(Ep. 64) Uncovering Shame: Reclaiming Your True Self (Part 2)

What if the shame you've spent your whole life outrunning traces back to something as simple as being a sensitive kid who felt too small?

In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise follow up on their last conversation ("Uncovering Shame, Reclaiming Your True Self") by getting deeply personal — Brian opens up the actual roots of his own shame, and lets it be walked through in real time. 

It's a vulnerable, illustrative companion to the previous episode's teaching, showing what tracing shame back to early childhood actually looks like.

Brian shares that the thing that eventually "blew up" in his life traced back to something surprisingly simple: two childhood sources of shame, both tied to not feeling like "a man." 

He was a sensitive boy who felt deeply and cried easily in a stoic family that didn't have a grid for it — so he came to believe he was a "crybaby" — and he was very small (4'10" and about 90 pounds as a high school freshman), which the world constantly pointed out. 

Laura connects it back to the Garden: just as Adam and Eve covered themselves, Brian spent years covering the "crater" of not feeling enough with protectors — the need to be cool, relentless work, performance, and eventually even his Christian faith turned into a work to cover himself. 

The hope is in the tracing: naming where shame comes from, and comforting that child rather than compensating for him, is where the healing finally begins.

In this episode: 

🔹 Brian's authentic story: two childhood roots of shame, both tied to not feeling like "a man" 

🔹 The sensitive boy in a stoic family — how "crybaby" became a shame identity 

🔹 Being small in a world that wouldn't stop pointing it out — shame over something you can't change 

🔹 The Garden connection: how protectors (coolness, work, performance) become the "leaves" we cover ourselves with 

🔹 When even faith becomes a "work" to cover shame — and where real healing starts instead

📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868

🔗 Learn more:

https://triggeredandtrue.com

https://lauraduncan.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:29

Hello and welcome everyone to this edition of Triggered and True. Laura, we got some catching up to do. Laura just took a big trip to Europe and I look forward to hearing all about that. But just tell us one big highlight of your European trip. What was your favorite?

SPEAKER_01 0:43

One big highlight, kind of based along with some of the things you talked about on the podcast, is I was just so amazed to go to these countries that, you know, like they're having all these, you know, buildings built in the 900s and they're having all the chaos of life happening during those times. We went through castles and learned all the things that were happening at that time. And it was so generational, it was so connected to unmet need and pain that I could just like you can see it in the architecture. Yes, I just looked at these castles and I just knew. No, like as you're going through the castles, you're learning about the history, you're learning about the families, the dynamics, the families and what they did. And I mean things got dicey there, you know. So like you're seeing it all. And at first you're kind of in awe of it because it's a little bit different than what we experience here in the Western world in the United States. But then when it comes down to it, it's universal. Oh, humans get hurt, and humans hurt others because of their lack and their pain. And it just made me feel like wow, like this is the same story all over the world for centuries and centuries and centuries, even if it comes in a different package, it's all the same.

SPEAKER_04 1:51

You know, it's interesting. I think sometimes we think the world's worse than it was, you know. We think there was some golden period back, I don't know, a thousand years ago. Christians think it was when, you know, 2,000 years ago. But I'm like, have you read Paul's letters, all of them? I mean, the book of Acts is pretty cool, but have you read the other letters and the things he was addressing in the churches? There was a lot of messy situations.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

There was a lot going on.

SPEAKER_04 2:18

I mean, there was people sleeping with their relatives, and there was and stepchildren, you know, all this stuff. You know, he was addressing all kinds of things. And I'm like, there was no golden age. There was no golden age.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

There's been humans ever since the garden.

SPEAKER_04 2:35

There have been humans, and I guess if you had to say pre-fall, pre-fall, post-fall, there's been no golden age, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Yeah, there's never been a golden age, and I just felt such a similarity. It felt like that could be a client sitting across from me way back in the 800s, 900s. They could be sitting across from me, and it would be the same story in a different time with different circumstances, same story.

SPEAKER_04 2:59

Yeah, yeah. You know, interestingly, I was uh listening to another podcast uh just this morning, and they were talking about one of you listen to other podcasts?

SPEAKER_01 3:09

I listen lots of other podcasts, but I love podcasts.

SPEAKER_04 3:14

I inhale podcasts, but this one was talking about, you know, part of the reason why people think it's so much worse today than it was, you know, maybe a hundred years ago. And he said it had a lot to do with the news we consume. So human nature is to be more drawn to negative news than positive news. Yes. Okay, that's kind of human nature.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

It's uh what sells? Yep.

