Make Sense Of Your Story with Adam Young

Special guest Adam Young joins us to discuss his new book, Make Sense of Your Story. 

What if the relationship patterns you can't seem to break are rooted in stories you've never fully understood? Adam Young, therapist and host of The Place We Find Ourselves podcast, joins us to explore how our earliest experiences continue to shape our most intimate relationships—and what we can do about it.

Whether you're struggling in your marriage, trying to parent differently than you were parented, or simply curious about why you relate to others the way you do, this conversation offers a compassionate roadmap for making sense of your story. As Adam reminds us, "Your stories need to be written and they need to be told." Are you ready to discover what's truly at the core of yours?

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Transcript

Introduction to Story Work with Adam Young

Brad Aldrich 0:04

Welcome to the Still Becoming One podcast. We are Brad and Kate.

Kate Aldrich 0:10

In our more than 20 years of marriage, we've survived both dark times and experienced restoration.

Brad Aldrich 0:15

Now as a licensed marriage counselor and relationship coaches. We help couples to regain hope and joy.

Kate Aldrich 0:23

We invite you to journey with us, as we are still becoming one.

Brad Aldrich 0:27

Let's start the conversation. Hello everyone, and welcome back to Still Becoming One. We are so excited to be here today and we're joined by a special guest. Why don't you introduce our guest for us today?

Kate Aldrich 0:44

Sure, I would love to. Today's guest is someone whose voice has guided countless people into deeper healing, clarity and connection. Adam Young is a therapist, teacher and the host of the Place we Find Ourselves podcast, a show that has become a lifeline for so many seeking to make sense of their stories through the lens of both neuroscience and faith. He holds a master's degree in divinity and counseling and is trained extensively in trauma care, narrative therapy and the work of Dan Allender. But more than his credentials, what sets Adam apart is his ability to name the ache between our patterns and to do so with compassion, clarity and courage. Today we're talking about his brand new book Make Sense of your Story A Path to Clarity, healing and Connection. Whether you're new to the work of engaging your story or have been walking this road for a while, this conversation will invite you deeper into the goodness of God's pursuit and your own heart. Adam, welcome to the podcast. We're so glad to have you here.

Adam Young 1:49

Thank you, kate. It's good to be with you all, yeah.

Kate Aldrich 1:52

Thank you, it's awesome, we're excited.

Brad Aldrich 1:55

Yeah, we are really excited. We got a chance to read the book and just loved it. We've been talking here about story work and the purpose of it and, adam, you just bring such great language to some of that. You say often that story shapes everything. How do you hope that your readers will experience that as kind of engaging with your book?

Adam Young 2:26

will experience that as kind of engaging with your book. Well, when I talk about your story, I'm not primarily talking about like a 30,000 foot overarching narrative of your life, from zero until however old you are and I think that's how many people think about story when they hear the story of your life. But I'm really inviting the reader to step into is two, three, four, five of the pivotal stories, scenes, incidents from their growing up years that were either harmful, traumatic, abusive, but that have stayed with them in their bodies, in their memory, and they may not know why. They may not know why I remember this thing. I just do.

Adam Young 3:11

And let me also say this at the outset you don't need to remember the whole story for it to be a story that shaped you. None of us have photographic, like video replay capacity, memories of the whole event. So I'm inviting you what are the fragments of memories, that thing that happened when you were 12 years old, that no one ever talks about, but you still remember? What are the scenes, the incidents from your growing up years that may have an effect on the way you relate today as an adult. Maybe you're 55 years old. That happened, you know, when you were five, when you were 10, when you were 15,. My contention is that those stories are still playing out in your present life, present day-to-day life.

How Story Shapes Everything in Our Lives

Kate Aldrich 4:04

Yeah, for sure, and we you know, brad and I, in our practice, like we, we meet with lots of different people, but when we meet with couples I think that's you know people will often be coming for tools, which is great. Tools are super helpful and sometimes they're needed because we need to learn different ways and strategies and things like that. But often, brad and I say we can give you as many tools as you want, but until we understand why you're doing what you're doing, what's're often trying to help couples to understand, and I don't know. But I love the example you talked about, you and your wife, and like trying to figure out that dynamic of her wanting you to pursue her, spend time with her, all of that and like being able to understand why that was a challenge for you.

