how long you need to work through your story, when do we ever get done?
2:14
SPEAKER_00: Just a lot of really good richness that, well, I was hoping to ask in order to fill in the gaps of episodes that I've listened to over the years from his work and just other things that I had curiosity about when it comes to story work.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: So if you love the wholehearted journey and process and story work and you've appreciated Adam's work over the years, you're gonna love this conversation.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: And even if you are new to Adam Young and you haven't heard his podcast before, that's okay.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: I think you're really gonna love hearing about his Enneagram A perspective and some of the type of insights that you would expect to hear in our conversation.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: So let's get right to it and learn more about making sense of your story.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: Hey, Adam.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: Hi, Amy.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: How you doing?
3:03
SPEAKER_01: Good, thank you.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: Good.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, I'd love to just hear about launching your book as an Enneagram 8.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: Uh, clearly you have forged, you know, a business by doing a podcast and your counseling business.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: And so much, it's well listened to.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: And you're very much um, you know, you're asked, you're sought out as a as a thought leader in the industry, if you will, on story work and a number of things.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: But launching a book is a big deal.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: So for you as an Enneagram 8, just tell me some things that you've maybe learned about yourself.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: It's how it's challenged you or stretched you in any way.
3:40
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think the biggest way is the vulnerability that you feel when you write a book that has so much autobiographical material in it.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of my stories in the book.
3:52
SPEAKER_01: There's actually more of my stories than the reader knows because I disguise some of them.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: Sure, that was smart.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: But they're actually my stories.
4:00
SPEAKER_01: So there's just a vulnerability that you feel, I think, anytime you put something that you're passionate about out into the world.
4:09
SPEAKER_01: And that has been the case for me with regard to this book, make sense of your story.
4:14
SPEAKER_01: It feels vulnerable to put not just myself out there in terms of my stories, but like something that I care so deeply about.
4:23
SPEAKER_01: Like you want it to move people.
4:25
SPEAKER_01: I think good art moves people, and that's the spirit of this book.
4:29
SPEAKER_01: That's the hope of it, is that it would move people to turn toward their own stories with a heart of compassion and curiosity.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: How has it differed for you putting a book out there versus a podcast?
4:44
SPEAKER_00: Because you've been doing the podcast thing for a while and you share a lot of stories on that.
4:47
SPEAKER_01: That's true.
4:49
SPEAKER_01: The book requires like the written word requires, uh, at least for me, a level of clarity of thinking and succinctness and flow that, you know, a podcast episode, 45 minutes, whatever it is, even though they're related to each other and connected to each other, they're not directly related to each other like a chapter is in a book.
5:13
SPEAKER_01: And so I had to pay a lot more attention to clarity of thought and succinctness in the writing of the book.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: I was uh I've talked to a couple of pastors on the podcast before who have gone on to do books, and they've said you can't just take a sermon series and make it a book.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: It does not work, it does not translate at all.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I I found the same thing myself.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: Just I'm grateful to get to be a podcaster.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to trying to translate it in the written word, whether it just be a quick blog or something else, trying to communicate it in written form, it's uh it's a heavy lift.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: So kudos to you for doing that work.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: And have have you always thought about putting this idea into a book?
5:56
SPEAKER_01: No, no, okay.
5:58
SPEAKER_01: No, as a matter of fact, uh, I was approached by a publisher probably six, seven years ago, and they said, um, I would like a particular series of your podcast episodes to be put in book form, and I'd like to publish it.
6:11
SPEAKER_01: It's a different publisher than I went with, but that was the first time I had ever even contemplated writing a book.
6:18
SPEAKER_01: Is a publisher asked me to, and I had never thought about writing the book.
6:23
SPEAKER_01: I like the podcast form, um, and it's easier than writing.
6:28
SPEAKER_01: Sure, sure.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, then what finally put you over the edge to to do it and to put this in a book?
6:34
SPEAKER_01: I think what put me over the edge was it I wrote the book to 35-year-old Adam as the book that I needed and couldn't find.
6:43
SPEAKER_01: So it really was, in some regards, a labor of love to my previous younger self.