SPEAKER_04 3:36

Well, it's like the gapers delay on the interstate when there's an accident, like you just can't help but like look and all the other stuff. So humans are drawn to kind of negative news. And as our news sources have switched from primarily getting local news to like really now local news, like so much of it's died out, like local news is not existent. That's true. So if when you were more focused on local news, probabilistically, there's less likely to be bad things to talk about. But as you expand, and as information age, obviously we know about everything now, and as you expand that lens out, if you get all the way out to world news, worldview, like you're definitely gonna be able to find something horrible going on somewhere all the time. Oh, yeah, all the time, you know. Whereas a hundred years ago, like ignorance is bliss, you had no idea that that horrible thing was happening, you know, a half a world away.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

So yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_04 4:32

So there's a lot of uh, you know, psychology behind that as well. But but back to today's podcast. Today's podcast is uh follow-up on our last podcast, which was called Uncovering Shame, Reclaiming Your True Self. And in that podcast, I'm just gonna give a quick summary. Yep, and then we're gonna dive into like me being very uh vulnerable. Okay. So uh we talked in that podcast about how shame is a virus and it's operating on a low grade level, affecting our overall well-being. We also talked a fair amount about the origin of shame. We got into Genesis and to the Garden of Eden and when shame first uh reared its ugly head, and how a lot of times as Christians or people, we get very focused on the sin, but God was actually more focused on the Adam and Eve's perception of themselves. The fact that they realized that they were naked, and that word naked we talked about could also be translated as evil. And God's biggest concern was who told you that you were evil. And we talked about um obviously the knowledge of good and evil and all of the chaos that that brought into humanity and how the knowledge of good uh drives this shame cycle just as much as the knowledge of evil. And in some ways, the knowledge of good we've even talked about is more detrimental than the knowledge of evil, because we're constantly measuring ourselves up to this bar, this impossible standard. And then we talked about the key to dealing with shame and how trying to get better can actually feed the shame system, like this focus on we need to fix ourselves just kind of feeds that shame system. And we talked about the actual antidote for shame, of course, is compassion. And hence the compassion method that you founded all those years ago. And um we also talked a lot about the behaviors we have always come from somewhere. So tracing back to early childhood experiences of shame. So those things we those things that we do, those things that manifest in our lives have an origin and it goes back to our early childhood development. And then we left the podcast with me saying that next time we'll go back through what I learned about shame in my life as I met with you, you know, during my great awakening, which was also my nervous breakdown, but I like to call it great awakening. I think it just sounds more yeah, it sounds a little bit more like, you know, cool, I had a great awakening.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Yeah. Well, it's also what happened, you know, we think nervous breakdown because of the negative experiences that we feel during that time, and that's what it's characteristic, characterized as. But if you think about it, you were just not aware of things that were going on inside of you, and you were awakened to what was going on inside of you through the uncomfortable feelings of what we sometimes look at as a nervous breakdown.

SPEAKER_04 7:39

Yep. Yep. Well, you know, one thing that I could I remember one of the first things you told me when I when I sat in your office was uh, and this is going back uh just to give some people some perspective. So it'll be seven years. Seven years next month. Is that right? That's a long time. That's a long time. Hey, seven years. I should be perfectly healed. Isn't seven like the number of completion, you know?

SPEAKER_01 8:11

Yes, it is finished.

SPEAKER_04 8:13

It is finished, yeah. Right. You know, that's back to my perfectionism. Like we can never attain perfection on this side of uh eternity, you know. So um we talked about you. I remember you telling me like right away how shame is the root of all anxiety and depression. And we talked about that last uh episode as well. And for me, primarily it manifested as anxiety, but I do remember it would kind of vacillate back and forth. When I was in the throes of the Great Awakening, there'd be it'd be 80% anxiety, but then there'd be times of of some pretty significant depression as well. So, you know, you've talked about how those are really just two sides of the same coin. So you want to just kind of give a little color on that? Anxiety and depression.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Yeah. So how they're connected, yeah. Yeah. So anxiety and depression are both messengers. They're trying to tell us through an anxious feeling or a depressed feeling that we have unmet need and pain. So it's ultimately your child self, that part of your brain that hasn't been reconciled, that hasn't received what it needs, whether that's comfort or the 10 gifts. And it's sending a message of a frantic, anxious feeling, getting our attention to say, hey, we don't have what we need. Same thing with depression. Depression is shutting ourselves down as an emotional trigger, shutting ourselves down and being depressed, even as a protector, to try to protect ourselves as well as anxiety, but to protect ourselves from that pain. And so we're either hyper-vigilant with anxiety or we're depressed with depression to protect ourselves from the pain that we're feeling consciously or subconsciously.