Adam Young 5:04

Right, yeah, so yeah, so great example. So in my own marriage, my own life like, my wife frequently comes to me and said over the years in marriage counseling she's brought to our therapy times hey, adam, it would really be good for my heart if you pursued me more, if you asked me more about what's going on for me, if there was more intentionality in your pursuit of my heart. Now if what was offered to me was the tool of you know? Hey, put it on your calendar.

Adam Young 5:36

Set an iPhone alarm or something like I'm not dismissing the helpfulness of certain tools. Sure, here's what I'm saying in the book. Until I understand what's going on in my nervous system, based on my experience, in this case with my mother, that's inhibiting me from naturally pursuing my wife's heart, then I'm going to be blocked, no matter what arsenal of tools has been given to me. Why? Because we are. We have neurons, we are deeply limbic beings.

Adam Young 6:12

Your limbic system is a deep part of your brain that drives your motivation, your emotion. It's very instrumental in how you relate to other people, especially close marriage. You know intimate relationships, and so I needed to understand I need present tense to understand that I was deeply violated, in an enmeshed kind of way, by my mother, and so there's something inside of me that says something inside of me that says I don't want to get too close to and I'll put it this way the woman, the woman in my life, sure, and I need to understand that. I need to have grief about that, I need to have anger about that If I'm going to show up for Caroline, my wife, the way she needs me to.

Brad Aldrich 7:03

Yeah, so, so good, it is really good. I think there are so many, let's just say, guys out there but people in general out there that have had that thing that their spouse has asked them to do over and over again, and they go yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll get on that or I'll think about that, and yet it kind of just slides into the background again. What was it that helped you to go? Okay, there's got to be something else going on here.

When Marriage Tools Aren't Enough

Adam Young 7:33

Well, I had stepped into some of the complexities of my story with regard to my mom. You know, starting as about a 35-year-old man, I began to explore the nature of my relationship with my mother and what I uncovered, what what the stories that I remembered really pointed to was. I was in a very what's called triangulated relationship with my mother. In other words, my dad was emotionally checked out of their marriage and my mom looked to me her son, for emotional support, companionship, guidance, intimacy, and in time, that became sexualized, and what I mean by that is there was an erotic energy between my mom and I. How do I know that? Well, one example is when she would hug me. There was a sense of energy flowing out of me like being taken and consumed rather than me receiving, and I always wanted to break off the hug before she did.

Brad Aldrich 8:34

There was something.

Adam Young 8:35

Here's the triangulated sexualized relationship with my mom.

Kate Aldrich 8:47

Yeah.

Adam Young 8:48

And the implication of that is that stuff inside of me is not going away and it's being brought into my present day relationship with my wife. And so I married a woman who this will come as no surprise it was is avoidantly attached, which means she didn't require anything of me as a 19, 20, 21 year old when we were dating like she and I, and it was like. My heart was like oh, I can rest in this, I don't have to tend to this woman.

Adam Young 9:27

She's not dysregulated in my presence and asking me to soothe her tend to her, bring her back from the abyss. She seems to be super self-sufficient. Yeah, and I was like I can breathe, I can breathe and breathe. The dilemma with that is she is also created in the image of a we and not an I, and therefore she needs relational care.

Kate Aldrich 9:54

Yeah, right.

Adam Young 9:54

No matter how avoidantly attached she is. And as she heals and grows from age, you know, when we start dating in college into her thirties from age, you know, when we start dating in college into her thirties, into her forties, as she heals and grows, her need for my care is going to actually increase, because that's how human beings are wired for relationship and that's going to, you can see it, that's going to create like a suffocation for me and it's and it's almost like my nervous system recoils against the woman that I'm married to, asking what my mom asked of me.

Adam Young 10:33

But she's not doing that, but it feels like she is.

Kate Aldrich 10:38

Sure, exactly yeah.

Brad Aldrich 10:40

It's really good, it is good. I want to push even further, because we've done some of that like okay, you can get the insight, the connection. Oh, look at how these things set you up for this type of relationship. How did the insight, having that light bulb go off start to change the behavior with your wife? Did you find it easier all of a sudden to start doing that connection? Did you what? What was different?