6:50
SPEAKER_01: This is the book that I needed when I was lost in my 30s.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's good.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: I I think that um can produce beautiful work when we do write to ourselves five, 10, 15 years ago and give the resource that we wish we had.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: So I love that.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: Well, one of the many things that you say uh in the book, and I just actually got the book yesterday.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm about halfway through.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, I got to chapter, I let's see, I have it in front of me.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to remember.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: I got to a chapter, and my Enneagram seven self was like, okay, I think we're stopping.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: We've um we've gone um to hard harder places.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: Um, I think it was the uh insecure attachment, but anyway, so a lot of great stuff in here that I've been enjoying so far.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: And I I wasn't surprised that I liked it, but um you ultimately the the overarching thing here is understanding our past is an important thing in order to experience healing.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: Why is that?
7:53
SPEAKER_00: Why do we have to look to the past to experience the healing going forward?
7:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
7:58
SPEAKER_01: Well, the neuroscience answer to that is because we have neurons in our brain.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: And the way neurons develop are through two ways: genes and life experiences.
8:09
SPEAKER_01: So, with the exception of the genes that were passed on to you, the neural connections in your brain are entirely a function of the experiences you've had in life, or to say it a little bit differently, your stories.
8:22
SPEAKER_01: And so engaging the stories of Adam as a five-year-old, a 10-year-old, a 15-year-old is going to give me access to understand why my brain has been shaped to experience the world and particularly relationships the way that it has.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: That's that's good.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: I love the the neuroscience piece in it.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: And you do offer that.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: Um, I I I went ahead and asked my Instagram community if they had some questions for you.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: And there's a couple that I'm like, I can't take all of them, but I'm gonna pick a couple of them.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: And one of them is in that idea of what about repressed and repressed past uh and then the memories.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: How do you engage when you when you don't know, when you're unsure, and the maybe the neurons are sending confused mess or confusing messages?
9:14
SPEAKER_01: Well, everyone remembers something.
9:17
SPEAKER_01: And so oftentimes we dismiss or minimize our story as no big deal.
9:25
SPEAKER_01: I'm putting that in quotes, when it's what we're really saying is my story doesn't seem to be as severe as my friends.
9:34
SPEAKER_01: Now, with regard to memories that you know, you're not sure if they happen, none of us have a photographic video replay memory of our past.
9:44
SPEAKER_01: That's the brain doesn't have that.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: So, what you have access to is you have sensation in your body, you have emotion, and you have fragments of scenes from your growing up years.
9:57
SPEAKER_01: What I'm inviting the reader to do is to welcome all of those fragments, all of those sensations, all of those emotions as valid forms of memory, valid ways of knowing.
10:12
SPEAKER_01: And what if you simply welcomed what you do remember rather than being concerned about what you don't remember?
10:22
SPEAKER_01: Because none of us remember the full story.
10:24
SPEAKER_01: That we we don't have that kit capacity.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: So do you encourage or what how do you encourage those who come and have a hazy memory picture thought or inclination?
10:39
SPEAKER_00: If it's just hazy, what do what do we do with that?
10:42
SPEAKER_01: Well, we welcome the haze and we welcome what we do know.
10:45
SPEAKER_01: And then so what I would do with somebody who has a hazy memory is tell me what you do remember.
10:52
SPEAKER_01: And then as they are narrating it, the question is what's coming up for you emotionally and in terms of bodily sensation as you're saying the sentence, my dad came home when I had my 10th birthday party, and he was in a rage.
11:10
SPEAKER_01: And I don't remember much more about that, but I remember that bit, and I remember feeling embarrassed and humiliated in front of my friends.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
11:20
SPEAKER_01: What's it like to tell me those few sentences?
11:24
SPEAKER_01: And now we are in the terrain of memory, and we are in the terrain of story, and we are in the terrain of deep big emotions, and so I want to have a posture of welcoming all of that and bringing curiosity to it.
11:41
SPEAKER_01: Those are really the two key words: welcome and curiosity.
11:45
SPEAKER_01: Will you be curious about what you do remember?