SPEAKER_04 10:07

Yeah. Yeah. And then would you say that people tend to that you meet with that are that are having significant issues or they're having significant triggers, you know, these triggers have really gotten significant. Would you say that um most people kind of lean towards one versus the other more so as like a dominant way that it manifests?

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Yes, definitely. Like, I mean, obviously, some people, you know, equally struggle with both, but I've seen more often that one person goes more towards anxiety, one more goes more towards depression. And I think it's whatever our coding, our early childhood development, it's what however we process pain during that time, they'll usually manifest it the same way.

SPEAKER_04 10:52

And potentially how it was modeled by the people around us, how they process their pain. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Yep, exactly. So, like, let's just say you had a depressed dad. So you modeled that when you were younger, but then let's say you became very anxious as an adult and your mom was anxious. You might fluctuate between the two based on what was modeled to you, and also based on where we're at. You know, when we feel like we have no choices, we sometimes become depressed. We feel like we have more choices, we become anxious. So sometimes it can be also circumstantial as well.

SPEAKER_04 11:20

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. But I do remember when I was having the really big bad anxiety, I'd be like, oh man, depression would be better. And then I remember when I was feeling really, really depressed, I'd be like, I kind of like anxiety better.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Yeah, we'll just take whatever we're not experiencing now. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_04 11:38

You know, it's kind of like, uh yeah. Anyway, so um, so you know, it's it's hard to believe that the root of what blew up was so simple. But it really, it really was extraordinarily a simple explanation. Yeah, it took a long time to like get to that simple explanation, but to really get to that root of that explanation was very simple. And I would say it really boiled down to two things from my early childhood development. Um, and both of them are connected to not feeling like a man by not feeling like I was a man, and that's where my shame was connected to. So the two things really were is that when I was younger, I was, I would say definitely more so than my parents, much more sensitive, where I would feel things deeply and I would express that, and maybe I'd cry a lot, I'd cry easily, or I would perceive that I would cry easily, especially compared to what was modeled or maybe accepted. And I know that um, you know, my parents provided me a lot of wonderful things, but that was definitely an area where that was not something that they were able to connect with, and it was something that definitely I would say kind of annoyed them. Real or perceived, real or perceived. I don't know if it really annoyed them or if I perceived it annoyed them, but that's how it felt to me. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Which as a child, your perspective is your reality, yeah, right. So that was real to you. Whether that was real from them or not, it was real to you.

SPEAKER_04 13:32

Yep, yep. So I had a lot of shame connected to that. So, you know, we we we talk about how shame is, you know, what you do is you know, it's a belief that what you do is who you are. So in this case, if I cried easily, I was a crybaby. Okay. So and that's that's not really what you did. Right. That's something I did. That's not really something positive, you know. So yeah, um, or at least I didn't perceive it as positive. Now I would look at it as being a wonderful thing to be able to feel emotions deeply, is a wonderful gift to have.

SPEAKER_03 14:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:08

So the second thing was is that I was just so little. You know, I just totally growing up was so tiny, just to give a perspective of that. My freshman year of high school, I was like 410 and weighed like 90 some pounds. Like there was not a single person in the entire high school that I was taller than. So um you know, and that was that was uh a huge source of shame for me, man. And it just really again, you know, really made me feel like I was something less than. And we were talking before this episode, we were talking a little bit about, you know, part of my shame came from something I did, which I was in my mind overly sensitive, crybaby. The second part was, you know, that I was just little. Okay, so that's not something I actually did, but I still had a lot of shame connected to it. And you you were talking to me about shame is like what you do, or it's connected to those innate characteristics of who we are. You know, someone else might have the same kind of shame because they're overweight or they're perceived to be overweight, or people think they're overweight, maybe they are, maybe they aren't. You know, I've even heard tall people talk about things like that.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

You can't change your height. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 15:34

You know, and people are always pointing out constantly how tall they are. Well, people would always point out constantly how small I was. I remember one time uh we had these neighbor kids, and uh there they had three boys, and I would babysit them. And I want to say that the oldest boy was like five years younger than me. Well, towards the tail end of my time babysitting them, he was as tall as me. So, like I remember like one time, like someone saying that I was babysitting them, like, who's babysitting who, you know, and I'm just like, you know, stuff like that, people would say all the time.