Adam Young 11:10

Naming harm, naming the dynamic is, I would say, more than 50% of the battle to change and healing. Just naming what's going on. Right is more than 50% of the way to healing growth change. So for so many people they feel like they need to do something differently in their intimate relationships. And sure, great. But what if naming the ways you've been set up for the dynamic what Sue Johnson calls the dance of your marriage, is going to take you further than putting an alarm in your iPhone to ask your wife how she's doing?

Kate Aldrich 11:56

Yeah, exactly, Exactly. Yeah, it's so good. And you know you spoke of the dance and and you know this process, as Dan Allender says, makes us curious, Like there's a. There are pieces for your wife too from her story and I don't know anything about her story that play into these things as well, and I love that you said. But as we grow and heal, that need will grow and heal in a positive, a positive way way, and and so then the interaction between husband and wife can grow and heal in really beautiful ways, which I think we've seen for us, we've seen for some of our clients, and. But I like that you named that, because I think that can sometimes feel intimidating, right, Because if we're not, and sometimes in relationships and for us too, sometimes we're not healing or growing at the same rate, and so then how do we walk alongside of and hold our spouse's story? Well, yeah.

Kate Aldrich 13:05

It becomes, as you said, a dance, but it also, at times, can be challenging.

Brad Aldrich 13:13

Yeah, and not using it as a weapon, right? We've seen that and I don't know if you've had a temptation of that of like, oh, that's just your story coming out kind of against each other instead of with each other.

Adam Young 13:27

Yes, yeah, I'm really glad you brought that up. That happens with couples all the time and it's just so heartbreaking you should never like. There's nothing helpful about telling someone. Your story is the reason we're having such a hard time right now. The sentence might be a hundred percent true.

Kate Aldrich 13:52

Okay, but it's an accusation.

Adam Young 13:55

right, it's an accusation, and accusations are thinly veiled versions of contempt.

Adam Young 14:01

And as we know from the Gottman's like, contempt is a killer in romantic relationships. And so the opposite of that, brad, I would say, is you need to get a PhD in how your spouse was wounded. That's the way I say it, that's really good. You need to have curiosity about your spouse's story and know it so well that you have an understanding for why he or she is the way they are, and that doesn't mean they're going to stay that way. But you need to understand why their nervous system reacts to you the way it does, because there's a reason for that. That's the premise of the book. There's a reason why we relate to people the way we do. There's a reason why we're stuck in the ways we're stuck. It's not random.

Brad Aldrich 14:55

Yeah, no, it's not, and this may bring us back to kind of the start, but I think it's an important thing, because one of the things I hear all the time as I kind of try to open those doors of woundedness or understanding deeper things, is this objection that says something like oh, I was raised in a Christian home. My parents tried their best. Overall, I had a pretty good childhood. Done, can we just move on to the normal things now? Right, yeah, how do you relate to that? How do you answer that kind of pseudo-honor objection?

Adam Young 15:34

Well, it's really odd for Christians to say because Christians believe in the Bible and according to the Bible, no one does the best they can. You sometimes do the best you can and you sometimes don't. That's what it means to be a sinner. So, according to the Bible, you have to grapple with the fact that you do harm, and you also have to grapple with the fact that your parents did harm, and some of that harm was intentional and some of that harm was intentional and some of that harm was unintentional.

Kate Aldrich 16:12

Sure.

Adam Young 16:13

So have you put down on a piece of paper some bullets of the primary ways your father harmed you when you were living in your home growing up, and on the bottom half of that paper, can you bullet out some of the key ways that your mother harmed you? And if you can't, then it's not merely that you're not honoring your father and mother, because honor requires honesty, but far more it's. You're living an illusion, you're living in denial, you've got your head in the sand about what actually went down for you as a boy or a girl and that that will leak out in your romantic relationships in really yucky, damaging ways, in your romantic relationships in really yucky damaging ways.

Brad Aldrich 17:08

Yeah, so then I'm going to turn the table on that.

Kate Aldrich 17:15

How do?

Adam Young 17:15

you have that not terrify you as a parent, that's a question.

Adam Young 17:18

We get a lot. Yeah, the way you have that not terrify you as a parent is twofold. Number one you need a savior, you need a rescuer, you need the spirit of God to heal your children from the harm that you've done. But that's okay. We're celebrating Easter shortly. That's what Easter is all about. God got involved and is on a rescue mission and loves your children deeply. So that's number one. But number two repair is possible in the land of the living. There is no way to avoid doing harm. However, there are lots of ways to repair harm. Sadly, many people have not experienced repair from their parents.