11:50
SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: A question I know I have gotten as a coach that encourages people to explore their story, and I'm sure you get often as well, is how do you know that you're ready to do story work, that you're emotionally or mentally ready to dive in?
12:06
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
12:07
SPEAKER_01: Well, uh, you are as ready as you are today.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: And so what I would say is, what do you feel capable of entering today?
12:16
SPEAKER_01: You don't need to enter this story any more deeply or with any more particularity than you feel ready to today.
12:24
SPEAKER_01: The the question is it's not a binary like you're ready or you're not ready.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: None of us are ready.
12:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm not ready.
12:31
SPEAKER_01: And yet I have to look truthfully and honestly at some of the core stories of my life if I want to become Adam and if I want to be free.
12:41
SPEAKER_01: And so the question is: how can I do that with kindness and a pacing that fits my heart and body's capacity today?
12:53
SPEAKER_01: And I would never want someone to go further than their body feels capable of going today.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm curious for you the timing of your story work and how you decided that you were ready to engage.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: Because obviously, uh, as a therapist, right, you're helping so many um work through their stories or work through their pain.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: Uh, where did this concept of story work and then also your education and your therapy work, how did that all collide for you personally?
13:29
SPEAKER_00: Has it taken a long time or was there a sudden epiphany?
13:33
SPEAKER_01: Uh yes, it's taken a long time, but the epiphany for me was I was 35 years old, I had lots of symptoms, and I had no idea that I had a story or why I was experiencing anxiety, depression, all these symptoms, relationship problems, etc.
13:49
SPEAKER_01: And somebody gave me a copy of a book called The Wounded Heart by Dan Allender.
13:54
SPEAKER_01: And the subtitle of that book is something about, you know, hope for childhood, you know, victims of childhood sexual abuse.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: I ignored the subtitle, but I started reading the book.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: And the book described the landscape of my heart better than anything I had ever read.
14:13
SPEAKER_01: And so I flew to Seattle to be with the author of this book because he runs these things called recovery weeks then and still does for people that have a history of sexual abuse.
14:24
SPEAKER_01: And again, I didn't have a history of sexual abuse in my mind at the time, but I wanted to be with the author of this book.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: And so I flew out to Seattle to be with him.
14:34
SPEAKER_01: And in that group, you get to tell your story for 25 minutes.
14:38
SPEAKER_01: It's a group, five men, Dan, another therapist type person.
14:43
SPEAKER_01: And I spent 23 and a half, maybe 24 minutes of my 25 talking about the physical and emotional abuse from my father.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: And then I took one minute to say some version of, and my mom and I were kind of like the closest two people in our family emotionally.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: I guess I was sort of her surrogate spouse.
15:05
SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, at the end of that time, Dan asked the group, Does anyone have any questions for Adam?
15:12
SPEAKER_01: And there was a gentleman in my group, and he said, Do you think your father was jealous of your relationship with your mother?
15:20
SPEAKER_01: And that was the moment when my whole life started to change because I began to put words to what would become a very clear understanding of the sexual abuse from my mom.
15:31
SPEAKER_01: But I didn't know that until that group experience, and until I shared my story with others, and they spoke into that story.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: They were able to reflect back what you maybe couldn't even hear yourself say.
15:47
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
15:48
SPEAKER_01: That's perfectly said.
15:49
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: How do you navigate sharing openly and freely as you do?
15:55
SPEAKER_00: Because that's another question I get often.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: And even I've debated how much do I share as my story, but it involves other stories and other people?
16:06
SPEAKER_00: How does that work when we're not?
16:09
SPEAKER_00: I know your heart and your posture isn't to create more chaos or riff or you know, whatever.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: What what's some ways to, I don't know, give us some boundaries or guardrails around what does it look like to share our story a little bit more openly as we've maybe processed it.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: And but there's other characters that might be outed, I guess.
16:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
16:31
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's different when your parents are alive than when they're dead.
16:36
SPEAKER_01: Both of my parents are now deceased, but my father was still alive when I told lots of stories publicly involved, and I don't mean on the podcast, but like in groups and not just therapy groups, but like with friends.