SPEAKER_03 16:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:11

Um, yeah, yeah. So, you know, and I I people say that about tall people too, you know, whatever, but it they don't realize, you know, no, I think if anybody would have realized how I was internalizing all that, they they wouldn't have done it, obviously. But um, but the hard thing was, so I would say those two things were the root of my shame. And you know, we've we've talked a lot about this when we met one-on-one, is that it wasn't so much that I was little, it wasn't so much that it I was sensitive, it's just that my parents just did not have a grid for it. Like they were not able to be there with me in that. And it come from a long line of uh, I would say people that try to be very stoic, you know, and not getting emotionally engaged, um, so on and so forth. So so really the the gift, you when we talk about the 10 gifts, the gift that really was getting kind of blown up here, that I had like a massive crater in my heart was in this concept of not feeling like I was enough. Yeah, like just this constant feeling like I wasn't a man, I wasn't man enough, I wasn't enough because of my stature, because of this sensitivity. So it's like that is and and to just walk that all the way forward and to see how that has you know manifested throughout my life and all the different places where I tried to compensate, you know, we talk about them as being protectors. And um like protectors are those things that we're trying to do to not feel, or we have feelings and we don't know what to do with them. So we gotta like displace this somewhere else. And a lot of times our protectors do that. So I would say that my protectors, my compensation things drove so much behavior. Yeah, and one of the big areas that uh drove it was in the area of work. So it was so important to me that I'd be seen as a hard worker because that could help compensate, because that's what men did. Yeah, that's what my dad did.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

You're like, I can't change my height, but I can change what I do by working harder to be more of a man.

SPEAKER_04 18:36

Yeah. So I'm on that knowledge of good and evil hamster wheel. So to be good means to work hard. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

So even though shame doesn't always come from what you do, we usually try to reconcile through what we do. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 18:52

100%. And um, you know, my dad definitely modeled hard work, which is a wonderful thing, and I'm so thankful for that because my life has reaped a lot of blessings because I know how to work really hard. Okay. But yeah, you know, it's not a place to be getting your significance from. And that's that's what I was doing, you know.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Or your identity, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:17

Yeah. And it also, you know, we've talked about even more recently. I think there's been a lot of growth in my area in the enough, and we'll talk a little bit more about that. But there was another aspect of that work thing, and it's connected to play because play felt shameful because you should be working.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:38

You know, so like that was not there were certain types of play that you know I felt like my family was cool with, like being in sports or you know, doing things like that, but like just being goofy, like play for play sake, being silly. Absolutely not. You know, like uh, and then if you did too much play, like you know, you should be working. So I feel like I really grew up, had to grow up kind of fast because I got thrown into the world of work at a very, very young age, grow growing up on a farm, which was so cool, which was so cool in so many ways.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

But didn't you say you were like five when you started to like do tours and be working? Well, okay, but it was young.

SPEAKER_04 20:28

Well, you were out there, like you were out there doing it with them as soon as you can remember anything. Like, you know, that was like yeah, there wasn't a babysitter or daycare, you just rode around the tractor, you know. So it's like so, like, you know, here's a here's a little pitchfork, it's just got three little things on it, and it's it's it's half size, you know, you can use that. But so, but those are you know, a lot of it'd be like anybody that has a family business where you actually have work that the kids could do to help. That could be a restaurant, that could be, you know, a lot of things, but you like you said, is beneficial to learn and to oh, everything you've gained from it, yeah. Yeah, I've gained the entrepreneurial stuff, there's a lot of good from it, and that's I don't want to take away from that. But but when you look at where the deficiencies are and kind of what led to the Great Awakening, definitely this lack of being able to have the freedom to play, because you've defined play as the freedom to not have to do anything. Yeah, and I'm like, I just like if there's nothing to do, yeah. I'm like, no, there should be something to do. So if there's any dead time, even for me to this day, I'm like, what do I fill this with? Like, I yeah, I'm going through like, what could I be doing? What could I be working on? What could I what could I be doing? So um, there was a lot of guilt connected to play, and I think that that is something I'm becoming more aware of just just in the last couple of years, just how stunted I am in that area. Um so and then thinking through all those other compensation things like the the need to be cool and just the peer pressure and like all the things that go along with that through your adolescence and all the stupid Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

It's huge. Stupid sounds it feels like it now in hindsight, but in the moment it's your whole life.

SPEAKER_04 22:24

Yeah, yeah. So that was that that need to be cool. Another brand. Protector was you know, work, but work is very closely connected to if you're gonna work, it's connected to performance. So, performance was the other one. So, these are all the things I'm doing to compensate for feeling overly sensitive, being feeling like a crybaby, not a man that way, and for just being little and being a run.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

One, yeah, and one good like illustration when we talk about shame is in the garden when Adam and Eve covered themselves. This is what you were covering yourself with. Yeah, you're covering yourself with working hard, you were covering yourself with performance, you were covering yourself with all those things that you talked about to cover up who you were, because you believe because you were shorter that you were less of a man, so you had to compensate by covering yourself with other things, that you couldn't be naked and unashamed, you couldn't be just yourself.