Adam Young 18:14

In other words, especially people that have a history of trauma, when they think of saying to mom mom, could we talk about some of the ways you hurt me when I was growing up? It's like, it's like they're like. I could never say that sentence to my mother. Well, okay, then you've got a really big bind on your hands because there's no way to move forward if someone is not willing to discuss, repair.

Kate Aldrich 18:39

Yeah, Sure, yep, absolutely. But our kids are between 21 and 17. And probably at nauseam we're like remember, if you guys ever need to talk to us about things we haven't done, well we are here. We know, mom, we know. But just making that an offer to them, an offer of repair?

Adam Young 19:02

Yes.

The Neuroscience Behind Story Impact

Kate Aldrich 19:04

And then I mean, we had one of our kiddos at Christmas time come and bring something to us and then actually being able to sit with them, and I got to admit, as a parent, it was hard, hard, right, it is not a pretty process, but it's also beautiful and I was so thankful that that kiddo was willing to open up to us, even though it was heartbreaking, because it's a mirror and it's as you said. I need a rescuer and I have to sit with that. At times that like, yep, as much as I might intend to do, well, I didn't. And so, yeah, it's a hard process and I love both of those and that's what I know. I work with a lot of women, moms, and when we start to do their story work, they can get very stuck in. Oh, I'm doing this to my kids, right, first address you, the little you, and then we can talk more about, like, how do you engage that process with your kids to to hopefully change generations for the positive?

Brad Aldrich 20:14

yeah, so, yeah, it's tough it is hard, it's tough, adam.

Brad Aldrich 20:21

You kind of talked about repair as one of the big six that you mentioned in your book of things that are important in relationships, and I don't know we'll have time to talk about all six of those, but they are really important things of engaging, both where we can grow into healthier relationships, but also places where we were not given, things that we missed. I'm curious, as you've kind of explored stories, your own and others, what's kind of the surprising one of the big six that kind of comes out of nowhere and goes oh, that was missing that kind of comes out of nowhere and goes oh, that was missing.

Adam Young 21:15

Oh, for me, the biggest of the big, the one that's the most heart-wrenching for me, is that in my story is number four, which is you needed your parents to be able to regulate your affect as a boy or a girl, and in my family I was a deeply sensitive boy who had a lot of big feelings and.

Adam Young 21:30

I was asked to regulate my parents' affect and they would never regulate mine, and that is that is tormenting for a child. A child's brain needs a container of soothing and care when that child becomes dysregulated in their body which happens all the time to children and when that container is not there, when mom and dad are not willing to sit on the foot of your bed, put their hand on your ankle, on your shoulder, and say you know what was it like for you that you were so hopeful about playing in your soccer game and you sat on the bench for the entire game. What are you? What's that disappointment like for you? How are you doing? What do you need? How can we support you? We are in this with you. Let me tell you about a time of deep disappointment in my. When those conversations of affect regulation are not happening. The child is left with unbelievably big feelings that they can't regulate on their own but they have to, and that that's really damaging to the brain.

Kate Aldrich 22:45

Yeah, yeah.

Brad Aldrich 22:48

And I think that you just mentioned one of the places that I really like this book is. You do kind of bring in some of the neuroscience, that this is not just hey, you know, we have to talk about the bad things that happened to you, of how our brain was formed and why these stories are so significant. Can you tell us a little bit of what you learned in how stories, and understanding our stories, impacts our neurobiology?

The Big Six Relationship Needs

Adam Young 23:25

Sure, the important thing to understand is that we are like lightning years. Important thing to understand is that we are like lightning years. Well, we're. 30 years ago we did not know nearly what we know now about neurobiology, brain structures, the limbic system, how neural networks get connected, but we do now, and that is really, really helpful for people with trauma, because so much of the byproduct of trauma it's not merely that I'm having all these big out of control feelings and difficulties in relationships, it's also that I feel like there's something wrong with me because I don't understand why, right, I can't put my. I don't know why this is so hard for me. Well, now we know. Now we know. And so the big two things that we know from neuroscience in terms of the development of your brain is number one relationships influence the neural connections in your brain more than anything else. So your relationships as a boy or a girl are more responsible for how your neurons are connected than nutrition, diet, exercise, meditation, prayer, all of it.