16:50
SPEAKER_01: My opinion is that our task is to honor our father and mother.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: And there's no way to honor the other people in our story if we're not willing to be truthful about the nature of our relationship with them.
17:05
SPEAKER_01: And so whether it's a father, a mother, stepfather, stepmother, a sibling, whoever it is, to honor is to speak truthfully.
17:13
SPEAKER_01: Now, I would not recommend anyone publicly talk about a story that they have not yet metabolized.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: And by metabolized, I mean they've grieved their griefs, they've sat with the story for years and had it engaged, and they are at a place where they do not need the reaction of others in order to feel clear and valid and solid about what actually happened.
17:43
SPEAKER_01: So it until I've become very clear about my own stories, I would not share them publicly.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we're all in process.
17:52
SPEAKER_01: I have stories happening now that I'm not talking about publicly because I'm not ready to.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, that's good.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: I I think that um, you know, even I I end up coaching a lot of coaches, and they've wondered at different times.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: We we hear some of the uh cliches out there of like your mess could become a message or your pain, a platform.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: And and those are catchy and there is some truth to them, but I think it's um we have to be fair to our story and take that with a a big awareness or deep awareness of is it actually appropriate and right for ourselves?
18:36
SPEAKER_01: Are we in a place and is it kind, is it kind to yourself to talk about this yet?
18:44
SPEAKER_01: My pain is not to become a platform for anything.
18:49
SPEAKER_01: My pain is to be grieved, it is to be entered into by others, it is to be cared for, it is to be responded to with empathy and with a naming of the boy in the stories of that of those painful stories.
19:04
SPEAKER_01: And so I I know what you mean by pain become a platform, but what I would say is that your story will tell you about your deep gifting, your deep glory, and your deep wounding.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: And all of that is meant for you to become who you were created to be.
19:29
SPEAKER_01: And so I can't become Adam until I have grappled with my gifting, my wounding, and the song of my heart, i.e., the longings in my heart.
19:40
SPEAKER_01: But that is that's what I think about with regard to platform or calling, is I want to be true to Adam.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: What that becomes for others, that that's my Eucharist gift.
19:51
SPEAKER_01: That's everyone has a gift to give others.
19:54
SPEAKER_01: What is the core of that gift?
19:56
SPEAKER_01: To become yourself.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh, perfectly said.
19:59
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for speaking to that.
20:01
SPEAKER_00: I because I would like to say that if we have done the work and if we truly were um, if we're sharing from a place of health and true calling or being compelled, if you will, then it it it doesn't it doesn't happen easily.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: Like there's some wrestle and there's some struggle in it.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: It's not like oh yeah, well, now I get to talk about it on a big platform and create a platform around this because I don't know, I sure wouldn't have chosen any any bit of pain that's a lot of things.
20:38
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: I I think that there's a lot of resistance at times um for people to engage with their stories.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: Uh part of it is like, oh, I think I'm judging up the past, or um, you know, there's a lot of roadblocks and obstacles.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: What do you see?
20:57
SPEAKER_00: What are some bigger fears out there?
20:59
SPEAKER_00: And how how would you speak to those as we're wrestling through?
21:03
SPEAKER_00: Do I even want to get this book and look at my story or work with a coach or therapist and do story work?
21:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
21:09
SPEAKER_01: Well, I have a chapter in the book called, I think it's called Common Objections to Exploring Your Story, where I go through the stuff that came up in me in my 30s when I began doing this work.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, one of those objections is I don't want to blame my parents.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't want to have a victim mentality.
21:28
SPEAKER_01: And here's what I would say uh engaging your story is not an invitation to blame your parents or anyone else, it is an invitation to name what has happened to you on this plan on this planet in your particular contexts, and your family is one of those contexts.
21:49
SPEAKER_01: And so it's not about blame, it is about naming truth.
21:54
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think you can be free until you've engaged.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Some of the heartbreaking tragedies that you've suffered during your growing up years, and we've all experienced harm that needs to be named.
22:10
SPEAKER_01: Until it's named, it can't heal.