SPEAKER_04 23:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's good stuff. And then um we've talked about this before, but like when I was in my mid-20s, I had more of a spiritual awakening. And one wonderful thing my parents did is you know, they drove me to church every Sunday, and a lot of Sundays it was it was half dragging because it was not what I wanted to be doing. Yeah, and and I would say that um that's one of the things I'm probably most thankful about them doing is is being very adamant uh about that. Because as boring as I thought it was at the time, there was definitely foundational things being put there that God used in powerful ways later on in my life. So then after living like a heathen for quite a while and doing these cool things and all this other stuff, my mid-20s, you know, when my frontal lobe probably got a little full more fully developed and was recognizing that that's a stupid way to live life, I had more of a spiritual awakening and quit drinking and you know, quit doing a lot of those things. But, you know, unfortunately, and we've talked about this, I didn't really find the freedom in Christ. I just kind of replaced a R version of Protectors for a PG version of Protectors. And kind of the things I was doing to cover myself, so to speak, like you mentioned, just they got cleaned up a little bit, you know. So it wasn't drinking and partying and some of the things that went along with that. It was more things that were work, work kind of remained always work was always there, you know.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Working and also Christianity can become work.

SPEAKER_04 25:08

Totally, it did for me. Yeah. I mean, it was my my my faith became very much a work that I was using to to help cover myself. So and then um, yeah, I mean, uh it's it's amazing some of the crazy things you can accomplish from your shame, being driven by your shame.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

Yeah, oh yeah, it's pretty amazing. You know, but what does it cost you?

SPEAKER_04 25:33

But it costs something. And I think about my uh, I was thinking of like professional things and like work-wise, like one of my greatest achievements that I ever did professionally was establishing this really complicated business and this uh whole it was a complicated business to structure, and the whole thing was driven by the whole premise of doing this business and establishing this is that there was this guy in the industry that said it couldn't be done. And that guy was kind of someone that got under my skin pretty easy, yeah. He was a little, he was a little bit, a little bit brash, a little bit arrogant, and he kind of reminded me of the bullies.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

Remind exactly. I was like, what should that remind you of? Exactly. You were ready to prove as an adult what you couldn't prove when you were a kid through that business.

SPEAKER_04 26:28

And that guy said it couldn't be done, and I'm just like, he said there was these regulatory issues and this and that. I'm like, yeah, I think all I mean, yeah, but I think all that can get worked through. There's precedence here, there's this, that. And I went to work on it, you know, four years later, it was done. Like the business was there, but but but but it was never able to be profitable, like, but I did it, I did it. Like, I in my mind, like this guy I proved him wrong, and like said it couldn't be done and it was done.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

Was it profitable?

SPEAKER_04 27:04

No, but you did it, it was not profitable, and there was some red flags along the way that maybe it wasn't gonna be profitable. But I was like, but I was just like, well, if I can just get it approved, then I know that it, you know, then I so I just think about the amazing things that you can do. And and we talked a little bit about this, like when I read uh Elon Musk's um biography, uh the the the one that's really good from Walter Isaacson, and I see the amazing things that he's been able to accomplish out of his pain.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

Like there's no freedom.

SPEAKER_04 27:40

Yeah, there's no freedom.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

Like what the Bible talks about, though, is you know, you gain the whole world, you gain whatever you're trying to succeed in, too, that we actually feel like we'll medicate our pain.

SPEAKER_03 27:51

Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

We gain the whole thing, but we lose our soul, yeah. And and that's the cost. The cost is you.

SPEAKER_04 27:58

Yeah, yeah. And and then what I tell people is that if you're lucky, if you're lucky in this lifetime, you'll come to the end of that. Yeah, like it'll boil over. You'll have your own great awakening where the crap will hit the fan and like you're like, okay, yeah, I can't even function anymore. I gotta deal with this. Now, now it's hard because like going through that, like that was that was hard, and that was very, very, very, very, very, very painful. But but at the same time, like I almost feel like the the more determined you are, the more the more determined you are, the more focused you are, the harder you work, like the bigger you crash, you know what I'm saying? So, like, yeah, no, totally. So, I'm so thankful that it happened for for so many reasons, but um, but one of the things I really wanted to hit on, and I think this this hits a lot of Christians when they come to the compassion method, and they're like, you know, I just want God to heal me or to take this anxiety away or to take that away. And I'm like, I get that, but the thing is, is that you think you want it done one way, which is you want to snap your finger and you want it to be gone. And God sometimes does that. So there was a time in my life where I had not to the level of the Great Awakening, but I had a tremendous amount of anxiety over something. And it was just in my mid-20s when I was coming back to my faith. And I will never forget praying a praying through a Bible verse in my shower, and that thing that had me just in knots, yeah, like just lifted off of me. Like it was so hundred percent supernatural, like it just was gone. And I kept thinking, like, okay, I'm gonna get out of the shower and it's gonna come back. It didn't like when I say it was gone, it was gone. And then the thing, the thing that was kind of, you know, the thing that I thought was causing the anxiety kind of fixed itself out in like three or four days after that, like it was gone anyway, and it didn't even matter because I already was free. Yeah, so yeah, it does happen supernaturally, of course, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

But I it's not that we don't want God to come and do things, but at the same time, it's about relationship.