Adam Young 24:42

Because? Why? Because we're created in the image of a triune God, and so we are deeply relational people. That's number one. Number two your earlier relationships, your earlier experiences have a disproportionate influence on the development of your brain. We know this now. Therefore, you put those two things together and here's what you get your earliest relationship with your primary caretakers, single most important thing for you to know something about yeah yeah, wow, and I think it's the part that we discount.

Brad Aldrich 25:20

I mean, you're just hearing you talk about it. I'm like sitting here thinking about you know how many parents out there are paying attention to all the additives are in the food and all the things that they're doing and missing some of the ways that dealing with emotions impacts their kids' brains and I think I mean it goes back to our honor and honesty, right, those things do matter.

Kate Aldrich 25:45

Parents are trying and those are things that are very tangible and sometimes they don't have emotions, they're very easy to look into regulate all those kinds of things. But yes, I think we also underestimate if we were in a deficit in our family, which we all are to some extent, but if we were in a deficit with emotions in our family, we're going to be in a deficit in the next family.

Kate Aldrich 26:12

That we're in and not have those those ways to enter in If nobody entered in with you. You've got to work to figure out that. As you said, that grief process, the fact that that is sad, that that is hard, and then how do I enter in with my new family, my kids, my you know, all of those kinds of things. It's a challenge to take your deficit and heal and have it be something. I don't know if that's where you were going with that comment, but yeah, I think those things are tangible and easy for people to kind of enter into, but the emotions many times are very difficult.

Adam Young 26:54

So and in terms of parenting, yeah, one of the things that neuroscience has demonstrated very conclusively is that if you want to be a better parent, it has nothing to do with interacting differently with your children.

Kate Aldrich 27:09

Yeah.

Adam Young 27:11

So you can take, you know, 95% of the parenting books out there, and it's not that they don't matter, it's not that they're not true.

Adam Young 27:19

Exactly it's that they are so incredibly secondary to this. Making coherent sense of your own developmental story that is what is linked to secure attachment in children. That's what's linked to what we call successful parenting the degree to which you, as a 34-year-old mother, have made complete sense of your own developmental story. And that's what this book is about. It's inviting you to make sense of your story and if you do that, it will change automatically, limbically, implicitly, the way you relate to your children. That's really good.

Kate Aldrich 28:01

It is really good. It is really good yeah.

Brad Aldrich 28:04

Adam, towards the end of the book you put in this idea which actually I thought was really well done of you challenge people that understanding your story needs to be done in the context of relationships and I'm wondering if you can expand on that because I'm sure some people reading that would go oh, does this mean I have to go tell my parents everything that they did wrong?

Kate Aldrich 28:31

Does this?

Brad Aldrich 28:31

mean I now need to go confront my bully from elementary school Like what do you mean in the context of relationships?

Adam Young 28:40

No, you don't have to talk to your parents, as a matter of fact, I would advise you strongly against that, at least for some time or the bully.

Adam Young 28:48

What I'm inviting people to do, oh, let me put it this way here's how you cannot heal fully your Bible, a journal, a cup of coffee, your favorite chair and a good view out the window and that's what many people try so much yeah Right, your favorite book, whatever your kind of rhythm is because the problem with that set up that I just narrated is you're alone Now. You're with God, but you're you don't. There are not, there are no other people in the room with you, and for you to engage your story, you have to tell it to others that can help tell it back to you in a more truthful way, because none of us can tell our stories truthfully. Why? Because we are too close to them. They're all we ever knew, and so what is actually harmful felt normal, because it was normal for you. So you need the reaction of other people so that you can name yourself in the story you just told truthfully and accurately. You also need the care of other people, not just their reaction.

Adam Young 30:07

You need their care. You need their containment, you need their presence. You need their attunement, their containment, you need their presence, you need their attunement. That's how neurons heal, that's how neural networks rewire is through attuned, caring presence of others.

Brad Aldrich 30:25

Wow, that's really powerful.

Kate Aldrich 30:27

It is really powerful and I mean we've experienced that sharing in a group setting. It's just yeah.

Brad Aldrich 30:35

It's powerful, it's different and I always tell people. It's even different than, yes, doing it with your coach, your therapist is great, but it's doing it in a group of people who care about you and can show you that care, I think, is even more powerful. For sure. Yeah, wow, adam, just to kind of wrapping up in this, you say that you will not experience freedom from the places where you're bound until you name what is most true about your story In many ways.