22:13
SPEAKER_01: Like a wound that is unnamed is a wound that cannot heal.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: And so all of us are stuck in various ways in our adult lives.
22:22
SPEAKER_01: Those stuck places are indicative of unhealed wounds, to say that a little differently, unnamed wounds.
22:30
SPEAKER_01: And so I think looking at the past is so that you can live more vitally and more alive in the few in the present.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: What would you say defines those unhealed or unnamed wounds?
22:44
SPEAKER_00: Because I thank goodness not all of us have sexual trauma in our past or from our family of origin, but give us kind of the spectrum of maybe what we could be invited to tend to that's in our story that was hard.
22:58
SPEAKER_01: Well, sure.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: I mean, everything from abuse, sexual abuse, sexual trauma to the way my wife puts it is she's like, look, sometimes you experience a capital T trauma and it's like shrapnel lodges in your body.
23:13
SPEAKER_01: And that needs to be tended to with care.
23:16
SPEAKER_01: But sometimes the harm that you experience from one of your primary caregivers is like a splinter in your foot.
23:25
SPEAKER_01: Now, that splinter is not big like shrapnel.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: There's no blood coming out, but it can affect the way you take every step.
23:34
SPEAKER_01: And her point is that that splinter also needs to be tended to with care and carefully removed.
23:44
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, you're gonna walk funny and have lots of downstream problems with your gait.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: So the point is whether you are aware of big T traumas or just smaller examples of harm, will you take your story seriously?
24:03
SPEAKER_01: And will you tend to it with care and curiosity?
24:07
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: I love that that analogy, if you will.
24:10
SPEAKER_00: It's so yeah, that is as perfect.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: And honestly, to that point, sometimes the splinter is more obvious than a parent.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: And when we tend to that, it might then help us be more aware of if there's shrapnel.
24:26
SPEAKER_01: So that's it.
24:26
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay, how do we as parents help our kids not experience or to to do the work of story work?
24:35
SPEAKER_00: I I joke, I have one who's launched and two more teenagers at home.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: And uh we pay for counseling.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: Um, I also joke about certain conversations or things that we have, like I might need to pay for counseling, you know, or pay for a session to, you know, go over this conversation, like I'm here for it.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: But I am an advocate.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: I mean, story work is a big part of what we do.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: It's simply wholehearted, and uh it's a process that I'm going through as well.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: But how do we help those that we're raising as we're tending to ourselves to also tend to them, knowing that as imperfect parents, we're gonna mess up.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, no shrapnel, but there might be some splinters along the way.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: Give us some guidance in that.
25:15
SPEAKER_01: Well, if you want to be a better parent, the neuroscience research is unequivocally clear that the single greatest thing you can do to become a better parent has nothing to do with interacting differently with your children.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: It is to do this make sense of your developmental story in your growing up years in your family of origin.
25:38
SPEAKER_01: So the research is really clear that people that have made coherent sense of their story in their family of origin, that translates into secure attachment with their children or the development of increasing levels of secure attachment with your children.
25:57
SPEAKER_01: So if you're a parent and you're listening to this and you're like, I want to be a better parent, instead of reading a parenting book, what I would invite you to do is to engage the boy or girl that you were in your growing up years and spend some time with him or her in the context of their stories.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: That's really good.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: When we use the Enneagram, the conversation I have a lot of times is that message you long to hear or the core longing.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: If those uh continue to go unsatisfied and unmet, then we look to our first our spouse.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: And if that didn't work out with them, we look to our kids, and that's where we can begin to create some harm because we're demanding of them or expecting them to fulfill some need in us that they have no business of meeting at all.
26:49
SPEAKER_01: Perfectly said.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: I couldn't agree more.
26:51
SPEAKER_01: And that happens all the time in families.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: You used the word victim earlier, and I want to expand on that just a minute because I have taken um son of some of Donald Miller's idea, hero on a mission and story brand.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: And one of our Enneagram sessions focuses on victim, villain, hero, and guide.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: And those roles that we play as it relates to Enneagram's growth level of health.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then also psychology, uh psychology-wise, it's levels of development.