SPEAKER_04 30:28

But the root was still there, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

The root was still there, yep, exactly. That's why I always tell people like God wants to not just do me, He does miracles, but He doesn't want to just do a miracle, He wants to be with us through it.

SPEAKER_04 30:41

He wants a relationship, and and He doesn't want to be a genie in a bottle.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

No, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 30:47

So, did I ever tell you about my Psalm 22 dream?

SPEAKER_01 30:51

Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember that. That was amazing. You should share like a yeah, I'm gonna right now. Yeah, yeah. No, I remember that. That was amazing.

SPEAKER_04 30:57

So, um, so this is something I wrote in my journal back on my birthday, July 27th, 2013. Okay. So this was what I journaled. I said, um, and the Lord gave, I said, today's July 27, 2013, my 38th birthday, and the Lord gave me an amazing gift. So this is what I wrote all those years ago. I said, before I share the gift, a little background is order in order. For the past several months, God has taken me on a journey of self-discovery. He has sent wonderful people into my life to help me understand why I struggle in certain areas. With the assistance of the Holy Spirit and the people he sent, I've determined that the stronghold in my life that I need deliverance from is shame. So I wrote this more than five years before, you know, the Great Awakening. So I was already on to actually I don't remember that dream.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

I thought you were talking about a different one. I'm sorry. Yeah, no, I don't remember that.

SPEAKER_04 31:55

No, this this is this, yeah, this might be a different one, but yeah. So anyway, um, yeah, so I recognized that I had this stronghold of shame, and then I went on to describe where the shame came from, my childhood. Wow, not feel but feeling little. I I like I forgot that I knew this already.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

That's so great.

SPEAKER_04 32:16

But this is five years before I was in your office, you know, like six. So yeah. So anyway, um, so here's what happened on on that day on July 27, 2013. So I woke up kind of early, went back to bed, and I fell into a dream. And in the dream, I was in a uh like a classroom, and the professor or the teacher was teaching about Psalm 22. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 32:45

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 32:46

That's it. That's all I remember from the dream. The subject was Psalm 22. I don't remember anything else about what happened, but all I remember was waking up and thinking, oh my gosh, I can't wait to go read Psalm 22. Because I'm like, God's got something in there for me, like this dream, and it just was like, so I just boom, I went right to I went right to it. So uh here's here's then what happened. Um so I went to read Psalm 22, and then I said, when I got to verse six, I stopped in my tracks. So I'll just read it. Um the psalm goes, Oh my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you our fathers trusted, they trusted and you delivered them. To you they cried and were rescued, and you they trusted and were not put to shame. And here's the verse that just smoked me. But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who see me mock me, they make mouths at me, they wag their heads.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 34:03

Okay, so I knew that David had written this psalm. Okay, so I was like connecting with it. I was first I was connecting, I'm like, oh yeah, you know, David felt this way. Well, then I went a little deeper with it and just read what it said. I was kind of really big in that season reading the Matthew Henry commentary. And this is what it said in the Matthew Henry commentary. Um he said the spirit of Christ, which was in the prophets, testifies in this psalm as clearly and fully as anywhere in the whole Old Testament to the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow. There is no doubt that David is speaking about Jesus Christ here. That's the sensitive part. There is no doubt that David is speaking about Jesus, not of himself or any other person. Much of this psalm is explicitly applied to Christ in the New Testament. All of it may be applied to him. Some of it must be understood as referring only to him.

SPEAKER_00 35:17

And what got me was like God knows what it feels like. Literally, to not feel like a man. And I know what that feels like. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:51

So like in that moment, you know, um it was so profound. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:57

That's empathy, that's compassion. At its deepest levels.

SPEAKER_04 36:04

Yeah. Yeah. So now here's where I want to go with this. One would think after an encounter like that, you'd be pretty well set free, right?

SPEAKER_03 36:17

Yeah. You would think, but I wasn't.

unknown 36:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:23

Five years later, there I was, you know, where it reached its zenith. And it really, it really reminds me of like what you talk about, like when you first were establishing the compassion method, when God said, you know, don't bring me in until I've been properly introduced.