Finding What's Truly at the Core

Brad Aldrich 31:12

Healing and growth are simply a matter of getting closer and closer to naming what is truest about your story. Tell me a little bit about, about narration for you.

Adam Young 31:23

Well for me. I knew that my dad was physically abusive, emotionally distant, verbally abusive Like I could have told you that as a 20 year old Like I had. I had language for that, I had experienced that, I had stories about that and I would have been able to narrate that. However, what's most true about my story is that my mother triangulated me, used me as a surrogate spouse and set me up to be envied by my father. I had no idea that what felt like the sweetness and closeness of my relationship with my mom was actually what was so harmful to me, and so my compass was whacked. Here's what I mean by that.

Adam Young 32:12

The way I narrated my story was mom was the gift God gave me to compensate for an abusive father. That's actually the opposite of what's true. I'm not saying dad was the gift. I'm saying my mother was actually more harmful and abusive to my heart, mind and body than the verbal and physical abuse from my father. But I didn't know that as a boy. I didn't know that as a 35 year old, and I was a psychology major, undergrad and I had a master's degree in social work. So education is not going to do the trick. Books are not going to do the trick unless they invite you into the particularity of your stories of harm and heartache and trauma.

Adam Young 33:01

And that's what I'm trying to do, and make sense of your story is it's like a guide, so that you can begin to explore your story and what's most true about your story in depth. Yeah, I love that.

Kate Aldrich 33:15

That's so good and I appreciate you sharing that because I've often I don't think I articulated it quite as well as you did, but I often share about. My dad was an alcoholic. He fought in Vietnam, so there was verbal abuse. It was just made our house kind of chaotic and I just I spent so much of my teenage years, childhood in my bedroom just kind of listening to my walkman hiding. And yet when I got so and I could tell, as you said, I had language for that ever since we met and brad and I started dating at 16 and 17. So I had language for that ever since we met and Brad and I started dating at 16 and 17. So I had language for all of that.

Kate Aldrich 33:54

And I thought for so long well, I can tell people about that. So what do I need to work on? Like what? What else would there be for me to do? And yet when I got into story work, it was my mom that I had to deal with, right, not my dad, right? And actually and this is it sounds hard, but like I actually felt more seen by my dad at times than my mom, even though he brought a general sense of disorder and chaos to our home with his coping strategy of drinking.

Adam Young 34:26

But yes, like, and I've shared that with many people, and there it opens up a world of oh, just because I can name certain things that happened in my family doesn't mean I necessarily understand the harm that's happened to me confessing, kate, is that you came to name what was most true about your story as you explored your relationship with your mother, and that had been an area that you were not aware of, not looking at, even though your body knew you hadn't named it, you hadn't told it, you hadn't understood it, you hadn't made sense of your relationship with your mom.

Kate Aldrich 35:11

You hadn't told it, you hadn't understood it, you hadn't made sense of your relationship with your mom because in your mind, dad was the harmful one, right, right, and he was. He was the obvious and like people I would say most of the people like around us knew my dad struggled, so like also, it was the world could see that was traumatic, right. So we're like OK, this is it. And yet that definitely has a place.

Brad Aldrich 35:33

I'm not downplaying that, but it wasn't we have most of the harm happened we have two adopted kids and I remember in one of our adoption processes, just because you put on a form that your dad was an alcoholic, you had to do all this extra stuff to deal with him. I did which was really interesting and frustrating at times, it wasn't the real core of what you needed to deal with, right yeah?

Kate Aldrich 36:00

That process was interesting and I remember you reflecting, because at that point we had done some of our work, and you said it's really funny that they're asking that about your dad but they're not asking anything about my harm which was just as harmful but the world wouldn't see it as such.

Kate Aldrich 36:17

So they're not predicting that that could be a problem and things could come up and so, yeah, it was just. It was a really interesting process, but I appreciate you kind of giving words to that, because I think more people out there than not probably are going to find that's true when they dive into their story. Not everybody, but oh, I didn't even realize that was more where. I was hurt where my heart was hurt.

Brad Aldrich 36:43

Yes, well, and we hear it, even in those people who have those big T traumas of some, you know the uncle or the neighbor who did something atrocious.