27:22
SPEAKER_00: So tell me a little bit, maybe just because you haven't gotten to see this or hear this before, when we're talking about a victim, villain, hero, and guide in our story, how have you seen those roles or characters play out in people's processing their past or um, or even how do you either view the Enneagram or use the Enneagram in your work as people are processing story?
27:45
SPEAKER_01: Right.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: Well, when I work with people, the thing that amazes me year in and year out is that they, so many of the people I work with come from such deeply harmful families.
27:59
SPEAKER_01: And yet, in the context of their trauma, there has been the development, the creation of immense, staggering beauty and glory.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: And how do you understand that?
28:15
SPEAKER_01: How do you understand somebody who it would make sense if you took the path of victim or villain?
28:21
SPEAKER_01: But you have made thousands of choices for life, for honesty, for truth, for goodness.
28:28
SPEAKER_01: And you have, in the words of Genesis 50, verse 20, what was intended for evil has also been meant by God for good.
28:36
SPEAKER_01: And I can see it in your life.
28:39
SPEAKER_01: And so what whether that's hero, whether that, and it is hero, it is Joseph Campbell's hero's journey.
28:47
SPEAKER_01: So many people with an experience of trauma have made immense palaces of a life when they had scrap metal to work with, and that evokes awe.
29:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it leads to worship because it's this sense of oh my gosh, what was intended for your destruction, you have not merely survived, though you've done that, which is amazing in and of itself, but you have become a more free, full version of the image of God in you.
29:23
SPEAKER_01: And that's staggering and it leads to immense awe.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: And in your viewpoint of working with people, what's what is that in someone where they do rise to the occasion and they become the hero?
29:39
SPEAKER_00: Like, is there some sort of ingredient or personality?
29:42
SPEAKER_00: What is it?
29:42
SPEAKER_00: Because I I can go, it's the grace of God that I find myself where I am.
29:49
SPEAKER_00: But it sometimes feels like there has to be something else too, because there's plenty of people who become the villain and keep perpetrating and and take their scrap metal and make a mess.
30:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, God forces no one's hand.
30:04
SPEAKER_01: And the invitation to truth, honesty, light is available to all at every moment.
30:13
SPEAKER_01: Why somebody chooses the path of repentance, hunger for healing, grief, rage, honesty, and becomes a more full version of themselves over the course of their lives.
30:30
SPEAKER_01: What's that ingredient?
30:32
SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.
30:35
SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.
30:37
SPEAKER_01: All I know is I get to witness it all the time, and I have awe.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: I have wonder.
30:43
SPEAKER_01: There is no ingredient that I that I know of.
30:47
SPEAKER_01: It's just the sense of, oh my gosh, look at what you have created with your life.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
30:57
SPEAKER_00: May that be encouraging to those who are in the process of rebuilding or who go, okay, I want, I want to do that too.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: I want that to be said of me as well.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: Um, okay, let's talk a little bit more about the book.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: Give us a picture.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: How did you lay it out?
31:12
SPEAKER_00: What's your why did you decide to do the process that you did, or what's the journey that you hope will go on as we work through the book?
31:21
SPEAKER_01: I hope people will be guided into an exploration of their story.
31:28
SPEAKER_01: And all of us have multiple stories.
31:31
SPEAKER_01: We have a family of origin story where we learned our role, we learned our style of relating.
31:36
SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of harm for all of us in our families.
31:40
SPEAKER_01: You have a sexual story, you're a sexual being, you have a body.
31:45
SPEAKER_01: Christians have a really hard time with this.
31:48
SPEAKER_01: You have a body, which means you have a story that is embodied, and your body is communicating with you truths about your story all the time.
31:59
SPEAKER_01: You also have an ethnicity, you have you belong to multiple collectives, you have a gender, you you have, and so you have a collective and a cultural story.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: All of these parts of you, all of these stories need to be explored if you are going to be free from the places where you're stuck.
32:18
SPEAKER_01: And so the book is like I'm taking people by the hand into each of these categories so that they might explore their body story, their sexual story, their family of origin story, et cetera.
32:31
SPEAKER_01: There's a chapter on what is your story with God?