SPEAKER_03 36:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:45

And as amazing as that spiritual encounter was, and I can feel the I can still feel the actual compassion from it.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

Extraordinary, yeah. There's no doubt.

SPEAKER_04 36:57

I still needed it to come from a person.

SPEAKER_00 37:02

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:08

It still had to come. I had to tangibly feel it coming to me from a person. And you know, in the 10 gifts process, you know, identifying a caregiver, you know, someone that was able to give me that gift of feeling like I was enough.

SPEAKER_00 37:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:28

You know, that's what's really catapulted my healing. You know, all of these other things were like steps along the way. Of course, yeah. What's really, what's really, really, really drove the healing deeper was, and I, and I don't want people to miss this because we want to people in their pain want to bypass people. People in their pain want to bypass people.

SPEAKER_02 37:55

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 37:56

Like they don't want to have to deal with it. They don't have to deal with people because humans hurt us. Exactly. They just want to go a straight. But God's like, let's back up a second. The situation, the way that I actually put this together is that you were meant to feel these gifts, these emotional needs were meant to come through your mom and dad. People. Like I wanted it to be skin on skin. And my skin's not there anymore. My skin's gone. Jesus isn't walking the earth as a human being anymore. So he wants us to experience those gifts coming from him through people, right? Him with skin on. You know, we are his hands and feet.

SPEAKER_01 38:41

And just like Jesus experienced as a human, he experienced humans. He had a mommy and a daddy. Because he was a human that needed humans.

SPEAKER_04 38:55

Right. Right. So in our spirituality, we can't do an end around the system that God put in place to deliver this to us as much as we like to just skip humans because they suck a lot of the times.

SPEAKER_01 39:14

Yeah, exactly. Why would we go there?

SPEAKER_04 39:16

Humans suck a lot of times.

SPEAKER_01 39:18

They do. But humans also carry love and compassion in a unique way.

SPEAKER_03 39:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

That is as important as spirituality on this earth.

SPEAKER_04 39:32

And in my mind, they don't separate it. That is spirituality, exactly. Yes. Yeah. It's that's just it's the it's the system God put in place.

SPEAKER_01 39:40

Like he yeah, but I mean more like ice, like spirituality without human contact. I 100% agree. They are meant to go together.

SPEAKER_04 39:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:50

Because it's everything's spiritual. There is no humans. Yeah, exactly. There's no separation, but sometimes because of our pain, we separate from our humanity.

SPEAKER_04 39:59

Totally.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

Because we only feel comfortable in our spirituality, but they're meant to go together.

SPEAKER_04 40:04

Yeah, we well, because we get into blame, which is the other way we deflect, you know, and we've talked a lot about that.

SPEAKER_01 40:10

But that woman you gave me, she made me eat it. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_04 40:13

Right. You know, yeah. So no, and it just and I think it really just underscores and the point I really just want to drive home is that, you know, am I perfectly set free from shame? Uh no. No. But it's a level of degrees. So when I think about where I was in 2013, you know, I got a measure of I got a measure of something that day. I remember being in my workout room that morning, because that's where I kind of had this whole epiphany and was reading the Bible and all that. And I started crying. And my daughter came in because she heard me. I must have been crying loud enough that she heard me or something, or she just happened to walk in and she's like, Oh my gosh, what's wrong? And I'm like, No, don't worry. You know what it was? I think it, I think the dog started barking like crazy. Because whenever I'd start to do that, or whenever someone would have a big emotion, the dog would start to bark. Well, anyway, that drew them, and they saw I was crying and whatever. So, and then they were like, What's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong? And I'm like, No, it's a good, it's a good wrong. It's a good wrong. Good wrong. It's a good wrong, it's a good thing.

SPEAKER_03 41:22

Yeah, yeah, I like that.

SPEAKER_04 41:24

Yeah. So anyway, um, but yeah, so as profound as that was, you know, there there was more the healing had to go further because I had to experience that. So my first gift giver was hitting on this area of enough, and it was the coach, yeah, the coach that I had, uh, that you know, the the coach that was very rough around the edges, but gave me that gift.

unknown 41:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:50

And that that's where you healed your shame of not feeling like you're enough.

SPEAKER_04 41:54

Yeah, yeah. That's brought a lot of healing to my shame. Absolutely, absolutely. So um, so yeah, that's that's really my journey. And it's it's still it's still remarkable to me how complicated it felt when I was sitting in your office. Like I felt that I was facing the most complicated thing on the planet. Like, yeah, Einstein Einstein couldn't solve what I had going on.