Kate Aldrich 36:53

Yeah.

Brad Aldrich 36:54

I know so many times the true of the story was the parent who never noticed, or they were told, and they Told and brushed it aside.

Kate Aldrich 37:06

Yeah, those are often harder to deal with than the actual physical harm.

Brad Aldrich 37:14

Yeah, that's why that quote jumped out at me, because I just think it's so significant that sometimes knowing the details of the story is the start. And there's so many layers that we need to work on.

Kate Aldrich 37:26

Yeah, I love too that you shared about your education, because I think that you would find that to be true as well. I say that all the time, like you going, getting your education, having a passion for it, the Lord leading you there, but then also hoping to fix yourself with it. I don't want to speak for you, but that.

Brad Aldrich 37:46

I joke now all the time that doing a master's in marriage and family therapy does very little for your own marriage and probably makes it worse, if anything. So yeah, that's very true.

Kate Aldrich 37:58

We got there, but yeah.

Brad Aldrich 38:00

So, adam, somebody picking up your book, reading through it and going, okay, I see that there's some stuff I need to work on. Where do I start? Where does somebody start in trying to figure out this story thing?

Adam Young 38:16

Well, if you can afford therapy, find a story-informed, trauma-informed therapist. That's number one. I've got some on my website, adamyoungcounselingcom. You can go to theallendercenter org. They have a directory of people that are trained in story work. If that's not an option for you, do you have someone or someone's in your community, in your life that you can risk, that it feels safe enough not totally safe, but safe enough to risk reading one of your stories of harm from your growing up years?

Kate Aldrich 38:54

to that person. Yeah.

Adam Young 38:56

And see what that experience is like for you and what fruit it bears. Your stories need to be written and they need to be told. That's the point, and so begin the process by writing a story and reading it to someone.

Kate Aldrich 39:15

I like that.

Brad Aldrich 39:16

That's really good.

Kate Aldrich 39:17

Super practical and yeah, yeah, that's so good. I love it, yeah.

Brad Aldrich 39:26

Wow, this has been really, I think, a really insightful conversation. I hope it's something that people will continue to pursue. We've been talking about story work for a long time. I think your book brings a new kind of primer of hey, how do you walk through this in a realistic way? I love I know you do too. I love Dan Allender. I think Dan Allender's books are fantastic. I will tell you. I've referred them to many guys who go man, he's so poetic. What does he actually mean?

Kate Aldrich 39:59

I love his writing style. I love that.

Brad Aldrich 40:02

But I think, Adam, your book does a really good job of kind of bringing it to. What does this actually mean?

Kate Aldrich 40:10

And it's a different style, which I think is good that we have different resources out there with different ways of writing, so I think yours brings a little bit more practical yeah, I don't know what else I would say, but I think it's really would be a resource for some of those guys who have a little bit hard time unraveling Dan's riddles, which I find very beautiful and insightful, but for some people that's a little bit more complicated. So, yeah, well, we hope that lots of people pick up your book, adam, because I think it's going to be a really good resource for people. We've already been recommending it to people.

Kate Aldrich 40:54

We actually were speaking somewhere and we're recommending it before it released or I think it was like the day it released, or something like that, so it's definitely on the top of our recommend to people. So thank you so much for taking the time to write it, because I think it's just really really good taking the time to write it, because I think it's just really really good.

Adam Young 41:17

Thank you, Kate Brad.

Kate Aldrich 41:17

This has been a delightful conversation, Thanks for talking about the book, getting the word out For sure, for sure.

Brad Aldrich 41:20

Thank you. Well, that was such a great conversation with Adam. I really do hope that you check out his book Make Sense of your Story, why Engaging your Past with Kindness Changes Everything, and we just really thank you, Adam, for joining us on Still Becoming One. Yeah, Until next time. I'm Brad Aldrich.

Kate Aldrich 41:43

And I'm Kate Aldrich. Be kind and take care of each other.

Brad Aldrich 41:51

Still Becoming One is a production of Aldrich Ministries. For more information about Brad and Kate's coaching ministry courses and speaking opportunities, you can find us at aldrichministriescom For podcast show notes and links to resources in all of our social media. Be sure to visit us at stillbecomingonecom and don't forget to like this episode wherever you get your podcasts. And be sure to follow us to continue your journey on Still Becoming One.