32:35
SPEAKER_01: Because all of us have to grapple with our unmet desires and our big disappointments.
32:42
SPEAKER_01: And those desires and disappointments tell me something about who you are.
32:49
SPEAKER_01: They tell me something about your name.
32:51
SPEAKER_01: And so I don't think any of us can really know who we are and what we were put here to do, apart from engaging the experiences that we had growing up.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's good.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: So true.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: At the beginning, you mentioned that you were part of Dan Allender's group, a small group of people where you shared your story.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: I I love that this book sort of replicates getting to sit with you, and you're the guide by the side through these chapters.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: But um, should we do this book with other people?
33:23
SPEAKER_00: Do we do it alone?
33:25
SPEAKER_00: Tell us a little bit about that.
33:27
SPEAKER_01: I think the book can be read alone, but I love, love, italicize it, bold it, underline it, the vision of gathering two or three and reading together and then sharing stories together.
33:44
SPEAKER_01: Like nothing warms my heart more than thinking about two or three or eight, not just reading the book, but letting the book inspire you and equip you to share your stories with one another, because that's where the freedom comes.
34:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: Uh a group of us, we um called ourselves the Fight Club, which I know you're not supposed to talk about the Fight Club, but um it's a legendary moment of my my story.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: But we actually had Dan Allender's book.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm looking at my shelf right now, to be told.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: And we had all heard about story work and engaged with some different things, but we went through that book together.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: And um wow, to sit with a person and have someone hear you.
34:40
SPEAKER_00: And you know, it sometimes we put time limits on it, sometimes it just was the night was over, and so we had to stop.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: But there was so much healing in that.
34:49
SPEAKER_00: And so why is that?
34:51
SPEAKER_00: Why is there something?
34:52
SPEAKER_00: What is it about our our being or our brain or whatever that telling someone else our story does uh deeper healing work than just going through it ourselves?
35:02
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, because we're created in the image of a triune God, a we and not an I, which means that the Homo sapiens, human beings, are wired for connection, for mirroring, for validation, for engagement with one another.
35:23
SPEAKER_01: I need my stories to be witnessed by you so that I can be held deeply in my traumas and cared for in the midst of the big feelings that come up as I'm telling those stories.
35:38
SPEAKER_01: I can't do that by myself, even if I have my Bible, a cup of coffee, my favorite chair, and a good view out the window.
35:47
SPEAKER_01: I need your face and your voice to name me well in the context of my stories.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: Okay, real quick, I know you have episodes on this and other content, but could you for a minute give some tips to people who are receiving stories, who are sitting in people's presence?
36:07
SPEAKER_00: Because I think that can that can be harmful in itself if it's not done well.
36:13
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
36:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:15
SPEAKER_01: First of all, nobody comes out of the womb skilled at engaging other stories.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: To engage another story is to love that person more deeply.
36:25
SPEAKER_01: It it story engagement is equal to love.
36:28
SPEAKER_01: The question is, how do you enter someone else's heartache with courage, with humility, and with kindness?
36:38
SPEAKER_01: And kindness is very different than a nice listening ear.
36:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm not talking about being a listening ear.
36:44
SPEAKER_01: I am talking about will you have the courage when you hear someone else's story, them as a 12-year-old girl, will you have the courage to put some words to what it was like for you as you listen to this 12-year-old girl go through that experience?
37:04
SPEAKER_01: Will I tell you what it was like for me to listen to your story?
37:09
SPEAKER_01: And will I name that 12-year-old girl well?
37:13
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
37:14
SPEAKER_01: All of her glory, all of her grief, all of her rage, all of her terror, whatever's in the story.
37:21
SPEAKER_01: Will I put words to that?
37:23
SPEAKER_01: That's the risk of kindness.
37:24
SPEAKER_01: And sadly, in our culture, more often than not, when we hear a story, we are content to merely be a listening ear.
37:33
SPEAKER_01: That's not good story engagement.
37:35
SPEAKER_01: It's not loving.
37:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's good.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: I I again, I know that it's this is a couple podcast episodes, but I think reflecting back, offering language, even if it's fumbling around, but offering some language of how you would name the feelings that you think and the care and the sympathy and the loss and all of that.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: I think it's really important.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's why the work of therapy and a therapist is really invaluable, even coaching at some level, depending on the kind of coach and the work that you do and doing this in a group that is truly safe.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: Um, this last month we talked about uh building a wholehearted table.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: And part of that process was determining who is a safe person for you in this season and this year, and to be considering that, um, not expecting perfection, but you know, ask making sure, like I think sometimes we just take our story to the airways and to social media and we just share it and spew it and we don't understand why we're not received well when it's supposed to be sacred and it's supposed to be shared with the right people.
38:44
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: All right.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: There's so many things I feel so grateful to get to ask you questions that I have been thinking about when it comes to story work.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: And I just really value what you are doing and what you're putting out there.
38:58
SPEAKER_00: Uh, is there anything else about the book that you'd really love for people to know as they consider taking maybe it feels like a bit of a leap for them and getting the book and reading through it and working through the pages?
39:10
SPEAKER_01: I I think the question for the listener is will you tend to your story with care?
39:19
SPEAKER_01: Will you give it the weight that it deserves?
39:22
SPEAKER_01: I mean, every single person's life has experienced plot lines, plot shifts, characters, settings, themes that are more epic than Hollywood's best offerings.
39:38
SPEAKER_01: Your life is more epic than the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
39:42
SPEAKER_01: It's more epic than the Star Wars 10 Star Wars movies.
39:47
SPEAKER_01: And your life is yours.
39:50
SPEAKER_01: Will you take it as seriously as God takes it?
39:54
SPEAKER_01: That's what I'm really inviting and trying to inspire people to do.
39:58
SPEAKER_01: I want people to take their life as seriously as God takes it and to be a little bit more specific, to take their wounds as seriously as God takes their wounds.
40:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's so good.
40:11
SPEAKER_00: Adam, thank you.
40:12
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for it putting out all the effort for doing a book when it was kind of the last thing on your mind.
40:19
SPEAKER_00: I think this will be really powerful.
40:21
SPEAKER_00: I think um just as I've read through part of it and then looked through the rest of it, it is, it feels very palatable, very doable, um, a great process and a framework, if you will, to to engage uh again in your story, whether you're alone or with a group.
40:36
SPEAKER_00: Um, I really love what you've done here.
40:38
SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much.
40:39
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me, Amy.
40:41
SPEAKER_01: It was a lovely conversation.
40:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, I am sure grateful and appreciate the opportunity to get to learn from Adam Young in this way.
40:50
SPEAKER_00: And I hope I asked some of the questions that you had hoped to hear.
40:56
SPEAKER_00: And a special shout out to those who participated in offering feedback and ideas around the type of questions that you wanted me to ask Adam.
41:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm always open to suggestions and ideas for this podcast because I do this podcast for you.
41:10
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I do enjoy it.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: I hope I always get to do it.
41:14
SPEAKER_00: But if you're not enjoying it, and if you're not wanting to hear certain things, well, then it is purely selfish.
41:21
SPEAKER_00: So share your ideas of podcast guests, questions that you would like me to ask, and of course, topics that you would like me to cover here.
41:30
SPEAKER_00: And while I likely can't do it all, I will do my best to fulfill those desires and then direct you to resources that maybe better serve your needs.
41:41
SPEAKER_00: Of course, if you listen to this conversation and you're like, wow, okay, maybe I need to do some of that story work, or maybe I need someone to sit with me and hear my story.
41:52
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's not big take trauma, but it was a difficult experience for you that you know is informing your decisions now.
42:00
SPEAKER_00: We can sit together, learn more about your personality type.
42:04
SPEAKER_00: I can share the insights that I have learned over the years, and I can sit with you and help you discern the next right step, whether it's in relationships, in your work, or even just in ways to deepen your faith.
42:20
SPEAKER_00: I have supported dozens and dozens and dozens of women over the years, and I would be honored to offer the same to you.
42:28
SPEAKER_00: Because remember, friend, we are all broken, we are all blowing it, and the brave one does something about it.