SPEAKER_01 42:18

Yeah, like there was no that I often say our trigger makes it complicated, but when we reconnect with our true selves, it's simpler than we think.

SPEAKER_04 42:28

Yeah, and I prided myself. I could I could usually just always work things out. Like that company. Every every hitch, every hitch I found, I found an end round. There were so many dead ends, and I figured out the end around, and I figured it out, and I figured it out, and I figured it out, but I couldn't figure this out. I couldn't figure out why I was had to come to your office.

SPEAKER_01 42:50

Well, and that's if anybody could have figured it out.

SPEAKER_04 42:53

I think I could have figured it out. Because I could have just worked my way through it, read enough books, did enough stuff, prayed enough.

SPEAKER_01 42:59

Oh, exactly. But that's the tricky thing about shame is you can't work your way out of it. Because the more you work, the worse it gets.

unknown 43:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:08

Because the more you try to do to get out, it keeps you stuck. The only way you can get through shame is to heal shame by receiving what you needed, by getting the comfort that you needed, getting the compassion that you needed, it heals the shame that work could never heal.

SPEAKER_04 43:24

Yeah. Yeah. Work just keep digging yourself a deeper hole.

SPEAKER_01 43:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:29

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but yeah, it's definitely, it's definitely a journey. And I look forward to um really, you know, the next one that the next one that really still lies before me is play. Because we've talked about this a lot of times. I still have not, I still have not found the level of healing there that I that I know that I know that I will eventually. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:55

You had moments that it's been easier, but not the same level of that healing that came from receiving the gift of not enough. So the gift of play. I love that. And also I would say that many times the gift of not needing to receive the gift of enough does help you with the gift of play.

SPEAKER_03 44:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:17

Because it allows you to relax, where when you're not enough, you have to be, you're frantically working for it.

SPEAKER_04 44:24

Yeah. And when you receive it, the the funny story when you talk about like helping you get it. I mean, for me, when I drank, that's where I was able to play. You know, and that's what what made me laugh when I thought about it. That made me reminded me of my wife in um marriage counseling saying she was the victim of false advertisement. Because when we were dating and courting, I was drinking. So and I was fun.

SPEAKER_01 44:51

So fun.

SPEAKER_04 44:51

I was fun. I mean, there's some videos out there. I was fun. Um, I had a good time, but that's still within you.

SPEAKER_01 44:59

Drinking just help you be less inhibited, but that's still the real you.

SPEAKER_04 45:03

Yeah, I know you safer you. I know you keep saying that. It's just yeah, yeah, yeah. But it it is uh it's a game of increments, and we're working our way our way that direction. So yeah, yeah, very good. So yeah, I guess my encouragement to everyone uh listening, one of my big encouragements is that what we're doing with the compassion method is profoundly spiritual, even if it doesn't feel spiritual in the sense that you were taught spirituality or your experience of you know how you how you studied Christianity or whatever, but this process is profoundly spiritual. And it can take everything you've learned throughout your experience of of being a Christian or whatever, and you just take it to the absolute next level. It actually help you live, live, it helped you live in everything you're reading, it'll help you actually appropriate it to your life. Actually, appropriate it to your life. So, yeah. So yeah. So any closing thoughts that you have, Laura?

SPEAKER_01 46:16

Um, no, I loved hearing your story and thank you for being vulnerable in it. And I love just the fact of how you can bridge those two worlds of your spiritual experience and your emotional experience together and how they really go together seamlessly and what it's done for your heart and for yourself. And I think that's amazing.

SPEAKER_04 46:35

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, literally, because obviously, uh, you you had a big hand in that. So appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 46:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:46

All right. Well, that's it for this episode. Um, if anybody has any questions or anything, definitely we've been getting quite a few questions lately. So I think we need to do an uh episode on questions because I think so.

SPEAKER_01 46:59

And Brian's answer, your answers. Um, I just got back, so I just got a chance to catch up on some of your answers, are amazing. We should post that on our podcast page.

SPEAKER_04 47:08

Yeah, we can we can go through them, but there's been some really good questions. So I almost think that maybe an episode going after some of them.

SPEAKER_01 47:15

Ask questions, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:16

And a lot of them are really connected. Like a lot of them have been really connected to faith, faith. People trying to bring their faith, their Christian faith, and how does that connect with yeah, the compassion method?

SPEAKER_01 47:28

And so on, so bring any questions, even if you feel like it's controversial or not agreeing, or you don't understand something. Bring questions. That's how we learn.

SPEAKER_04 47:37

Yeah, very good. Well, thank you everyone for listening. Until next time, uh, we'll see you later. Bye bye. See you, everyone.